Читать книгу The Incomplete Anglers - John Daniel Robins - Страница 6

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The chilliness had roused us, but for a minute or two after the train had disappeared and the sound had ceased to buzz along the rails, we stood by our stuff in silence and breathed in the remoteness. Then, from its place at the top of my little haversack, I pulled out our trusty flashlight, newly equipped with batteries, and sent a pathetic beam along the platform in the general direction of the station. Each of us shouldered a piece of dunnage. While we despise the works of men, we intended to sleep in the station during the few remaining hours of that night. The station might be about twenty feet by eight, and it is divided into two non-communicating parts, each supplied with an outside door. The smaller part has no window, and the door has always been locked whenever I have been there, for which reason its contents remain a mystery. The other part is never locked. It has two small windows, benches along one end and part of two sides, a stove and a supply of wood. Anyone reaching Radiant at two o’clock in the morning is expected to be a guest of the railway in the little station on the night of arrival.

We opened the door, and immediately fell back in disorder. Outside, at that time of night, the mosquitoes were quiescent, but inside they were instantly and extensively active. Accordingly, we had to bring up the rest of our stuff and undo every bag to find our mosquito-quelling Flytox, which should of course have been at the top of my little haversack, along with the flashlight. By the smoky light of a lantern which I neglected to mention as part also of the furnishings in our hospice, we finally found the Flytox. (At this point I abandon the capital letter. Flytox may be a trade name, and we may be advertising a commercial product, and there may be, and I presume are, quite as good moppers-up of black flies and mosquitoes as this preparation, but we had been led to it, and knew no other. It was good for Job and Daniel, and ’twas good enough for us.) During the process of finding the flytox and attaching the sprayer to the container, we were devoured. We could not remember where we had put the fly-repellent, known hereinafter as fly-dope, which was to be applied to our persons, and which ought to have been immediately available at the top of my little haversack. Finally we flytoxed the place, and a great peace descended upon it. The peace could be maintained only by keeping the room hermetically sealed, but at the time we could see only good in such sealing. We spread the tent out on the floor as a mattress, disposed our individual blankets, and turned in. And over! I have slept on asphalt and cement pavements; I have slumbered soundly on freshly rolled, still warm steel rails; I have snored stentoriously on undulating roots and pyramidical stones; and I swear that all these are as down when compared with the unyielding flatness of a common wooden floor. It is the most unaccommodating substance known; it yields not itself to the contours of the human form, nor does it permit that form to yield to it. Every one of my bones was between forty and fifty years old, and every one roared aloud that dreadful night. Still, I must have slept, for there came a time when I was conscious of early daylight, somewhat suddenly.

I put on my shoes—all I had removed—and slipped out to be sure that the canoe was safe. The town of Radiant, as the merry trainman had called it, lay before me, and all that mighty heart was lying still. The inhabitants of Radiant consist—or at that time consisted—of a Park Ranger, a Fire Ranger, five sectionmen, two wives, one sister-in-law, and three children. The buildings are such as are proper for the housing and occupation of the inhabitants, but comprise in addition some dozen or so log buildings belonging to a lumber company which operates in these regions during certain winter seasons. The town climbs up gently from a lake now marked on the map as Radiant, but then known as Trout. I know quite well that we have six or seven hundred Trout Lakes in the Province of Ontario, and only one Radiant Lake. Nevertheless, I feel a definite resentment at the change, and decline to accept it. These things should be left as Adam named them.

By the time I had come back to the station, Tom was awake. We made our breakfast on the stove, then hunted up the Park Ranger to secure the various permits necessary, that is, our travel permits and our angling licenses. I wanted Tom to meet the Park Ranger, and I had hoped the Fire Ranger as well would be there. The latter was away, but in subsequent years Tom came to anticipate meeting both of them again with as much eagerness as I did myself. Blessings on ye, Messrs. Nadon and Proulx, our blessing and the big bannock too! The former of you taught us, not once nor twice, that officials were human beings and not a separate species, that an official could be both obliging and faithful, both genial and honest, both courteous and efficient. Almost any other official in the Park would have taught us the same lesson, but we happened to learn it from you. The second of you, in your appropriated loggers’ shanty, over mighty helpings of ravishing pea-soup from the great black cauldron bubbling on the stove, helpings thrice renewed and still urged, eaten with the sister-in-law’s home-baked bread, and with tea strong enough to climb its own steep—the second of you, I say, with your tales of the perfect lumber-camp, your teamster’s pride in the horses you used to drive for Gillespie, your joy in deer and bear and wolves, with your speech that rang like the sound of the cross-cut saw at twenty below, emphatic as the blows of your own bright axe in the morning, colourful as the gay Assumption belt you used to wear—the second of you made us realize that the race of natural lumberjacks had not yet died out.

In your camp, too, I heard Ed tell some of his authentic experiences when he worked for the great Paul Bunyan. I have no idea who Ed was, or why he was in your camp that night. It was the year before this trip of Tom’s and mine, and I was coming out with Jim. We intended to wait in the dreary station for the midnight train, due at one-thirty, but you invited us to sit beside your hospitable fire. We found Ed already there. I do not recall how he was induced to talk. When memory picks up the wave-length, he is already speaking, and this is an approximation to what he is saying.

“Talkin’ about jams, Frenchy, I mind me of one jam that was a humdinger. It was in the square-timber days, and course I was workin’ for old Paul. I wasn’t a hewer or anythin’. All I done was some of the scorin’. Paul was cuttin’ up along Georgian Bay that winter, an’ he got a contract for a lot of round logs for masts or flagpoles or somethin’. This was the first time they ever sent logs out in the round and kinda loose. Before that they always rafted ’em. Paul started to raft them round logs together just like he been used to, but then he got the idea of just lettin’ ’em go and follerin’ ’em down and that’s what they all been doin’ ever sence.

“So we brung them logs down Lake Huron and Lake Erie till we got in the Niagara River. She was runnin’ hell bent for leather. That was the spring after the Winter of the Blue Snow. You remember, Frenchy, what an awful slew of indigo blue water there was tryin’ to get away that spring. Old man Reckitts made a hell of a lot of money out of that Blue Snow. He compressed it, and they been sellin’ it ever sence for bluein’ clothes.

“Well, the Niagara was chock full of this damn indigo blue snow-water, when along comes us with the drive. There was one place along there where there was a kind of swift water, a kind of drop, maybe ten or twelve feet, and around a bend. They’d been so much snow that winter that there’d been a couple of bad landslides nigh this bend and a lot of trees and stuff was layin’ out there makin’ a kind of island. Well, sir, them logs begun to catch at them two landslides, and before you could skin an eyeball we had two as pretty jams as you ever laid eyes on. The one below wasn’t so bad, and Paul set the gang to work clearin’ it away.

