SHOWS HOW THE PARTY MADE THEMSELVES AT HOME IN THE BUSH--TALK ROUND THE
CAMP FIRE--A FLASH OF TEMPER--TURNING IN.
The spot where they were thus suddenly arrested in their progress was a
small bay, formed by a low point which jutted from the mainland, and
shut out the prospect in advance. There was little or no wood on the
point, except a few stunted willows, which being green and small would
not, as La Roche the cook remarked, "make a fire big enough to roast the
wing of a mosquito." There was no help for it, however. The spot on
which Massan had resolved to encamp for the night was three miles on the
other side of the point, and as the way was now solid ice instead of
water, there was no possibility of getting there until a change of wind
should drive the ice off the shore. Moreover, it was now getting dark,
and it behoved them to make their preparations with as much speed as
possible. Accordingly, Massan and Prince shouldered one canoe, Francois
and Gaspard carried the other, and the light one was placed on the
shoulders of Bryan the blacksmith; La Roche took the provision-basket
and cooking utensils under his special charge; while the three Esquimau
interpreters and the two Indian guides busied themselves in carrying the
miscellaneous goods and baggage into camp. As for Chimo, he seated
himself quietly on a lump of ice, and appeared to superintend the entire
proceedings; while his young mistress and her mother, accompanied by
Frank and Stanley, crossed the ice to the shore, to select a place for
their encampment.
But it was some time ere a suitable place could be found, as the point
happened to be low and swampy, and poor Eda's first experience of a life
in the woods was stepping into a hole which took her up to the knees in
mud and water. She was not alone, however, in misfortune, for just at
the same moment Bryan passed through the bushes with his canoe, and
staggered into the same swamp, exclaiming as he did so, in a rich brogue
which many years' residence among the French half-breeds of Rupert's
Land had failed to soften, "Thunder an' turf! such a blackguard counthry
I niver did see. Och, Bryan dear, why did ye iver lave yer native
land?"
"Pourquoi, why, mon boy? for ver' goot raison," cried La Roche, in a
horrible compound of French and broken English, as he skipped lightly
past, with a loud laugh, "for ver' goot raison--dey was tired of you to
home, vraiment. You was too grande raskale; dey could not keep you no
longer."
"Thrue for ye, La Roche," replied the blacksmith, "thrue for ye, boy;
they sartinly could not keep me on nothin', an' as the murphies was all
sp'iled wi' the rot, I had to lave or starve."
At last, after a long search, Frank Morton found a spot pretty well
adapted for their purpose. It was an elevated plot of gravel, which was
covered with a thin carpet of herbage, and surrounded by a belt of
willows which proved a sufficient shelter against the wind. A low and
rather shaggy willow-tree spread its branches over the spot, and gave to
it a good deal of the feeling and appearance of shelter, if not much of
the reality. This was of little consequence, however, as the night
proved fine and comparatively mild, so that the black vault of heaven,
spangled with hosts of brilliant stars, amply compensated for the want
of a leafy canopy.
Under the willow-tree, Frank and La Roche busied themselves in spreading
a very small white tent for Mr Stanley and his family. Frank himself,
although entitled from his position in the Company's service to the
luxury of a tent, scorned to use one, preferring to rough it like the
men, and sleep beneath the shelter of the small canoe. Meanwhile, Mr
Stanley proceeded to strike a light with his flint and steel; and Bryan,
having deposited his burden near the tent, soon collected a sufficiency
of driftwood to make a good fire. Edith and her mother were not idle in
the midst of this busy scene. They collected a few bundles of dried
twigs to make the fire light more easily, and after the blaze was
casting its broad glare of light over the camp, and the tent was
pitched, they assisted La Roche in laying the cloth for supper. Of
course, in a journey like this, none but necessary articles were taken,
and these were of the most homely character. The kettle was the
tea-pot, the cups were tin pannikins, and the table-cloth was a large
towel, while the table itself was the ground, from the damp of which,
however, the party in the tent were protected by an ample oil-cloth.
