LOST IN THE WOODS.
One day it happened that about noon, while Arthur was 'brushing' at a
short distance from the shanty, he noticed a pack of grouse among the
underwood within shot. Dropping his axe, he ran home for the gun, which
stood loaded in one corner.
It was not altogether the sportsman's organ of destructiveness (for he
had never forgotten little Jay's lesson on that head), but probably
a growing dislike to the constant diet of pork, that urged him to an
unrelenting pursuit. Cautiously he crept through the thickets, having
wafted an unavailing sigh for the pointer he had left at Dunore, his
companion over many a fallow and stubble field, who would greatly have
simplified this business. Unconsciously he crossed the blazed side-line
of the lot into the dense cover beyond, tantalized by glimpses of game,
which never came near enough for good aim. 'I must regularly stalk
them,' thought Arthur.
Noiselessly creeping on, he was suddenly brought to by an unexpected
sight. The head and horns of a noble buck were for a moment visible
through the thicket. Arthur's heart throbbed in his ears as he stood
perfectly motionless. Grouse were utterly forgotten in the vision of
venison. With every sense concentrated in his eyes, he watched the
brush which screened the browsing deer. By a slight crackling of twigs
presently, he was made aware that the animal was moving forward; he
crept in the same direction. The leaves had been damped by a shower two
hours before, and the cloudy day permitted them to retain moisture, or
their crispness might have betrayed his tread.
Ha! a dried stick on which he inadvertently set his foot snapped across.
The splendid shy eyes of the deer looked round in alarm as he bounded
away. A shot rang through the forest after him, waking such a clamour
of jays and crows and woodpeckers, that Arthur was quite provoked with
them, they seemed exulting over his failure. Pushing aside the dried
timber which had caused this mischance, he pressed on the track of
the deer impetuously. He could not believe that his shot had missed
altogether, though the white tail had been erected so defiantly; which
'showing of the white feather,' as the Canadian sportsman calls it, is a
sign that the animal is unwounded.
But four feet had much the advantage of two in the chase. One other
glimpse of the flying deer, as he came out on the brow of a ridge, was
all that Arthur was favoured with. Some partridge got up, and this time
he was more successful; he picked up a bird, and turned homewards.
Homewards! After walking a hundred yards or so he paused. Had he indeed
gone back on his own track? for he had never seen this clump of pines
before. He could not have passed it previously without notice of its
sombre shade and massive boles. He would return a little distance, and
look for the path his passage must have made in brushing through the
thickets.
Brought to a stand again. This time by a small creek gurgling deeply
beneath matted shrubs. He had gone wrong--must have diverged from his
old course. More carefully than before, he retraced his way to the
pine-clump, guided by the unmistakeable black plumage of the tree-tops.
There he stood to think what he should do.
The sky was quite obscured: it had been so all the morning. No guidance
was to be hoped for from the position of the sun. He had heard something
of the moss on the trees growing chiefly at the north side; but on
examination these pines seemed equally mossed everywhere. What nonsense!
surely he must be close to his own path. He would walk in every
direction till he crossed the track.
Boldly striking out again, and looking closely for footmarks on the soft
ground, he went along some distance; here and there turned out of his
straight course by a thicket too dense for penetration, till before him
rose pine-tops again. Could it be? The same pines he had left!
He covered his eyes in bewilderment. Having stood on the spot for
several minutes previously, he could not be mistaken. Yet he thought he
could have been sure that he was proceeding in a direction diametrically
opposite for the last quarter of an hour, while he must have been going
round in a circle. Now, indeed, he felt that he was lost in the woods.
Poor Arthur's mind was a sort of blank for some minutes. All the trees
seemed alike--his memory seemed obliterated. What horrid bewilderment
had possession of his faculties? Shutting him in, as by the walls of a
living tomb, the great frowning forest stood on all sides. A mariner on
a plank in mid-ocean could not have felt more hopeless and helpless.