“But this here upper one—about half a mile above where the gang was workin’—she was a daisy. I was comin’ along with Babe—that’s Paul’s blue ox I was tellin’ you about—and I watched her pile up. Them logs’d come a-sizzlin’ along and then they’d strike her kerboom. You’d see a two hundred footer hit her—and then it’d go up maybe a quarter of a mile straight up in the air and come down kersmash and help pile up the tangle.

“Just to show you how fast she piled up. When I seen her start, I says to myself, ‘Well, we’re damn well here for a couple of weeks before we break this jam, so I might as well light up the old corn-cob.’ Babe was standin’ there, brushin’ logs off with his tail that was fallin’ all around us. I guess he thought the flies was bad for so early. Well, I took a look first at the jam. She was piled up maybe half a mile high. Then I takes enough time off to fill my pipe, and then I looks again before I lights her.

“Well, I know it’s kinda hard to believe, but in that time, and it can’t have been more than half an hour—we was workin’ by the hour on the drive, and not by the piece, so it took longer to fill a pipe or anything like that—well, in that time she’d piled up so’s I couldn’t see the top. There was a cloud had got caught part way up it too.

“About this time up comes Paul.

“ ‘Ed,’ he says, ‘she’s a nasty mess.’

“ ‘She sure is,’ I says. ‘How far back is she jammed, do you s’pose?’

“ ‘Well, she was piled up about twenty miles back, when I come away about ten minutes ago,’ says Paul. ‘I paced it as I came along. She’s solid that far back with logs, and the river’s pilin’ up all over the country.’

“I could see there wasn’t hardly any comin’ through; water, I mean.

“ ‘See that bunch of logs stickin’ out?’ says Paul.

“There was one place about in the middle where there was a big mess of logs bulgin’ out about a quarter of a mile out of the main jam.

“ ‘Well,’ says Paul, ‘I got a notion that there bulge is bunched around the key log. She’s too hard to get at with the peavy, and she’s too risky anyhow. I’m goin’ to hitch Babe to that mess and give it a jolt. We’ll just let Babe stay right here and fetch her slonchways from the side. I’ll hook the big skiddin’ chain around that mess, and then I’ll pass the chain up to you. When I say go, you let Babe give it hell.’

“ ‘But where’ll you be?’ I says.

“ ‘I ain’t goin’ to be in front of them logs,’ Paul says, and he kinda grins.

“Well, pretty soon here was me and Babe standin’ by the shore, so close Babe’s tail was hangin’ over kinda. There was Paul foolin’ around with his peavy, workin’ a place to fit the chain. He seemed to find it sort of hard. He’d pull out half a dozen logs and throw ’em to one side. But most of them logs was over two hundred foot long, and they was clumsy to work with.

“All of a sudden I went kinda sick. You know that low sort of quiet crackin’ splittin’ sound a jam makes when she’s givin’ ’way, Frenchy. I heard it, and I seen the bulge movin’ just a leetle, and then I seen a three-hundred-foot log shoot up in the air, like it’d been squeezed out of some kinda paste tube or somethin’. I knowed Paul’d loosened the key log. I tried to yell, but I couldn’t, and my blood froze that hard it took four days and a half to thaw me out afterwards.

“I seen Paul jerk his peavy out and turn around and look down the river. I’d forgot all about them men down below, right in the way of that tremendjous jam and her a-movin’. Well, sir, Paul let one beller out of him, and then he shoved his back against that bulge of logs, and braced his feet on the rock bottom of the river. I could see the men makin’ tracks for the shore. Paul was breathin’ so hard he was sendin’ up steam enough to make a kind of mist. That mist is floatin’ around there yet, a lot of it.

“Then I seen Paul beginnin’ to sink. I couldn’t do a thing but gawp, but one of my eyes popped right out. Did you notice that left eye lookin’ kind of funny? That’s the one. Ole the Blacksmith shoved her right back in with the little tongs, but she never went the same again. Just then it was kind of a good thing. I could stand there and watch the men runnin’ for the shore and Paul sinkin’ down all at the same time. First off I couldn’t tell what was happenin’ and then I seen what it was. He was holdin’ so hard agin that jam he was pushin’ the river-bed down. By this time the gang below was all safe on shore and I yells to Paul. And it wasn’t any too soon neither. I begun to hear that there crackin’ agin. I thought maybe Paul’s strength was givin’ ’way, but I’d ought to of knowed better, only I was kind of silly with all the strain and everything. Then I seen what it was. Paul’d sank so far he was losin’ his purchase on the logs. The logs was gettin’ throwed up and fallin’ all around me and Babe again. I was kind of standin’ under Babe’s belly; that’s how they wasn’t hittin’ me. And Babe was switchin’ his tail to knock ’em off, thinkin’ they was flies.

“It’s a lucky thing maybe he was, too. Paul might of had a nasty time gettin’ out, only Babe’s tail kind of swung out over the river when he was switchin’, and Paul grabbed it and swung like he was on a rope. He kicked agin the jam and that give him a long swing downstream, long enough in fac’ so that he lit on shore and knocked down a few trees, but not to hurt. Poor Babe fetched a beller you could’ve heered forty mile away, and the poor old tail stretched so they had to put a couple of half-hitches in it so it wouldn’t drag and get in the way.

“Paul give a kind of a rough estimate he’d sunk down about two hundred and forty feet. Course he pushed the hull bottom of the river down with him. She come back about eighty feet or so when the weight was off her, but she stayed sunk about a hundred and sixty feet or so. And you don’t have to take my word for it either, because there she is to this day. Paul had to give up sendin’ logs around that way, because this new big falls he made in the Niagara was too rough on ’em. That’s a mighty long time ago, Frenchy, but I’m a lot older’n I look.”

By half-past eight, Tom and I were ready for the trail. The first stage was a mile carry along the railway track, to the place where the railway crosses the Petawawa River. Beyond that, the Petawawa would parallel the tracks for some four or five miles—many more, I imagine—but about that distance from the bridge the Crow River, formerly Lavieille Creek, comes tumbling over an old dam into the Petawawa. We follow it up, and away from the railway.

It was not exactly unavoidable, this proceeding down the railway track. Trout Lake, upon which Radiant smiles, is after all merely a bulge in the Petawawa. We could have put the canoe into the water at once and have gone down the river. There were, however, as I told Tom quite truthfully, two or three rapids between the foot of the lake and the railway bridge, and we should have been constantly in and out of the canoe. I was silent as to my real reason. Tom had never been in rapids, except at the Soo, and then as a more or less inactive passenger in a huge canoe under the care of an expert Indian, who was said to dispose of dangerously nervous passengers by means of a primitive method of inducing anaesthesia with a swift and heavy paddle brought down smartly upon the head. Now I was no expert, no Indian; had no paddle to spare, no time, no dexterity in administering anaesthetics: in short, had no faith in the situation at all. I was frankly terrified at the thought of us in the immediate presence of rapids. On that morning, had the possibility presented itself of proceeding along the railway tracks all the way to the fishing grounds, I should have seized upon it with vast relief. Consequently, the mile was welcome, and we proceeded along the tracks.

