THE FOREST ON FIRE.
Robert drew his paddle into the canoe, and sat perfectly still for some
moments, gazing towards the fire and taking in its circumstances. They
could hear the dull roar of the blaze distinctly, and even caught a
glimpse of its crimson glare through an opening in the tall pines
fringing the lake. It must have been burning a couple of hours to have
attained such mastery. Dark resinous smoke hung heavily in the air: a
hot stifling gust of it swept down on the canoe.
'The wind is towards the pond, most providentially,' said Robert, taking
up his paddle, and beginning to stroke the water vigorously towards home.
'The burning _may_ do no harm; but fire is a fearful agent to set afoot.
I'm sure the captain heartily wishes his kindling undone by this time.'
'Is there no danger to the farm, Robert?' asked his sister, who had
become blanched with fear. 'I never heard such a terrible sound as that
raging and crackling.'
'To Daisy Burn none, I should say; for, of course, the man had sense
enough to fire the bush only a long way down in front, an extensive
clearing rather round the house, and the breeze will keep away the
blaze.'
'Thank God,' fervently ejaculated Linda. 'I wish we could bring Miss
Armytage and little Jay to the Creek while it lasts. Wouldn't you go
across for them, Bob? I know they must be frightened.'
Robert hardly heard her, and certainly did not take in the import of her
words. With some wonder at his set face and earnest watch along shore,
she did not press her wish. He was looking at the belt of fat resinous
pines and balsams, dry as chips from the long summer droughts and
tropical heats, which extended along from the foot of Armytage's farm
even to the cedar swamp; he was feeling that the slight wind was blowing
in a fair direction for the burning of this most inflammable fuel, and
consequently the endangering of his property on the creek. A point or
two from the east of south it blew; proved by the strong resinous smell
wafted towards the landing cove.
'Bob, you're forgetting the trout and the tackle,' as he jumped ashore,
helped her out, and hurried up the beaten path beside the beaver meadow.
'Never mind; I want to see Holt,' was his answer. 'If any man can help,
'tis he.'
'Then there is danger!' She still thought of the Daisy Burn people.
Before they reached the house, they met Mr. Holt and half-a-dozen
Indians.
'We must burn a patch of brushwood, to deprive the fire of fuel,' said
the former. 'These Indians have done the like on the prairies westward.
It is worth trying, at all events.'
'Go up to my mother, Linda; there's nothing to be much alarmed for as
yet; I hope this plan of Holt's may stop its progress. I'll be at the
house as soon as I can, tell her;' and he ran after the others, down to
the mouth of the creek, where a strip of alluvial land, covered with
bushes and rank grass, interrupted the belt of firs and cedars. Calling
in fire as an ally against itself seemed to Robert very perilous; but
the calm Indians, accustomed to wilderness exigencies, set about the
protective burning at once. The flame easily ran through the dry
brushwood; it was kept within bounds by cutting down the shrubs where it
might spread farther than was desirable. Soon a broad blackened belt lay
beside the creek, containing nothing upon which the fire could fasten.
Axes were at work to widen it still further.
'The wind has risen very much, Holt,' said Robert, as they felt hot
currents of air sweep past them.
'Just the result of the rarified atmosphere over the flames,' he
answered. They spoke little: the impending risk was too awful. For once,
the white man submitted himself to the guidance of the red. To prevent
the fire from crossing the creek was the great object. The water itself,
perhaps a hundred feet wide, would be an ineffectual barrier; such
fierce flame would overleap it. Therefore the Indians had burned
the left bank, and now proceeded to burn the right. Indomitably
self-possessed, cool and silent, they did precisely what met the
emergency, without flurry or confusion.
[Illustration: THE FOREST ON FIRE.]
All this time the fire was advancing behind the green veil of woods.
Volumes of thick smoke were borne off across the pond, alarming the
dwellers in distant shanties and oases of clearing, with suggestion
of the most terrific danger that can befall a settler in the bush.
Before sunset the conflagration came in sight of Cedar Creek. Marching
resistlessly onward, to the sound of great detonations of crashing and
crackling timber, and its own vast devouring roar, the mighty fire
presented a front of flame thirty feet higher than the tree-tops.
