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The Tent Dwellers




[Illustration: "He was swearing steadily and I think still blaming me
for most of his troubles."--_Page_ 83.]




THE TENT
DWELLERS


BY
ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

_Author of "The Van Dwellers," "The Lucky Piece," etc_.


_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY HY. WATSON_


[Illustration]


NEW YORK
THE OUTING PUBLISHING CO.
MCMVIII


COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY
THE OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY




Chapter One


  _Come, shape your plans where the fire is bright,_
    _And the shimmering glasses are--_
  _When the woods are white in the winter's night,_
    _Under the northern star._




Chapter One


It was during the holiday week that Eddie proposed the matter. That is
Eddie's way. No date, for him, is too far ahead to begin to plan
anything that has vari-colored flies in it, and tents, and the prospect
of the campfire smell. The very mention of these things will make his
hair bristle up (rather straight, still hair it is and silvered over
with premature wisdom) and put a new glare into his spectacles (rather
wide, round spectacles they are) until he looks even more like an
anarchist than usual--more indeed than in the old Heidelberg days, when,
as a matter of truth, he is a gentle soul; sometimes, when he has
transgressed, or thinks he has, almost humble.

As I was saying, it was during the holidays--about the end of the week,
as I remember it--and I was writing some letters at the club in the
little raised corner that looks out on the park, when I happened to
glance down toward the fireplace, and saw Eddie sitting as nearly on his
coat collar as possible, in one of the wide chairs, and as nearly in the
open hickory fire as he could get, pawing over a book of Silver
Doctors, Brown Hackles and the like, and dreaming a long, long dream.

Now, I confess there is something about a book of trout flies, even at
the year's end, when all the brooks are flint and gorged with white,
when all the north country hides under seamless raiment that stretches
even to the Pole itself--even at such a time, I say, there is something
about those bits of gimp, and gut, and feathers, and steel, that prick
up the red blood of any man--or of any woman, for that matter--who has
ever flung one of those gaudy things into a swirl of dark water, and
felt the swift, savage tug on the line and heard the music of the
singing reel.

I forgot that I was writing letters and went over there.

"Tell me about it, Eddie," I said. "Where are you going, this time?"

Then he unfolded to me a marvelous plan. It was a place in Nova
Scotia--he had been there once before, only, this time he was going a
different route, farther into the wilderness, the deep unknown,
somewhere even the guides had never been. Perhaps stray logmen had been
there, or the Indians; sportsmen never. There had been no complete
surveys, even by the government. Certain rivers were known by their
outlets, certain lakes by name. It was likely that they formed the usual
network and that the circuit could be made by water, with occasional
carries. Unquestionably the waters swarmed with trout. A certain
imaginative Indian, supposed to have penetrated the unknown, had
declared that at one place were trout the size of one's leg.

Eddie became excited as he talked and his hair bristled. He set down a
list of the waters so far as known, the names of certain guides, a
number of articles of provision and an array of camp paraphernalia.
Finally he made maps and other drawings and began to add figures. It was
dusk when we got back. The lights were winking along the park over the
way, and somewhere through the night, across a waste of cold, lay the
land we had visited, still waiting to be explored. We wandered out into
the dining room and settled the matter across a table. When we rose from
it, I was pledged--pledged for June; and this was still December, the
tail of the old year.




Chapter Two


  _And let us buy for the days of spring,_
    _While yet the north winds blow!_
  _For half the joy of the trip, my boy,_
    _Is getting your traps to go._




Chapter Two


Immediately we, that is to say, Eddie, began to buy things. It is
Eddie's way to read text-books and to consult catalogues with a view of
making a variety of purchases. He has had a great deal of experience in
the matter of camp life, but being a modest man he has a fund of respect
for the experience of others. Any one who has had enough ability, or
time, to write a book on the subject, and enough perseverance, or money,
to get it published, can preach the gospel of the woods to Eddie in the
matter of camp appointments; and even the manufacturers' catalogues are
considered sound reading. As a result, he has accumulated an amazing
collection of articles, adapted to every time and season, to every
change of wind and temperature, to every spot where the tent gleams
white in the campfire's blaze, from Greenland's icy mountains to India's
coral strand. Far be it from me to deride or deprecate this tendency,
even though it were a ruling passion. There are days, and nights, too,
recalled now with only a heart full of gratitude because of Eddie's
almost inexhaustible storehouse of comforts for soul and flesh--the
direct result of those text-books and those catalogues, and of the wild,
sweet joy he always found in making lists and laying in supplies. Not
having a turn that way, myself, he had but small respect for my ideas of
woodcraft and laid down the law of the forest to me with a firm hand.
When I hinted that I should need a new lancewood rod, he promptly
annulled the thought. When I suggested that I might aspire as far as a
rather good split bamboo, of a light but serviceable kind, he dispelled
the ambition forthwith.

"You want a noibwood," he said. "I have just ordered one, and I will
take you to the same place to get it."

[Illustration: "It was a field day for Eddie and he bought more."]

I had never heard of this particular variety of timber, and it seemed
that Eddie had never heard of it, either, except in a catalogue and from
the lips of a dealer who had imported a considerable amount of the
material. Yet I went along, meekly enough, and ordered under his
direction. I also selected an assortment of flies--the prettiest he
would let me buy. A few others which I had set my heart on I had the
dealer slip in when Eddie wasn't looking. I was about to buy a curious
thing which a trout could not come near without fatal results, when the
wide glare of his spectacles rested on me and my courage failed. Then he
selected for me a long landing net, for use in the canoe, and another
with an elastic loop to go about the neck, for wading; leaders and
leader-boxes and the other elementary necessaries of angling in the
northern woods. Of course such things were as A, B, C to Eddie. He had
them in infinite variety, but it was a field day and he bought more. We
were out of the place at last, and I was heaving a sigh of relief that
this part of it was over and I need give the matter no further thought,
when Eddie remarked:

"Well, we've made a pretty good start. We can come down here a lot of
times between now and June."

"But what for?" I asked.

"Oh, for things. You haven't a sleeping bag yet, and we'll be thinking
of other stuff right along. We can stay over a day in Boston, too, and
get some things there. I always do that. You want a good many things.
You can't get them in the woods, you know."

Eddie was right about having plenty of time, for this was January. He
was wrong, however, about being unable to get things in the woods. I
did, often. I got Eddie's.




Chapter Three


  _Now the gorges break and the streamlets wake_
    _And the sap begins to flow,_
  _And each green bud that stirs my blood_
    _Is a summons, and I must go._




Chapter Three


Eddie could not wait until June. When the earliest April buds became
tiny, pale-green beads--that green which is like the green of no other
substance or season--along certain gray branches in the park across the
way, when there was a hint and flavor of stirring life in the morning
sun, then there came a new bristle into Eddie's hair, a new gleam into
his glasses, and I felt that the wood gods were calling, and that he
must obey.

"It is proper that one of us should go on ahead," he argued, "and be
arranging for guides, canoes and the like at the other end."

I urged that it was too soon--that the North was still white and hard
with cold--that preliminaries could be arranged by letter. I finally
suggested that there were still many things he would want to buy. He
wavered then, but it was no use. Eddie can put on a dinner dress with
the best and he has dined with kings. But he is a cave-, a cliff- and a
tree-dweller in his soul and the gods of his ancestors were not to be
gainsaid. He must be on the ground, he declared, and as for the
additional articles we might need, he would send me lists. Of course, I
knew he would do that, just as I knew that the one and mighty reason
for his going was to be where he could smell the first breath of the
budding North and catch the first flash and gleam of the waking trout in
the nearby waters.

He was off, then, and the lists came as promised. I employed a sort of
general purchasing agent at length to attend to them, though this I
dared not confess, for to Eddie it would have been a sacrilege not easy
to forgive. That I could delegate to another any of the precious
pleasure of preparation, and reduce the sacred functions of securing
certain brands of eating chocolate, camp candles, and boot grease (three
kinds) to a commercial basis, would, I felt, be a thing almost
impossible to explain. The final list, he notified me, would be mailed
to a hotel in Boston, for the reason, he said, that it contained things
nowhere else procurable; though I am convinced that a greater reason was
a conviction on his part that no trip could be complete without buying a
few articles in Boston at the last hour before sailing, and his desire
for me to experience this concluding touch of the joy of preparation.
Yet I was glad, on the whole, for I was able to buy secretly some things
he never would have permitted--among them a phantom minnow which looked
like a tin whistle, a little four-ounce bamboo rod, and a gorgeous Jock
Scott fly with two hooks. The tin whistle and the Jock Scott looked
deadly, and the rod seemed adapted to a certain repose of muscle after a
period of activity with the noibwood. I decided to conceal these
purchases about my person and use them when Eddie wasn't looking.

But then it was sailing time, and as the short-nosed energetic steamer
dropped away from the dock, a storm (there had been none for weeks
before) set in, and we pitched and rolled, and through a dim disordered
night I clung to my berth and groaned, and stared at my things in the
corner and hated them according to my condition. Then morning brought
quiet waters and the custom house at Yarmouth, where the tourist who is
bringing in money, and maybe a few other things, is made duly welcome
and not bothered with a lot of irrelevant questions. What Nova Scotia
most needs is money, and the fisherman and the hunter, once through the
custom house, become a greater source of revenue than any tax that could
be laid on their modest, not to say paltry, baggage, even though the
contents of one's trunk be the result of a list such as only Eddie can
prepare. There is a wholesome restaurant at Yarmouth, too, just by the
dock, where after a tossing night at sea one welcomes a breakfast of
good salt ham, with eggs, and pie--two kinds of the latter, pumpkin and
mince.

I had always wondered where the pie-belt went, after it reached Boston.
Now I know that it extends across to Yarmouth and so continues up
through Nova Scotia to Halifax. Certain New Englanders more than a
hundred years ago, "went down to Nova Scotia," for the reason that they
fostered a deeper affection for George, the King, than for George of the
Cherry Tree and Hatchet. The cherry limb became too vigorous in their
old homes and the hatchet too sharp, so they crossed over and took the
end of the pie-belt along. They maintained their general habits and
speech, too, which in Nova Scotia to-day are almost identical with those
of New England. But I digress--a grave and besetting sin.

I had hoped Eddie would welcome me at the railway station after the long
forenoon's ride--rather lonely, in spite of the new land and the fact
that I made the acquaintance of a fisherman who taught me how to put
wrappings on a rod. Eddie did not meet me. He sent the wagon, instead,
and I enjoyed a fifteen-mile ride across June hills where apple blossoms
were white, with glimpses of lake and stream here and there; through
woods that were a promise of the wilderness to come; by fields so
thickly studded with bowlders that one to plant them must use drill and
dynamite, getting my first impression of the interior of Nova Scotia
alone. Then at last came a church, a scattering string of houses, a
vista of lakes, a neat white hotel and the edge of the wilderness had
been reached. On the hotel steps a curious, hairy, wild-looking figure
was capering about doing a sort of savage dance--perhaps as a
preparation for war. At first I made it out to be a counterpart of
pictures I had seen of Robinson Crusoe on his desert island. Then I
discovered that it wore wide spectacles and these in the fading sunlight
sent forth a familiar glare. So it was Eddie, after all, and no edged
tool had touched hair or beard since April. I understood, now, why he
had not met me at the station.




Chapter Four


  _Now, the day is at hand, prepare, prepare--_
    _Make ready the boots and creel,_
  _And the rod so new and the fly-book, too,_
    _The line and the singing reel._




Chapter Four


[Illustration: "Eddie's room and contents ... was a marvel and a
revelation."]

Eddie's room and contents, with Eddie in the midst of them, was a marvel
and a revelation. All the accouterments of former expeditions of
whatever sort, all that he had bought for this one, all that I had
shipped from week to week, were gathered there. There were wading boots
and camp boots and moccasins and Dutch bed-slippers and shoepacks--the
last-named a sort of Micmac Indian cross between a shoe and a moccasin,
much affected by guides, who keep them saturated with oil and wear them
in the water and out--there were nets of various sizes and sorts, from
large minnow nets through a line of landing nets to some silk head nets,
invented and made by Eddie himself, one for each of us, to pull on day
or night when the insect pests were bad. There was a quantity of
self-prepared ointment, too, for the same purpose, while of sovereign
remedies, balms and anodynes for ills and misfortunes, Eddie's
collection was as the sands of the sea. Soothing lotions there were for
wounds new and old; easing draughts for pains internal and external;
magic salves such as were used by the knights of old romance, Amadis de
Gaul and others, for the instant cure of ghastly lacerations made by man
or beast, and a large fresh bottle of a collodion preparation with
which the victim could be painted locally or in general, and stand forth
at last, good as new--restored, body, bones and skin. In addition there
was a certain bottle of the fluid extract of gelsemium, or something
like that, which was recommended for anything that the rest of the
assortment could do, combined. It was said to be good for everything
from a sore throat to a snake bite--the list of its benefits being
recorded in a text-book by which Eddie set great store.

"Take it, by all means, Eddie," I said, "then you won't need any of the
others."

That settled it. The gelsemium was left behind.

I was interested in Eddie's rods, leaning here and there on various
parcels about the room. I found that the new noibwood, such as I had
ordered, was only a unit in a very respectable aggregate--rather an
unimportant unit it appeared by this time, for Eddie calmly assured me
that the tip had remained set after landing a rather small trout in a
nearby stream and that he did not consider the wood altogether suitable
for trout rods. Whereupon I was moved to confess the little bamboo stick
I had bought in Boston, and produced it for inspection. I could see that
Eddie bristled a bit as I uncased it and I think viewed it and wiggled
it with rather small respect. Still, he did not condemn it utterly and I
had an impulse to confess the other things, the impossible little
scale-wing flies, the tin whistle and the Jock Scott with two hooks.
However, it did not seem just the psychological moment, and I refrained.

As for Eddie's flies, viewed together, they were a dazzling lot. There
were books and books of them--American, English, Scotch and what not.
There was one book of English dry-flies, procured during a recent
sojourn abroad, to be tried in American waters. One does not dance and
jiggle a dry-fly to give it the appearance of life--of some unusual
creature with rainbow wings and the ability to wriggle upstream, even
against a swift current. The dry-fly is built to resemble life itself,
color, shape and all, and is cast on a slow-moving stream where a trout
is seen to rise, and allowed to drift with the gently flowing current
exactly over the magic spot. All this Eddie explained to me and let me
hold the book a little time, though I could see he did not intend to let
me use one of the precious things, and would prefer that I did not touch
them.

He was packing now and I wandered idly about this uncatalogued museum of
sporting goods. There was a heap of canvas and blankets in one corner--a
sleeping bag, it proved, with an infinite number of compartments, or
layers; there were hats of many shapes, vests of many fabrics, coats of
many colors. There were things I had seen before only in sporting goods
windows; there were things I had never seen before, anywhere; there were
things of which I could not even guess the use. In the center of
everything were bags--canvas and oil-skin receptacles, vigorously named
"tackle bag," "wardrobe," "war bag" and the like--and into these the
contents of the room were gradually but firmly disappearing, taking
their pre-destined place according to Eddie's method--for, after all, it
was a method--and as I looked at Eddie, unshaven for weeks, grizzled and
glaring, yet glowing with deep kindliness and the joy of anticipation, I
could think of nothing but Santa Claus, packing for his annual journey
that magic bag which holds more and ever more, and is so deep and so
wide in its beneficence that after all the comforts and the sweets of
life are crowded within, there still is room for more a-top. Remembering
my own one small bag which I had planned to take, with side pockets for
tackle, and a place between for certain changes of raiment, I felt my
unimportance more and more, and the great need of having an outfit like
Eddie's--of having it in the party, I mean, handy like, where it would
be easy to get hold of in time of need. I foresaw that clothes would
want mending; also, perhaps, rods; and it was pleasant to note that my
tent-mate would have boxes of tools for all such repairs.

I foresaw, too, that I should burn, and bruise, and cut myself and that
Eddie's liniments and lotions and New Skin would come in handy. It
seemed to me that in those bags would be almost everything that human
heart could need or human ills require, and when we went below where Del
and Charlie, our appointed guides, were crowding certain other bags
full of the bulkier stores--packages, cans and bottles, and when I gazed
about on still other things--tents, boots, and baskets of camp
furniture--I had a sense of being cared for, though I could not but
wonder how two small canoes were going to float all that provender and
plunder and four strong men.




Chapter Five


  _Then away to the heart of the deep unknown,_
    _Where the trout and the wild moose are--_
  _Where the fire burns bright, and tent gleams white_
    _Under the northern star._




Chapter Five


It was possible to put our canoes into one of the lakes near the hotel
and enter the wilderness by water--the Liverpool chain--but it was
decided to load boats and baggage into wagons and drive through the
woods--a distance of some seventeen uneven miles--striking at once for
the true wilderness where the larger trout were said to dwell and the
"over Sunday" fisherman does not penetrate. Then for a day or two we
would follow waters and portages familiar to our guides, after which we
would be on the borders of the unknown, prepared to conquer the
wilderness with an assortment of fishing rods, a supply of mosquito
ointment and a pair of twenty-two caliber rifles, these being our only
guns.

It seems hardly necessary to say that we expected to do little shooting.
In the first place it was out of season for most things, though this did
not matter so much, for Eddie had in some manner armed himself with a
commission from the British Museum to procure specimens dead or alive,
and this amounted to a permit to kill, and skin, and hence to eat,
promiscuously and at will. But I believe as a party, we were averse to
promiscuous killing; besides it is well to be rather nice in the matter
of special permits. Also, we had come, in the main, for trout and
exploration. It was agreed between us that, even if it were possible to
hit anything with our guns, we would not kill without skinning, and we
wouldn't skin without eating, after which resolution the forest things
probably breathed easier, for it was a fairly safe handicap.

I shall not soon forget that morning drive to Jake's Landing, at the
head of Lake Kedgeemakoogee, where we put in our canoes. My trip on the
train along the coast, and the drive through farming country, more or
less fertile, had given me little conception of this sinister
land--rock-strewn and barren, seared by a hundred forest fires. Whatever
of green timber still stands is likely to be little more than brush.
Above it rise the bare, gaunt skeletons of dead forests, bleached with
age, yet blackened by the tongues of flame that burned out the life and
wealth of a land which is now little more than waste and desolation--the
haunt of the moose, the loon and the porcupine, the natural home of the
wild trout.

It is true, that long ago, heavy timber was cut from these woods, but
the wealth thus obtained was as nothing to that which has gone up in
conflagrations, started by the careless lumbermen and prospectors and
hunters of a later day. Such timber as is left barely pays for the
cutting, and old sluices are blocked and old dams falling to decay. No
tiller of the soil can exist in these woods, for the ground is heaped
and drifted and windrowed with slabs and bowlders, suggesting the wreck
of some mighty war of the gods--some titanic missile-flinging combat,
with this as the battle ground. Bleak, unsightly, unproductive, mangled
and distorted out of all shape and form of loveliness, yet with a
fierce, wild fascination in it that amounts almost to beauty--that is
the Nova Scotia woods.

