cracked. The canoe hit with a bump that threw us forward. I returned to
the young cable. It came in limp and slack.
We looked at each other sadly.
"No use," sighed Dick at last. "They've never invented the words, and
we'd upset if we kicked the dog."
I had the end of the line in my hands.
"Look here!" I cried. That thick brass wire had been as cleanly bitten
through as though it had been cut with clippers. "He must have caught
sight of you," said I.
Dick lifted up his voice in lamentation. "You had four feet of him out
of water," he wailed, "and there was a lot more."
"If you had kept cool," said I severely, "we shouldn't have lost him.
You don't want to get rattled in an emergency; there's no sense in it."
"What were you going to do with that?" asked Dick, pointing to where I
had laid the pistol.
"I was going to shoot him in the head," I replied with dignity. "It's
the best way to land them."
Dick laughed disagreeably. I looked down. At my side lay our largest
iron spoon.
We skirted the left-hand side of the lake in silence. Far out from
shore the water was ruffled where the wind swept down, but with us it
was as still and calm as the forest trees that looked over into it.
After a time we turned short to the left through a very narrow passage
between two marshy shores, and so, after a sharp bend of but a few
hundred feet, came into the other river.
This was a wide stream, smoothly hurrying, without rapids or tumult.
The forest had drawn to either side to let us pass. Here were the
wilder reaches after the intimacies of the little river. Across
stretches of marsh we could see an occasional great blue heron standing
mid-leg deep. Long strings of ducks struggled quacking from invisible
pools. The faint marsh odour saluted our nostrils from the point where
the lily-pads flashed broadly, ruffling in the wind. We dropped out the
smaller spoon and masterfully landed a five-pound pickerel. Even Deuce
brightened. He cared nothing for raw fish, but he knew their
possibilities. Towards evening we entered the hilly country, and so at
the last turned to the left into a sand cove where grew maples and
birches in beautiful park order under a hill. There we pitched camp,
and, as the flies lacked, built a friendship-fire about which to
forgather when the day was done.
Dick still vocally regretted the muscallunge told him of my big bear.
One day, late in the summer, I was engaged in packing some supplies
along an old fur trail north of Lake Superior. I had accomplished one
back-load, and with empty straps was returning to the cache for
another. The trail at one point emerged into and crossed an open park
some hundreds of feet in diameter, in which the grass grew to the
height of the knee. When I was about halfway across, a black bear arose
to his hind legs not ten feet from me, and remarked _Woof!_ in a
loud tone of voice. Now, if a man were to say _woof_ to you
unexpectedly, even in the formality of an Italian garden or the
accustomedness of a city street, you would be somewhat startled. So I
went to camp. There I told them about the bear. I tried to be
conservative in my description, because I did not wish to be accused of
exaggeration. My impression of the animal was that he and a spruce tree
that grew near enough for ready comparison were approximately of the
same stature. We returned to the grass park. After some difficulty we
found a clear footprint. It was a little larger than that made by a
good-sized coon.
"So, you see," I admonished didactically, "that lunge probably was not
quite so large as you thought."
"It may have been a Chinese bear," said Dick dreamily--"a Chinese lady
bear of high degree."
I gave him up.
VII.
ON OPEN-WATER CANOE TRAVELLING.
"It is there that I am going, with an extra hand to bail her--
Just one single long-shore loafer that I know. He can take his chance
of drowning while I sail and sail and sail her, For the Red Gods call
me out, and I must go."
The following morning the wind had died, but had been succeeded by a
heavy pall of fog. After we had felt our way beyond the mouth of the
river we were forced to paddle north-west by north, in blind reliance
on our compass. Sounds there were none. Involuntarily we lowered our
voices. The inadvertent click of the paddle against the gunwale seemed
to desecrate a foreordained stillness.
Occasionally to the right hand or the left we made out faint
shadow-pictures of wooded islands that endured but a moment and then
deliberately faded into whiteness. They formed on the view exactly as
an image develops on a photographic plate. Sometimes a faint
_lisp-lisp-lisp_ of tiny waves against a shore nearer than it
seemed cautioned us anew not to break the silence. Otherwise we were
alone, intruders, suffered in the presence of a brooding nature only as
long as we refrained from disturbances.