Rousing himself with a shake from the numb, chill sensation which had
begun to paralyze exertion, he thought that, if he could reach the little
creek before mentioned, he might pursue his course, as it probably fell
into their own lake at the foot of the Cedars. Keeping the pine-tops
in a right line behind him, he succeeded in striking the creek, and
discovering which way it flowed. After pushing his way some hours along
a path of innumerable difficulties, he found himself, in the waning
light, at the edge of a cypress swamp.
Almost man though he was, he could have sat down and cried. Blackest
night seemed to nestle under those matted boughs, and the sullen gleams
of stagnant water--the plash of a frog jumping in--the wading birds that
stalked about--told him what to expect if he went farther. At the same
instant a gleam of copper sunset struck across the heavens on the tops
of the evergreens, and the west was not in the direction that the
wanderer had imagined; he now easily calculated that he had all this
time been walking _from_ home instead of towards it.
Strange to say, a ray of hope was brought upon that sunbeam, even
coupled with the conviction that he had been hitherto so wofully astray.
To-morrow might be bright (and to all the wanderers in this world the
anchor is to-morrow); he would be able to guide his course by the sun,
and would come all right. He resolved to spend the night in a tree near
his fire for fear of wild beasts, and selected a fine branching cedar
for his dormitory. Laying his gun securely in one of the forks, and
coiling himself up as snugly as possible, where four boughs radiated
from the trunk, about twenty feet from the ground, he settled himself to
sleep as in an arm-chair, with the great hushing silence of the forest
around him. Unusual as his circumstances were, he was soon wrapt in a
dreamless slumber.
Dull and slow dawned the November morning among the trees; broad
daylight on their tops, when but a twilight reached the earth, sixty or
eighty feet below. Arthur found himself rather stiff and chill after
his unwonted night's lodging; he tried to gather up the brands of the
evening's fire, which had sunk hours before into grey ashes, that he
might at least warm himself before proceeding farther. Simultaneously
with its kindling appeared the sun--oh, welcome sight! and shot a golden
arrow aslant a line of trees. Then was revealed to Arthur the mossy
secret of wood-craft, that the north side bears a covering withheld from
the south; for he perceived that, viewed in the aggregate, the partial
greenery on the various barks was very distinct. Examining individual
trunks would not show this; but looking at a mass, the fact was evident.
Now he knew the points of the compass; but of what practical avail was
his knowledge? Whether he had wandered from the shanty to the north,
south, east, or west, was only conjecture. How could that creek have
led him astray? He must have crossed the rising ground separating two
watersheds--that sloping towards his own lake and towards some other.
There flowed the little stream noiselessly, sucked into the swampy
cypress grove: of course it got out somewhere at the other side; but as
to following it any farther into the dismal tangled recesses, with only
a chance of emergence in a right direction, he felt disinclined to try.
No breakfast for him but a drink of water; though with carnivorous eyes
he saw the pretty speckled trout glide through the brown pool where he
dipped his hand; and he crossed the creek over a fallen tree, ascending
to the eastward. He could not be insensible to the beauty of nature
this morning--to the majesty of the mighty forest, standing in still
solemnity over the face of the earth. Magnificent repose! The world
seemed not yet wakened; the air was motionless as crystal; the infinitely
coloured foliage clung to maples and aspens--tattered relics of the
royal raiment of summer. The olden awe overshadowed Arthur's heart; his
Creator's presence permeated these sublime works of Deity. Alone in the
untrodden woods, his soul recognised its God; and a certain degree of
freedom from anxiety was the result. Personal effort was not his sole
dependence, since he had felt that God was present, and powerful.