Only the water is not like that. Once on the stream or lake and all is
changed. For the shores are green; the river or brook is clear and
cold--and tarry black in the deep places; the water leaps and dashes in
whirlpools and torrents, and the lakes are fairy lakes, full of green
islands--mere ledges, many of them, with two or three curious sentinel
pines--and everywhere the same clear, black water, and always the trout,
the wonderful, wild, abounding Nova Scotia trout.

To Jake's Landing was a hard, jolting drive over a bad road, with only a
break here and there where there is a house or two, and maybe a sawmill
and a post-office, the last sentinels of civilization. It was at
Maitland, the most important of these way stations, that we met Loon.
Maitland is almost a village, an old settlement, in fact, with a store
or two, some pretty houses and a mill. Loon is a dog of the hound
variety who makes his home there, and a dear and faithful friend of
Eddie's, by the latter's account. Indeed, as we drew near Maitland,
after announcing that he would wish to stop at the Maitland stores to
procure some new things he had thought of, Eddie became really boastful
of an earlier friendship with Loon. He had met Loon on a former visit,
during his (Loon's) puppyhood days, and he had recorded the meeting in
his diary, wherein Loon had been set down as "a most intelligent and
affectionate young dog." He produced the diary now as evidence, and I
could see that our guides were impressed by this method of systematic
and absolute record which no one dare dispute. He proceeded to tell us
all he knew about Loon, and how glad Loon would be to see him again,
until we were all jealous that no intelligent and affectionate hound dog
was waiting for us at Maitland to sound the joy of welcome and to speed
us with his parting bark.

Then all at once we were at Maitland and before Loon's home, and sure
enough there in the front yard, wagging both body and tail, stood Loon.
It took but one glance for Eddie to recognize him. Perhaps it took no
more than that for Loon to recognize Eddie. I don't know; but what he
did was this: He lifted up his voice as one mourning for a lost soul and
uttered such a series of wails and lamentations as only a hound dog in
the deepest sorrow can make manifest.

"Wow-ow-oo-ow-wow-oo-oo-o."

The loon bird sends a fairly unhappy note floating down the wet, chill
loneliness of a far, rainy lake, but never can the most forlorn of loons
hope to approach his canine namesake of Maitland. Once more he broke
out into a burst of long-drawn misery, then suddenly took off under the
house as if he had that moment remembered an appointment there, and
feared he would be late. But presently he looked out, fearfully enough,
and with his eyes fixed straight on Eddie, set up still another of those
heart-breaking protests.

As for Eddie, I could see that he was hurt. He climbed miserably down
from the wagon and crept gently toward the sorrowing hound.

"Nice Loon--nice, good Loon. Don't you remember me?"

"Wow-ow-oo-ow-wow-oo-oo-o," followed by another disappearance under the
house.

"Come, Loon, come out and see your old friend--that's a good dog!"

It was no use. Loon's sorrow would not be allayed, and far beyond
Maitland we still heard him wailing it down the wind.

Of course it was but natural that we should discuss the matter with
Eddie. He had assured us that dogs never forget, and we pressed him now
to confess what extreme cruelty or deceit he had practiced upon Loon in
his puppyhood, that the grown hound dog had remembered, and reproached
him for to-day. But for the most part Eddie remained silent and seemed
depressed. Neither did he again produce his diary, though we urged him
to do so, in order that he might once more read to us what he had
recorded of Loon. Perhaps something had been overlooked, something that
would make Loon's lamentations clear. I think we were all glad when at
last there came a gleam through the trees and we were at Jake's Landing,
where our boats would first touch the water, where we would break our
bread in the wilderness for the first time.

[Illustration: "Eddie produced his jug of fly mixture and we anointed
ourselves for the first time, putting on a pungent fragrance."]

It was not much of a place to camp. There was little shade, a good deal
of mud, and the sun was burning hot. There was a remnant of black flies,
too, and an advance guard of mosquitoes. Eddie produced his jug of fly
mixture and we anointed ourselves for the first time, putting on a
pungent fragrance which was to continue a part of us, body and bone, so
long as the wilderness remained our shelter. It was greasy and sticky
and I could not muster an instant liking for the combined fragrance of
camphor, pennyroyal and tar. But Eddie assured me that I would learn to
love it, and I was willing to try.

I was more interested in the loading of the canoes. Del, stout of muscle
and figure--not to say fat, at least not over fat--and Charlie, light of
weight and heart--sometimes known as Charles the Strong--were packing
and fitting our plunder into place, condensing it into a tight and solid
compass in the center of our canoes in a way that commanded my respect
and even awe. I could see, however, that when our craft was loaded the
water line and the gunwale were not so far apart, and I realized that
one would want to sit decently still in a craft like that, especially in
rough water.

Meantime, Eddie had coupled up a rod and standing on a projecting log
was making a few casts. I assumed that he was merely giving us an
exhibition of his skill in throwing a fly, with no expectation of really
getting a rise in this open, disturbed place. It was fine, though, to
see his deft handling of the rod and I confess I watched him with
something of envy. I may confess, too, that my own experience with fly
casting had been confined to tumbling brooks with small pools and
overhanging boughs, where to throw a fly means merely to drop it on a
riffle, or at most to swing it out over a swirling current below a fall.
I wondered as I watched Eddie if I ever should be able to send a fly
sailing backward and then shoot it out forward a matter of twenty yards
or so with that almost imperceptible effort of the wrist; and even if I
did learn the movement, if I could manage to make the fly look real
enough in such smooth, open water as this to fool even the blindest and
silliest of trout.

But, suddenly, where Eddie's fly--it was a Silver Doctor, I think--fell
lightly on the water, there was a quick swirl, a flash and then a
widening circle of rings.

"You got him comin'," commented Charlie, who, it seems, had been
noticing.

The fly went skimming out over the water again and softly as thistle
seed settled exactly in the center of the circling rings. But before it
touched, almost, there came the flash and break again, and this time
there followed the quick stiffening of the rod, a sudden tightening of
the line, and a sharp, keen singing of the reel.

"That's the time," commented Charlie and reached for a landing net.

To him it was as nothing--a thing to be done a hundred times a day. But
to me the world heaved and reeled with excitement. It was the first
trout of the expedition, the first trout I had ever seen taken in such
water, probably the largest trout I had ever seen taken in any water. In
the tension of the moment I held my breath, or uttered involuntary
comments.

It was beautiful to see Eddie handle that trout. The water was open and
smooth and there is no gainsaying Eddie's skill. Had he been giving an
exhibition performance it could not have been more perfect. There was no
eagerness, no driving and dragging, no wild fear of the fish getting
away. The curved rod, the taut swaying line, and the sensitive hand and
wrist did the work. Now and again there was a rush, and the reel sang as
it gave line, but there was never the least bit of slack in the recover.
Nearer and nearer came the still unseen captive, and then presently our
fisherman took the net from his guide, there was a little dipping
movement in the water at his feet and the first trout of the expedition
was a visible fact--his golden belly and scarlet markings the subject of
admiration and comment.

It was not a very big fish by Nova Scotia standards--about
three-quarters of a pound, I believe; but it was the largest trout I had
ever seen alive, at that time, and I was consumed with envy. I was also
rash. A little more, and I had a rod up, was out on a log engaged in a
faithful effort to swing that rod exactly like Eddie's and to land the
fly precisely in the same place.

But for some reason the gear wouldn't work. In front of me, the fly fell
everywhere but in the desired spot, and back of me the guides dodged and
got behind bushes. You see, a number three steel hook sailing about
promiscuously in the air, even when partially concealed in a fancy bunch
of feathers, is a thing to be avoided. I had a clear field in no time,
but perhaps Eddie had caught the only fish in the pool, for even he
could get no more rises. Still I persisted and got hot and fierce, and
when I looked at Eddie I hated him because he didn't cut his hair, and
reflected bitterly that it was no wonder a half-savage creature like
that could fish. Finally I hooked a tree top behind me and in jerking
the fly loose made a misstep and went up to my waist in water. The
tension broke then--I helped to break it--and the fishing trip had
properly begun.

The wagons had left us now, and we were alone with our canoes and our
guides. Del, the stout, who was to have my especial fortunes in hand,
knelt in the stern of the larger canoe and I gingerly entered the bow.
Then Eddie and his guide found their respective places in the lighter
craft and we were ready to move. A moment more and we would drop down
the stream to the lake, and so set out on our long journey.

I recall now that I was hot and wet and still a little cross. I had
never had any especial enthusiasm about the expedition and more than
once had regretted my pledge made across the table at the end of the old
year. Even the bustle of preparation and the journey into a strange land
had only mildly stirred me, and I felt now that for me, at least, things
were likely to drag. There were many duties at home that required
attention. These woods were full of mosquitoes, probably malaria. It was
possible that I should take cold, be very ill and catch no fish
whatever. But then suddenly we dropped out into the lake Kedgeemakoogee,
the lake of the fairies--a broad expanse of black water, dotted with
green islands, and billowing white in the afternoon wind, and just as we
rounded I felt a sudden tug at the end of my line which was trailing out
behind the canoe.

In an instant I was alive. Del cautioned me softly from the stern, for
there is no guide who does not wish his charge to acquit himself well.

"Easy now--easy," he said. "That's a good one--don't hurry him."

But every nerve in me began to tingle--every drop of blood to move
faster. I was eaten with a wild desire to drag my prize into the boat
before he could escape. Then all at once it seemed to me that my line
must be fast, the pull was so strong and fixed. But looking out behind,
Del saw the water break just then--a sort of double flash.

"Good, you've got a pair," he said. "Careful, now, and we'll save 'em
both."

To tell the truth I had no hope of saving either, and if I was careful I
didn't feel so. When I let the line go out, as I was obliged to, now and
then, to keep from breaking it altogether, I had a wild, hopeless
feeling that I could never take it up again and that the prize was just
that much farther away. Whenever there came a sudden slackening I was
sickened with a fear that the fish were gone, and ground the reel handle
feverishly. Fifty yards away the other canoe, with Eddie in the bow, had
struck nothing as yet, and if I could land these two I should be one
ahead on the score. It seems now a puny ambition, but it was vital then.
I was no longer cold, or hot, or afraid of malaria, or mosquitoes, or
anything of the sort. Duties more or less important at home were
forgotten. I was concerned only with those two trout that had fastened
to my flies, the Silver Doctor and the Parmcheenie Belle, out there in
the black, tossing water, and with the proper method of keeping my line
taut, but not too taut, easy, but not too easy, with working the prize
little by little within reach of the net. Eddie, suddenly seeing my
employment, called across congratulations and encouragement. Then,
immediately, he was busy too, with a fish of his own, and the sport, the
great, splendid sport of the far north woods, had really begun.

I brought my catch near the boatside at last, but it is no trifling
matter to get two trout into a net when they are strung out on a
six-foot leader, with the big trout on the top fly. Reason dictates that
the end trout should go in first and at least twice I had him in, when
the big fellow at the top gave a kick that landed both outside. It's a
mercy I did not lose both, but at last with a lucky hitch they were duly
netted, in the canoe, and I was weak and hysterical, but triumphant.
There was one of nearly a pound and a half, and the other a strong
half-pound, not guess weight, but by Eddie's scales, which I confess I
thought niggardly. Never had I taken such fish in the Adirondack or
Berkshire streams I had known, and what was more, these were two at a
time![1]

Eddie had landed a fine trout also, and we drew alongside, now, for
consultation. The wind had freshened, the waves were running higher,
and with our heavy canoes the six-mile paddle across would be a risky
undertaking. Why not pitch our first night's camp nearby, here on Jim
Charles point--a beautiful spot where once long ago a half-civilized
Indian had made his home? In this cove before dark we could do abundant
fishing.

For me there was no other plan. I was all enthusiasm, now. There were
trout here and I could catch them. That was enough. Civilization--the
world, flesh and the devil--mankind and all the duties of life were as
nothing. Here were the woods and the waters. There was the point for the
campfire and the tents. About us were the leaping trout. The spell of
the forest and the chase gripped me body and soul. Only these things
were worth while. Nothing else mattered--nothing else existed.

We landed and in a little while the tents were white on the shore, Del
and Charlie getting them up as if by conjury. Then once more we were out
in the canoes and the curved rod and the taut line and the singing reel
dominated every other force under the wide sky. It was not the truest
sport, maybe, for the fish were chiefly taken with trolling flies. But
to me, then, it did not matter. Suffice it that they were fine and
plentiful, and that I was two ahead of Eddie when at last we drew in for
supper.

That was joy enough, and then such trout--for there are no trout on
earth like those one catches himself--such a campfire, such a cozy tent
(Eddie's it was, from one of the catalogues), with the guides' tent
facing, and the fire between. For us there was no world beyond that
circle of light that on one side glinted among boughs of spruce and
cedar and maple and birch, and on the other, gleamed out on the black
water. Lying back on our beds and smoking, and looking at the fire and
the smoke curling up among the dark branches toward the stars, and
remembering the afternoon's sport and all the other afternoons and
mornings and nights still to come, I was moved with a deep sense of
gratitude in my heart toward Eddie.

"Eddie," I murmured, "I forgive you all those lists, and everything,
even your hair. I begin to understand now something of how you feel
about the woods and the water, and all. Next time----"

Then (for it was the proper moment) I confessed fully--the purchasing
agent, the tin whistle, even the Jock Scott with two hooks.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The ordinary New York and New England "half pound trout" will weigh
anywhere from four to six ounces. It takes a trout nearly a foot long to
weigh half a pound. With each additional inch the weight increases
rapidly. A trout thirteen inches in length will weigh about three
quarters of a pound. A fourteen-inch trout will weigh a pound. A
fifteen-inch trout, in good condition, will weigh one and a half pounds,
plump.




Chapter Six


  _Nearer the fire the shadows creep--_
    _The brands burn dim and red--_
  _While the pillow of sleep lies soft and deep_
    _Under a weary head._




Chapter Six


When one has been accustomed to the comforts of civilized life--the
small ones, I mean, for they are the only ones that count--the beginning
of a wild, free life near to nature's heart begets a series of
impressions quite new, and strange--so strange. It is not that one
misses a house of solid walls and roof, with stairways and steam
radiators. These are the larger comforts and are more than made up for
by the sheltering temple of the trees, the blazing campfire and the
stairway leading to the stars. But there are things that one does
miss--a little--just at first. When we had finished our first evening's
smoke and the campfire was burning low--when there was nothing further
to do but go to bed, I suddenly realized that the man who said he would
be willing to do without all the rest of a house if he could keep the
bathroom, spoke as one with an inspired knowledge of human needs.

I would not suggest that I am a person given to luxurious habits and
vain details in the matter of evening toilet. But there are so many
things one is in the habit of doing just about bedtime, which in a
bathroom, with its varied small conveniences, seem nothing at all, yet
which assume undue proportions in the deep, dim heart of nature where
only the large primitive comforts have been provided. I had never been
in the habit, for instance, of stumbling through several rods of bushes
and tangled vines to get to a wash-bowl that was four miles wide and six
miles long and full of islands and trout, and maybe snapping turtles (I
know there were snapping turtles, for Charlie had been afraid to leave
his shoepacks on the beach for fear the turtles would carry them off),
and I had not for many years known what it was to bathe my face on a
ground level or to brush my teeth in the attitude of prayer. It was all
new and strange, as I have said, and there was no hot water--not even a
faucet--that didn't run, maybe, because the man upstairs was using it.
There wasn't any upstairs except the treetops and the sky, though, after
all, these made up for a good deal, for the treetops feathered up and
faded into the dusky blue, and the blue was sown with stars that were
caught up and multiplied by every tiny wrinkle on the surface of the
great black bowl and sent in myriad twinklings to our feet.

Still, I would have exchanged the stars for a few minutes, for a
one-candle power electric light, or even for a single gas jet with such
gas as one gets when the companies combine and establish a uniform rate.
I had mislaid my tube of dentifrice and in the dim, pale starlight I
pawed around and murmured to myself a good while before I finally called
Eddie to help me.

"Oh, let it go," he said. "It'll be there for you in the morning. I
always leave mine, and my soap and towel, too."

He threw his towel over a limb, laid his soap on a log and faced toward
the camp. I hesitated. I was unused to leaving my things out overnight.
My custom was to hang my towel neatly over a rack, to stand my
toothbrush upright in a glass on a little shelf with the dentifrice
beside it. Habit is strong. I did not immediately consent to this wide
and gaudy freedom of the woods.

"Suppose it rains," I said.

"All the better--it will wash the towels."

"But they will be wet in the morning."

"Um--yes--in the woods things generally are wet in the morning. You'll
get used to that."

It is likewise my habit to comb my hair before retiring, and to look at
myself in the glass, meantime. This may be due to vanity. It may be a
sort of general inspection to see if I have added any new features, or
lost any of those plucked from the family tree. Perhaps it is only to
observe what the day's burdens have done for me in the way of wrinkles
and gray hairs. Never mind the reason, it is a habit; but I didn't
realize how precious it was to me until I got back to the tent and found
that our only mirror was in Eddie's collection, set in the back of a
combination comb-brush affair about the size of one's thumb.

Of course it was not at all adequate for anything like a general
inspection. It would just about hold one eye, or a part of a mouth, or
a section of a nose, or a piece of an ear or a little patch of hair, and
it kept you busy guessing where that patch was located. Furthermore, as
the comb was a part of the combination, the little mirror was obliged to
be twinkling around over one's head at the precise moment when it should
have been reflecting some portion of one's features. It served no useful
purpose, thus, and was not much better when I looked up another comb and
tried to use it in the natural way. Held close and far off, twisted and
turned, it was no better. I felt lost and disturbed, as one always does
when suddenly deprived of the exercise of an old and dear habit, and I
began to make mental notes of some things I should bring on the next
trip.

There was still a good deal to do--still a number of small but precious
conveniences to be found wanting. Eddie noticed that I was getting into
action and said he would stay outside while I was stowing myself away;
which was good of him, for I needed the room. When I began to take on
things I found I needed his bed, too, to put them on. I suppose I had
expected there would be places to hang them. I am said to be rather
absent-minded, and I believe I stood for several minutes with some sort
of a garment in my hand, turning thoughtfully one way and another,
probably expecting a hook to come drifting somewhere within reach. Yes,
hooks are one of the small priceless conveniences, and under-the-bed is
another. I never suspected that the space under the bed could be a
luxury until I began to look for a place to put my shoes and handbag.
Our tent was just long enough for our sleeping-bags, and just about wide
enough for them--one along each side, with a narrow footway between.
They were laid on canvas stretchers which had poles through wide hems
down the sides--the ends of these poles (cut at each camp and selected
for strength and springiness) spread apart and tacked to larger cross
poles, which arrangement raised us just clear of the ground, leaving no
space for anything of consequence underneath. You could hardly put a
fishing rod there, or a pipe, without discomfort to the flesh and danger
to the articles. Undressing and bestowing oneself in an upper berth is
attended with problems, but the berth is not so narrow, and it is flat
and solid, and there are hooks and little hammocks and things--valuable
advantages, now fondly recalled. I finally piled everything on Eddie's
bed, temporarily. I didn't know what I was going to do with it next, but
anything was a boon for the moment. Just then Eddie looked in.