The term proceed sounds somewhat magniloquent to describe the movement of two peaceful, inoffensive men fleeing with their all into the solitude of a semi-northern forest. But anyone who has ever tried travelling by foot along a railroad should understand my difficulty. For reasons that almost anyone can perceive, the great railway engineers have always discouraged walking along their right-of-way, and in fact have made normal walking impossible, by their diabolical spacing of the ties. The pedestrian movement enforced on railroad tracks has seemed to me at times to bear a distinct resemblance to the knight’s move in chess. Some dexterous juveniles are able to walk upon the steel rails themselves, but this is of course not practicable for any distance. Hence, quite at a loss for a word to describe accurately and specifically the eccentric and uncomfortable locomotion I am discussing, I have been driven to the indefinite but not actually misleading term proceeding. Indeed, as I think about it and remember more clearly the operation, I am struck with the felicity of the expression. A procession often implies, not continuous movement, but occasional and sometimes prolonged pauses. I assure you there were many such.

Most canoe-campers transport everything, I suppose, in one carry. The Hero is content with so little that he can do this easily. The Sportsman has a guide, whose carrying capacity is always a matter of conjecture, for its limit has never been reached. There is also a breathless young thing who rushes through the woods like wildfire, in shorts, who carries provisions barely sufficient to get him through to the next food depot, and whose boast is in having done in one day what we have dawdled over for a week. But as for us, we have with us the Canoe, enough blanketing and tenting to keep us reasonably warm and dry, all the food required for two and a half weeks, as shown on the Grub List, such other odds and ends as may or may not appear in the chronicle, and Tom’s superfluous camera. Moreover, we simply are not heroic. Sorry, but we are not. We must make two trips to get our stuff across a portage.

I presume that a methodical searching into a porous memory would disclose the basis on which our division of loads was made, but at the moment it is a mystery, like the basis of our general distribution of labour on a canoe trip. One or two guiding principles I do recall. The first, which I communicated as a tradition, was that the owner of the canoe should carry it himself. This tradition arose partly from sheer vainglory, and a quite erroneous conviction that I could stand the hardships of the portage better than Tom. I may say that it was modified on the second day out. On short carries it was, and is, jealously observed, but on long ones we began to alternate in carrying the canoe. The second principle is that a man carries his personal sundries, and it may be summed up for us in the responsibility of each man for his own small haversack.

I must add a word—in fact, a paragraph—about the contents of mine, since there are certain family articles which I carry. For instance, there are candle-ends. The flashlight is not to be riotously squandered. It partakes of the character of emergency rations. Its illusory brilliance must be conserved. In the ordinary routine of our camp life, it is used only as the means of illuminating the grand nightly flytoxing. For tent lighting we ordinarily use candles, or rather candle-ends.

Throughout the year, I keep a watchful eye upon candles. Their chief use, in our household, is to convey an impression of a fifteenth century Christmas, and to archaize, if not refine, one or two other rare entertaining occasions. Candles put to such use are partially burned, and after the occasion has passed, I quietly take possession of them and add them to the miscellaneous store in my tackle-box. There are in addition some four or six or eight—they are always in even numbers—which are regarded as ornamental in their own right or are considered necessary to display certain cherished candlesticks. They occupy, in a more or less forgotten manner, permanent positions in the home. As the heats of summer fiercen, these candles gradually assume a gracefully bowed attitude that is not proper to candles. Upon my drawing attention to their incorrect posture, I am usually allowed to appropriate them for my hoard. By the time June comes round, I have a quite large assortment of candle-ends, somewhat more gaudy in colour than is required in the woods, but adequate in candle-power for the trip. It is our proud boast that only once have Tom and I used a regular, full-length, natural-colour candle; and that one we found by a camp-site.

Now from time immemorial the candle-ends belong in my little haversack. So do the blanket-pins, and the flashlight, and the medicine chest, and the cribbage board and cards, and the canoe-mender, and the flytox with its sprayer—and the candlestick, also found one time on a log. I am sure there are other communal articles that go into it, but I cannot at the moment think of any more. I do know, however, that both Tom and I would immediately recognize the proper place for anything I have omitted to mention.

I cannot rid myself of some clinging vestiges of respect for the man who makes one trip on a portage. In an attempt to obtain as large a measure of tolerance as possible from him, I set forth here our impedimenta, itemized as to main containers and comprisers. It is, I promise, my last enumeration. Let me call to mind the stuff as laid out at the beginning of a carry after we have been perhaps two days out. No matter how many times we have gone into the bush together, there is always an element of uncertainty, of raggedness, about the first two carries, wherefore I select a later occasion. Perhaps we are ready to set out on the second lap of the long portage that is broken by camping at the Forks, where the White Partridge joins the Creek.

For us the canoe is not a container, in the sense employed above. Heroes and Guides suspend great weights from thwarts and other suspending places in a canoe carried upside down, but for Tom and me the canoe is load enough. The Pet, a long brown bag, named long ago in bitter irony, falls to Tom’s lot. Into it he puts all his clothing, his small pack, and a large part of the food. Usually lying beside it is the tent bundle, very compactly rolled, and enfolding the blankets within its sheltering envelope. Third of the major packs is my own big rucksack. It contains my clothing, my little haversack, and some of the food, chiefly extra cans of powdered milk, and such. In the case of anything which comes in more than one container, the current package goes into an ancient army dunnage bag, carried in the Pet, while the reserves are put into my pack. The bacon, which comes in one vast slab, falls also to my share. Most of the grease areas—I cannot call them spots—on my pack are bacon grease areas. Within the same folds of brown paper which enwrap the bacon nestles the half-pound of chipped beef. I carry the butter pail, and the jam. When everything else is in, the axe, with the handle insinuating its way down the back of the pack, and with its head peeping coyly out of one corner at the top, completes my big load.

In addition, there are impedimenta which are genuine impediments, hideous, misshapen things that must be borne with imprecations and without credit. They do not weigh much; they have no abiding place on shoulder or back; when carried in the hand, they take out of action a sadly needed fly-and-mosquito-fighting force; they are the very devil.