Then at noon the vapours began to eddy, to open momentarily in
revelation of vivid green glimpses, to stream down the rising wind.
Pale sunlight dashed fitfully across us like a shower. Somewhere in the
invisibility a duck quacked. Deuce awoke, looked about him, and
_yow-yow-yowed_ in doggish relief. Animals understand thoroughly
these subtleties of nature.
In half an hour the sun was strong, the air clear and sparkling, and a
freshening wind was certifying our prognostications of a lively
afternoon.
A light canoe will stand almost anything in the way of a sea, although
you may find it impossible sometimes to force it in the direction you
wish to go. A loaded canoe will weather a great deal more than you
might think. However, only experience in balance and in the nature of
waves will bring you safely across a stretch of whitecaps.
With the sea dead ahead you must not go too fast; otherwise you will
dip water over the bow. You must trim the craft absolutely on an even
keel; otherwise the comb of the wave, too light to lift you, will slop
in over one gunwale or the other. You must be perpetually watching your
chance to gain a foot or so between the heavier seas.
With the sea over one bow you must paddle on the leeward side. When the
canoe mounts a wave, you must allow the crest to throw the bow off a
trifle, but the moment it starts down the other slope you must twist
your paddle sharply to regain the direction of your course. The
careening tendency of this twist you must counteract by a corresponding
twist of your body in the other direction. Then the hollow will allow
you two or three strokes wherewith to assure a little progress. The
double twist at the very crest of the wave must be very delicately
performed, or you will ship water the whole length of your craft.
With the sea abeam you must simply paddle straight ahead. The
adjustment is to be accomplished entirely by the poise of the body. You
must prevent the capsize of your canoe when clinging to the angle of a
wave by leaning to one side. The crucial moment, of course, is that
during which the peak of the wave slips under you. In case of a
breaking comber, thrust the flat of your paddle deep in the water to
prevent an upset, and lean well to leeward, thus presenting the side
and half the bottom of the canoe to the shock of water. Your recovery
must be instant, however. If you lean a second too long, over you go.
This sounds more difficult than it is. After a time you do it
instinctively, as a skater balances.
With the sea over the quarter you have merely to take care that the
waves do not slue you around sidewise, and that the canoe does not dip
water on one side or the other under the stress of your twists with the
paddle. Dead astern is perhaps the most difficult of all, for the
reason that you must watch both gunwales at once, and must preserve an
absolutely even keel, in spite of the fact that it generally requires
your utmost strength to steer. In really heavy weather one man only
can do any work. The other must be content to remain passenger, and he
must be trained to absolute immobility. No matter how dangerous a
careen the canoe may take, no matter how much good cold water may pour
in over his legs, he must resist his tendency to shift his weight. The
entire issue depends on the delicacy of the steersman's adjustments, so
he must be given every chance.
The main difficulty rests in the fact that such canoeing is a good deal
like air-ship travel--there is not much opportunity to learn by
experience. In a four-hour run across an open bay you will encounter
somewhat over a thousand waves, no two of which are exactly alike, and
any one of which can fill you up only too easily if it is not correctly
met. Your experience is called on to solve instantly and practically a
thousand problems. No breathing-space in which to recover is permitted
you between them. At the end of the four hours you awaken to the fact
that your eyes are strained from intense concentration, and that you
taste copper.
Probably nothing, however, can more effectively wake you up to the last
fibre of your physical, intellectual, and nervous being. You are filled
with an exhilaration. Every muscle, strung tight, answers immediately
and accurately to the slightest hint. You quiver all over with
restrained energy. Your mind thrusts behind you the problem of the last
wave as soon as solved, and leaps with insistent eagerness to the next.
You attain that superordinary condition when your faculties react
instinctively, like a machine. It is a species of intoxication. After a
time you personify each wave; you grapple with it as with a personal
adversary; you exult as, beaten and broken, it hisses away to leeward.