When all the things were carried up, and the men assembled, the camp
presented the following appearance: in the centre of the open space,
which nature had arranged in the form of a circle, blazed the fire; and
a right jovial, sputtering, outrageous fire it was, sending its sparks
flying in all directions, like the artillery of a beleaguered fortress
in miniature, and rolling its flames about in fierce and wayward
tongues, that seemed bent on licking in and swallowing up the entire
party, but more especially La Roche, who found no little difficulty in
paying due attention to his pots and kettles. Sometimes the flames
roared fiercely upwards, singeing off the foliage of the overhanging
willow as they went, and then, bursting away from their parent fire,
portions of them floated off for a few seconds on the night air. On the
weather side of this fire stood Mr Stanley's tent, under the
willow-tree, as before described, its pure white folds showing strongly
against the darkness of the sky beyond. The doorway, or curtain of the
tent, was open, displaying the tea-equipage within, and the smiling
countenances of Stanley and his wife, Frank and Eda, who, seated on
blankets and shawls around the towel, were preparing to make an assault
on the fat duck before mentioned. This duck had been split open and
roasted on a piece of stick before the blaze, and now stood with the
stumps of its wings and legs extended, as if demanding urgently to be
eaten--a demand which Chimo, who crouched near the doorway, could scarce
help complying with.
To the right of the tent was placed the small canoe, bottom up, so as to
afford a partial protection to the bedding which Oostesimow was engaged
in spreading out for Frank and himself and his comrade Ma-Istequan.
Facing this, at the other side of the fire, and on the left of the tent,
the largest canoe was turned up in a similar manner, and several of the
men were engaged in covering the ground beneath it with a layer of
leaves and branches, above which they spread their blankets; while
others lounged around the fire and smoked their beloved pipes, or
watched with impatient eyes the operations of Bryan, who, being
accustomed to have familiar dealings with the fire, had been deemed
worthy of holding the office of cook to the men, and was inducted
accordingly.
It is due to Bryan to say that he fully merited the honour conferred
upon him; for never, since the days of Vulcan, was there a man seen who
could daringly dabble in the fire as he did. He had a peculiar
sleight-of-hand way of seizing hold of and tossing about red-hot coals
with his naked hand, that induced one to believe he must be made of
leather. Flames seemed to have no effect whatever on his sinewy arms
when they licked around them; and as for smoke, he treated it with
benign contempt. Not so La Roche: with the mercurial temperament of his
class he leaped about the fire, during his culinary operations, in a way
that afforded infinite amusement to his comrades, and not unfrequently
brought him into violent collision with Bryan, who usually received him
on such occasions with a strong Irish growl, mingled with a disparaging
or contemptuous remark.
Beyond the circle of light thrown by the fire was the belt of willows
which encompassed the camp on all sides except towards the sea, where a
narrow gap formed a natural entrance and afforded a glimpse of the ocean
with its fields and hummocks of ice floating on its calm bosom and
glancing in the faint light of the moon, which was then in its first
quarter.
"How comfortable and snug everything is!" said Mrs Stanley, as she
poured out the tea, while her husband carved the duck.
"Yes, isn't it, Eda?" said Frank, patting his favourite on the head, as
he held out her plate for a wing. "There, give her a bit of the breast
too," he added. "I know she's ravenously hungry, for I saw her looking
at Chimo, just before we landed, as if she meant to eat him for supper
without waiting to have him cooked."
"O Frank, how can you be so wicked?" said Eda, taking up her knife and
fork and attacking the wing with so much energy as almost to justify her
friend's assertion.
"Snug, said you, Jessie? yes, that's the very word to express it," said
Stanley. "There's no situation that I know of (and I wasn't born
yesterday) that is so perfectly snug, and in all respects comfortable,
as an encampment in the woods on a fine night in spring or autumn."
"Or winter," added Frank, swallowing a pannikin of tea at a draught,
nodding to Chimo, as much as to say, "Do that if you can, old fellow,"
and handing it to Mrs Stanley to be replenished. "Don't omit winter--
cold, sharp, sunny winter. An encampment in the snow, in fine weather,
is as snug as this."