One of these, the least obnoxious, is the coarse grain sack which holds the nine loaves of bread. I must confess to a romantic though waning repugnance against carrying bread into the bush. Bread seems to me to smack too much of the effete life I am fleeing, the life of green vegetables, of the raucous radio, of warm bath-water, of newspapers, of fresh milk, of ties and cuff-links, of refrigeration, of pastry and lectures, of art and social intercourse, of citizenship and womankind, of cleanliness and white linen sheets, of motor-cars and mattresses. Flour I would take, and as a concession, even pancake flour; and I would scorn the baker as I flipped my flapjack into the air. But Tom adores bread, and watches with unconcealed concern the spread of the green mould through the desiccating loaves. Jim is so insensitive to this exquisiteness of my quivering woodland soul that he does not even stop at bread: he takes eggs! But no egg shells of ours defile the camp-sites when Tom and I go off a-Juning.

The rough stuff, consisting of the frying-pan and the three billies, is dropped into a sack still coarser in texture than the bread bag. Our billies are covered tin pails, so graduated into small, smaller, smallest, that they form in repose what we might call a nest of billies. The largest is a veritable Pooh-Bah among utensils. For a normal meal it serves first as tea-kettle, next as teapot, then as the kettle for heating dish-water, and finally as the lowly dishpan. The second billy is primarily for cooking porridge, though it may also be used for soaking beans, or prunes, or for mixing pancake batter. In case of need, it may perform all the functions of Billy No. 1. Both of these are always swart on the outside, with a fine nap of black velvet adhering not too firmly to them. The third and smallest is never set on the fire. It is the regular soaking-billy. It is also used, if disengaged, for mixing Klim. As the innermost of the three billies in the nest when on the march, it can be kept reasonably clean.

The bag for table service and clean kitchen-ware is always tied to the rough-stuff sack. There are three tin plates, two tin cups, three forks, two knives, three dessert spoons, two table spoons, one long-handled spoon—I believe that we have too many spoons—an egg-beater, dish-mop, dish-towel, metal pan-scourer, one bar laundry soap, one long toasting-fork, the prongs of which are continually protruding through the bag and prodding the carrier on the trail. The bag itself is one of four sandbags, the loot of a pillaging expedition one dark afternoon in 1916 in Camp Borden.

We have, too, a gawky bundle, tied up firmly, containing the fishing rods, landing-nets, and in these later years the spare paddle. At one time the axe was included, but it was removed because of an annoying suggestion that the bearer of this bundle was an anachronistic lictor, with the fasces. Even though the rods remained, the removal of the axe from that bundle made the lictorial suggestion fairly remote. The remaining hand luggage comprised the tackle-box, which I always carry as a mark of rank, and the box of worms.

Let us say it is a short carry, half a mile, we are making. Tom takes the worms, the two utensil sacks, the bundle with the rods, sometimes the bread bag; I take the canoe. On the second trip, Tom takes the Pet and the tent bundle; I my big pack and the tackle-box, the badge of my seniority.

I should, perhaps, apologize for this long digression. But the fisherman is not smitten with the insensate rigidity of purpose which must look always, thrust always, straight ahead. Fishing is itself a pause for breath. Hence, the fisherman will be tolerant of asides. It may be advisable, however, to remind you that some time ago we set off, or were about to set off, down the railroad track on a mile carry to the bridge over the Petawawa River. Thence we were to paddle and portage some four miles or thereabout, down to where the Creek comes tumbling into a placid, pond-like widening of the river.

I remember the surprising lightness of the canoe as I sauntered off with it on my shoulders, its weight resting easily on my canoe pad. I know that the Hero—or the guide—may knot a sweater round his neck and dispense with any other padding amenities. I do not. Years ago I used to roll my blankets, bandolier-fashion, and rest the canoe on them. There were several disadvantages in this. If the blanket shifted, as it tended to do, it allowed the paddles to do their worst, or it encircled my neck and nearly strangled me. Even if it remained in position, snuggling closely about my neck, it developed within the airless regions of that inverted canoe a steaming heat which I found very trying. Later I had a pad made, on the model of an old one belonging to Jim. It does suggest excess baggage, since it is used for one purpose only, and that thought troubled me occasionally, until the year we met a man carrying a canoe on a wooden yoke. That reconciled me to the pad. He seemed proud of it, and allowed me to lift it and try it on. He gave me its dimensions, and offered me advice as to having it made. He gave me his address, and was most benevolent about it all. It would have been indecent not to be grateful to him. While he was talking to me, and wasting his time in demonstrating his wooden yoke, I was grateful for his interest, just as I am to all those who try to do good to me, to persons like automobile philanthropists, house insulation humanitarians, insurance evangelists, and other similar benefactors. I have been afraid that Tom was somewhat smitten with this contraption, but I may be wronging him. After the Man with the Wooden Yoke had gone on about his other business, we luxuriated in two hours of complete silence.

I am not sure of whether or not Tom helped me up with the canoe. By the second day, even effete I disdain assistance in lifting it up to my shoulders, but often in the aching tenderfootedness of the first day I submit to the friendly offices of the other man in the matter. After about two hundred yards, Tom asked me how it felt. I assured him with conviction that it had never seemed so light, that I had at last, apparently quite by accident, hit upon the correct way of carrying a canoe. The first faint doubtings troubled me immediately thereafter, followed by a growing belief that I had lashed the paddles too closely together, or else not closely enough. A pain in one shoulder admonished me that the canoe was off balance, while a suspicion rose within me that I too must be off balance, to inflict such misery upon myself. I remember the feeling of shamed relief when I decided to stop and readjust the paddles. I tilted the front end of the canoe down, to steady it while I should be taking it off my shoulders, and I stumbled just a little, but enough to send its nose ploughing into the gravel down the grading by the track. I staggered, and Tom called to me to wait and he would help me with it, and I did wait hours while he ran twenty feet, and we got it down, and my shoes were filled with gravel, and I wished that Tom would break a leg and end the trip.

My method of picking up a canoe is highly improper and inefficient, but I am one of the old dogs that cannot be taught new tricks, and learn the old ones badly. As I was taught, the two paddles are laid across two of the thwarts, lengthwise of the canoe, and lashed into place there, far enough apart to rest on the shoulders, quite close to the neck. After the paddles have been lashed in place, the carrier takes hold of the two sides by the gunwale, near the stern, and turns the canoe over as he raises the stern over his head, allowing the nose to remain braced against the ground. He then moves forward until he reaches the point of balance. He has inserted his head between the lashed paddles, and when finally he lifts the whole craft from the ground, it balances upon his shoulders. The properly trained man will, I understand, first dandle the canoe upon his knee, and thence lift it in one easy swing to position.