"Go it, you son of a gun!" you shout. "Ah, you would, would you! think
you can, do you?" and in the roar and rush of wind and water you crouch
like a boxer on the defence, parrying the blows, but ready at the
slightest opening to gain a stroke of the paddle.
In such circumstances you have not the leisure to consider distance.
You are too busily engaged in slaughtering waves to consider your rate
of progress. The fact that slowly you are pulling up on your objective
point does not occur to you until you are within a few hundred yards of
it. Then, unless you are careful, you are undone.
Probably the most difficult thing of all to learn is that the waves to
be encountered in the last hundred yards of an open sweep are exactly
as dangerous as those you dodged so fearfully four miles from shore.
You are so nearly in that you unconsciously relax your efforts. Calmly,
almost contemptuously, a big roller rips along your gunwale. You are
wrecked--fortunately within easy swimming distance. But that doesn't
save your duffel. Remember this: be just as careful with the very last
wave as you were with the others. Get inside before you draw that deep
breath of relief.
Strangely enough, in out-of-door sports, where it would seem that
convention would rest practically at the zero point, the bugbear of
good form, although mashed and disguised, rises up to confuse the
directed practicality. The average man is wedded to his theory. He has
seen a thing done in a certain way, and he not only always does it that
way himself, but he is positively unhappy at seeing any one else
employing a different method. From the swing at golf to the manner of
lighting a match in the wind, this truism applies. I remember once
hearing a long argument with an Eastern man on the question of the
English riding-seat in the Western country.
"Your method is all very well," said the Westerner, "for where it came
from. In England they ride to hunt, so they need a light saddle and
very short stirrups set well forward. That helps them in jumping. But
it is most awkward. Out here you want your stirrups very long and
directly under you, so your legs hang loose, and you depend on your
balance and the grip of your thighs--not your knees. It is less tiring,
and better sense, and infinitely more graceful, for it more nearly
approximates the bareback seat. Instead of depending on stirrups, you
are part of the horse. You follow his every movement. And as for your
rising trot, I'd like to see you accomplish it safely on our mountain
trails, where the trot is the only gait practicable, unless you take
for ever to get anywhere." To all of which the Easterner found no
rebuttal except the, to him, entirely efficient plea that his own
method was good form.
Now, of course, it is very pleasant to do things always accurately,
according to the rules of the game, and if you are out merely for
sport, perhaps it is as well to stick to them. But utility is another
matter. Personally, I do not care at all to kill trout unless by the
fly; but when we need meat and they do not need flies, I never hesitate
to offer them any kind of doodle-bug they may fancy. I have even at a
pinch clubbed them to death in a shallow, land-locked pool. Time will
come in your open-water canoe experience when you will pull into
shelter half full of water, when you will be glad of the fortuity of a
chance cross-wave to help you out, when sheer blind luck, or main
strength and awkwardness, will be the only reasons you can honestly
give for an arrival, and a battered and dishevelled arrival at that. Do
not, therefore, repine, or bewail your awkwardness, or indulge in undue
self-accusations of "tenderfoot." Method is nothing; the arrival is the
important thing. You are travelling, and if you can make time by nearly
swamping yourself, or by dragging your craft across a point, or by
taking any other base advantage of the game's formality, by all means
do so. Deuce used to solve the problem of comfort by drinking the
little pool of cold water in which he sometimes was forced to lie. In
the woods, when a thing is to be done, do not consider how you have
done it, or how you have seen it done, or how you think it ought to be
done, but how it _can_ be accomplished. Absolute fluidity of
expedient, perfect adaptability, is worth a dozen volumes of
theoretical knowledge. "If you can't talk," goes the Western
expression, "raise a yell; if you can't yell, make signs; if you can't
make signs, wave a bush."
