The Best Ballantyne Westerns. R. M. Ballantyne
there occurs a deep bay or inlet, to save rounding which travellers usually strike straight across from point to point, making what is called in voyageur parlance a traverse. These traverses are subjects of considerable anxiety and frequently of delay to travellers, being sometimes of considerable extent, varying from four to five, and in such immense seas as Lake Superior to fourteen miles. With boats, indeed, there is little to fear, as the inland craft of the fur-traders can stand a heavy sea, and often ride out a pretty severe storm; but it is far otherwise with the bark canoes that are often used in travelling. These frail craft can stand very little sea—their frames being made of thin, flat slips of wood and sheets of bark, not more than a quarter of an inch thick, which are sewed together with the fibrous roots of the pine (called by the natives wattape), and rendered water-tight by means of melted gum. Although light and buoyant, therefore, and extremely useful in a country where portages are numerous, they require very tender usage; and when a traverse has to be made, the guides have always a grave consultation, with some of the most sagacious among the men, as to the probability of the wind rising or falling—consultations which are more or less marked by anxiety and tediousness in proportion to the length of the traverse, the state of the weather, and the courage or timidity of the guides.
On the present occasion there was no consultation, as has been already seen. The traverse was a short one, the morning fine, and the boats good. A warm glow began to overspread the horizon, giving promise of a splendid day, as the numerous oars dipped with a plash and a loud hiss into the water, and sent the boats leaping forth upon the white wave.
“Sing, sing!” cried the guide again, and clearing his throat, he began the beautiful, quick-tuned canoe-song “Rose Blanche,” to which the men chorused with such power of lungs that a family of plovers, which up to that time had stood in mute astonishment on a sandy point, tumbled precipitately into the water, from which they rose with a shrill, inexpressibly wild, plaintive cry, and fled screaming away to a more secure refuge among the reeds and sedges of a swamp. A number of ducks, too, awakened by the unwonted sound, shot suddenly out from the concealment of their night’s bivouac with erect heads and startled looks, sputtered heavily over the surface of their liquid bed, and rising into the air, flew in a wide circuit, with whistling wings, away from the scene of so much uproar and confusion.
The rough voices of the men grew softer and softer as the two Indians listened to the song of their departing friends, mellowing down and becoming more harmonious and more plaintive as the distance increased, and the boats grew smaller and smaller, until they were lost in the blaze of light that now bathed both water and sky in the eastern horizon, and began rapidly to climb the zenith, while the sweet tones became less and less audible as they floated faintly across the still water, and melted at last into the deep silence of the wilderness.
The two Indians still stood with downcast heads and listening ears, as if they loved the last echo of the dying music, while their grave, statue-like forms added to, rather than detracted from, the solitude of the deserted scene.
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
Charley and Harry begin their sporting career, without much success—Whisky-John catching.
The place in the boats usually allotted to gentlemen in the Company’s service while travelling is the stern. Here the lading is so arranged as to form a pretty level hollow, where the flat bundles containing their blankets are placed, and a couch is thus formed that rivals Eastern effeminacy in luxuriance. There are occasions, however, when this couch is converted into a bed, not of thorns exactly, but of corners; and really it would be hard to say which of the two is the more disagreeable. Should the men be careless in arranging the cargo, the inevitable consequence is that “monsieur” will find the leg of an iron stove, the sharp edge of a keg, or the corner of a wooden box occupying the place where his ribs should be. So common, however, is this occurrence that the clerks usually superintend the arrangements themselves, and so secure comfort.
On a couch, then, of this kind, Charley and Harry now found themselves constrained to sit all morning—sometimes asleep, occasionally awake, and always earnestly desiring that it was time to put ashore for breakfast, as they had now travelled for four hours without halt, except twice for about five minutes, to let the men light their pipes.
“Charley,” said Harry Somerville to his friend, who sat beside him, “it strikes me that we are to have no breakfast at all to-day. Here have I been holding my breath and tightening my belt, until I feel much more like a spider or a wasp than a—a—”
“Man, Harry; out with it at once, don’t be afraid,” said Charley.
“Well, no, I wasn’t going to have said that exactly, but I was going to have said a voyageur; only I recollected our doings this morning, and hesitated to take the name until I had won it.”
“It’s well that you entertain so modest an opinion of yourself,” said Mr Park, who still smoked his pipe as if he were impressed with the idea that to stop for a moment would produce instant death. “I may tell you for your comfort, youngsters, that we shan’t breakfast till we reach yonder point.”
The shores of Lake Winnipeg are flat and low, and the point indicated by Mr Park lay directly in the light of the sun, which now shone with such splendour in the cloudless sky, and flashed on the polished water, that it was with difficulty they could look towards the point of land.
“Where is it?” asked Charley, shading his eyes with his hand; “I cannot make out anything at all.”
“Try again, my boy; there’s nothing like practice.”
“Ah, yes! I make it out now; a faint shadow just under the sun. Is that it?”
“Ay, and we’ll break our fast there.”
“I would like very much to break your head here,” thought Charley, but he did not say it, as, besides being likely to produce unpleasant consequences, he felt that such a speech to an elderly gentleman would be highly improper; and Charley had some respect for grey hairs for their own sake, whether the owner of them was a good man or a goose.
“What shall we do, Harry? If I had only thought of keeping out a book.”
“I know what I shall do,” said Harry, with a resolute air:
“I’ll go and shoot!”
“Shoot!” cried Charley. “You don’t mean to say that you’re going to waste your powder and shot by firing at the clouds! for, unless you take them, I see nothing else here.”
“That’s because you don’t use your eyes,” retorted Harry. “Will you just look at yonder rock ahead of us, and tell me what you see.”
Charley looked earnestly at the rock, which to a cursory glance seemed as if composed of whiter stone on the top. “Gulls, I declare!” shouted Charley, at the same time jumping up in haste.
Just then one of the gulls, probably a scout sent out to watch the approaching enemy, wheeled in a circle overhead. The two youths dragged their guns from beneath the thwarts of the boat, and rummaged about in great anxiety for shot-belts and powder-horns. At last they were found; and having loaded, they sat on the edge of the boat, looking out for game with as much—ay, with more intense interest than a Blackfoot Indian would have watched for a fat buffalo cow.
“There he goes,” said Harry; “take the first shot, Charley.”
“Where? where is it?”
“Right ahead. Look out!”
As Harry spoke, a small white gull, with bright-red legs and beak, flew over the boat so close to them that, as the guide remarked, “he could see it wink!” Charley’s equanimity, already pretty well disturbed, was entirely upset at the suddenness of the bird’s appearance; for he had been gazing intently at the rock when his friend’s exclamation drew his attention in time to see the gull within about four