Daylight went down before that huge glare. The low hanging clouds were
crimsoned with a glow, not from the sinking sun, but from the billows
of blaze beneath. As the dusk deepened, the terrors of the scene
intensified by contrast, though in reality the triumphant fire recoiled
from that blackened space fringing the stream, where it must die for
want of fuel.
To prevent its spreading up to the concession line, and catching the
forest there, and perhaps destroying the whole township, all the men in
the neighbourhood had assembled to cut down trees, and leave a barrier
of vacancy. If the wind had not been blowing from that direction, it is
improbable that their endeavours would have been sufficient to keep
back the burning. The crestfallen Captain Armytage, author of all the
mischief, wielded an axe among them. Truly he had created a view of
black smoking poles and cheerful charcoal vistas before his dwelling.
Whether that were better than the utilitarian Scotchman's green woods,
he did not say just now, nor have spirit even to answer Davidson's
sarcastic remarks on his 'muckle clearin'.'
Far into the night, the great gaunt boles of trees stood amid wreathing
flame. When all risk was over that it would communicate further, and
destroy the garden or the house, Robert and the rest could admire its
magnificence, and Sam Holt could tell of other forest-burnings of which
he had heard, especially of the great fire which occurred in the year
1825, and consumed about two hundred square miles of woods on the
Miramichi River in New Brunswick, left fourteen houses standing in the
town of Newcastle, and destroyed five hundred people. Two thousand were
thus reduced to pauperism.
'Such things are never heard of in Europe. Why are these forests more
inflammable than those in the old world?' asked Mr. Wynn the elder.
'Because the drought and heat of the climate are so much greater,'
answered Sam Holt; 'and the preponderance of pines, loaded to the end
of every leaf and twig with pitch and resin, affords uncommon food for
fire.'
Then as to the cause; he considered it could never be spontaneous
combustion, but always accident, unless, indeed, in an exceptional case
like the present, said Mr. Holt _sotto voce_. Settlers, burning brush
heaps, or logging, sometimes permit the flame to run along the ground
into the bush; and in dry weather entrance was sufficient. The boundary
fences of farms were often consumed in this way, and more extensive
mischief might follow.
For days the charred chaos of timber poles and fallen trunks gave forth
such heat and flickering flames as to be unapproachable. Zack's Yankee
brain had a scheme for utilizing the ashes, if only he had machinery big
enough for converting all into potash and pearlash. This man was old Mr.
Wynn's special aversion. There was indeed little in common between the
well-bred European gentleman, who always, even in these poor circumstances,
wore the whitest linen (he never knew how Linda toiled over those neat
shirt-fronts and ruffles), and kept up the _convenances_ of society in
the bush, and had a well-educated range of thought--between all this and
the Yankee storekeeper, who wore no linen at all, nor had the faintest
idea of the usages of the polite world, nor an idea which might not be
paralleled in the mental experience of a rat in a barn. 'Get' and
'grasp' were the twin grooves of his life.
Unconscious of the antipathy, Zack would saunter up to Cedar Creek
sometimes of an evening, and, if not intercepted, would march straight
into the parlour where the ladies sat, and fix his feet on the wooden
chimney-piece, discharging tobacco juice at intervals into the fire
with unerring labial aim. Mr. Wynn's anger at the intrusion signified
nothing, nor could a repellent manner be understood by Zack without some
overt act, which a strained respect for hospitality prevented on the
part of the old gentleman.
'Well, Robert, how you could permit that man to walk with you for the
last half-hour I do not know.' Mr. Wynn stood on the threshold, looking
a complete contrast to the shuffling, retreating figure of the lank
Yankee striding over to the road.
'I assure you it is not for the pleasure I take in his society, sir; but
he gives me useful hints. We were talking just now of potash, and I
showed him my new rail-fences; he has rather put me out of conceit with
my week's work because it is of basswood, which he says does not hold.'
'Are those the rails which I helped to split?'