And do not be too ready to take advice as to what you can or cannot
accomplish, even from the woods people. Of course the woods Indians or
the _voyageurs_ know all about canoes, and you would do well to
listen to them. But the mere fact that your interlocutor lives in the
forest, while you normally inhabit the towns, does not necessarily give
him authority. A community used to horses looks with horror on the
instability of all water craft less solid than canal boats. Canoemen
stand in awe of the bronco. The fishermen of the Georgian Bay,
accustomed to venture out with their open sailboats in weather that
forces the big lake schooners to shelter, know absolutely nothing about
canoes. Dick and I made an eight-mile run from the Fox island to
Killarney in a trifling sea, to be cheered during our stay at the
latter place by doleful predictions of an early drowning. And this from
a seafaring community. It knew all about boats; it knew nothing about
canoes; and yet the unthinking might have been influenced by the advice
of these men simply because they had been brought up on the water. The
point is obvious. Do not attempt a thing unless you are sure of
yourself; but do not relinquish it merely because some one else is not
sure of you.
The best way to learn is with a bathing-suit. Keep near shore, and try
everything. Don't attempt the real thing until your handling in a heavy
sea has become as instinctive as snap-shooting or the steps of dancing.
Remain on the hither side of caution when you start out. Act at first
as though every wavelet would surely swamp you. Extend the scope of
your operations very gradually, until you know just what you can do.
_Never_ get careless. Never take any _real_ chances. That's
all.
VIII.
THE STRANDED STRANGERS.
As we progressed, the country grew more and more solemnly aloof. In the
Southland is a certain appearance of mobility, lent by the deciduous
trees, the warm sun, the intimate nooks in which grow the commoner
homely weeds and flowers, the abundance of bees and musical insects,
the childhood familiarity of the well-known birds, even the pleasantly
fickle aspects of the skies. But the North wraps itself in a mantle of
awe. Great hills rest not so much in the stillness of sleep as in the
calm of a mighty comprehension. The pines, rank after rank, file after
file, are always trooping somewhere, up the slope, to pause at the
crest before descending on the other side into the unknown. Bodies of
water exactly of the size, shape, and general appearance we are
accustomed to see dotted with pleasure craft and bordered with wharves,
summer cottages, pavilions, and hotels, accentuate by that very fact a
solitude that harbours only a pair of weirdly laughing loons. Like the
hills, these lakes are lying in a deep, still repose, but a repose that
somehow suggests the comprehending calm of those behind the veil. The
whole country seems to rest in a suspense of waiting. A shot breaks the
stillness for an instant, but its very memory is shadowy a moment after
the echoes die. Inevitably the traveller feels thrust in upon himself
by a neutrality more deadly than open hostility would be. Hostility at
least supposes recognition of his existence, a rousing of forces to
oppose him. This ignores. One can no longer wonder at the taciturnity
of the men who dwell here; nor does one fail to grasp the eminent
suitability to the country of its Indian name--the Silent Places.
Even the birds, joyful, lively, commonplace little people that they
are, draw some of this aloofness to themselves. The North is full of
the homelier singers. A dozen species of warblers lisp music-box
phrases, two or three sparrows whistle a cheerful repertoire, the
nuthatches and chickadees toot away in blissful _bourgeoisie_. And
yet, somehow, that very circumstance thrusts the imaginative voyager
outside the companionship of their friendliness. In the face of the
great gods they move with accustomed familiarity. Somehow they possess
in their little experience that which explains the mystery, so that
they no longer stand in its awe. Their everyday lives are spent under
the shadow of the temple whither you dare not bend your footsteps. The
intimacy of occult things isolates also these wise little birds.
The North speaks, however, only in the voices of three--the two
thrushes, and the white-throated sparrow. You must hear these each at
his proper time.
The hermit thrush you will rarely see. But late some afternoon, when
the sun is lifting along the trunks of the hardwood forest, if you are
very lucky and very quiet, you will hear him far in the depth of the
blackest swamps. Musically expressed, his song is very much like that
of the wood thrush--three cadenced liquid notes, a quivering pause,
then three more notes of another phrase, and so on. But the fineness of
its quality makes of it an entirely different performance. If you
symbolize the hermit thrush by the flute, you must call the wood thrush
a chime of little tinkling bells. One is a rendition; the other the
essence of liquid music. An effect of gold-embroidered richness, of
depth going down to the very soul of things, a haunting suggestion of
having touched very near to the source of tears, a conviction that the
just interpretation of the song would be an equally just interpretation
of black woods, deep shadows, cloistered sunlight, brooding
hills--these are the subtle and elusive impressions you will receive in
the middle of the ancient forest.