The real canoe-man takes much of the weight on a tump-line, I am told, but I do not. Occasionally I will relieve the shoulders for a time by allowing the weight to come on my head, but I do it in a very unskilful and despicable manner which commands no one’s respect, not even Tom’s. When I am carrying my canoe on the trail, the nose tilts slightly downward, with the disquieting result that I cannot see anything above, or more than a few feet beyond me, unless I deliberately shift the balance. As I mentioned earlier, the rear lashings are permanent. The blades of the paddles, which should, I believe, be at the front, but are not, are thrust through knotted loops. These loops have grown rather loose with the lapse and the use of twenty years, and with the succession of paddles for which they were not originally fitted, but their knottings are sacred. They were knotted by Samivel. We depend on the front lashing, done with the long painter, to keep the paddles firmly in place.

When I first owned the canoe, I was very proud of the distance between the middle and bow thwarts. It created immense cargo space, and caused envy among my friends. But it was unsatisfactory for carrying. When the paddles were lashed on, the carrying part of them was too long, and the resultant spring increased the difficulty of portaging the canoe. That is why Tom made our one structural alteration, putting in the extra thwart.

We rested, and shifted loads, and jested bitterly, and cursed the liar who had assured us that the bridge was only a mile away, and emptied our shoes, and went on and on. Finally, to our amazement, we actually did see the bridge. A delightful breeze was coming down the gorge of the Petawawa, and the rapids roared below us. We listened for trains, although we understood that there would be none for two days. Still, some two hundred yards of narrow bridge dictated caution, and while we could be sure that in the easy escapability of the regular land right-of-way there would be no train to trouble us, life had mocked us both so often that we unconsciously considered it capable of materializing a train at any moment to entrap us on that slender thread of bridge. The railroad ties were evenly and closely spaced, but the pleasant breeze swung the canoe disconcertingly about my head, with the faintest of suggestions to an alert imagination that I might lose my balance and be toppled over into the lively commotion a hundred odd feet below. Then the roaring receded, and the ground came up to reassure us, and the bridge became a culvert and a high track. After another hundred yards we saw the first of those beloved comforters, the fire rangers’ signs.

These are of heavy cardboard, black on a bright yellow ground, and are designed primarily to admonish campers as to the danger of fire. The most spectacular contains a huge black hand with fingers outspread and pointing upward, and an invitation to stop and consider whether you have extinguished your camp-fire before leaving it. I may say that, to the best of my belief, we have. A profound psychologist, employed at some time by some department somewhere, hit on the device of using these signs to mark the beginnings of portages and the terminations thereof. Consequently, campers go about lakes seeking a sign, and meditate perforce on their quenching duties each time they find one. The signs must be frequently replaced, because, if the rangers are to be believed, as of course all rangers are, Bruin has a tendency to go berserk at the sight of the signs and tear them down, if he can.

We ploughed down the gravel of the track grading, and out upon the richness of a genuine though miniature trail. The quality of remoteness in space differs from that of remoteness in time, and I know of nothing that illustrates this better than a trail. The roar of humanity, dulled through remoteness in space, is still raucous with pain and menace and cultivated lusts, but the poignancy in the low murmur of the remote in time has lost the tones of pain and menace. Temporal continuity is as inescapable as spatial continuity, and indeed the chain of being through time is more readily recognized than the vast enmeshing of the continuum in space, but the mind of man requires very little aid to set up its little partition between the present and the past. On the trail, a gentle shower, effacing the sharp outline of a boot-sole in the mud; a single leaf, fallen carelessly across a track; the tiny, patient erosions of two quiet days—any of these will create the illusion of infinite remoteness between the man on the trail and his predecessor. That illusion once set up, he revels in the silent communion with all who have gone before, in the concave path, the healed-over blaze, the entroughed leaves, the brown powdered punk, even in the dim places where the foot feels the trail rather than the eye sees it.

We passed joyously along this trail and through an open camp-site to the water’s edge. Beside the river, here peaceful and sedgy after the turmoil of the rapids, we sank on the ground by our discharged loads and looked rapturously at each other. The trip was about to begin. On the railroad we had had no sense of being in the bush, no ecstasy. Although we had seen nobody along the track, we had still been hearing the hideous clangour of humanity. We were not yet away from the railroad, for it ran parallel to the river for the first five miles of our course, if one may call two lines parallel which occasionally come into sight of each other. Moreover, we had to go back over that track for the rest of our stuff. Even so, this was one of the special moments of the trip. Another would be at this same spot, when we should push off from shore. There would be still others, to be duly solemnized at the proper time.

Tom rolled a cigarette; I filled my pipe. A chipmunk scampered across the path we had just come down. We gazed at it with adoration. Now we were among our own kin. I saw it as the striped jester prancing ahead of our pre-Cambrian procession of moose, mice, martens and mink; of beavers and bears; of ducks and deer; of woodchucks and weasels and wolves; of loons and lynxes; of rabbits and (w)rens; of porcupines and partridges; of squirrels and skunks; of whip-poor-wills and whisky-jacks; of owls and owlets. (I am very sorry about those owlets, but I couldn’t leave a blank file, nor could I for some reason comfortably associate an owl with an otter.) We are very childish about chipmunks, Tom and I.

But there was not much time for loitering. We pretended that we should be content for this day to reach the Creek, that we should not try to make the fishing spots until the morrow. In reality, I had set my heart on trying for trout at the Forks in the gathering dusk of that self-same day. I could see us standing on the old black apron of the abandoned chute, casting into the dark waters, facing into the sunset across the opening in the valley, shouting to each other to get the landing net and help with this monster, and finally desisting from sheer satiety. So, after five minutes, we trudged back along the railroad, and the way seemed longer than when we had been carrying loads. Already habits were being formed, however, and our second trip was very matter-of-fact, very uneventful, almost efficient.

We loaded the canoe. In the bow, the rough stuff and the dishes, and the bundle of rods. Between Tom and me, the Pet, the tent, my pack; on top of them the bread. Under my seat and in the stern behind me, the tackle-box and the worms, the axe, and the butter pail. Tom climbed over the stuff to his seat in the bow. I shoved the canoe off and crawled over the stern. We thrust the paddles against the sand and pushed. Slowly, half-poled, half-paddled, the canoe swished its way out through the reeds. Tom gave a little lurch. His paddle had not touched bottom when he had expected it to do so. We were off.

I suppose that no more self-contained feeling is possible to man than comes to the canoeing camper at this moment. Gathered about him within a space of somewhat less than thirty square feet are his transportation, his shelter and warmth, his complete wardrobe, all his food except that which he hopes to catch, his implements of the chase, his hospital, his entertainment, his social and political institutions, indeed the whole of society except women. If he has shopped wisely, he is as completely equipped with necessities as ever was Robinson Crusoe. He has no cares, for he has all he needs, and little else. His ambitions are modest, and all but one are likely to be attained. He will not, of course, achieve his supreme ambition, that of catching on a light line, with his favourite fly, a trout at least a pound bigger than any of his friends or acquaintances has caught. Tom and I at any rate cannot achieve that ambition, though we share it, for they do not grow in our particular streams, these giants. We hope only to catch a bigger one than we ourselves have hitherto taken.