"That's your pillow material, you know," he said, pointing to my medley
of garments. "You want a pillow, don't you?"

Sure enough, I had no pillow, and I did want one. I always want a pillow
and a high one. It is another habit.

"Let me show you," he said.

So he took my shoes and placed them, one on each side of my couch, about
where a pillow should be, with the soles out, making each serve as a
sort of retaining wall. Then he began to double and fold and fill the
hollow between, taking the bunchy, seamy things first and topping off
with the softer, smoother garments in a deft, workmanlike way. I was
even moved to add other things from my bag to make it higher and
smoother.

"Now, put your bag on the cross-pole behind your pillow and let it lean
back against the tent. It will stay there and make a sort of head to
your bed, besides being handy in case you want to get at it in the
night."

Why, it was as simple and easy as nothing. My admiration for Eddie grew.
I said I would get into my couch at once in order that he might
distribute himself likewise.

But this was not so easy. I had never got into a sleeping-bag before,
and it is a thing that requires a little practice to do it with skill
and grace. It has to be done section at a time, and one's night garment
must be worked down co-ordinately in order that it may not become merely
a stuffy life-preserver thing under one's arms. To a beginner this is
slow, warm work. By the time I was properly down among the coarse, new
blankets and had permeated the remotest corners of the clinging
envelope, I had had a lot of hard exercise and was hot and thirsty. So
Del brought me a drink of water. I wasn't used to being waited on in
that way, but it was pleasant. After all there were some conveniences of
camp life that were worth while. And the bed was comfortable and the
pillow felt good. I lay watching Eddie shape his things about, all his
bags and trappings falling naturally into the places they were to occupy
through the coming weeks. The flat-topped bag with the apothecary stores
and other urgency articles went at the upper end of the little footway,
and made a sort of table between our beds. Another bag went behind his
pillow, which he made as he had made mine, though he topped it off with
a little rubber affair which he inflated while I made another mental
memorandum for next year. A third bag----

But I did not see the fate of the third bag. A haze drifted in between
me and the busy little figure that was placing and pulling and folding
and arranging--humming a soothing ditty meantime--and I was swept up
bodily into a cloud of sleep.




Chapter Seven


  _Now, Dawn her gray green mantle weaves_
    _To the lilt of a low refrain--_
  _The drip, drip, drip of the lush green leaves_
    _After a night of rain._




Chapter Seven


The night was fairly uneventful. Once I imagined I heard something
smelling around the camp, and I remember having a sleepy curiosity as to
the size and manner of the beast, and whether he meant to eat us and
where he would be likely to begin. I may say, too, that I found some
difficulty in turning over in my sleeping-bag, and that it did rain. I
don't know what hour it was when I was awakened by the soft thudding
drops just above my nose, but I remember that I was glad, for there had
been fires in the woods, and the streams were said to be low. I
satisfied myself that Eddie's patent, guaranteed perfectly waterproof
tent was not leaking unduly, and wriggling into a new position, slept.

It was dull daylight when I awoke. Through the slit in the tent I could
see the rain drizzling on the dead campfire. Eddie--long a guest of the
forest lost now in the multiple folds of his sleeping-bag--had not
stirred. A glimpse of the guides' tent opposite revealed that the flap
was still tightly drawn. There was no voice or stir of any living
creature. Only the feet of the rain went padding among the leaves and
over the tent.

Now, I am not especially given to lying in bed, and on this particular
morning any such inclination was rather less manifest than usual. I
wanted to spread myself out, to be able to move my arms away from my
body, to whirl around and twist and revolve a bit without so much
careful preparation and deliberate movement.

Yet there was very little to encourage one to get up. Our campfire--so
late a glory and an inspiration--had become a remnant of black ends and
soggy ash. I was not overhot as I lay, and I had a conviction that I
should be less so outside the sleeping-bag, provided always that I could
extricate myself from that somewhat clinging, confining envelope.
Neither was there any immediate prospect of breakfast--nobody to talk
to--no place to go. I had an impulse to arouse Eddie for the former
purpose, but there was something about that heap of canvas and blankets
across the way that looked dangerous. I had never seen him roused in his
forest lair, and I suspected that he would be savage. I concluded to
proceed cautiously--in some manner which might lead him to believe that
the fall of a drifting leaf or the note of a bird had been his summons.
I worked one arm free, and reaching out for one of my shoes--a delicate
affair, with the soles filled with splices for clambering over the
rocks--I tossed it as neatly as possible at the irregular bunch
opposite, aiming a trifle high. It fell with a solid, sickening thud,
and I shrank down into my bag, expecting an eruption. None came. Then I
was seized with the fear that I had killed or maimed Eddie. It seemed
necessary to investigate.

I took better aim this time and let go with the other shoe.

"Eddie!" I yelled, "are you dead?"

There was a stir this time and a deep growl. It seemed to take the form
of words, at length, and I caught, or fancied I did, the query as to
what time it was; whereupon I laboriously fished up my watch and
announced in clear tones that the hand was upon the stroke of six. Also
that it was high time for children of the forest to bestir themselves.

At this there was another and a deeper growl, ending with a single
syllable of ominous sound. I could not be sure, but heard through the
folds of a sleeping-bag, the word sounded a good deal like hell and I
had a dim conviction that he was sending me there, perhaps realizing
that I was cold. Then he became unconscious again, and I had no more
shoes.

Yet my efforts had not been without effect. There was a nondescript stir
in the guides' tent, and presently the head of Charles, sometimes called
the Strong, protruded a little and was withdrawn. Then that of Del, the
Stout, appeared and a little later two extraordinary semi-amphibious
figures issued--wordless and still rocking a little with sleep--and with
that deliberate precision born of long experience went drabbling after
fuel and water that the morning fire might kindle and the morning pot be
made to boil.

They were clad in oilskins, and the drapery of Charles deserves special
attention. It is likely that its original color had been a flaunt of
yellow, and that it had been bedizened with certain buttonholes and hems
and selvages and things, such as adorn garments in a general way of
whatever nature or sex. That must have been a long time ago. It is
improbable that the oldest living inhabitant would be able to testify
concerning these items.

Observing him thoughtfully as he bent over the wet ashes and skillfully
cut and split and presently brought to flame the little heap of wood he
had garnered, there grew upon me a realization of the vast service that
suit of oilskins must have rendered to its owners--of the countless
storms that had beaten upon it; of the untold fires that had been
kindled under its protection; of the dark, wild nights when it had
served in fording torrents and in clambering over slippery rocks, indeed
of all the ages of wear and tear that had eaten into its seams and
selvages and hues since the day when Noah first brought it out of the
Ark and started it down through the several generations which had ended
with our faithful Charles, the Strong.

I suppose this is just one of those profitless reflections which is
likely to come along when one is still tangled up in a sleeping-bag,
watching the tiny flame that grows a little brighter and bigger each
moment and forces at last a glow of comfort into the tent until the
day, after all, seems worth beginning, though the impulse to begin it is
likely to have diminished. I have known men, awake for a long time, who
have gone on to sleep during just such morning speculations, when the
flames grew bright and brighter and crackled up through the little heap
of dry branches and sent that glow of luxury into the tent. I remember
seeing our guide adjust a stick at an angle above the fire, whereby to
suspend a kettle, and men, suddenly, of being startled from somewhere--I
was at the club, I think, in the midst of a game of pool--by a wild
whoop and the spectacle of Eddie, standing upright in the little runway
between our beds, howling that the proper moment for bathing had
arrived, and kicking up what seemed to me a great and unnecessary stir.

[Illustration: "Not to take the morning dip ... was to manifest a sad
lack of the true camping spirit."]

The idea of bathing on such a morning and in that primitive costume had
not, I think, occurred to me before, but I saw presently there was
nothing else for it. A little later I was following Eddie, cringing from
the cold, pelting rain, limping gingerly over sharp sticks and pebbles
to the water's edge. The lake was shallow near the shore which meant a
fearful period of wading before taking the baptismal plunge that would
restore one's general equilibrium. It required courage, too, for the
water was icy--courage to wade out to the place, and once there, to make
the plunge. I should never have done it if Eddie had not insisted that
according to the standard text-books the day in every well-ordered camp
always began with this ceremony. Not to take the morning dip, he said,
was to manifest a sad lack of the true camping spirit. Thus prodded, I
bade the world a hasty good-by and headed for the bottom. A moment later
we were splashing and puffing like seals, shouting with the fierce,
delightful torture of it--wide awake enough now, and marvelously
invigorated when all was over.

[Illustration: "Catching it in the skillet as it fell, compelled
admiration"]

We were off after breakfast--a breakfast of trout and flapjacks--the
latter with maple sirup in the little eating tent. The flapjacks were
Del's manufacture, and his manner of tossing the final large one into
the air and catching it in the skillet as it fell, compelled admiration.

The lake was fairly smooth and the rain no longer fell. A gray
morning--the surface of the water gray--a gray mantle around the more
distant of the islands, with here and there sharp rocks rising just
above the depths. It was all familiar enough to the guides, but to me it
was a new world. Seated in the bow I swung my paddle joyously, and even
with our weighty load it seemed that we barely touched the water. One
must look out for the rocks, though, for a sharp point plunged through
the bottom of a canoe might mean shipwreck. A few yards away, Eddie and
his guide--light-weight bodies, both of them--kept abreast, their
appearance somehow suggesting two grasshoppers on a straw.

It is six miles across Kedgeemakoogee and during the passage it rained.
When we were about half-way over I felt a drop or two strike me and saw
the water about the canoe spring up into little soldiers. A moment later
we were struck on every side and the water soldiers were dancing in a
multitude. Then they mingled and rushed together. The green islands were
blotted out. The gates of the sky swung wide.

[Illustration: "To put on a pair of waders like that in the front end of
a canoe in a pouring rain is no light matter."]

Of course it was necessary to readjust matters. Del drew on his oilskins
and I reached for my own. I had a short coat, a sou'wester, and a pair
of heavy brown waders, so tall that they came up under my arms when
fully adjusted. There was no special difficulty in getting on the hat
and coat, but to put on a pair of waders like that in the front end of a
canoe in a pouring rain is no light matter. There seemed no good place
to straighten my legs out in order to get a proper pull. To stand up was
to court destruction, and when I made an attempt to put a leg over the
side of the canoe Del admonished me fearfully that another such move
would send us to the bottom forthwith. Once my thumbs pulled out of the
straps and I tumbled back on the stores, the rain beating down in my
face. I suppose the suddenness of the movement disturbed the balance of
the boat somewhat, for Del let out a yell that awoke a far-away loon,
who replied dismally. When at last I had the feet on, I could not get
the tops in place, for of course there was no way to get them anywhere
near where they really belonged without standing up. So I had to remain
in that half-on and half-off condition, far from comfortable, but more
or less immune to wet. I realized what a sight I must look, and I could
hardly blame Eddie for howling in derision at me when he drew near
enough to distinguish my outline through the downpour. I also realized
what a poor rig I had on for swimming, in event of our really capsizing,
and I sat straight and still and paddled hard for the other side.

It was not what might be termed a "prolonged and continuous downpour."
The gray veil lifted from the islands. The myriad of battling soldiers
diminished. Presently only a corporal's guard was leaping and dancing
about the canoe. Then these disappeared. The clouds broke away. The sun
came. Ahead of us was a green shore--the other side of Kedgeemakoogee
had been reached.




Chapter Eight


  _Where the trail leads back from the water's edge--_
    _Tangled and overgrown--_
  _Shoulder your load and strike the road_
    _Into the deep unknown._




Chapter Eight


We were at the beginning of our first carry, now--a stretch of about two
miles through the woods. The canoes were quickly unloaded, and as I
looked more carefully at the various bags and baskets of supplies, I
realized that they were constructed with a view of being connected with
a man's back. I had heard and read a good deal about portages and I
realized in a general way that the canoes had to be carried from one
water system to another, but somehow I had never considered the baggage.
Naturally I did not expect it to get over of its own accord, and when I
came to consider the matter I realized that a man's back was about the
only place where it could ride handily and with reasonable safety. I
also realized that a guide's life is not altogether a holiday excursion.

I felt sorry for the guides. I even suggested to Eddie that he carry a
good many of the things. I pointed out that most of them were really
his, anyway, and that it was too bad to make our faithful retainers lug
a drug store and sporting goods establishment, besides the greater part
of a provision warehouse. Eddie sympathized with the guides, too. He was
really quite pathetic in his compassion for them, but he didn't carry
any of the things. That is, any of those things.

It is the etiquette of portage--of Nova Scotia portage, at least--that
the fisherman shall carry his own sporting paraphernalia--which is to
say, his rods, his gun, if he has one, his fishing basket and his
landing net. Also, perhaps, any convenient bag of tackle or apparel when
not too great an inconvenience. It is the business of the guides to
transport the canoes, the general outfit, and the stores. As this was to
be rather a long carry, and as more than one trip would be necessary, it
was proposed to make a half-way station for luncheon, at a point where a
brook cut the trail.

But our procession did not move immediately. In the first place one of
the canoes appeared to have sprung a leak, and after our six-mile paddle
this seemed a proper opportunity to rest and repair damages. The bark
craft was hauled out, a small fire scraped together and the pitch pot
heated while the guides pawed and squinted about the boat's bottom to
find the perforation. Meantime I tried a few casts in the lake, from a
slanting rock, and finally slipped in, as was my custom. Then we found
that we did not wish to wait until reaching the half-way brook before
having at least a bite and sup. It was marshy and weedy where we were
and no inviting place to serve food, but we were tolerably wet, and we
had paddled a good way. We got out a can of corned beef and a loaf of
bread, and stood around in the ooze, and cut off chunks and chewed and
gulped and worked them down into place. Then we said we were ready, and
began to load up. I experimented by hanging such things as landing nets
and a rod-bag on my various projections while my hands were to be
occupied with my gun and a tackle-bag. The things were not especially
heavy, but they were shifty. I foresaw that the rod-bag would work
around under my arm and get in the way of my feet, and that the landing
nets would complicate matters. I tied them all in a solid bunch at last,
with the gun inside. This simplified the problem a good deal, and was an
arrangement for which I had reason to be thankful.

It was interesting to see our guides load up. Charles, the Strong, had
been well named. He swung a huge basket on his back, his arms through
straps somewhat like those which support an evening gown, and a-top of
this, other paraphernalia was piled. I have seen pack burros in Mexico
that were lost sight of under their many burdens and I remembered them
now, as our guides stood forth ready to move. I still felt sorry for
them (the guides, of course) and suggested once more to Eddie that he
should assume some of their burdens. In fact, I was almost willing to do
so myself, and when at the last moment both Charlie and Del stooped and
took bundles in each hand, I was really on the very point of offering to
carry something, only there was nothing more to carry but the canoes,
and of course they had to be left for the next trip. I was glad, though,
of the generous impulse on my part. There is always comfort in such
things. Eddie and I set out ahead.

There is something fine and inspiring about a portage. In the first
place, it is likely to be through a deep wood, over a trail not
altogether easy to follow. Then there is the fascinating thought that
you are cutting loose another link from everyday mankind--pushing a
chapter deeper into the wilderness, where only the more adventurous ever
come. Also, there is the romantic gipsy feeling of having one's
possessions in such compass that not only the supplies themselves, but
the very means of transportation may be bodily lifted and borne from one
water link to another of that chain which leads back ever farther into
the unknown.

I have suggested that a portage trail is not always easy to follow. As a
matter of fact the chances are that it will seldom be easy to follow. It
will seldom be a path fit for human beings. It won't be even a decent
moose path, and a moose can go anywhere that a bird can. A carry is
meant to be the shortest distance between two given places and it
doesn't strive for luxury. It will go under and over logs, through
scratchy thickets and gardens of poison ivy. It will plow through swamps
and quicksands; it will descend into pits; it will skin along the sharp
edge of slippery rocks set up at impossible angles, so that only a
mountain goat can follow it without risking his neck. I believe it would
climb a tree if a big one stood directly in its path.

We did not get through with entire safety. The guides, shod in their
shoepacks, trained to the business, went along safely enough, though
they lurched a good deal under their heavy cargoes and seemed always on
the verge of disaster. Eddie and I did not escape. I saw Eddie slip, and
I heard him come down with a grunt which I suspected meant damage. It
proved a serious mishap, for it was to one of his reels, a bad business
so early in the game. I fell, too, but I only lost some small areas of
skin which I knew Eddie would replace with joy from a bottle in his
apothecary bag.

But there were things to be seen on that two-mile carry. A partridge
flew up and whirred away into the bushes. A hermit thrush was calling
from the greenery, and by slipping through very carefully we managed to
get a sight of his dark, brown body. Then suddenly Eddie called to me to
look, and I found him pointing up into a tree.

"Porky, Porky!" he was saying, by which I guessed he had found a
porcupine, for I had been apprised of the numbers in these woods. "Come,
here's a shot for you," he added, as I drew nearer. "Porcupines damage a
lot of trees and should be killed."

I gazed up and distinguished a black bunch clinging to the body of a
fairly large spruce, near the top. "He doesn't seem to be damaging that
tree much," I said.

"No, but he will. They kill ever so many. The State of Maine pays a
bounty for their scalps."

I looked up again. Porky seemed to be inoffensive enough, and my killing
blood was not much aroused.

"But the hunters and logmen destroy a good many more trees with their
fires," I argued. "Why doesn't the State of Maine and the Province of
Nova Scotia pay a bounty for the scalps of a few hunters and logmen?"

But Eddie was insistent. It was in the line of duty, he urged, to
destroy porcupines. They were of no value, except, perhaps, to eat.

"Will you agree to eat this one if I shoot him?" I asked, unbundling my
rifle somewhat reluctantly.

"Of course--that's understood."

I think even then I would have spared Porky's life, but at that moment
he ran a little way up the tree. There was something about that slight
movement that stirred the old savage in me. I threw my rifle to my
shoulder, and with hasty aim fired into the center of the black bunch.

I saw it make a quick, quivering jump, slip a little, and cling fast.
There was no stopping now. A steady aim at the black ball this time, and
a second shot, followed by another convulsive start, a long slide, then
a heavy thudding fall at our feet--a writhing and a twisting--a moaning
and grieving as of a stricken child.