"Rather cold, is it not?" said Mrs Stanley.
"Cold! not a bit," replied Frank, making a reckless dive with his hand
into the biscuit-bag; "if you have enough wood to get up a roaring fire,
six feet long by three broad and four deep, with a bank of snow five
feet high all around ye, a pine-tree with lots of thick branches
spreading overhead to keep off the snow, and two big green blankets to
keep out the frost--(another leg of that widgeon, please)--you've no
notion how snug it is, I assure you."
"Hum!" ejaculated Stanley, with a dubious smile, "you forgot to add--a
youthful, robust frame, with the blood careering through the veins like
wildfire, to your catalogue of requisites. No doubt it is pleasant
enough in its way; but commend me to spring or autumn for thorough
enjoyment, when the air is mild, and the waters flowing, and the woods
green and beautiful."
"Why don't you speak of summer, papa?" said Eda, who had been listening
intently to this conversation.
"Summer, my pet! because--"
"Allow me to explain," interrupted Frank, laying down his knife and
fork, and placing the forefinger of his right hand in his left palm, as
if he were about to make a speech. "Because, Eda, because there is such
a thing as heat--long-continued, never-ending, sweltering heat. Because
there are such reprehensible and unutterably detestable insects as
mosquitoes, and sand-flies, and bull-dogs; and there is such a thing as
being bitten, and stung, and worried, and sucked into a sort of partial
madness; and I have seen such sights as men perpetually slapping their
own faces, and scratching the skin off their own cheeks with their own
nails, and getting no relief thereby, but rather making things worse;
and I have, moreover, seen men's heads swelled until the eyes and noses
were lost, and the mouths only visible when opened, and their general
aspect like that of a Scotch haggis; and there is a time when all this
accumulates on man and beast till the latter takes to the water in
desperation, and the former takes to intermittent insanity, and that
time is--_summer_.--Another cup, please, Mrs Stanley. 'Pon my
conscience, it creates thirst to think of it."
At this stage the conversation of the party in the tent was interrupted
by a loud peal of laughter mingled with not a few angry exclamations
from the men. La Roche, in one of his frantic leaps to avoid a tongue
of flame which shot out from the fire with a vicious velocity towards
his eyes, came into violent contact with Bryan while that worthy was in
the act of lifting a seething kettle of soup and boiled pork from the
fire. Fortunately for the party whose supper was thus placed in
jeopardy, Bryan stood his ground; but La Roche, tripping over a log,
fell heavily among the pannikins, tin plates, spoons, and knives, which
had been just laid out on the ground in front of the canoe.
"Ach! mauvais chien," growled Gaspard, as he picked up and threw away
the fragments of his pipe, "you're always cuttin' and jumpin' about like
a monkey."
"Oh! pauvre crapaud," cried Francois, laughing; "don't abuse him,
Gaspard. He's a useful dog in his way."
"Tare an' ages! you've done it now, ye have. Bad luck to ye! wasn't I
for iver tellin' ye that same. Shure, if it wasn't that ye're no bigger
or heavier than a wisp o' pea straw, ye'd have druve me and the soup
into the fire, ye would. Be the big toe o' St. Patrick, not to mintion
his riverince the Pope--"
"Come, come, Bryan," cried Massan, "don't speak ill o' the Pope, an'
down wi' the kettle."
"The kittle, is it? Sorra a kittle ye'll touch, Massan, till it's cool
enough to let us all start fair at wance. Ye've got yer mouth and
throat lined wi' brass, I believe, an' would ate the half o't before a
soul of us could taste it!"
"Don't insult me, you red-faced racoon," retorted Massan, while he and
his comrades circled round the kettle, and began a vigorous attack on
the scalding mess; "my throat is not so used to swallowin' fire as your
own. I never knowed a man that payed into the grub as you do.--Bah! how
hot it is.--I say, Oolibuck, doesn't it remember you o' the dogs o' yer
own country, when they gits the stone kettle to clean out?"