Be it noticed here that Mr. Wynn the elder could not bear to be totally
dependent on his sons, nor to live the life of a _faineant_ while they
laboured so hard; he demanded some manual task, and believed himself of
considerable use, while they had often to undo his work when he turned
his back; and at all times the help was chiefly imaginary. No matter, it
pleased him; and they loved the dear old gentleman too well to undeceive
him.
'As to the potash business, sir, I fear it is too complicated and
expensive to venture upon this year, though the creek is an excellent
site for an ashery, and they say the manufacture is highly remunerating.
What do you think, father?' And they had a conference that diverged far
from potash.
After closely watching Davidson's management, and finding that he
realized twenty-eight shillings per hundredweight, Robert resolved to
try the manufacture. Details would be tedious. Both reader and writer
might lose themselves in leach-tubs, ash-kettles, and coolers. The 'help,'
Liberia, proved herself valuable out of doors as well as indoors at this
juncture; for Mrs. Zack's principle of up-bringing was that young folk
should learn to turn their hand to 'most everythin'. And Libby, a large
plump girl with prodigiously red cheeks and lips, had profited so far by
her training as to be nearly as clever in the field as in the kitchen.
Her great strength was a constant subject of admiration to Andy, though
the expression of any such sentiment was met by unmitigated scorn on the
lady's part.
'Why, thin, Miss Green, an' it's yerself has the beautifullest arm, all
to nothing', that ever I see; an' it's mottled brown with freckles, an'
as big as a blacksmith's anyhow. Och, an' look how she swings up the
potash kettle as light as if it was only a stone pot; musha, but yer
the finest woman, my darlin', from this to yerself all round the world
agin!'
'I guess, Mister Handy, if yer was to bring some logs, an' not to stand
philanderin' thar, 'twould be a sight better,' rejoined Miss Liberia
sourly.
'Look now,' answered Andy; 'ye couldn't make yerself ugly musthore, not
if yer wor thryin' from this till then, so ye needn't frown; but ye're
very hard-hearted intirely on a poor orphant like me, that has nayther
father nor mother, nor as much as an uncle, nor a cousin near me itself.
Though sorra bit o' me but 'ud sooner never have one belongin' to me
than thim out-an-out disgraceful cousins of yer own at the "Corner."'
Libby was immovable by this as by any other taunt, to all appearance.
'Throth, I thried her every way,' quoth Andy subsequently, after
an experience of some months; 'I thried her by flatthery an' by
thruth-tellin', by abusing her relations an' herself, an' by praisin'
'em, by appalin' to her compassion an' by bein' stiff an' impident, an'
I might as well hould me tongue. A woman that couldn't be coaxed wid
words, I never seen afore.'
Perhaps she was the better servant for this disqualification; at all
events, she had no idea of any nonsense keeping her from the full
discharge of her duties in the house. Her propensity to call the
gentlemen by their baptismal names, without any respectful prefix, was
viewed by Linda as a very minor evil when set off against strength and
willing-heartedness. But one day that she wanted her young mistress,
and abruptly put her head into the parlour, asking, in a strong tone,
'Whar's Linda? Tell her the men that's settin' the fall wheat'll be
'long in no time for dinner,' Mr. Wynn could have turned her away on the
spot.
'Wal! sure it ain't no sin to forget the "miss" of an odd time, I
guess,' was the large damsel's rejoinder, though without the least spice
of sauciness. 'Come, I hain't no time to be spendin' here;' and she
closed the door after her with a bang which made gentle Mrs. Wynn start.
There was some trouble in convincing her husband that it was only the
servant's rough manner--no real disrespect was intended; the incident
put him into low spirits for the day, and turned many a backward thought
upon the wealth of his youth.
He would say, in these downcast moods, that Canada was no place for the
gentleman emigrant; but could he point out any colony _more_ suited?
Also, that his sons earned daily bread by harassing toil, worse than
that of a bricklayer or day labourer at home; but were they not happier
than in pursuit of mere pastime like thousands of their equals in the
province they had left? Robert would certainly have answered in the
affirmative. Arthur's restless spirit less wisely pined for the
pleasure-seeking of such a life as Argent's.