And it was not so easy to stop this. I sent shot after shot into the
quivering black, pin-cushioned ball before it was finally still--its
stained, beautifully pointed quills scattered all about. When it was
over, I said:

"Well, Eddie, they may eat up the whole of Nova Scotia, if they want
to--woods, islands and all, but I'll never shoot another, unless I'm
starving."

We had none of us starved enough to eat that porcupine. In the first
place he had to be skinned, and there seemed no good place to begin. The
guides, when they came up, informed us that it was easy enough to do
when you knew how, and that the Indians knew how and considered
porcupine a great delicacy. But we were not Indians, at least not in the
ethnological sense, and the delicacy in this instance applied only to
our appetites. I could see that Eddie was anxious to break his vow, now
that his victim was really dead by my hand. We gathered up a few of the
quills--gingerly, for a porcupine quill once in the flesh, is said to
work its way to the heart--and passed on, leaving the black pin cushion
lying where it fell. Perhaps Porky's death saved one or two more trees
for the next Nova Scotia fire.

There were no trout for luncheon at our half-way halt. The brook there
was a mere rivulet, and we had not kept the single small fish caught
that morning. Still I did not mind. Not that I was tired of trout so
soon, but I began to suspect that it would require nerve and resolution
to tackle them three times a day for a period of weeks, and that it
might be just as well to start rather gradually, working in other things
from time to time.

I protested, however, when Del produced a can of Columbia River salmon.
That, I said, was a gross insult to every fish in the Nova Scotia
waters. Canned salmon on a fishing trip! The very thought of it was an
offense; I demanded that it be left behind with the porcupine. Never, I
declared, would I bemean myself by eating that cheap article of
commerce--that universally indigenous fish food--here in the home of the
chief, the prince, the _ne plus ultra_ of all fishes--the Nova Scotia
trout.

So Del put the can away, smiling a little, and produced beans. That was
different. One may eat beans anywhere under the wide sky.




Chapter Nine


  _The black rock juts on the hidden pool_
    _And the waters are dim and deep,_
  _Oh, lightly tread--'tis a royal bed,_
    _And a king lies there asleep._




Chapter Nine


It was well into the afternoon before the canoes reached the end of the
carry--poking out through the green--one on the shoulders of each guide,
inverted like long shields, such as an ancient race might have used as a
protection from arrows. Eddie and I, meantime, had been employed getting
a mess of frogs, for it was swampy just there, and frogs, mosquitoes and
midges possessed the locality. We anointed for the mosquitoes and
"no-see-ums," as the midges are called by the Indians, and used our
little rifles on the frogs.

I wonder, by the way, what mosquitoes were made for. Other people have
wondered that before, but you can't overdo the thing. Maybe if we keep
on wondering we shall find out. Knowledge begins that way, and it will
take a lot of speculation to solve the mosquito mystery.

I can't think of anything that I could do without easier than the
mosquito. He seems to me a creature wholly devoid of virtues. He is a
glutton, a poisoner, a spreader of disease, a dispenser of disturbing
music. That last is the hardest to forgive. If he would only be still I
could overlook the other things. I wonder if he will take his voice with
him into the next world. I should like to know, too, which place he is
bound for. I should like to know, so I could take the other road.[2]

Across Mountain Lake was not far, and then followed another short
carry--another link of removal--to a larger lake, Pescawess. It was
nearly five miles across Pescawess, but we made good time, for there was
a fair wind. Also we had the knowledge that Pescawah Brook flows in on
the other side, and the trout there were said to be large and not often
disturbed.

We camped a little below this brook, and while the tents were going up
Eddie and I took one of the canoes and slipped away past an island or
two, among the strewn bowlders at the stream's mouth, pausing to cast a
little here and there, though at first with no other result than to get
our lines in a mess together.

"Now, say, old man," Eddie began, as my line made a turn around his neck
and a half-dozen twists around his tackle, the whole dropping in a heap
in the water, "you mustn't cast like that. You should use the treetop
cast--straight up in the air, when there's a man behind you. Don't you
know you might lacerate a fellow's ear, or put a hook through his lip,
or his nose, or something?"

I said that I was sorry, and that if he would give me a few points on
the treetop cast, and then avoid sitting in the treetops as much as
possible himself I thought there would be no further danger.

He was not altogether pacified. The lines were in a bad tangle and he
said it was wasting precious time to be fooling that way. Clearly two
men could not fish from one canoe and preserve their friendship, and
after our lines were duly parted and Eddie had scolded me sufficiently,
we went ashore just below where the swift current tumbles in, and made
our way to the wide, deep, rock-bound pools above. The going was pretty
thick and scratchy, and one had to move deliberately.

Eddie had more things to carry than I did, for he had brought his gun
and his long-handled net, and these, with his rod, set up and properly
geared with a long leader and two flies, worried him a good deal. The
net had a way of getting hung on twigs. The line and leader displayed a
genius for twisting around small but tough branches and vines, the hooks
caught in unexpected places, and the gun was possessed to get between
his legs. When I had time to consider him, he was swearing steadily and
I think still blaming me for most of his troubles, though the saints
know I was innocent enough and not without difficulties of my own.
Chiefly, I was trying to avoid poison ivy, which is my bane and seemed
plentiful in this particular neck of the woods.

We were out at last, and the wide, dark pool, enclosed by great black
bowlders and sloping slabs of stone, seemed as if it might repay our
efforts. Not for years, maybe, had an artificial fly been cast in that
water. Perhaps Eddie was still annoyed with me, for he pushed farther up
to other pools, and was presently lost to view.

I was not sorry of this, for it may be remembered that I had thus far
never caught a trout by casting in open, smooth water, and I was willing
to practice a little alone. I decided to work deliberately, without
haste and excitement, and to get my flies caught in the treetops as
infrequently as possible. I adjusted them now, took a good look behind
and tossed my cast toward the other side of the dark pool. I thought I
did it rather well, too, and I dragged the flies with a twitching
motion, as I had seen Eddie do it, but nothing happened. If there were
trout anywhere in the world, they would be in a pool like this, and if
there was ever an evening for them it was now. It was in the nature of
probability that Eddie would come back with a good string, and I could
not let him find me a confessed failure. So once more I sent the flies
out over the pool--a little farther this time, and twitched them a
little more carefully, but I might have been fishing in a tub, so far as
any tangible fish were concerned.

A little more line and a reckless back cast landed my tail fly in a
limb--a combination which required time and patience to disengage. By
the time I had worked out the puzzle it began to seem like a warm
evening. Then I snapped the flies into several different corners of the
pool, got hung again on the same limb, jerked and broke the fly and
repeated some of the words I had learned from Eddie as we came through
the brush.

I was cooler after that, and decided to put on a new and different fly.
I thought a Jenny Lind would be about the thing, and pretty soon was
slapping it about--at first hopefully, then rashly. Then in mere
desperation I changed the top fly and put on a Montreal. Of course I
wouldn't catch anything. I never would catch anything, except by
trolling, as any other duffer, or even a baby might, but I would have
fun with the flies, anyway. So the Montreal went capering out over the
pool, landing somewhere amid the rocks on the other side. And then all
at once I had my hands full of business, for there was a leap and a
splash, and a z-z-z-t of the reel, and a second later my rod was curved
like a buggy whip, the line as taut as wire and weaving and swaying from
side to side with a live, heavy body, the body of a trout--a real
trout--hooked by me with a fly, cast on a quiet pool.

I wouldn't have lost that fish for money. But I was deadly afraid of
doing so. A good thing for me, then, my practice in landing, of the
evening before. "Easy, now--easy," I said to myself, just as Del had
done. "If you lose this fish you're a duffer, sure enough; also a chump
and several other undesirable things. Don't hurry him--don't give him
unnecessary line in this close place where there may be snags--don't,
above all things, let him get any slack on you. Just a little line,
now--a few inches will do--and keep the tip of your rod up. If you point
it at him and he gets a straight pull he will jump off, sure, or he will
rush and you cannot gather the slack. Work him toward you, now, toward
your feet, close in--your net has a short handle, and is suspended
around your neck by a rubber cord. The cord will stretch, of course, but
you can never reach him over there. Don't mind the reel--you have taken
up enough line. You can't lift out a fish like that on a four-ounce
rod--on any rod short of a hickory sapling. Work him toward you, you
gump! Bring your rod up straighter--straighter--straight! Now for the
net--carefully--oh, you clumsy duffer, to miss him! Don't you know that
you can't thrash him into the net like that?--that you must dip the net
_under_ him? I suppose you thought you were catching mice. You deserve
to lose him altogether. Once more, now, he's right at your feet--a
king!"

Two long backward steps after that dip, for I must be certain that he
was away from the water's edge. Then I bumped into something--something
soft that laughed. It was Eddie, and he had two fish in his landing
net.

"Bully!" he said. "You did it first-rate, only you don't need to try to
beat him to death with the landing net. Better than mine," he added, as
I took my trout off the fly. "Suppose now we go below. I've taken a look
and there's a great pool, right where the brook comes out. We can get to
it in the canoe. I'll handle the canoe while you fish."

That, also, is Eddie's way. He had scolded me and he would make amends.
He had already taken down his rod, and we made our way back through the
brush without much difficulty, though I was still hot with effort and
excitement, and I fear a little careless about the poison ivy. A few
minutes later, Eddie, who handles a canoe--as he does everything else
pertaining to the woods--with grace and skill, had worked our craft
among the rocks into the wide, swift water that came out from under a
huge fallen log--the mouth of Pescawah Brook.

"Cast there," he said, pointing to a spot just below the log.

Within twenty minutes from that time I had learned more about
fishing--real trout fishing--than I had known before in all my life. I
had, in Eddie, a peerless instructor, and I had such water for a drill
ground as is not found in every day's, or every week's, or every month's
travel. Besides, there were fish. Singly and in pairs they came--great,
beautiful, mottled fellows--sometimes leaping clear of the water like a
porpoise, to catch the fly before it fell. There were none less than a
pound, and many over that weight. When we had enough for supper and
breakfast--a dozen, maybe--we put back the others that came, as soon as
taken from the hook. The fishing soon ended then, for I believe the
trout have some means of communication, and one or two trout returned to
a pool will temporarily discourage the others. It did not matter. I had
had enough, and once more, thanks to Eddie, returned to the camp,
jubilant.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] When this chapter appeared in _The Outing Magazine_ Frederic
Remington wrote as follows:

"My dear Paine: Just read your _Outing_ article on the woods and your
speculation on 'why mosquitoes were made,' etc. I know the answer. They
were created to aid civilization--otherwise, no man not an idiot would
live anywhere else than in the woods."

I am naturally glad to have this word of wisdom from an authority like
Remington, but I still think that Providence could have achieved the
same result and somehow managed to leave the mosquito out of it.




Chapter Ten


  _Where the path is thick and the branches twine_
    _I pray you, friend, beware!_
  _For the noxious breath of a lurking vine_
    _May wither your gladness there._




Chapter Ten


It was raining next morning, but that was not the worst. During the
night I had awakened with a curious, but not entirely unfamiliar
sensation about one of my eyes. There was a slight irritant, itching
tendency, and the flesh felt puffy to the touch. I tried to believe it
was imagination, and went to sleep again.

But there was no doubt next morning. Imagination is a taunting jade, but
I don't believe she could close one of my eyes and fatten up the
other--not in so short a time. It was poison ivy--that was what it
was--and I had it bad.

[Illustration: "Our one looking-glass was not big enough to hold all of
even one eye."]

When Eddie woke, which he did, finally, he took one look at me and dove
back into his sleeping bag out of pure fear. He said I was a sight, and
he was correct. Our one looking-glass was not big enough to hold all of
even one eye, but taking my features in sections I could see that he had
not overstated my appearance. Perhaps the situation was amusing, too--at
least Eddie, and even the guides, professed to be entertained--but for
me, huddled against one side of a six by eight tent--a tent otherwise
packed with bags and bundles and traps of various kinds--Eddie's things,
mostly, and Eddie himself among them--with a chill rain coming down
outside, and with a face swollen and aching in a desperate way with
poison, the quality of the humor to me seemed strained when I tried to
distinguish it with the part of an eye I had left.

Eddie meantime had dived down into his bag of remedies, happy to have a
chance to use any or all of them, and was laying them out on his
sleeping bag in front of him--in his lap, as it were, for he had not
yet arisen--reading the labels and wondering which he should try on me
first. I waited a little, then I said:

"Never mind those, Eddie, give me your alcohol and witch hazel."

But then came an embarrassing moment. Running his eye over the bottles
and cans Eddie was obliged to confess that not one of them contained
either alcohol or witch hazel.

"Eddie," I said reproachfully, "can it be, in a drug store like that,
there is neither alcohol nor witch hazel?"

He nodded dismally.

"I meant to bring them," he said, "but the triple extract of gelsemium
would do such a lot of things, and I thought I didn't need them, and
then you made fun of that, and--and----"

"Never mind, Eddie," I said, "I have an inspiration. If alcohol cures
it, maybe whisky will, and thank Heaven we did bring the whisky!"

We remained two days in that camp and I followed up the whisky treatment
faithfully. It rained most of the time, so the delay did not matter.
Indeed it was great luck that we were not held longer by that
distressing disorder which comes of the malignant three-leaved plant
known as mercury, or poison ivy. Often it has disqualified me for a week
or more. But the whisky treatment was a success. Many times a day I
bathed my face in the pure waters of the lake and then with the
spirits--rye or Scotch, as happened to be handy. By the afternoon of the
first day I could see to put sirup on my flapjacks, and once between
showers I felt able to go out with Eddie in the canoe, during which
excursion he took a wonderful string of trout in a stagnant-looking,
scummy pool where no one would ever expect trout to lie, and where no
one but Eddie could have taken them at all.

By the next morning, after a night of sorrow--for my face always pained
and itched worse when everybody was in bed and still, with nothing to
soothe me but the eternal drip, drip from the boughs and from the eaves
of the tent--the swelling was still further reduced, and I felt able to
travel. And I wish to add here in all seriousness that whatever may be
your scruples against the use of liquors, don't go into the woods
without whisky--rye or Scotch, according to preference. Alcohol, of
course, is good for poison ivy, but whisky is better. Maybe it is
because of the drugs that wicked men are said to put into it. Besides,
whisky has other uses. The guides told us of one perfectly rigid person
who, when he had discovered that whisky was being included in his camp
supplies, had become properly incensed, and commanded that it be left at
home. The guides had pleaded that he need not drink any of it, that they
would attend to that part of what seemed to them a necessary camp duty,
but he was petrified in his morals, and the whisky remained behind.

Well, they struck a chilly snap, and it rained. It was none of your
little summer landscape rains, either. It was a deadly cold, driving,
drenching saturation. Men who had built their houses on the sand, and
had no whisky, were in a bad fix. The waves rose and the tents blew
down, and the rigid, fossilized person had to be carried across an
overflowed place on the back of a guide, lifting up his voice meanwhile
in an effort to convince the Almighty that it was a mistake to let it
rain at this particular time, and calling for whisky at every step.

It is well to carry one's morals into the woods, but if I had to leave
either behind, I should take the whisky.

It was a short carry to Lake Pescawah. Beyond that water we carried
again about a quarter of a mile to a lake called Pebbleloggitch--perhaps
for the reason that the Indian who picked out the name couldn't find a
harder one. From Pebbleloggitch we made our way by a long canal-like
stillwater through a land wherein no man--not even an Indian,
perhaps--has ever made his home, for it lies through a weird, lonely
marsh--a sort of meadow which no reaper ever harvested, where none but
the wild moose ever feeds.

We were nearing the edge of the unknown now. One of the guides, Del, I
think, had been through this stillwater once before, a long time ago. At
the end of it, he knew, lay the upper Shelburne River, which was said to
flow through a sheet of water called Irving Lake. But where the river
entered the lake and where it left it was for us to learn. Already forty
miles or more from our starting point, straight into the wilderness, we
were isolated from all mankind, and the undiscovered lay directly
before. At the end of the stillwater Del said:

"Well, gentlemen, from this on you know as much of the country as I do.
All I know is what I've heard, and that's not much. I guess most of it
we'll have to learn for ourselves."




Chapter Eleven


  _By lonely tarn, mid thicket deep,_
    _The she-moose comes to bear_
  _Her sturdy young, and she doth keep_
    _It safely guarded there._




Chapter Eleven


We got any amount of fly-casting in the Pebbleloggitch stillwater, but
no trout. I kept Del dodging and twice I succeeded in hooking him,
though not in a vital spot. I could have done it, however, if he had sat
still and given me a fair chance. I could land Del even with the treetop
cast, but the trout refused to be allured. As a rule, trout would not
care to live in a place like that. There would not be enough excitement
and activity. A trout prefers a place where the water is busy--where the
very effort of keeping from being smashed and battered against the rocks
insures a good circulation and a constitution like a steel spring. I
have taken trout out of water that would have pulverized a golf ball in
five minutes. The fiercer the current--the greater the tumult--the more
cruel and savage the rocks, the better place it is for trout.

Neither do I remember that we took anything in the Shelburne above
Irving Lake, for it was a good deal like the stillwater, with only a
gentle riffle here and there. Besides, the day had become chill, and a
mist had fallen upon this lonely world--a wet white, drifting mist that
was closely akin to rain. On such a day one does not expect trout to
rise, and is seldom disappointed. Here and there, where the current was
slow-moving and unruffled, Eddie, perhaps, would have tried his dry
flies, but never a trout was seen to break water, and it is one of the
tenets of dry-fly fishing that a cast may only be made where a trout has
been seen to rise--even then, only after a good deal of careful
maneuvering on shore to reach the proper spot on the bank without
breaking the news to the trout. It wasn't a pleasant time to go
wriggling through marsh grass and things along the shore, so it is just
as well that there was no excuse for doing it.

As it was, we paddled rather silently down the still river, considerably
impressed with the thought that we were entering a land to us
unknown--that for far and far in every direction, beyond the white mist
that shut us in and half-obliterated the world, it was likely that there
was no human soul that was not of our party and we were quieted by the
silence and the loneliness on every hand.

Where the river entered the lake there was no dashing, tumbling water.
In fact, we did not realize that we had reached the lake level until the
shores on either hand receded, slowly at first, and then broadly
widening, melted away and were half lost in the mist.

The feeling grew upon me, all at once, that we were very high here.
There were no hills or ridges that we could see, and the outlines of
such timber as grew along the shore seemed low. It was as if we had
reached the top of the world, where there were no more hills--where the
trees had been obliged to struggle up to our altitude, barely to fringe
us round. As for course now, we had none. Our map was of the vaguest
sort. Where the outlet was we could only surmise.

In a general way it was supposed to be at the "other end" of the lake,
where there was said to be an old dam, built when the region was
lumbered, long ago. But as to the shape of the lake, and just where that
"other end" might lie, when every side except the bit of shore nearest
at hand was lost in the wet, chill mist, were matters for conjecture and
experiment. We paddled a little distance and some islands came out of
the gray veil ahead--green Nova Scotia islands, with their ledges of
rock, some underbrush and a few sentinel pines. We ran in close to
these, our guides looking for moose or signs of them.