Oolibuck's broad visage expanded with a chuckle as he lifted an enormous
wooden spoonful of soup to his ample mouth. "Me tink de dogs of de
Innuit [Esquimaux] make short work of dis kettle if 'e had 'im."
"Do the dogs of the Huskies eat with their masters?" inquired Francois,
as he groped in the kettle with his fork in search of a piece of pork.
"Dey not eat _wid_ der masters, but dey al'ays clean hout de kettle,"
replied Moses, somewhat indignantly.
"Ha!" exclaimed Massan, pausing for a few minutes to recover breath;
"yes, they always let the dogs finish off the feast. Ye must know,
comrades, that I've seed them do it myself--anyways I've seed a man that
knew a feller who said he had a comrade that wintered once with the
Huskies, which is pretty much the same thing. An' he said that
sometimes when they kill a big seal, they boil it whole an' have a
rig'lar feast. Ye must understand, mes garcons, that the Huskies make
thumpin' big kettles out o' a kind o' soft stone they find in them
parts, an' some o' them's big enough to boil a whole seal in. Well,
when the beast is cooked, they take it out o' the pot, an' while they're
tuckin' into it, the dogs come and sit in a ring round the pot to wait
till the soup's cool enough to eat. They knows well that it's too hot
at first, an' that they must have a deal o' patience; but afore long
some o' the young uns can't hold on, so they steps up somewhat desperate
like, and pokes their snouts in. Of course they pulls them out pretty
sharp with a yell, and sit down to rub their noses for a bit longer.
Then the old uns take courage an' make a snap at it now and again, but
very tenderly, till it gits cooler at last, an' then at it they go,
worryin', an' scufflin', an' barkin', an' gallopin', just like Moses
there, till the pot's as clean as the day it wos made."
"Ha! ha! oh, ver' goot, tres bien; ah! mon coeur, just tres
splendiferous!" shouted La Roche, whose risibility was always easily
tickled.
"It's quite true, though--isn't it, Moses?" said Massan, as he once more
applied to the kettle, while some of his comrades cut up the goose that
Frank had shot in the afternoon.
"Why, Moses, what a capacity you have for grub!" said Francois. "If
your countrymen are anything like you, I don't wonder that they have
boiled seals and whales for dinner."
"It'll take a screamin' kittle for a whale," spluttered Bryan, with his
mouth full, "an' a power o' dogs to drink the broth."
"You tink you funny, Bryan," retorted Moses, while an oily smile beamed
on his fat, good-humoured countenance; "but you not; you most dreadful
stupid."
"Thrue for ye, Moses; I was oncommon stupid to let you sit so long
beside the kittle," replied the Irishman, as he made a futile effort to
scrape another spoonful from the bottom of it. "Och! but ye've licked
it as clane as one of yer own dogs could ha' done it."
"Mind your eye!" growled Gaspard, at the same time giving La Roche a
violent push, as that volatile worthy, in one of his eccentric
movements, nearly upset his can of water.
"Oh! pardon, monsieur," exclaimed La Roche, in pretended sorrow, at the
same time making a grotesque bow that caused a general peal of laughter.
"Why, one might as well travel with a sick bear as with you, Gaspard,"
said Francois half angrily.
"Hold your jaw," replied Gaspard.
"Not at your bidding," retorted Francois, half rising from his reclining
posture, while his colour heightened. Gaspard had also started up, and
it seemed as if the little camp were in danger of becoming a scene of
strife, when Dick Prince, who was habitually silent and unobtrusive,
preferring generally to listen rather than to speak, laid his hand on
Gaspard's broad shoulder and pulled him somewhat forcibly to the ground.
"Shame on you, comrades!" he said, in a low, grave voice, that instantly
produced a dead silence; "shame on you, to quarrel on our first night in
the bush! We've few enough friends in these parts, I think, that we
should make enemies o' each other."
"That's well said," cried Massan, in a very decided tone. "It won't do
to fall out when there's so few of us." And the stout voyageur thrust
his foot against the logs on the fire, causing a rich cloud of sparks to
ascend, as if to throw additional light on his remark.