The olive-backed thrush you will enjoy after your day's work is quite
finished. You will see him through the tobacco haze, perched on a limb
against the evening sky. He utters a loud joyful _chirp_ pauses
for the attention he thus solicits, and then deliberately runs up five
mellow double notes, ending with a metallic "_ting_ chee chee
chee" that sounds as though it had been struck on a triangle. Then a
silence of exactly nine seconds and repeat. As regularly as clock-work
this performance goes on. Time him as often as you will, you can never
convict him of a second's variation. And he is so optimistic and
willing, and his notes are so golden with the yellow of sunshine!
The white-throated sparrow sings nine distinct variations of the same
song. He may sing more, but that is all I have counted. He inhabits
woods, berry-vines, brulés, and clearings. Ordinarily he is cheerful,
and occasionally aggravating. One man I knew he drove nearly crazy. To
that man he was always saying, "_And he never heard the man say drink
and the_----." Toward the last my friend used wildly to offer him a
thousand dollars if he would, if he only _would_, finish that
sentence. But occasionally, in just the proper circumstances, he
forgets his stump corners, his vines, his jolly sunlight, and his
delightful bugs to become the intimate voice of the wilds. It is night,
very still, Very dark. The subdued murmur of the forest ebbs and flows
with the voices of the furtive folk--an undertone fearful to break the
night calm. Suddenly across the dusk of silence flashes a single thread
of silver, vibrating, trembling with some unguessed ecstasy of emotion:
"_Ah! poor Canada Canada Canada Canada!_" it mourns passionately,
and falls silent. That is all.
You will hear at various times other birds peculiarly of the North.
Loons alternately calling and uttering their maniac laughter; purple
finches or some of the pine sparrows warbling high and clear; the
winter wren, whose rapturous ravings never fail to strike the attention
of the dullest passer; all these are exclusively Northern voices, and
each expresses some phase or mood of the Silent Places. But none
symbolizes as do the three. And when first you hear one of them after
an absence, you are satisfied that things are right in the world, for
the North Country's spirit is as it was.
Now ensued a spell of calm weather, with a film of haze over the sky.
The water lay like quicksilver, heavy and inert. Toward afternoon it
became opalescent. The very substance of the liquid itself seemed
impregnated with dyes ranging in shade from wine colour to the most
delicate lilac. Through a smoke veil the sun hung, a ball of red, while
beneath every island, every rock, every tree, every wild fowl floating
idly in a medium apparently too delicate for its support, lurked the
beautiful crimson shadows of the North.
[Illustration: EACH WAVE WAS SINGLY A PROBLEM, TO FAIL IN WHOSE
SOLUTION MEANT INSTANT SWAMPING.]
Hour after hour, day after day, we slipped on. Point after point,
island after island, presented itself silently to our inspection and
dropped quietly astern. The beat of paddles fitted monotonously into
the almost portentous stillness. It seemed that we might be able to go
on thus for ever, lapped in the dream of some forgotten magic that had
stricken breathless the life of the world. And then, suddenly, three
weeks on our journey, we came to a town.
It was not the typical fur town of the Far North, but it lay at the
threshold. A single street, worn smooth by the feet of men and dogs,
but innocent of hoofs, fronted the channel. A board walk, elevated
against the snows, bordered a row of whitewashed log and frame houses,
each with its garden of brilliant flowers. A dozen wharves of various
sizes, over whose edges peeped the double masts of Mackinaw boats,
spoke of a fishing community. Between the roofs one caught glimpses of
a low sparse woods and some thousand-foot hills beyond. We subsequently
added the charm of isolation in learning that the nearest telegraph
line was fifteen miles distant, while the railroad passed some fifty
miles away.