I may say here that no expedition in Nova Scotia is a success without
having seen at least one moose. Of course, in the hunting season, the
moose is the prime object, but such is the passion for this animal among
Nova Scotia guides, that whatever the season or the purpose of the
expedition, and however triumphant its result, it is accounted a
disappointment and a failure by the natives when it ends without at
least a glimpse of a moose.

We were in wonderful moose country now; the uninvaded wild, where in
trackless bog and swamp, or on the lonely and forgotten islands the
she-moose secludes herself to bear and rear her young. That Charlie and
Del were more absorbed in the possibility of getting a sight of these
great, timid, vanishing visions of animal life--and perhaps a longer
view of a little black, bleating calf--than in any exploration for the
other end of the Shelburne River was evident. They clung and hovered
about those islands, poking the canoes into every nook and corner,
speaking in whispers, and sitting up straight at sight of any
dark-looking stump or bunch of leaves. Eddie, too, seemed a good deal
interested in the moose idea. I discovered presently that he was
ambitious to send a specimen of a moose calf, dead or alive, to the
British Museum, and would improve any opportunity to acquire that asset.

I may say that I was opposed to any such purpose. I am overfond of
Eddie, and I wanted him to have a good standing with the museum people,
but I did not like the idea of slaughtering a little calf moose before
its mother's very eyes, and I did not approve of its capture, either.
Even if the mother moose could be convinced that our intentions were
good, and was willing to have her offspring civilized and in the British
Museum, or Zoo, or some other distinguished place, I still opposed the
general scheme. It did not seem to me that a calf moose tied either
outside or inside of our tent for a period of weeks, to bleat and tear
around, and to kick over and muss up things generally, would be a proper
feature to add to a well-ordered camp, especially if it kept on raining
and we had to bring him inside. I knew that eventually he would own that
tent, and probably demand a sleeping bag. I knew that I should have to
give him mine, or at least share it with him.

I stated and emphasized these views and insisted that we go over toward
the half-obscured shore, where there appeared to be an opening which
might be the river. We did go over there, at length, and there was, in
fact, an opening, but it was made by a brook entering the lake instead
of leaving it. Our memorandum of information declared that a stream
called the Susketch emptied into the lake somewhere, and we decided to
identify this as the place. We went up a little way to a good looking
pool, but there were no trout--at least, they refused to rise, though
probably the oldest and mossiest inhabitant of that place had never had
such an opportunity before. Back to the lake again, we were pretty soon
hovering about the enchanted islands, which seemed to rise on every
hand.

It was just the sort of a day to see moose, Del said, and there was no
other matter that would stand in importance against a proposition like
that. I became interested myself, presently, and dropped my voice to a
whisper and sat up at every black spot among the leaves. We had just
about given it up at length, when all at once Del gave the canoe a great
shove inshore, at the same time calling softly to the other canoe,
which had already sheared off into the lake.

They were with us in an instant and we were clambering out. I hadn't
seen a thing, but Del swore that he had caught a glimpse of something
black that moved and disappeared.

Of course we were clad in our wet-weather armor. I had on my oilskins,
and what was more, those high, heavy wading boots that came up under my
arms. It is no easy matter to get over even level ground rapidly with a
rig like that, and when it comes to scaling an island, full of ledges
and holes and underbrush and vines, the problem becomes complex. Del and
Charlie, with their shoepacks, distanced me as easily as if I had been
sitting still, while that grasshopper, Eddie, with only the lightest
sort of waders, skipped and scampered away and left me plunging and
floundering about in the brush, with scarcely the possibility of seeing
anything, even if it were directly in front of my nose.

As a matter of fact, I didn't care anything about seeing moose, and was
only running and making a donkey of myself because the others were doing
it, and I had caught a touch of their disease.

Suddenly, I heard Charlie call, "There they are! There they go!" and
with a wild redoubled effort I went headlong into a deep pit,
half-filled with leaves and brush, and muck of various sorts. This, of
course, would seem to assassinate any hope I might have of seeing the
moose, but just then, by some occult process, Charles, the Strong,
discovered my disaster, and with that prowess which has made him famous
yanked me out of the mess, stood me on my feet and had me running again,
wallowing through the bushes toward the other side of the little island
whence the moose had fled.

"There they go--they are swimming!" I heard Del call, and then Eddie:

"I see em! I see em!" and then Charles's voice, a little ahead of me:

[Illustration: "Hurry! Hurry! They've got over to the shore!"]

"Hurry! Hurry! They've got over to the shore!"

I reached the shore myself just then--our shore, I mean--on all fours
and full of scratches and bruises, but not too late, for beyond a wide
neck of water, on the mainland, two dark phantoms drifted a little way
through the mist and vanished into the dark foliage behind.

It was only a glimpse I had and I was battered up and still disordered,
more or less, with the ivy poison. But somehow I was satisfied. For one
thing, I had become infected with a tinge of the native enthusiasm about
seeing the great game of the woods, and then down in my soul I rejoiced
that Eddie had failed to capture the little calf. Furthermore, it was
comforting to reflect that even from the guides' point of view, our
expedition, whatever else might come, must be considered a success.

We now got down to business. It was well along toward evening, and
though these days were long days, this one, with its somber skies and
heavy mist, would close in early. We felt that it was desirable to find
the lake's outlet before pitching our tents, for the islands make rather
poor camping places and lake fishing is apt to be slow work. We wanted
to get settled in camp on the lower Shelburne before night and be ready
for the next day's sport.

We therefore separated, agreeing upon a signal of two shots from
whichever of us had the skill or fortune to discover the outlet. The
other canoe faded into the mist below the islands while we paddled
slowly toward the gray green shores opposite. When presently we were all
alone, I was filled, somehow, with the feeling that must have come over
those old Canadian voyageurs who were first to make their way through
the northlands, threading the network of unknown waters. I could not get
rid of the idea that we were pioneers in this desolate spot, and so far
as sportsmen were concerned, it may be that we were.




Chapter Twelve


  _The lake is dull with the drifting mist,_
    _And the shores are dim and blind;_
  _And where is the way ahead, to-day,_
    _And what of the path behind?_




Chapter Twelve


Along the wet, blurred shore we cruised, the mist getting thicker and
more like rain. Here and there we entered some little bay or nook that
from a distance looked as if it might be an outlet. Eventually we lost
all direction and simply investigated at random wherever any appearance
seemed inviting. Once we went up a long slough and were almost ready to
fire the signal shots when we discovered our mistake. It seemed a narrow
escape from the humiliation of giving a false alarm. What had become of
the others we did not know. Evidently the lake was a big one and they
might be miles away. Eddie had the only compass, though this would seem
to be of no special advantage.

At last, just before us, the shore parted--a definite, wide parting it
was, that when we pushed into it did not close and come to nothing, but
kept on and on, opening out ahead. We went a good way in, to make sure.
The water seemed very still, but then we remembered the flatness of the
country. Undoubtedly this was the outlet, and we had discovered it. It
was only natural that we should feel a certain elation in our having had
the good fortune--the instinct, as it were--to proceed aright. I lifted
my gun and it was with a sort of triumphant flourish that I fired the
two signal shots.

It may be that the reader will not fully understand the importance of
finding a little thing like the outlet of a lake on a wet, disagreeable
day when the other fellows are looking for it, too; and here, to-day,
far away from that northern desolation, it does not seem even to me a
very great affair whether our canoe or Eddie's made the discovery. But
for some reason it counted a lot then, and I suppose Del and I were
unduly elated over our success. It was just as well that we were, for
our period of joy was brief. In the very instant while my finger was
still touching the trigger, we heard come soggily through the mist, from
far down the chill, gray water, one shot and then another.

I looked at Del and he at me.

"They've found something, too," I said. "Do you suppose there are two
outlets? Anyhow, here goes," and I fired again our two shots of
discovery, and a little later two more so that there might be no mistake
in our manifest. I was not content, you see, with the possibility of
being considered just an ordinary ass, I must establish proof beyond
question of a supreme idiocy in the matter of woodcraft. That is my way
in many things. I know, for I have done it often. I shall keep on doing
it, I suppose, until the moment when I am permitted to say, "I die
innocent."

"They only think they have found something," I said to Del now. "It's
probably the long slough we found a while ago. They'll be up here quick
enough," and I fired yet two more shots, to rub it in.

But now two more shots came also from Eddie, and again two more. By this
time we had pushed several hundred yards farther into the opening, and
there was no doubt but that it was a genuine river. I was growing every
moment more elated with our triumph over the others and in thinking how
we would ride them down when they finally had to abandon their lead and
follow ours, when all at once Del, who had been looking over the side of
the canoe grew grave and stopped paddling.

"There seems to be a little current here," he pointing down to the grass
which showed plainly now in the clear water, "yes--there--is--a
current," he went on very slowly, his voice becoming more dismal at
every word, "but it's going the wrong way!"

I looked down intently. Sure enough, the grass on the bottom pointed
back toward the lake.

"Then it isn't the Shelburne, after all," I said, "but another river
we've discovered."

Del looked at me pathetically.

"It's the Shelburne, all right," he nodded, and there was deep suffering
in his tones, "oh, yes, it's the Shelburne--only it happens to be the
upper end--the place where we came in. That rock is where you stopped to
make a few casts."

No canoe ever got out of the upper Shelburne River quicker than ours.
Those first old voyageurs of that waste region never made better time
down Irving Lake. Only, now and then, I fired some more to announce our
coming, and to prepare for the lie we meant to establish that we only
had been replying to their shots all along and not announcing anything
new and important of our own.

But it was no use. We had guilt written on our features, and we never
had been taught to lie convincingly. In fact it was wasted effort from
the start. The other canoe had been near enough when we entered the trap
to see us go in, and even then had located the true opening, which was
no great distance away. They jeered us to silence and they rode us down.
They carefully drew our attention to the old log dam in proof that this
was the real outlet; they pointed to the rapid outpouring current for it
was a swift boiling stream here--and asked us if we could tell which way
it was flowing. For a time our disgrace was both active and complete.
Then came a diversion. Real rain--the usual night downpour--set in, and
there was a scramble to get the tents up and our goods under cover.

Yet the abuse had told on me. One of my eyes--the last to yield to the
whisky treatment, began to throb a good deal--and I dragged off my wet
clothes, got on a dry garment (the only thing I had left by this time
that was dry) and worked my way laboriously, section by section, into
my sleeping bag, after which Eddie was sorry for me--as I knew he would
be--and brought me a cup of tea and some toast and put a nice piece of
chocolate into my mouth and sang me a song. It had been a pretty
strenuous day, and I had been bruised and cold and wet and scratched and
humiliated. But the tea and toast put me in a forgiving spirit, and the
chocolate was good, and Eddie can sing. I was dry, too, and reasonably
warm. And the rain hissing into the campfire at the door had a soothing
sound.




Chapter Thirteen


  _Now take the advice that I do not need--_
    _That I do not heed, alway:_
  _For there's many a fool can make a rule_
    _Which only the wise obey._




Chapter Thirteen


As usual, the clouds had emptied themselves by morning. The sky was
still dull and threatening, and from the tent door the water of the lake
was gray. But the mist had gone, and the islands came out green and
beautiful. The conditions made it possible to get some clothing decently
smoked and scorched, which is the nearest approach to dryness one is
ever likely to achieve in the woods in a rainy season.

I may say here that the time will come--and all too soon, in a period of
rain--when you will reach your last dry suit of underwear--and get it
wet. Then have a care. Be content to stay in a safe, dry spot, if you
can find one--you will have to go to bed, of course, to do it until
something is dry--that is, pretty dry. To change from one wet suit to
another only a little less so is conducive neither to comfort nor to a
peaceful old age. Above all, do not put on your night garment, or
garments, for underwear, for they will get wet, too; then your condition
will be desperate.

I submit the above as good advice. I know it is good advice for I did
not follow it. I have never followed good advice--I have only given it.
At the end of several nights of rain and moist days, I had nothing
really dry but my nightshirt and one slipper and I think Eddie's
condition was not so far removed. What we did was to pick out the least
damp of our things and smoke and scorch them on a pole over the campfire
until they had a sort of a half-done look, like bread toasted over a gas
jet; then suddenly we would seize them and put them on hot and go around
steaming, and smelling of leaf smoke and burnt dry goods--these odors
blended with the fragrance of camphor, tar and pennyroyal, with which we
were presently saturated in every pore. For though it was said to be too
late for black flies and too early for mosquitoes, the rear guard of the
one and the advance guard of the other combined to furnish us with a
good deal of special occupation. The most devoted follower of the
Prophet never anointed himself oftener than we did, and of course this
continuous oily application made it impossible to wash very perfectly;
besides, it seemed a waste to wash off the precious protection when to
do so meant only another immediate and more thorough treatment.

I will dwell for a moment on this matter of washing. Fishing and
camping, though fairly clean recreations, will be found not altogether
free from soiling and grimy tendencies, and when one does not or cannot
thoroughly remove the evidences several times a day, they begin to tell
on his general appearance. Gradually our hands lost everything original
except their shape. Then I found that to shave took off a good deal of
valuable ointment each time, and I approved of Eddie's ideas in this
direction to the extent of following his example. I believe, though,
that I washed myself longer than he did--that is, at stated intervals.
Of course we never gave up the habit altogether. It would break out
sporadically and at unexpected moments, but I do not recall that these
lapses ever became dangerous or offensive. My recollection is that Eddie
gave up washing as a mania, that morning at the foot of Irving Lake and
that I held out until the next sunrise. Or it may have been only until
that evening--it does not matter. Washing is a good deal a question of
pride, anyway, and pride did not count any more. Even self-respect had
lost its charm.

[Illustration: "If one's things are well smoked and scorched and scalded
and put on hot in the morning----"]

[Illustration: "We never failed to hide the whisky."]

In the matter of clothing, however, I wish to record that I never did
put on my nightdress for an undergarment. I was tempted to do so, daily,
but down within me a still small voice urged the rashness of such a deed
and each night I was thankful for that caution. If one's things are well
smoked and scorched and scalded and put on hot in the morning, he can
forget presently that they are not also dry, and there is a chance that
they may become so before night; but to face the prospect of getting
into a wet garment to sleep, that would have a tendency to destroy the
rare charm and flavor of camp life. In time I clung to my dry nightshirt
as to a life-belt. I wrapped it up mornings as a jewel, buried it deep
in the bottom of my bag, and I locked the bag. Not that Eddie did not
have one of his own--it may be that he had a variety of such things--and
as for the guides, I have a notion that they prefer wet clothes. But
though this was a wild country, where it was unlikely that we should
meet any living soul, there was always the possibility of a stray
prospector or a hunter, and a dry garment in a wet time is a temptation
which should not be put in any man's way. Neither that nor the liquor
supply. When we left our camp--as we did, often--our guns, our tackle,
even our purses and watches, were likely to be scattered about in plain
view; but we never failed to hide the whisky. Whisky is fair loot, and
the woodsman who would scorn to steal even a dry shirt would carry off
whisky and revel in his shame.

There were quantities of trout in the lower Shelburne, and in a pool
just below the camp, next morning, Eddie and I took a dozen or
more--enough for breakfast and to spare--in a very few minutes. They
were lively fish--rather light in color, but beautifully marked and
small enough to be sweet and tender, that is, not much over a half-pound
weight. In fact, by this time we were beginning to have a weakness for
the smaller fish. The pound-and-upward trout, the most plentiful size,
thus far, were likely to be rather dry and none too tender. When we
needed a food supply, the under-sized fish were more welcome, and when,
as happened only too rarely, we took one of the old-fashioned New
England speckled beauty dimensions--that is to say, a trout of from
seven to nine inches long and of a few ounces weight--it was welcomed
with real joy. Big fish are a satisfaction at the end of a line and in
the landing net, but when one really enters upon a trout diet--when at
last it becomes necessary to serve them in six or seven different ways
to make them go down--the demand for the smallest fish obtainable is
pretty certain to develop, while the big ones are promptly returned
with good wishes and God-speed to their native element.

For of course no true sportsman ever keeps any trout he cannot use. Only
the "fish-hog" does that. A trout caught on a fly is seldom injured, and
if returned immediately to the water will dart away, all the happier, it
may be, for his recent tug-of-war. He suffers little or no pain in the
tough cartilages about his mouth and gills (a fact I have demonstrated
by hooking the same fish twice, both marks plainly showing on him when
taken) and the new kind of exercise and experience he gets at the end of
the line, and his momentary association with human beings, constitute
for him a valuable asset, perhaps to be retailed in the form of
reminiscence throughout old age. But to fling him into a canoe, to gasp
and die and be thrown away, that is a different matter. That is a crime
worse than stealing a man's lunch or his last dry undershirt, or even
his whisky.

In the first place, kill your trout the moment you take him out of the
water--that is, if you mean to eat him. If he is too big, or if you
already have enough, put him back with all expedition and let him swim
away. Even if he does warn the other trout and spoil the fishing in that
pool, there are more pools, and then it is likely you have fished enough
in that one, anyway. Come back next year and have another battle with
him. He will be bigger and know better what to do then. Perhaps it will
be his turn to win.

In the matter of killing a fish there are several ways to do it. Some
might prefer to set him up on the bank and shoot at him. Another way
would be to brain him with an ax. The guides have a way of breaking a
trout's neck by a skillful movement which I never could duplicate. My
own method is to sever the vertebrÃ¦ just back of the ears--gills, I
mean--with the point of a sharp knife. It is quick and effective.

I don't know why I am running on with digression and advice this way.
Perhaps because about this period I had had enough experience to feel
capable of giving advice. A little experience breeds a lot of advice. I
knew a man once----[3]

FOOTNOTES:

[3] The publisher wished me to go on with the story at this point. The
man referred to above got his experience in Wall Street. He got enough
in half a day to keep him in advice for forty-seven years.




Chapter Fourteen


  _Oh, never a voice to answer here,_
    _And never a face to see--_
  _Mid chill and damp we build our camp_
    _Under the hemlock tree._




Chapter Fourteen


In spite of the rains the waters of the Shelburne were too low at this
point to descend in the canoes. The pools were pretty small affairs and
the rapids long, shallow and very ragged. It is good sport to run rapids
in a canoe when there is plenty of swift water and a fair percentage of
danger. But these were dangerous only to the canoes, which in many
places would not even float, loaded as we were. It became evident that
the guides would have to wade and drag, with here and there a carry, to
get the boats down to deeper water--provided always there _was_ deeper
water, which we did not doubt.

Eddie and I set out ahead, and having had our morning's fishing, kept
pretty well to the bank where the walking was fairly good. We felt
pleasant and comfortable and paid not much attention to the stream,
except where a tempting pool invited a cast or two, usually with prompt
returns, though we kept only a few, smaller fish.