"Pardon me, mes comrades," cried Francois; "I did not intend to
quarrel;" and he extended his hand to Gaspard, who took it in silence,
and dropping back again to his recumbent posture, resumed his pipe.
This little scene was witnessed by the party in the tent, who were near
enough to overhear all that was said by the men, and even to converse
with them if they should desire to do so. A shade of anxiety crossed
Mr Stanley's countenance, and some time after, recurring to the
subject, he said--
"I don't feel quite easy about that fellow Gaspard. He seems a sulky
dog, and is such a Hercules that he might give us a deal of trouble if
he were high-spirited."
A slight smile of contempt curled Frank's lip as he said, "A strong arm
without a bold heart is not of more value than that of my Eda here in
the hour of danger. But I think better of Gaspard than you seem to do.
He's a sulky enough dog, 'tis true; but he is a good, hard worker, and
does not grumble; and I sometimes have noticed traces of a better spirit
than usually meets the eye. As for his bulk, I think nothing of it; he
wants high spirit to make it available. Francois could thrash him any
day."
"Perhaps so," replied Stanley; "I hope they won't try their mettle on
each other sooner than we expect. Not that I care a whit for any of the
men having a round or two now and then and be done with it; but this
fellow seems to `nurse his wrath to keep it warm.' On such an
expedition as ours, it behoves us to have a good understanding and a
kindly feeling in the camp. One black sheep in the flock may do much
damage."
"He's only piebald, not black," said Frank, laughing, as he rose to quit
the tent. "But I must leave you. I see that Eda's eyes are refusing to
keep open any longer, so good-night to you all, and a sound sleep."
Frank's concluding remarks in reference to him were overheard by
Gaspard, who had risen to look at the night, and afterwards kneeled near
the tent, in order to be at some distance from his comrades while he
said his prayers; for, strange though it may seem, many of the rough and
reckless voyageurs of that country, most of whom are Roman Catholics,
regularly retire each night to kneel and pray beneath a tree before
lying down on their leafy couches, and deem the act quite consistent
with the swearing and quarrelling life that too many of them lead. Such
is human nature. As Gaspard rose from his knees Frank's words fell upon
his ear, and when he drew his blanket over his head that night there was
a softer spot in his heart and a wrinkle less on his brow.
When Frank stepped over to the place where his canoe lay, the aspect of
the camp was very different from what it had been an hour before. The
fire had burned low, and was little more than a mass of glowing embers,
from which a fitful flame shot forth now and then, casting a momentary
glare on the forms of the men, who, having finished their pipes, were
all extended in a row, side by side, under the large canoe. As they
possessed only a single green blanket each, they had to make the most of
their coverings, by rolling them tightly around their bodies, and
doubling the ends down under their feet and over their heads; so that
they resembled a row of green bolsters, all their feet being presented
towards the fire, and all their heads resting on their folded capotes.
A good deal of loud and regular snoring proved that toil and robust
health seldom court the drowsy god long in vain. Turning to his own
canoe, Frank observed that his Indian friends were extended out under
it, with a wide space between them, in which his own bedding was neatly
arranged. The grave sons of the forest had lain down to rest long
before their white comrades, and they now lay as silent and motionless
as the canoe that covered their heads. Being a small canoe, it did not
afford protection to their legs and feet; but in fine weather this was
of no consequence, and for the morrow they cared not.
Before lying down Frank kneeled to commend himself and his comrades to
the protection of God; then stirring up the embers of the fire, he
pulled out a small Bible from his breast pocket and sat down on a log to
read. Frank was a careless, rollicking, kind-hearted fellow, and how
much there was of true religion in these acts none but himself could
tell. But the _habit_ of reading the Word, and of prayer, had been
instilled into him from infancy by a godly mother, and he carried it
with him into the wilderness.
When he drew his blanket over him and laid his head on his capote the
stars were still twinkling, and the moon still sailed in a clear sky and
gave silver edges to the ice upon the sea. All was calm and solemn and
beautiful, and it seemed as if it could never be otherwise in such a
tranquil scene. But nature does not always smile. Appearances are
often deceitful.