We paddled twelve minutes, and reached the first of the five rapids on our stretch of the Petawawa. A shaggy riverman one day told me the names of all these, names redolent of log-drivers and bateaux, and I noted them all carefully on a piece of bacon-wrapping paper long since lost. The first two were merely short stretches of swift water which even I was prepared to run. Now Tom’s education had to begin in earnest. Destiny, working largely through a predisposition to fat, has thrust upon me from time to time responsibilities for which I was totally unfitted. In any canoe trip that I have taken I have weighed so much more than my companion that I have of necessity been given the stern place, the position of responsibility. As one consequence, I have never learned the craft of bow-man. But I do know that to him falls the look-out job, so far as imminent rocks are concerned, and that he must often fend the canoe away from these perils with light, delicate thrusts. Jim can do it with the grace of a sculptured Greek athlete, and with an accuracy that removes all anxiety. I explained to Tom as well as I could what I thought was Jim’s technique. I told him the little I knew about submerged rocks. I told him more than I knew about the meanings of ripples, about the breakings that indicated rocks too close to the surface for safety. I held forth on the significance of colour in relation to rocks in water. I enlarged upon the upsetting and lacerating properties of rocks. All this I did in the twelve minutes of paddling before we reached the first fast water. I did a thorough job. From one or two disturbing experiences of earlier years I had developed a fear of rocks lurking just below the surface of canoeing waters, and I think I was quite earnest about the subject.

If communication of the artist’s emotion be of the essence of great art, then I am, or at any rate was at that time, a great artist. For I undoubtedly communicated an emotion with respect to rocks. Tom developed during twelve and a quarter minutes—twelve minutes of paddling and a quarter-minute of scooting—a horror of rocks which is the nearest approach to monomania that I have observed in my immediate circle. We may be in the middle of a lake, with two hundred feet of water under us, but if there is the slightest sudden wind-ripple, Tom gets all in a dither, and swears that the water shoals hereabouts. On this same lake, with a wind howling around us, and queer-shaped masses of cloud being hurled across a tortured sky, and breaking foam preceding green sheets of water that slither in over the gunwale, and torn-up, twisty waves that leave the paddle pawing helplessly in the air; when I am sweating in an agony of terror, or numb with a sense of impending widowhood thrust upon an untrusting female; when I am calculating with despair the enormous distance from the nearest shore, and realizing the impossibility of cutting across to the nearest shore in any event, with the wind as it is—while I am doing these things, Tom sings high in the gale, and throws out great bravoes, and says ha! ha! among the trumpeting tempests, and in general acts like an idiot in a holocaust. But on a stream, with water varying in depth from three and a half feet to minus two feet, with the shore three or four yards away, with or without a slight speeding up of the current, Tom cowers and rages.

There will probably come no more fitting time to describe our badges of servitude than now. A brief moment ago, in describing Tom’s reactions to a storm at lake, I suggested that I have a wife. She is convinced that I shall be drowned unfailingly. I think that it is not so much my being drowned that she finds distasteful, as my being uselessly drowned in the prosecution of selfish pleasures, and away from home. Accordingly, my departure on a fishing trip was wont in former times to resemble the setting-forth on his last criminal exploit of a callous and brutal gunman, leaving a faithful, God-fearing spouse, with an active endowment of the second sight.

This was in former times. Some few years ago, and before the trip of which this is a chronicle, an increasing sense of guilt compelled me to a desperate measure of humiliation. It appears that among the sensible precautions taken by some deep-water sailors of small craft is the occasional wearing of a kapok life-jacket. In an evil moment I volunteered to wear one of those things if the domestic objections to a proposed expedition were withdrawn. Since that time I have been held up to private ridicule frequently, to public scorn and in the presence of a noble fellowship of anglers once, and to secret contempt I know not how often. You may bet your uttermost dollar that Tom has to wear one—I saw to that. Partly, of course, for his own safety.

For neither Tom nor I can swim. Because of this, almost all our friends shake their heads, and warn us that we should not be found in any such cranky vehicle as a canoe. They are quite right. Never venture into a canoe unless you can swim well. If you do, above two or three times, and have not yet been drowned, you will become so enamoured of canoeing that no amount of prudent counsel or sensible reflection will drive out of your head the fantastic notion that you will not fall out of your canoe. Sooner or later you will fall out, and you can only pray that the kindly Providence which our honest forefathers deemed to have special care over silly folk may cause you to be dumped in drenching but not dangerous places. Neither Tom nor I should ever go a-paddling, tra la la!

I promised that I would wear that jacket whenever I should be in the canoe. I wore it with horror and shame the first trip after I bought it. I skulked behind the wifely petticoat and waved its protecting folds at Jim. I emphasized my hen-pecked condition, and exalted my honour as a man of my word in wearing the jacket under all circumstances. In the secret of my reins I soon was mightily holpen. For I had always been troubled with an inner shuddering at our setting forth over any extensive water, when I considered, as I invariably did, that a misadventure was likely to have only one end for me, and also that in these latter days, with the decay of faith and what not, the fool seemed to have little better protection against his folly than the wise man against his.

We approached the first of the two bits of swift water.

“Hadn’t we better land now?” Tom asked, without turning round.

“Land? What for?”

“Well, hey! you’re not going to run that big cataract, are you?”

“Sure! You watch for rocks and we’ll be down in no time.”

“We’re on one now!” Tom cried, as he lunged frantically at a rock some fifteen feet away, nearly overturning the canoe.

“Damn you! Keep quiet!” I bellowed.

Tom yelled again and plunged his paddle straight down into the water on the other side, and pushed at a rock we had passed before his paddle touched the water. There was a grinding sound, the bow of the canoe stopped, was lifted, hung. The stern was pulled swiftly around. I prised against the gunwale with my paddle to save the craft from going broadside down the stream. Now, the danger real and known, Tom acted, quickly and surely. The canoe was not heavily caught. The slight, accurate push against the rock raised it free and gave it enough side thrust to straighten the course. Before we fully realized that we were clear of our obstruction, we had shot out into the eddy at the foot of the swift and were already slowing up.

“Fine!” I said encouragingly. “That’s your first rapid, and all’s well. Let’s light up.”

Tom grunted, took in his paddle and pulled out his pipe. He did not turn to look at the mildly tumbling waters we had just come through. I knew that his feelings had been hurt. He is not accustomed to being sworn at with impunity.