We found the banks more attractive. Men had seldom disturbed the life
there, and birds sang an arm's length away, or regarded us quietly,
without distrust. Here and there a hermit thrush--the sweetest and
shyest of birds--himself unseen, charmed us with his mellow syllables.
Somehow, in the far, unfretted removal of it all, we felt at peace with
every living thing, and when a partridge suddenly dropped down on a limb
not three yards away, neither of us offered to shoot, though we had our
rifles and Eddie his B. M. license to kill and skin and hence to eat,
and though fish were at a discount and game not overplentiful.

And then we were rewarded by a curious and beautiful exhibition. For the
partridge was a mother bird, and just at our feet there was a peeping
and a scampering of little brown balls that disappeared like magic among
the leaves--her fussy, furry brood.

I don't think she mistrusted our intent--at least, not much. But she
wanted to make sure. She was not fully satisfied to have us remain just
there, with her babies hiding not two yards away. She dropped on the
ground herself, directly in front of us--so close that one might almost
touch her--and letting one of her wings fall loosely, looked back at us
over her shoulder as if to say, "You see, it is broken. If you wish, you
can catch me, easily."

So we let her fool us--at least, we let her believe we were
deceived--and made as if to stoop for her, and followed each time when
she ran a few steps farther ahead, until little by little she had led us
away from her family. Then when she was sure that we really did not want
her or her chickens, but cared only to be amused, she ran quickly a
little way farther and disappeared, and we saw her no more. Within a
minute or two from that time she was probably back with her little
folks, and they were debating as to whether we were bird or beast, and
why we carried that curious combination of smells.

It was such incidents as this that led us on. The morning was gone,
presently, and we had no means of knowing how far we had come. It seemed
to us but a short way. We forgot the windings of the stream, some of
which we had eluded by cut-offs, and how many hard places there would be
for Del and Charlie to get over with the canoes. As a matter of fact we
rather expected them to overtake us at any time, and as the pools became
deeper and longer and the rapids somewhat more navigable we feared to
leave the stream on the chance of being passed. It was about one o'clock
when we reached a really beautiful stretch of water, wide and deep, and
navigable for an indefinite distance. Here we stopped to get fish for
luncheon, and to wait for the boats, which we anticipated at any moment.

It was a wonderful place to fish. One could wade out and get long casts
up and down, and the trout rose to almost any fly. Eddie caught a white
perch at last and I two yellow ones, not very plentiful in these waters
and most desirable from the food point of view. The place seemed really
inexhaustible. I think there were few trout larger than fourteen inches
in length, but of these there were a great many, and a good supply of
the speckled beauty size. When we had enough of these for any possible
luncheon demand, and were fairly weary of casting and reeling in, we
suddenly realized that we were hungry; also that it was well into the
afternoon and that there were no canoes in sight. Furthermore, in the
enthusiasm of the sport we had both of us more than once stepped beyond
the gunwales of our waders and had our boots full of water, besides
being otherwise wet. Once, in fact, I had slipped off a log on all
fours, in a rather deep place. It began to be necessary that we should
have a camp and be fed. Still we waited hopefully, expecting every
moment to see the canoes push around the bend.

Eventually we were seized with misgivings. Could the guides have met
with shipwreck in some desperate place and disabled one or both of the
canoes, perhaps losing our stores? The thought was depressing. Was it
possible that they had really passed us during some period when we had
left the water, and were now far ahead? We could not believe it. Could
it be that the river had divided at some unseen point and that we had
followed one fork and they another? It did not seem probable. Perhaps,
after all, we had come farther than we believed, and they had been
delayed by the difficulties of navigation.

But when another hour passed and they did not appear or answer to our
calls, the reason for their delay did not matter. We were wet, cold and
hungry. Food and fire were the necessary articles. We had not a scrap of
food except our uncooked fish, and it would be no easy matter, without
ax or hatchet, to get a fire started in those rain-soaked woods. Also,
we had no salt, but that was secondary.

Eddie said he would try to build a fire if I would clean some fish, but
this proved pretty lonesome work for both of us. We decided to both
build and then both clean the fish. We dug down under the leaves for dry
twigs, but they were not plentiful. Then we split open some dead spruce
branches and got a few resinous slivers from the heart of them, a good
many in fact, and we patiently gathered bits of reasonably dry bark and
branches from under the sheltered side of logs and rocks and leaning
trees.

We meant to construct our fire very carefully and we did. We scooped a
little hollow in the ground for draught, and laid in some of the drier
pieces of bark, upon which to pile our spruce slivers. Upon these in
turn we laid very carefully what seemed to be our driest selections of
twigs, increasing the size with each layer, until we laid on limbs of
goodly bulk and had a very respectable looking heap of fuel, ready for
lighting on the windward side.

Our mistake was that we did not light it sooner. The weight of our
larger fuel had pressed hard upon our little heap of spruce slivers and
flattened it, when it should have remained loose and quickly
inflammable, with the larger fuel lying handy, to be added at the
proper moment. As it was, the tiny blaze had a habit of going out just
about the time when it ought to have been starting some bigger material.
When we did get a sickly flame going up through the little damp mess of
stuff, there was a good deal more smoke than fire and we were able to
keep the blaze alive only by energetic encouragement in the form of
blowing.

First Eddie would get down on his hands, with his chin against the
ground and blow until he was apoplectic and blind with smoke, and then I
would take my turn. I never saw two full-grown men so anxious over a
little measly fire in my life. We almost forgot that we were perishing
with cold and hunger ourselves in our anxiety to keep the spark of life
in that fire.

We saved the puny thing, finally, and it waxed strong. Then we put in a
good deal of time feeding and nursing our charge and making it warm and
comfortable before we considered ourselves. And how did the ungrateful
thing repay us? By filling our eyes with smoke and chasing us from side
to side, pursuing us even behind trees to blind and torture us with its
acrid smarting vapors. In fact, the perversity of campfire smoke remains
one of the unexplained mysteries. I have seen a fire properly built
between two tents--with good draught and the whole wide sky to hold the
smoke--suddenly send a column of suffocating vapor directly into the
door of the tent, where there was no draught, no room, no demand at all
for smoke. I have had it track me into the remotest corner of my
sleeping-bag and have found it waiting for me when I came up for a
breath of air. I have had it come clear around the tent to strangle me
when I had taken refuge on the back side. I have had it follow me
through the bushes, up a tree, over a cliff----

As I was saying, we got the fire going. After that the rest was easy. It
was simply a matter of cleaning a few trout, sticking them on sticks and
fighting the smoke fiend with one hand while we burnt and blackened the
trout a little with the other, and ate them, _sans_ salt, _sans_ fork,
_sans_ knife, _sans_ everything. Not that they were not good. I have
never eaten any better raw, unsalted trout anywhere, not even at
Delmonico's.

[Illustration: "It's all in a day's camping, of course."]

The matter of getting dry and warm was different. It is not the
pleasantest thing in the world, even by a very respectable fire such as
we had now achieved, to take off all of one's things without the
protection of a tent, especially when the woods are damp and trickly and
there is a still small breath of chill wind blowing, and to have to hop
and skip, on one foot and then on the other, to keep the circulation
going while your things are on a limb in the smoke, getting scalded and
fumigated, and black edged here and there where the flame has singed up
high. It's all in a day's camping, of course, and altogether worth
while, but when the shades of night are closing in and one is still
doing a spectral dance about a dying fire, in a wet wood, on a stomach
full of raw trout, then the camping day seems pretty long and there is
pressing need of other diversion.

It was well toward night when we decided that our clothes were scorched
enough for comfortable wear, and a late hour it was, for the June days
in the north woods are long. We had at no time lost sight of the river,
and we began to realize the positive necessity of locating our guides
and canoes. We had given up trying to understand the delay. We decided
to follow back up the river until we found them, or until we reached
some other branch which they might have chosen. It was just as we were
about to begin this discouraging undertaking that far up the bend we
heard a call, then another. We answered, both together, and in the reply
we recognized the tones of Charles the Strong.

Presently they came in sight--each dragging a canoe over the last riffle
just above the long hole. A moment later we had hurried back to meet two
of the weariest, wettest, most bedraggled mortals that ever poled and
dragged and carried canoe. All day they had been pulling and lifting;
loading, unloading and carrying those canoes and bags and baskets over
the Shelburne riffles, where not even the lightest craft could float.
How long had been the distance they did not know, but the miles had
been sore, tedious miles, and they had eaten nothing more than a
biscuit, expecting at every bend to find us waiting.

It was proper that we should make camp now at the first inviting place.
We offered to stop right there, where our fire was already going, but it
was decided that the ground was a poor selection, being rather low. We
piled into the canoes and shot down the long hole, while the light of
evening was fading from the sky. Several hundred yards below, the water
widened and the bank sloped higher. It seemed an attractive spot and we
already knew the fishing in these waters. But as a final test Eddie made
a cast as we rounded, tossing his flies into an inviting swirl just
below a huge bowlder. For some reason we had put on three flies, and
when he finally got his mess of fish into the net, there were three
trout--all good ones--one on each fly.

We decided to camp there, for good luck, and to stay until we were fully
repaired for travel. No camp was ever more warmly welcomed, or ever will
be more fondly remembered by us all.




Chapter Fifteen


  _To-night, to-night, the frost is white,_
    _Under the silver moon;_
  _And lo, I lie, as the hours go by,_
    _Freezing to death in June._




Chapter Fifteen


The reader will have gathered by this time that I had set out with only
a hazy idea of what camping in Nova Scotia would be like. I think I had
some notion that our beds would be down in the mud as often as not, and
sticky and disagreeable--something to be endured for the sake of the
day's sport. Things were not as I expected, of course. Things never are.
Our beds were not in the mud--not often--and there were days--chill,
wet, disheartening days--when I looked forward to them and to the
campfire blaze at the tent door with that comfort which a child finds in
the prospect of its mother's arm.

On the whole, I am sure our camps were more commodious than I had
expected them to be; and they were pretentious affairs, considering that
we were likely to occupy them no more than one night. We had three
tents--Eddie's, already described; a tent for the guides, of about the
same proportions, and a top or roof tent, under which we dined when it
rained. Then there was a little porch arrangement which we sometimes put
out over the front, but we found it had the bad habit of inviting the
smoke to investigate and permeate our quarters, so we dedicated the
little porch fly to other uses. A waterproof ground cloth was spread
between our stretcher beds, and upon the latter, as mentioned before,
were our sleeping-bags; also our various bundles, cozily and
conveniently bestowed. It was an inviting interior, on the whole
something to anticipate, as I have said.

Yet our beds were not perfect. Few things are. I am a rather large man,
and about three o'clock in the morning I was likely to wake up somewhat
cramped and pinched together from being so long in the little canvas
trough, with no good way of putting out my arms; besides being a little
cold, maybe, because about that hour the temperature seemed to make a
specialty of dropping low enough to get underneath one's couch and creep
up around the back and shoulders. It is true it was June, but June
nights in Nova Scotia have a way of forgetting that it is drowsy,
scented summertime; and I recall now times when I looked out through the
tent flap and saw the white frost gleaming on the trees, and wondered if
there was any sum of money too big to exchange for a dozen blankets or
so, and if, on the whole, perishing as I was, I would not be justified
in drugging Eddie in taking possession of his sleeping-bag. He had
already given me one of the woolen pockets, for compared with mine his
was a genuine Arctic affair, and, I really believe, kept him
disgustingly warm, even when I was freezing. I was grateful, of course,
for I should have perished early in the fight without it. I was also
appreciative. I knew just how much warmer a few more of those soft,
fleecy pockets would make me, especially on those nights when I woke
about the cheerless hour of three, to find the world all hard and white,
with the frost fingers creeping down my shoulder blades and along my
spine. Then it was I would work around and around--slowly and with due
deliberation of movement, for a sleeping-bag is not a thing of sudden
and careless revolution--trying to find some position or angle wherein
the cold would not so easily and surely find my vitals. At such a time,
the desire for real comfort and warmth is acute, and having already one
of Eddie's pockets and realizing its sterling worth--also that no more
than two feet away from me he lay warm and snug, buried in the undue
luxury of still other pockets--I may confess now I was goaded almost to
the point of arising and taking peremptory possession of the few paltry
pockets that would make my lot less hard.

[Illustration: "Nightly he painted my scratches with new skin."]

Sooner or later, I suppose, I should have murdered Eddie for his
blankets if he had not been good to me in so many ways. Daily he gave me
leaders, lines, new flies and such things; nightly he painted my
scratches with new skin. On the slightest provocation he would have
rubbed me generously with liniment, for he had a new, unopened bottle
which he was dying to try. Then there was scarcely an evening after I
was in bed--I was always first to go, for Eddie liked to prepare his bed
unhurriedly--that he did not bring me a drink, and comfort me with
something nice to eat, and maybe sing a little while he was "tickling"
his own bed (there is no other name for it), and when he had finished
with the countless little tappings, and pattings, and final touches
which insured the reposeful comfort of his couch, he would place the
candle lantern just between, where each could see equally well and so
read a little in order that we might compose our minds for rest.




Chapter Sixteen


  _Now snug, the camp--the candle-lamp,_
    _Alighted stands between--_
  _I follow "Alice" in her tramp_
    _And you your "Folly Queen."_




Chapter Sixteen


In the matter of Eddie's reading, however, I was not wholly satisfied.
When we had been leaving the little hotel, he had asked me, suddenly,
what I would take for reading in the woods. He added that he always read
a little at night, upon retiring, and from his manner of saying it, I
assumed that such reading might be of a religious nature.

Now, I had not previously thought of taking anything, but just then I
happened to notice lying upon the table a copy of "Alice in Wonderland,"
evidently belonging to the premises, and I said I would take that. I had
not foregathered with Alice and the White Rabbit for a good while, and
it seemed to me that in the depths of an enchanted wood I might properly
and profitably renew their acquaintance. The story would hardly offend
Eddie, even while he was finding solace in his prayer-book.

I was only vaguely troubled when on the first night of our little
reading exercise I noticed that Eddie's book was not of the sort which I
had been led to expect, but was a rather thick, suspicious-looking
affair, paper-bound. Still, I reflected, it might be an ecclesiastical
treatise, or even what is known as a theological novel, and being
absorbed just then in an endeavor to accompany Alice into the wonderful
garden I did not investigate.

What was my surprise--my shock, I may say--next morning, on picking up
the volume, to discover that it was printed in a foreign language, and
that language French--always a suspicious thing in print--and to learn
further, when by dint of recalling old school exercises, I had spelled
out the author's name and a sentence here and there, that not only was
it in that suspicious language, but that it was a novel, and of a
sort--well, of course there is only one thing worse than an English
translation of a French novel, and that is a French novel which cannot
be translated--by any one in this country, I mean, who hopes to keep out
of jail.

I became absorbed in an endeavor to unravel a passage here and there
myself. But my French training had not fitted me for the task. My
lessons had been all about the silk gloves of my uncle's children or of
the fine leather shoes of my mother's aunt, and such innocent things. I
could find no reference to them in Eddie's book. In fact I found on
almost every page reference to things which had nothing to do with
wardrobe of any sort, and there were words of which I had the deepest
suspicion. I was tempted to fling the volume from me with a burning
blush of shame. Certainly it was necessary to protest against the
introduction of the baleful French novel into this sylvan retreat.

I did so, later in the day, but it was no use. Eddie had already gulped
down some twenty pages of the poison and would not listen to reason.
There was a duchess in the book, and I knew immediately from the lame
excuses he made for this person that she was not at all a proper
associate for Eddie, especially in this remote place. I pleaded in vain.
He had overtaken the duchess on the third page, and the gaud of her
beauty was in his eyes. So it came to pass that while I was following
gentle little Alice and the White Rabbit through a land of wonder and
dreams, Eddie, by the light of the same candle, was chasing this
butterfly of folly through a French court at the rate of some twenty
finely printed pages every night, translating aloud here and there,
until it sometimes became necessary for me to blow out the candle
peremptorily, in order that both of us might compose our minds for
needed slumber.

Perhaps I am dwelling unnecessarily upon our camp detail, but, after
all, the tent, with its daily and nightly round becomes a rather
important thing when it is to be a habitation for a period of weeks of
sun and storm; and any little gem of experience may not be wholly
unwasted.

Then there is the matter of getting along without friction, which seems
important. A tent is a small place, and is likely to contain a good many
things--especially in bad weather--besides yourselves. If you can manage
to have your things so the other fellow will stumble over them as
infrequently as possible, it is just as well for him, and safer for you.
Also, for the things. Then, too, if you will make your beds at separate
times, as we did, one remaining outside, or lying in a horizontal
position among his own supplies while the other is in active operation,
you are less likely to rub against each other, which sometimes means to
rub in the wrong direction, with unhappy results. Of course forbearance
is not a bad asset to have along, and a small measure of charity and
consideration. It is well to take one's sense of humor, too, and any
little remnant of imagination one may have lying about handy at the
moment of starting. Many a well-constructed camp has gone to wreck
during a spell of bad weather because one or more of its occupants did
not bring along imagination and a sense of humor, or failed to produce
these articles at the critical moment. Imagination beautifies many a
desolate outlook--a laugh helps over many a hard place.




Chapter Seventeen


  _Oh, the pulses leap where the fall is steep,_
    _And the rocks rise grim and dark,_
  _With the swirl and sweep of the rapids deep,_
    _And the joy of the racing bark._




Chapter Seventeen


We established a good camp on the Shelburne and remained in it for
several days. For one thing, our canoes needed a general overhauling
after that hard day on the rocks. Also, it rained nightly, and now and
then took a turn at it during the day, to keep in practice.

We minded the rain, of course, as it kept us forever cooking our
clothes, and restrained a good deal of activity about the camp. Still,
we argued that it was a good thing, for there was no telling what sort
of water lay ahead and a series of rock-strewn rapids with low water
might mean trouble.

On the whole, we were willing to stay and put up with a good deal for
the sport in that long pool. There may be better fishing on earth than
in the Shelburne River between Irving and Sand lakes, but it will take
something more than mere fisherman's gossip to convince either Eddie or
me of that possibility. We left the guides and went out together one
morning, and in less than three hours had taken full fifty fish of a
pound each, average weight. We took off our top flies presently and
fished with only one, which kept us busy enough, and always one of us
had a taut line and a curved rod; often both at one time.

We began to try experiments at last, and I took a good fish on one of
the funny little scale-winged flies (I had happily lost the Jock Scott
with two hooks early in the campaign) and finally got a big fellow by
merely tying a bit of white absorbent cotton to a plain black hook.