Still he kept on to the south-east, hoping at last to strike some of the
inhabited townships; and the unvarying solidity of forest was well-nigh
disheartening him, when he saw, after several miles' walking, the
distinctly defined imprint of a man's foot on some clayey soil near a
clump of chestnut trees. Yes, there could be no mistake: some person
had passed not long since; and though the tracks led away considerably
from the south-easterly direction he had hitherto kept, he turned,
without hesitation to follow them, and proceeded as rapidly as possible,
in hope of overtaking the solitary pedestrian, whoever he might be. He
shouted aloud, he sang some staves of various familiar old songs; but no
response from other human voice came, anxiously as he listened for such
echo. But the footmarks were before his eyes as tangible evidence; he
had got very sharp by this time at detecting the pressure of a heel on
the dead leaves, or the displacement of a plant by quick steps. The
tracks must lead to something. Certainly; they led to a creek.
Impossible! It cannot be that he has followed his own footprints of
yesterday! Planting his boot firmly on the bank beside the other mark,
he compared the twain. A glance was enough; the impressions were
identical.
The bewildered feeling of one in a labyrinth recurred. He saw nothing
better for it than to return to the point whence he had diverged to
follow the tracks. He now remembered having made this detour the
previous day to avoid cutting his way through a dense underwood on the
bank of the stream.
Nigh an hour had been lost by this delusive retracing of footmarks. He
thought that if he climbed the highest tree he could find, he would be
able to get a bird's-eye view of the country round. Oh that he might
behold some islet of clearing amid the ocean of woods!
To reach the branches of any of the largest trees was the difficulty;
for the smooth shaft of a massive marble pillar would be as easily
climbed as the trunk of some arboreal giants here, rising fifty feet
clear of boughs. However, by swinging from the smaller trees he
accomplished his object, and saw beneath him on all sides the vast
continuity of forest.
Desert could not be lonelier nor more monotonous. No glimmer even of
distant lake on the horizon; no brown spots of clearing; no variety,
save the autumn coat of many colours, contrasted with sombre patches of
pine. Stay--was not that a faint haze of smoke yonder? a light bluish
mist floating over a particular spot, hardly moving in the still air.
Arthur carefully noted the direction, and came down from his observatory
on the run. He was confident there must be a trapper's fire, or a camp,
or some other traces of humanity where that thin haze hung. He could not
be baulked this time. Hope, which is verily a beauteous hydra in the
young breast, revived again in strength. If he only had somewhat to eat,
he wouldn't mind the long tramp before him. Beech-mast rather increased
than appeased his hunger; and nothing came in view that could be shot.
He had not walked far, when a sharp, wild cry, as of some small animal
in pain, struck his ear. Pushing away the brush at the left, he saw the
cause--a little dark furry creature hanging to a sapling, as it seemed;
and at his appearance the struggles to escape were redoubled, and the
weakly cries of fear became more piteous. Arthur perceived that to the
top of the sapling was fastened a steel snaptrap, clasping a forepaw in
its cruel teeth, and that each convulsive effort to get free only set the
animal dangling in the air, as a trout is played from a rod. Hopelessly
snared, indeed, was the poor marten; he had not even the resource
of parting with his paw, which, had he had any 'purchase' to strive
against, would probably have been his choice. By what blandishments of
bait he had ever been seduced into his present melancholy position was
out of Arthur's power to imagine.
But now at least it was beyond all doubt that men were near. Raising his
eyes from inspection of the marten-trap, he saw on a tree close by a
freshly-cut blaze. Some rods farther on he could see another. Now a
question arose, which way should he follow the line?--one end was
probably in pathless forest. He concluded to take that direction which
suited the smoke he had seen.
He wondered what blazed lino this was--whether marking the side lots of
a concession, or a hunter's private road through the woods. Presently,
at a little distance, the sight of a man's figure stooping almost made
his heart leap into his mouth. How lonely he had been, how almost
desperate at times, he had not fully known till this his deliverance.
Oh, that blessed human form! be he the rudest trapper or Indian, Arthur
could have embraced him. Much more when, the face being lifted from
examining the trap, and fixing its eyes with a very astonished stare on
the approaching figure, Arthur recognised the shrewd features of Peter
Logan.