Our pipes lighted, we paddled on, but not for long. Four or five minutes, no more, and we could hear the pleasant murmur that told of another somewhat abrupt change of level. A half bend in the river, and there it was, very similar to the first, though slightly longer. Tom turned and glared at me.

“You’re not going to run this?” he said.

There was nothing I could think of that I wanted to do less than to run that stretch. But I could see Jim coolly preparing to enjoy a little respite from the labour of paddling. I could see other parties lightly shooting down. I could see the voyageurs relaxing, and probably spitting tabac canadien in derision at such puny water. I could see birch-barks, guided by quiet Indians, bobbing nonchalantly through the centuries down that peaceful little bit. I knew quite well that if we carried our canoe around it, we should be the first to do so since time began, and I could not endure the silent mockery of all our forerunners.

“Why, of course we’ll run it,” I said. “There’s nothing to it.”

Tom looked around again for one second.

“All right, you’re the boss,” he said. “But if we get through here alive, I want you to land me. Then you can take your old boat plump to hell with you.” He faced ahead again.

He was in deadly earnest. I was very much irritated myself. Calling the canoe a boat! For half a cent I would turn back and call the whole thing off.

Down the worst of it we went without any mishap. Over the smooth green V that marked the drop, in through the narrow gap in the shelf, with four or five inches to spare. Then the keel caught on a submerged rock and we teetered crazily. There was enough of the canoe ahead of the point at which we had caught to keep the direction true; hence, we were in no immediate danger of damage. We sat for a moment, doing nothing.

Just here the water on each side would be perhaps five feet deep; no depth at all in a quiet stream, but a very different matter with the current as swift as this was. Apparently we were resting on a miniature peak, for there was no projection of the rock on either side of the canoe. There was nothing upon which to stand to lighten the load and so float the craft.

“What do you want me to do?” Tom yelled.

“Nothing! Just keep your shirt on!” I yelled back.

It was not brilliant repartee, but consider the circumstances. They called for wisdom, not wit, and these are seldom found together, wit and wisdom.

Certainly there was nothing Tom could do but sit still. He was doing that, but if ever a man’s motionless back, including the back of his head, expressed downright blazing fury, his did. As for me, I could only crawl forward, and hope that the shifting of the weight might release the canoe. I gingerly brought in my paddle, grasped the gunwales with either hand, and began to ease myself ahead until I was stretched out full length over our piles of supplies, face downward. Just after I passed over the tent bundle and was beginning to crush the bread bag, the canoe freed itself and swept on down the stream, the most unguided craft that ever navigated swift water, for the steersman was sprawled out helplessly in an attitude of complete prostration.

We slowed down and I began to right myself. Tom looked round. He had known nothing of all my change of position, and for an instant he appeared startled. Then he turned to watch the canoe and fended it away from the bank towards which it was drifting. I regained my place and dipped my paddle into the quiet water. Tom turned again, a broad grin overspreading his face. Then he began to laugh. We both laughed, loud and long.

“Say, if you’ll promise to lie on your belly every time we run a rapids, I guess I’ll stay with the expedition,” said Tom. “It’s only when you try to steer that we get on the rocks.”

I do not remember how far our next run of straight paddling extended. My log calls it a “short paddle,” and I recall that the warning hum, like the sound of wind rising among the trees, came annoyingly soon, and increased with disconcerting rapidity. Again Tom looked back anxiously. I shook my head. Already I could see the water ahead tumbling white where the river narrowed sharply and made an abrupt turn into the bush. The railroad was again in sight. I scanned both shores of the river. We were near the right bank, but just here the stream widened to a broad pond before it plunged into the heavily-wooded gorge. Then I saw, away across the pond, and much too near the rapids, the welcome fire placard that marks the beginning of a portage. I called to Tom to confirm my surmise, with his younger and better vision. Yes, there was a yellow sign. Tom was all for fetching a very long compass round, lest we should be swept down the rapids in getting over to the other side. When we had crossed, and were resting alongside the log from which we were to unload the canoe, we looked at the wild turmoil of water roaring below us, and turned with relief to the drudgery of a half-mile double carry along the railroad. When we put into the water once more, the river was loitering on its way in complete forgetfulness of its recent agitation.

The next rapids were far away. We paddled steadily on—five, ten, twenty minutes, until I almost entertained the fantastic notion, belied by all my previous experience on the same river, that we were beyond the last of the Petawawa troubles. Finally the river grew wider and there appeared to be a bay or second channel, we could not tell which. Across its mouth lay an orderly line of logs. We were evidently on the heels of a timber drive, and indeed the next turn revealed the rear of the drive itself, with a boom now across the whole river. We cruised beside this, and after several vain attempts to squeeze between the chained ends of the boom logs, we found at last a link in which the chain was low enough in the water, and the log itself sufficiently depressed, to allow us to ease the canoe over by a series of clumsy, spasmodic jerks like the attempts of an undecided young duck to take off from a lake surface. Worming our way among the logs was slow work, especially since we were compelled to paddle across the current in order to reach the fire sign that marked our next carry. Tom was inclined to believe that the logs were intelligently malevolent and eager to stave us in. Below us, where the white water gleamed once more, we could see the drivers busy by the shore. A four-minute portage over a broad, easy trail, with a carpet of pine needles and a blood-thirsty myriad of mosquitoes, thrilled us with our first bush carry. An eight-minute paddle, a five-minute carry through the bush, and we came out upon a peaceful lagoon. We were close to the railroad again, and straight ahead, across the lagoon, was a dainty wooded point. I shouted. I knew the spot. The year before, Jim and I had made an arrangement with a piratical section gang to transport us as far as possible on the handcar. The point ahead was the place from which we had set out with the canoe. We should soon be turning up into God’s own unspoiled country. Quietly we swung over to the right until we found the Creek mouth. A miniature estuary it was, level and peaceful, slipping modestly into the Petawawa, timidly, like a small child silently putting its hand into an adult’s.

Less than five minutes of this, and again we heard the familiar roar of water too much hurried in its career. Here was the lowest in a series of old dams, and for us it provides a pleasantly definite beginning for the Creek. All beginnings and ends are but arbitrary terms of convenience, and if we choose to begin a beloved creek with a definite dam, instead of with a more or less uncertain widening, no one may say us nay. I understand from the maps that the authorities wish to have it take its rise far away in a fished-out, four-flusher lake which is not even on the main route. Let ’em. For us, the Creek begins where we enter it.