Yet curious are the ways of fish. For on the next morning--a perfect
trout day, with a light southwest wind and running clouds, after a night
of showers--never a rise could we get. We tried all the casts of the day
before--the Parmcheenie, the Jenny Lind, the Silver Doctor and the Brown
Hackle. It was no use. Perhaps the half a hundred big fellows we had
returned to the pool had warned all the others; perhaps there was some
other unwritten, occult law which prohibited trout from feasting on this
particular day. Finally Eddie, by some chance, put on a sort of a Brown
Hackle affair with a red piece of wool for a tail--he called it a Red
Tag fly, I think--and straightway from out of the tarry black depths
there rose such a trout as neither of us had seen the day before.

After that, there was nothing the matter with Eddie's fishing. What
there was about this brown, red-tailed joke that tickled the fancy of
those great silly trout, who would have nothing to do with any other
lure, is not for me to say. The creature certainly looked like nothing
that ever lived, or that they could ever have imagined before. It seemed
to me a particularly idiotic combination and I could feel my respect
for the intelligence of trout waning. Eddie agreed with me as to that.
He said he had merely bought the thing because it happened to be the
only fly he didn't have in his collection and there had been a vacant
place in his fly-book. He said it was funny the trout should go for it
as they did, and he laughed a good deal about it. I suppose it was
funny, but I did not find it very amusing. And how those crazy-headed
trout did act. In vain I picked out flies with the red and brown colors
and tossed them as carefully as I could in just the same spots where
Eddie was getting those great whoppers at every cast. Some mysterious
order from the high priest of all trout had gone forth that morning,
prohibiting every sort and combination of trout food except this absurd
creature of which the oldest and mossiest trout had never dreamed. That
was why they went for it. It was the only thing not down on the list of
proscribed items.

There was nothing for me to do at last but to paddle Eddie around and
watch him do some of the most beautiful fishing I have ever seen, and to
net his trout for him, and take off the fish, and attend to any other
little wants incident to a fisherman's busy day. I did it with as good
grace as I could, of course, and said I enjoyed it, and tried not to be
nasty and disagreeable in my attitude toward the trout, the water,
Eddie, and the camp and country in general. But, after all, it is a
severe test, on a day like that, to cast and cast and change flies until
you have wet every one in your book, without even a rise, and to see the
other chap taking great big black and mottled fellows--to see his rod
curved like a whip and to watch the long, lithe body leaping and
gleaming in the net.

But the final test, the climax, was to come at evening. For when the
fish would no longer rise, even to the Red Tag, we pulled up to the
camp, where Eddie of course reported to the guides his triumph and my
discomfiture. Then, just as he was opening his fly-book to put the
precious red-tailed mockery away, he suddenly stopped and stared at me,
hesitated, and held up another--that is, two of them, side by side.

"So help me!" he swore, "I didn't know I had it! I must have forgotten I
had one, and bought another, at another time. Now, I had forgotten that,
too. So help me!"

If I hadn't known Eddie so well--his proclivity for buying, and
forgetting, and buying over again--also his sterling honor and general
moral purity--the fishes would have got him then, Red Tag and all. As it
was, I condescended to accept the second fly. I agreed that it was not
such a bad production, after all, though I altered my opinion again,
next morning, for whatever had been the embargo laid on other varieties
of trout bait the day before, it was on now, and there was a general
rising to anything we offered--Doctors, Parmcheenie, Absorbent
Cotton--any old thing that skimmed the water and looked big and
succulent.

We broke camp that morning and dropped down toward the next lake--Sand
Lake, it would be, by our crude map and hazy directions. There are no
better rapids and there is no more lively fishing than we had on that
run. There was enough water for us to remain in the canoes, and it was
for the most part whirling, swirling, dashing, leaping water--shooting
between great bowlders--plunging among cruel-looking black
rocks--foaming into whirlpools below, that looked ready to swamp our
light craft, with stores, crew, tackle, everything.

It was my first exhibition of our guides' skill in handling their
canoes. How they managed to just evade a sharp point of rock on one side
and by a quick twist escape shipwreck from a bowlder or mass of bowlders
on the other, I fail to comprehend. Then there were narrow boiling
channels, so full of obstructions that I did not believe a chip could go
through with entire safety. Yet somehow Del the Stout and Charles the
Strong seemed to know, though they had never traveled this water before,
just where the water would let the boats pass, just where the stones
were wide enough to let us through--touching on both sides, sometimes,
and ominously scraping on the bottom, but sliding and teetering into the
cauldron below, where somehow we did not perish, perhaps because we
shot so quickly through the foam. In the beginning I remembered a few
brief and appropriate prayers, from a childhood where such things were a
staff of comfort, and so made my peace with the world each time before
we took the desperate plunge. But as nothing seemed to happen--nothing
fatal, I mean--I presently gave myself up to the pure enjoyment of the
tumult and exhilaration, without disturbing myself as to dangers here or
hereafter.

I do not believe the times that the guides got out of the canoes to ease
them over hard places would exceed twice, and not oftener than that were
we called on to assist them with the paddles. Even when we wished to do
so, we were often requested to go on fishing, for the reason, I suppose,
that in such a place one's unskilled efforts are likely to be
misdirected with fatal results. Somewhat later we were to have an
example of this kind--but I anticipate.

We went on fishing. I never saw so many fish. We could take them as we
shot a rapid, we could scoop them in as we leaped a fall. They seemed to
be under every stone and lying in wait. There were great black fellows
in every maelstrom; there were groups holding receptions for us in the
stillwater pools below. It is likely that that bit of the Shelburne
River had not been fished before within the memory of any trout then
living, and when those red and blue and yellow flies came tumbling at
them, they must have thought it was great day in the morning and that
the white-faced prophets of big feeding had come. For years, the trout
we returned to those pools will tell their friends and descendants of
the marvels and enchantments of that day.

I had given up my noibwood as being too strenuous in its demands for
constant fishing, but I laid aside the light bamboo here in this
high-pressure current and with this high-speed fishing, where trout
sometimes leaped clear of the water for the fly cast on the foam far
ahead, to be swinging a moment later at the end of the line almost as
far behind. No very delicate rod would improve under a strain like that,
and the tough old noibwood held true, and nobody cared--at least I
didn't--whether the tip stayed set or not. It was bent double most of
the time, anyway, and the rest of the time didn't matter.

I don't know how many fish I took that day, but Eddie kept count of his,
and recorded a total of seventy-four between camp and the great,
splendid pool where the Shelburne foams out into Sand Lake, four miles
or such a matter, below.

I do know that we lost two landing nets in that swift water, one apiece,
and this was a serious matter, for there were but two more, both
Eddie's, and landing nets in the wilderness are not easy to replace. Of
fish we kept possibly a dozen, the smallest ones. The others--larger and
wiser now--are still frolicking in the waters of the Shelburne, unless
some fish-hog has found his way to that fine water, which I think
doubtful, for a fish-hog is usually too lazy and too stingy to spend the
effort and time and money necessary to get there.




Chapter Eighteen


  _There's nothing that's worse for sport, I guess,_
    _Than killing to throw away;_
  _And there's nothing that's better for recklessness_
    _Than having a price to pay._




Chapter Eighteen


We had other camp diversions besides reading. We had shooting matches,
almost daily, one canoe against the other, usually at any stop we
happened to make, whether for luncheon or to repair the canoes, or
merely to prospect the country. On rainy days, and sometimes in the
evening, we played a game of cards known under various names--I believe
we called it pedro. At all events, you bid, and buy, and get set back,
and have less when you get through than you had before you began.
Anyhow, that is what my canoe did on sundry occasions. I am still
convinced that Del and I played better cards than the other canoe,
though the score would seem to show a different result. We were
brilliant and speculative in our playing. They were plodders and not
really in our class. Genius and dash are wasted on such persons.

I am equally certain that our shooting was much worse than theirs,
though the percentage of misses seemed to remain in their favor. In the
matter of bull's-eyes--whenever such accidents came along--they happened
to the other canoe, but perhaps this excited our opponents, for there
followed periods of wildness when, if their shots struck anywhere, it
was impossible to identify the places. At such periods Eddie was likely
to claim that the cartridges were blanks, and perhaps they were. As for
Del and me, our luck never varied like that. It remained about equally
bad from day to day--just bad enough to beat the spectacular fortunes of
Eddie and Charles the Strong.

In the matter of wing-shooting, however--that is to say, shooting when
we were on the wing and any legitimate quarry came in view--my
recollection is that we ranked about alike. Neither of us by any chance
ever hit anything at all, and I have an impression that our misses were
about equally wide. Eddie may make a different claim. He may claim that
he fired oftener and with less visible result than I. Possibly he did
fire oftener, for he had a repeating rifle and I only a single shot, but
so far as the result is concerned, if he states that his bullets flew
wider of the mark, such a claim is the result of pure envy, perhaps
malice. Why, I recall one instance of a muskrat whose skin Eddie was
particularly desirous of sending to those museum folks in London--all
properly mounted, with their names (Eddie's and the muskrat's) on a neat
silver plate, so that it could stand there and do honor to us for a long
time--until the moths had eaten up everything but the plate, perhaps,
and Eddie struck the water within two or three feet of it (the muskrat,
of course) as much as a dozen times, while such shots as I let go didn't
hit anything but the woods or the sky and are, I suppose, still buried
somewhere in the quiet bosom of nature. I am glad to unload that
sentence. It was getting top-heavy, with a muskrat and moths and a
silver plate in it. I could shoot some holes in it with a little
practice, but inasmuch as we didn't get the muskrat, I will let it stand
as a stuffed specimen.

I am also glad about the muskrat. Had he perished, our pledge would have
compelled us to eat him, and although one of Eddie's text-books told a
good deal about their food value and seven different ways of cooking
them, I was averse to experimenting even with one way. I have never
really cared for muskrats since as a lad I caught twenty of them one
night in a trammel net. Up to that hour the odor of musk had never been
especially offensive to me, but twenty muskrats in a net can compound a
good deal of perfumery. We had to bury the net, and even then I never
cared much about it afterwards. The sight of it stirred my imagination,
and I was glad when it was ripped away from us by a swift current one
dark night, it being unlawful to set a trammel net in that river, and
therefore sinful, by daylight.

It was on Sand Lake that Eddie gave the first positive demonstration of
his skill as a marksman. Here, he actually made a killing. True, it was
not a wing shot, but it was a performance worthy of record. A chill wet
wind blew in upon us as we left the river, and a mist such as we had
experienced on Irving Lake, with occasional drifts of rain, shut us in.
At first it was hard to be certain that we were really on a lake, for
the sheet of water was long and narrow, and it might be only a widening
of the river. But presently we came to an island, and this we accepted
as identification. It was the customary island, larger than some, but
with the bushes below, the sentinel pines, and here and there a gaunt
old snag--bleached and dead and lifting its arms to the sky. On one of
these dead ones we made out, through the mist, a strange dark bunch
about the size of a barn door and of rather irregular formation.
Gradually nearing, we discovered the bunch to be owls--great horned
owls--a family of them, grouped on the old tree's limbs in solid
formation, oblivious to the rain, to the world, to any thought of
approaching danger.

Now, the great horned owl is legitimate quarry. The case against him is
that he is a bird of prey--a destroyer of smaller birds and an enemy of
hen roosts. Of course if one wanted to go deeply into the ethics of the
matter, one might say that the smaller birds and the chickens are
destroyers, too, of bugs and grasshoppers and things, and that a life is
a life, whether it be a bird or a bumble-bee, or even a fish-worm. But
it's hard to get to the end of such speculations as that. Besides, the
owl was present, and we wanted his skin. Eddie crept close in with his
canoe, and drew a careful bead on the center of the barn door. There
was an angry little spit of powder in the wet, a wavering movement of
the dark, mist-draped bunch, a slow heaving of ghostly pinions and four
silent, feathered phantoms drifted away into the white gloom. But there
was one that did not follow. In vain the dark wings heaved and fell.
Then there came a tottering movement, a leap forward, and
half-fluttering, half-plunging, the heavy body came swishing to the
ground.

Yet unused to the battle as he was, for he was of the younger brood, he
died game. When we reached him he was sitting upright, glaring out of
his great yellow eyes, his talons poised for defense. Even with Eddie's
bottle of new skin in reserve, it was not considered safe to approach
too near. We photographed him as best we could, and then a shot at close
range closed his brief career.

I examined the owl with considerable interest. In the first place I had
never seen one of this noble species before, and this was a beautiful
specimen. Also, his flesh, being that of a young bird, did not appeal to
warrant the expression tough as a boiled owl, which the others
remembered almost in a chorus when I referred to our agreement
concerning the food test of such game as we brought down. I don't think
any of us wanted to eat that owl. I know I didn't, but I had weakened
once--on the porcupine, it may be remembered--and the death of that
porcupine rested heavily upon me, especially when I remembered how he
had whined and grieved in the moment of dying. I think I had a notion
that eating the owl would in some measure atone for the porcupine. I
said, with such firmness as I could command, and all day I repeated at
intervals, that we would eat the owl.

We camped rather early that afternoon, for it was not pleasant traveling
in the chill mist, and the prospect of the campfire and a snug tent was
an ever-present temptation. I had suggested, also, that we ought to go
ashore in time to cook the owl for supper. It might take time to cook
him.

We did not especially need the owl. We had saved a number of choice
small trout and we were still able to swallow them when prepared in a
really palatable form. Eddie, it is true, had condemned trout at
breakfast, and declared he would have no more of them, but this may have
been because there were flapjacks. He showed no disposition to condemn
them now. When I mentioned the nice, tender owl meat which we were to
have, he really looked longingly at the trout and spoke of them as juicy
little fellows, such as he had always liked. I agreed that they would be
good for the first course, and that a bird for supper would make out a
sumptuous meal. I have never known Eddie to be so kind to me as he was
about this time. He offered me some leaders and flies and even presented
me with a silver-mounted briar-root pipe, brought all the way from
London. I took the things, but I did not soften my heart. I was born in
New England and have a conscience. I cannot be bribed like that.

I told the guides that it would be better to begin supper right away, in
order that we might not get too hungry before the owl was done. I
thought them slow in their preparations for the meal. It was curious,
too, for I had promised them they should have a piece of the bird. Del
was generous. He said he would give his to Charles. That he never really
cared much for birds, anyhow. Why, once, he said, he shot a partridge
and gave it away, and he was hungry, too. He gave it to a boy that
happened along just then, and when another partridge flew up he didn't
even offer to shoot it. We didn't take much stock in that story until it
dawned upon us that he had shot the bird out of season, and the boy had
happened along just in time to be incriminated by accepting it as a
present. It was better to have him as a partner than a witness.

As for Charles, he affected to be really eager for owl meat. He said
that all his life he had looked forward to this time. Still, he was
slow, I thought. He seemed about as eager for supper as a boy is to
carry in the evening wood. He said that one of the canoes leaked a
little and ought to be pitched right away. I said it was altogether too
damp for such work and that the canoe would wait till morning. Then he
wanted to look up a spring, though there were two or three in plain
sight, within twenty yards of the camp. I suspected at last that he was
not really anxious to cook the owl and was trying to postpone the matter
until it was too late for him (the owl) to get properly done before
bedtime. Then I became firm. I said that a forest agreement was sacred.
That we were pledged to the owl before we shot him, and that we would
keep our promise to the dead, even to the picking of his bones.

Wood was gathered then, and the fire blazed. The owl's breast--fat and
fine it looked--was in the broiler, and on the fire. There it
cooked--and cooked. Then it cooked some more and sent up an appetizing
smell. Now and then, I said I thought the time for it had come, but
there was a burden of opinion that more cooking would benefit the owl.
Meantime, we had eaten a pan or two of trout and a few other things--the
bird of course being later in the bill of fare. At most dinners I have
attended, this course is contemplated with joy. It did not seem to be on
this occasion. Eddie agreed with Del that he had never cared much for
bird, anyway, and urged me to take his share. I refused to deprive him
of it. Then he said he didn't feel well, and thought he really ought not
to eat anything more. I said grimly that possibly this was true, but
that he would eat the owl.

It was served then, fairly divided and distributed, as food is when men
are on short rations. I took the first taste--I was always
venturesome--a little one. Then, immediately, I wished I had accepted
Eddie's piece. But meantime he had tasted, too--a miserly taste--and
then I couldn't have got the rest of it for money.

For there was never anything so good as that breast of young owl. It was
tender, it was juicy, it was as delicately flavored as a partridge,
almost. Certainly it was a dainty morsel to us who had of late dealt so
largely in fish diet. Had we known where the rest of that brood of owls
had flown to we should have started after them, then and there.

     Extract from my diary that night: "Eddie has been taken with
     a slight cramp, and it has occurred to him that the owl
     meat, though appetizing, may be poisonous. He is searching
     his medicine bag for remedies. His disaster is merely
     punishment for the quantity of other food he ate beforehand,
     in his futile effort to escape the owl."




Chapter Nineteen


  _Then scan your map, and search your plans,_
    _And ponder the hunter's guess--_
  _While the silver track of the brook leads back_
    _Into the wilderness._




Chapter Nineteen


We looked for moose again on Sand Lake, but found only signs. On the
whole, I thought this more satisfactory. One does not have to go
galloping up and down among the bushes and rocks to get a glimpse of
signs, but may examine them leisurely and discuss the number, character
and probable age of these records, preserving meanwhile a measure of
repose, not to say dignity.

Below Sand Lake a brook was said to enter. Descending from the upper
interior country, it would lead us back into regions more remote than
any heretofore traveled. So far as I could learn, neither of our guides
had ever met any one who even claimed in know this region, always
excepting the imaginative Indian previously mentioned. Somewhere in
these uncharted wilds this Indian person had taken trout "the size of
one's leg."

Regardless of the dimensions of this story, it had a fascination for us.
We wished to see those trout, even if they had been overrated. We had
been hurrying, at least in spirit, to reach the little water gateway
that opened to a deeper unknown where lay a chain of lakes, vaguely set
down on our map as the Tobeatic[4] waters. At some time in the past the
region had been lumbered, but most of the men who cut the timber were
probably dead now, leaving only a little drift of hearsay testimony
behind.

It was not easy to find the entrance to the hidden land. The foliage was
heavy and close along the swampy shore, and from such an ambush a still
small current might flow unnoticed, especially in the mist that hung
about us. More than once we were deceived by some fancied ripple or the
configuration of the shore. Del at length announced that just ahead was
a growth of a kind of maple likely to indicate a brook entrance. The
shore really divided there and a sandy waterway led back somewhere into
a mystery of vines and trees.

We halted near the mouth of the little stream for lunch and
consultation. It was not a desirable place to camp. The ground was low
and oozy and full of large-leaved greenhousy-looking plants. The recent
rains had not improved the character of the place. There was poison ivy
there, too, and a delegation of mosquitoes. We might just as well have
gone up the brook a hundred yards or so, to higher and healthier ground,
but this would not have been in accord with Eddie's ideas of
exploration. Explorers, he said, always stopped at the mouth of rivers
to debate, and to consult maps and feed themselves in preparation for
unknown hardships to come. So we stopped and sat around in the mud, and
looked at some marks on a paper--made by the imaginative Indian, I
think--and speculated as to whether it would be possible to push and
drag the canoes up the brook, or whether everything would have to go
overland.