Here we had our first “lift.” A lift is an annoyance. It has no dignity, no character. It is nondescript. By definition, which is the recognized method of concealing inner truth by means of superficial accuracy, a lift is a carry too short to justify all the preparations for a portage proper. The canoe is not carried on the shoulders of one man, but right-side up, in the hands of two, with the lighter parcels left in it. Hence the name. A lift may be fifty yards, or more, or less, in length. It is a minor misery. In the first place, a canoe, carried over uneven ground or rock by two men at different levels and with different methods of handling their respective ends of the craft, and bumping against its carriers, is not only an exceedingly awkward object, but it takes on also an apparent increase in weight that gives each of its bearers an unreasoning but immediate and ineradicable sense of being exploited. Bags and packs are never properly arranged, but are dragged across in a haphazard fashion which doubles the labour and trebles the irritation. Rods are not taken down, nor little odds and ends packed into the big bundles. All in all, a lift is a messy affair. It takes time, and returns very little distance for this time, for often enough the water at the other end is easily visible, just a few ridiculous yards ahead.

Now that I bethink me, this is not the place for a tirade against lifts, for with us, on this occasion, the carry became a lift through an evil chance. We tried to make it a portage. I do not remember whether I had forgotten the shortness of the carrying distance, or whether I thought it easier to carry the canoe alone. I do remember that I lashed the paddles, shouted exultantly to Tom that we were on our way at last, hoisted the canoe to my shoulders, and started briskly up the steep, smooth ridge of rock. Alas! like one Heedless, that was a-going that way, I watched not well my steps. Up the rock, and over the crest, and before me lay a twelve-inch drop which I must have judged to be half that, if I judged at all. I came down with a thud and a grunt, but without falling. It did not matter; indeed, I think I might better have fallen. I have already mentioned that the distance between the thwarts used in carrying was more than ordinarily long. This put a very heavy stress on the paddles at any time of portage. The additional strain of a sudden jolt was too much for paddles already somewhat old, and still suffering from the effects of a long year’s drying-out in a furnace-heated cellar. There was a sharp crack, not very loud. There must, in fact, have been two, but the synchronization was perfect. I called to Tom, who helped me lower the canoe gingerly, not to say tenderly, to the ground. Then we unlashed the paddles.

They had not been broken in any coarse, uncompromising manner, but each had been daintily shivered, cracked in a way that made one of them quite useless as a beast of burden or a practical propellent, and the other too delicate to be trusted fifty yards from shore in the most placid of waters. Tom looked at me gravely but said nothing. It must have been nearly one o’clock, and we had not eaten since half-past six. Moreover, not fifteen minutes before, we had felicitated each other quite formally on the approach of lunch. But now, in the face of our calamity, we had no thought of food. By this, of course, I mean that I had no thought of food. Not until this moment of writing, of emotion recollected in comparative tranquillity, did it ever occur to me to wonder if perhaps Tom retained his sensation of hunger.

I thought several futile thoughts. I remembered the advice to take a spare paddle—and cursed the advisers. They had merely embittered the moment. I resolved that I would always be considerate, and never offer advice, to embitter the moments of others. I thought of Robinson Crusoe—cross my heart! I did—and his patient whittling away at two sides of a huge tree until he had whittled it down to a plank. With a grisly fascination in the picture, I saw Tom and me patiently whittling down trees, huge trees, to make paddles, in order to paddle back to that railway bridge, a mile from Radiant. I remembered an account I had read of men paddling five hundred and sixty miles with their hands, and wondered if we should begin at once to paddle back down the Creek and across the Petawawa, to flag a train. Since the railroad was not more than half a mile away, this would not have involved any great exertion or hardship, but to my morbid thinking it seemed an indefinite, cruelly prolongable ordeal. I suppose that all this was self-laceration, to avoid the clear facing of my folly in being unprepared for such an accident.

I doubt sometimes if Tom has as vivid an imagination as I have, if he is as fully a creative artist. Certainly his behaviour at this time did not proclaim the free creative spirit that moves among the wrecks of time and space, harrowed by the jangle of discordant spheres, and finally, with a wild cry of sorrow for a disordered world, mingled with an exultant shout of artistic parturition, arises and moulds the universe anew, nearer to the heart’s desire. The great creative artist flings the broken world aside and builds again. If he cannot create afresh, he knows there is nothing left to do save weep and howl aesthetically. That’s me. But it is not Tom. Poor fellow! He knows no better than to mend the broken world and set it going once again.

“S’pose there’s any pine around here?” he asked. He had been examining the less damaged of the two paddles.

“Why?”

“You know, if I had some pitch and some thread, or string, or something, I believe I could wrap this one up so it would work, and maybe the other one.”

Tom was so romantic, wanting pine pitch, like an ancient Huron or a pioneer in the Queen’s bush. He’s always half-pretending he’s a brave. I fished out our canoe-mending stuff, a tarry substance, which he pronounced ideal. It should have been at the top of my little haversack, but was not. I found also a half-rotted line, which might have been kept until some day the mythical monster trout would break it under maddening circumstances. On a short carry, at least one rusty tin can always lies near the trail. I discovered it and its cover. We built a little fire, arranged the material, and set to work. The difficult factor in handling the canoe-mender is that it must be boiling hot to run, and will not remain boiling hot for more than four seconds in the open air, which is the only kind usually available in such cases. I kept it boiling in the rusty cover, and transferred it, under instructions, to the shivered paddle. We poured it into the splits. Then Tom wound the decrepit line around the paddle, and I poured the boiling mender on it, and smoothed that boiling mender with my fingers. It remained painfully hot long after the four seconds of its running time. Tom’s wrapping was so beautiful that I was reluctant to smear the tarry mess over it, but in the course of a marvellous repair job the paddle grew firm once more, until finally Tom pronounced it good. It was good. It is now only a spare, but it carried us up and down rapids all that trip, and over stormy lakes, and it is still as seaworthy as need be. Not only so, but that tinkering wizard wound the other paddle into serviceable submission. He lifted it up at last and shook it. He pressed the blade against the ground. Then he handed it to me.

“I’m starved!” cried Tom. “Let’s eat.”

But first we carried all our stuff over the ridge, and laid it down near the far end of the lift. Then we boiled our billy of tea, and fried our bacon, and Tom dropped back to cook’s assistant, and rummaged for the butter and the bread, and with the egg-beater mixed some Klim in the smallest billy, and put on the dish-water.

“Look down, look down that lonesome road,

Befo’ you travel on,”

he sang.

So we were very merry, and leaned back on our elbows on the warm rock, and looked out over that barren, burnt piece of country in the healing heat of the June afternoon sun, and blessed the Lord. With this meal our emancipation had begun. Beyond the ridge, a bare hundred yards away, were people, and cities, and routine, and care, and clamour, and the smell of gasoline, and foul coal-smoke, and houses, but we were now utterly separate from them. We should be eating meals much more remote from civilization than this one, but not again were we to be so conscious of release as in that happy hour. Custom would stale even this bright bliss.