Personally, the prospect of either did not fill me with enthusiasm. The
size of the brook did not promise much in the way of important waters
above or fish even the size of one's arm. However, Tobeatic exploration
was down on the cards. Our trip thus far had furnished only a hint of
such mystery and sport as was supposed to lie concealed somewhere beyond
the green, from which only this little brooklet crept out to whisper the
secret. Besides, I had learned to keep still when Eddie had set his
heart on a thing. I left the others poring over the hieroglyphic map,
and waded out into the clean water of the brook. As I looked back at Del
and Charlie, squatting there amid the rank weeds, under the dark,
dripping boughs, with Eddie looking over their shoulders and pointing at
the crumpled paper, spread before them, they formed a picturesque
group--such a one as Livingstone or Stanley and their followers might
have made in the African jungles. When I told Eddie of this he grew
visibly prouder and gave me two new leaders and some special tobacco.

We proceeded up the stream, Eddie and I ahead, the guides pushing the
loaded canoes behind. It was the brook of our forefathers--such a stream
as might flow through the valley meadows of New England, with trout of
about the New England size, and plentiful. Lively fellows, from seven to
nine inches in length, rose two and three at almost every cast. We put
on small flies and light leaders and forgot there were such things as
big trout in Nova Scotia. It was joyous, old-fashioned fishing--a real
treat for a change.

We had not much idea how far we were to climb this water stairway, and
as the climb became steeper, and the water more swift, the guides pushed
and puffed and we gave them a lift over the hard places--that is, Eddie
did. I was too tired to do anything but fish.

As a rule, the water was shallow, but there were deep holes. I found one
of them presently, by mistake. It was my habit to find holes that
way--places deeper than my waders, though the latter came to my
shoulders. It seemed necessary that several times daily I should get my
boots full of water. When I couldn't do it in any other way I would fall
over something and let the river run into them for a while. I called to
Eddie from where I was wallowing around, trying to get up, with my usual
ballast.

"Don't get in here!" I said.

He was helping the boys over a hard place just then, tugging and
sweating, but he paused long enough to be rude and discourteous.

"I don't have to catch my trout in my boots," he jeered, and the guides
were disrespectful enough to laugh. I decided that I would never try to
do any of them a good turn again. Then suddenly everything was
forgotten, for a gate of light opened out ahead, and presently we pushed
through and had reached the shores of as lovely a sheet of water as lies
in the great north woods. It was Tupper Lake, by our calculation, and it
was on the opposite side that Tobeatic Brook was said to enter. There,
if anywhere, we might expect to find the traditional trout. So far as we
knew, no one had looked on these waters since the old lumbering days.
Except for exploration there was no reason why any one should come. Of
fish and game there were plenty in localities more accessible. To me, I
believe the greatest joy there, as everywhere in the wilderness--and it
was a joy that did not grow old--was the feeling that we were in a
region so far removed from clanging bells and grinding wheels and all
the useful, ugly attributes of mankind.

We put out across the lake. The land rose rather sharply beyond, and
from among the trees there tumbled out a white foaming torrent that made
a wide swirling green pool where it entered. We swept in below this
aquarium, Eddie taking one side and I the other. We had on our big flies
now and our heavy leaders. They were necessary. Scarcely had a cast gone
sailing out over the twisting water when a big black and gold shape
leaped into the air and Eddie had his work cut out for him. A moment
later my own reel was singing, and I knew by the power and savage rushes
that I had something unusual at the other end.

"Trout as big as your leg!" we called across to each other, and if they
were not really as big as that, they were, at all events, bigger than
anything so far taken--as big as one's arm perhaps--one's forearm, at
least, from the hollow of the elbow to the fingertips. You see how
impossible it is to tell the truth about a trout the first time. I never
knew a fisherman who could do it. There is something about a fish that
does not affiliate with fact. Even at the market I have known a fish to
weigh more than he did when I got him home. We considered the
imaginative Indian justified, and blessed him accordingly.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Pronounced To-be-at-ic




Chapter Twenty


  _You may slip away from a faithful friend_
    _And thrive for an hour or two,_
  _But you'd better be fair, and you'd better be square,_
    _Or something will happen to you._




Chapter Twenty


We took seventeen of those big fellows before we landed, enough in all
conscience. A point just back of the water looked inviting as a place to
pitch the tents, and we decided to land, for we were tired. Yet curious
are the ways of fishermen: having had already too much, one becomes
greedy for still more. There was an old dam just above, unused for a
generation perhaps, and a long, rotting sluiceway through which poured a
torrent of water. It seemed just the place for the king of trouts, and I
made up my mind to try it now before Eddie had a chance. You shall see
how I was punished.

I crept away when his back was turned, taking his best and
longest-handled landing net (it may be remembered I had lost mine), for
it would be a deep dip down into the sluice. The logs around the
premises were old and crumbly and I had to pick my way with care to
reach a spot from which it would be safe to handle a big trout. I knew
he was there. I never had a stronger conviction in my life. The
projecting ends of some logs which I chose for a seat seemed fairly
permanent and I made my preparations with care. I put on a new leader
and two large new flies. Then I rested the net in a handy place, took a
look behind me and sent the cast down the greased lightning current that
was tearing through the sluice.

I expected results, but nothing quite so sudden. Neither did I know that
whales ever came so far up into fresh-water streams. I know it was a
whale, for nothing smaller could have given a yank like that; besides,
in the glimpse I had of him he looked exactly like pictures I have seen
of the leviathan who went into commission for three days to furnish
passage for Jonah and get his name in print. I found myself suddenly
grabbing at things to hold on to, among them being Eddie's long-handled
net, which was of no value as ballast, but which once in my hand I could
not seem to put down again, being confused and toppling.

As a matter of fact there was nothing satisfactory to get hold of in
that spot. I had not considered the necessity of firm anchorage when I
selected the place, but with a three-ton trout at the end of a long
line, in a current going a thousand miles a minute, I realized that it
would be well to be lashed to something permanent. As it was, with my
legs swinging over that black mill-race, my left hand holding the rod,
and my right clutching the landing net, I was in no position to
withstand the onset of a battle such as properly belongs to the North
Pacific Ocean where they have boats and harpoons and long coiled lines
suitable to such work.

[Illustration: "I remember seeing the sluice, black and swift, suddenly
rise to meet me."]

Still, I might have survived--I might have avoided complete disaster, I
think--if the ends of those two logs I selected as a seat had been as
sound as they looked. Of course they were not. They were never intended
to stand any such motions as I was making. In the brief moment allowed
me for thought I realized this, but it was no matter. My conclusions
were not valuable. I remember seeing the sluice, black, and swift,
suddenly rise to meet me, and of dropping Eddie's net as I went down.
Then I have a vision of myself shooting down that race in a wild
toboggan ride, and a dim, splashy picture of being pitched out on a heap
of brush and stones and logs below.

When I got some of the water out of my brains so I could think with
them, I realized, first, that I was alive, still clutching my rod and
that it was unbroken. Next, that the whale and Eddie's landing net were
gone. I did not care so especially much about the whale. He had annoyed
me. I was willing to part with him. Eddie's net was a different matter.
I never could go back without that. After all his goodness to me I had
deceived him, slipped away from him, taken his prized net--and lost it.
I had read of such things; the Sunday-school books used to be full of
similar incidents. And even if Eddie forgave me, as the good boy in the
books always did, my punishment was none the less sure. My fishing was
ended. There was just one net left. Whatever else I had done, or might
do, I would never deprive Eddie of his last net. I debated whether I
should go to him, throw myself on his mercy--ask his forgiveness and
offer to become his special guide and servant for the remainder of the
trip--or commit suicide.

But presently I decided to make one try, at least, to find the net. It
had not been thrown out on the drift with me, for it was not there.
Being heavy, it had most likely been carried along the bottom and was at
present lodged in some deep crevice. It was useless, of course; still, I
would try.

I was not much afraid of the sluice, now that I had been introduced to
it. I put my rod in a place of safety and made my way to the upper end
of the great trough. Then I let myself down carefully into the racing
water, bracing myself against the sides and feeling along the bottom
with my feet. It was uncertain going, for the heavy current tried hard
to pull me down. But I had not gone three steps till I felt something. I
could not believe it was the net. I carefully steadied myself and--down,
down to my elbow. Then I could have whooped for joy, for it _was_ the
net. It had caught on an old nail or splinter, or something, and held
fast.

Eddie was not at the camp, and the guides were busy getting wood. I was
glad, for I was wet and bruised and generally disturbed. When I had
changed my things and recovered a good deal, I sat in the shade and
smoked and arranged my fly-book and other paraphernalia, and brooded on
the frailty of human nature and the general perversity and cussedness of
things at large. I had a confession all prepared for Eddie, long before
he arrived. It was a good confession--sufficiently humble and truthful
without being dangerous. I had tested it carefully and I did not believe
it could result in any disagreeable penance or disgrace on my part. It
takes skill to construct a confession like that. But it was wasted. When
Eddie came in, at last, he wore a humble hang-dog look of his own, and I
did not see the immediate need of _any_ confession.

"I didn't really intend to run off from you," he began sheepishly. "I
only wanted to see what was above the dam, and I tried one or two of the
places up there, and they were all so bully I couldn't get away. Get
your rod, I want to take you up there before it gets too late."

So the rascal had taken advantage of my brief absence and slipped off
from me. In his guilty haste he had grabbed the first landing net he had
seen, never suspecting that I was using the other. Clearly I was the
injured person. I regarded him with thoughtful reproach while he begged
me to get my rod and come. He would take nothing, he said, but a net,
and would guide for me. I did not care to fish any more that day; but I
knew Eddie--I knew how his conscience galled him for his sin and would
never give him peace until he had made restitution in full. I decided to
be generous.

We made our way above the dam, around an old half-drained pond, and
through a killing thicket of vines and brush to a hidden pool, faced
with slabs and bowlders. There, in that silent dim place I had the most
beautiful hour's fishing I have ever known. The trout were big, gamy
fellows and Eddie was alert, obedient and respectful. It was not until
dusk that he had paid his debt to the last fish--had banished the final
twinge of remorse.

Our day, however, was not quite ended. We must return to camp. The
thicket had been hard to conquer by daylight. Now it was an impenetrable
wall of night and thorns. Across the brook looked more open and we
decided to go over, but when we got there it proved a trackless, swampy
place, dark and full of pitfalls and vines. Eddie, being small and
woods-broken could work his way through pretty well, but after a few
discouragements I decided to wade down the brook and through the shallow
pond above the dam. At least it could not be so deadly dark there.

It was heart-breaking business. I went slopping and plunging among
stumps and stones and holes. I mistook logs for shadows and shadows for
logs with pathetic results. The pond that had seemed small and shallow
by daylight was big enough and deep enough now. A good deal of the way I
went on my hands and knees, but not from choice. A nearby owl hooted at
me. Bats darted back and forth close to my face. If I had not been a
moral coward I should have called for help. Eddie had already reached
camp when I arrived and had so far recovered his spiritual status that
he jeered at my condition. I resolved then not to mention the sluice and
the landing net at all--ever. I needed an immediate change of garments,
of course--the third since morning.[5] It had been a hard, eventful day.
Such days make camping remembered--and worth while.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] I believe the best authorities say that one change is enough to take
on a camping trip, and maybe it is--for the best authorities.




Chapter Twenty-one


  _Oh, it's well to live high as you can, my boy,_
    _Wherever you happen to roam,_
  _But it's better to have enough bacon and beans_
    _To take the poor wanderers home._




Chapter Twenty-one


By this time we had reached trout diet _per se_. I don't know what _per
se_ means, but I have often seen it used and it seems to fit this case.
Of course we were not entirely out of other things. We had flour for
flapjacks, some cornmeal for mush and Johnnie-cake, and enough bacon to
impart flavor to the fish. Also, we were not wholly without beans--long
may they wave--the woods without them would be a wilderness indeed. But
in the matter of meat diet it was trout _per se_, as I have said, unless
that means we did not always have them; in which case I will discard
those words. We did. We had fried trout, broiled trout, boiled trout,
baked trout, trout on a stick and trout chowder. We may have had them
other ways--I don't remember. I know I began to imagine that I was
sprouting fins and gills, and daily I felt for the new bumps on my head
which I was certain must result from this continuous absorption of brain
food. There were several new bumps, but when I called Eddie's attention
to them, he said they were merely the result of butting my head so
frequently against logs and stumps and other portions of the scenery.
Then he treated them with liniment and new skin.

Speaking of food, I believe I have not mentioned the beefsteak which we
brought with us into the woods. It was Eddie's idea, and he was its
self-appointed guardian and protector. That was proper, only I think he
protected it too long. It was a nice sirloin when we started--thick and
juicy and of a deep rich tone. Eddie said a little age would improve it,
and I suppose he was right--he most always is. He said we would
appreciate it more, too, a little later, which seemed a sound doctrine.

Yet, somehow, that steak was an irritation. It is no easy matter to
adjust the proper age of a steak to the precise moment of keen and
general appreciation. We discussed the matter a good deal, and each time
the steak was produced as a sort of Exhibit A, and on each occasion
Eddie decided that the time was not ripe--that another day would add to
its food value. I may say that I had no special appetite for steak, not
yet, but I did not want to see it carried off by wild beasts, or offered
at last on a falling market.

Besides, the thing was an annoyance as baggage. I don't know where we
carried it at first, but I began to come upon it in unexpected places.
If I picked up a yielding looking package, expecting to find a dry
undergarment, or some other nice surprise, it turned out to be that
steak. If I reached down into one of the pack baskets for a piece of
Eddie's chocolate, or some of his tobacco--for anything, in fact--I
would usually get hold of a curious feeling substance and bring up that
steak. I began to recognize its texture at last, and to avoid it.
Eventually I banished it from the baskets altogether. Then Eddie took to
hanging it on a limb near the camp, and if a shower came up suddenly he
couldn't rest--he must make a wild rush and take in that steak. I
refused at last to let him bring it into the tent, or to let him hang it
on a nearby limb. But this made trouble, for when he hung it farther
away he sometimes forgot it, and twice we had to paddle back a mile or
so to get that steak. Also, sometimes, it got wet, which was not good
for its flavor, he said; certainly not for its appearance.

In fact, age told on that steak. It no longer had the deep rich glow of
youth. It had a weather-beaten, discouraged look, and I wondered how
Eddie could contemplate it in that fond way. It seemed to me that if the
time wasn't ripe the steak was, and that something ought to be done
about a thing like that. My suggestions did not please Eddie.

I do not remember now just when we did at last cook that steak. I prefer
to forget it. Neither do I know what Eddie did with his piece. I buried
mine.

[Illustration: "When I awoke, a savory smell was coming in the tent."]

Eddie redeemed himself later--that is to say, he produced something I
could eat. He got up early for the purpose. When I awoke, a savory smell
was coming in the tent. Eddie was squatted by the fire, stirring
something in a long-handled frying pan. Neither he nor the guides were
communicative as to its nature, but it was good, and I hoped we would
have it often. Then they told me what it was. It was a preparation with
cream (condensed) of the despised canned salmon which I had denounced
earlier in the trip as an insult to live, speckled trout. You see how
one's point of view may alter. I said I was sorry now we hadn't brought
some dried herring. The others thought it a joke, but I was perfectly
serious.

In fact, provisioning for a camping trip is a serious matter. Where a
canoe must carry a man and guide, with traps and paraphernalia, and
provisions for a three-weeks' trip, the problem of condensation in the
matter of space and weight, with amplitude in the matter of quantity,
affords study for a careful mind. We started out with a lot of can and
bottle goods, which means a good deal of water and glass and tin, all of
which are heavy and take up room. I don't think ours was the best way.
The things were good--too good to last--but dried fruits--apricots,
prunes and the like--would have been nearly as good, and less
burdensome. Indeed by the end of the second week I would have given five
cents apiece for a few dried prunes, while even dried apples, which I
had learned to hate in childhood, proved a gaudy luxury. Canned beans,
too, I consider a mistake. You can't take enough of them in that form.
No two canoes can safely carry enough canned beans to last two fishermen
and two Nova Scotia guides for three weeks. As for jam and the like,
why it would take one canoe to carry enough marmalade to supply Del the
Stout alone. If there is any such thing as a marmalade cure, I hope Del
will take it before I am ready to go into the woods again. Otherwise I
shall tow an extra canoe or a marmalade factory.

As I have said, dried things are better; fruits, beans, rice, beef,
bacon--maple sugar (for sirup), cornmeal and prepared flour. If you want
to start with a few extras in the way of canned stuff, do it, but be
sure you have plenty of the staples mentioned. You will have enough
water and tin and glass to carry with your condensed milk, your vinegar,
a few pickles, and such other bottle refreshments as your tastes and
morals will permit. Take all the variety you can in the way of dried
staples--be sure they are staples--but cut close on your bulky tinned
supplies. It is better to be sure of enough Johnnie-cake and bacon and
beans during the last week out than to feast on plum-pudding and
California pears the first.




Chapter Twenty-two


  _Oh, it's up and down the island's reach,_
    _Through thicket and gorge and fen,_
  _With never a rest in their fevered quest,_
    _Hurry the hunter men._




Chapter Twenty-two


I would gladly have lingered at Tobeatic Dam. It was an ideal place,
wholly remote from everything human--a haunt of wonderful trout,
peaceable porcupines and tame birds. The birds used to come around the
tent to look us over and ask questions, and to tell us a lot about what
was going on in the back settlements--those mysterious dim places where
bird and beast still dwell together as in the ancient days, their round
of affairs and gossip undisturbed. I wanted to rest there, and to heal
up a little before resuming the unknown way.

But Eddie was ruthless--there were more worlds to conquer. The spirit of
some old ancestor who probably set out to discover the Northwest Passage
was upon him. Lower Tobeatic Lake was but a little way above. We pushed
through to it without much delay. It was an extensive piece of water,
full of islands, lonely rocks and calling gulls, who come to this inland
isolation to rear their young.

The morning was clear and breezy and we set on up the lake in the
canoes, Eddie, as usual, a good way in advance. He called back to us now
and then that this was great moose country, and to keep a sharp lookout
as we passed the islands. I did not wish to see moose. The expedition
had already acquitted itself in that direction, but Eddie's voice was
eager, even authoritative, so we went in close and pointed at signs and
whispered in the usual way. I realized that Eddie had not given up the
calf moose idea and was still anxious to shine with those British Museum
people. It seemed to me that such ambitions were not laudable. I
considered them a distinct mar to a character which was otherwise almost
perfect. It was at such times that my inclination to drown or poison
Eddie was stronger than usual.

He had been behind an island a good while when we thought we heard a
shot. Presently we heard it again, and were sure. Del was instantly all
ablaze. Two shots had been the signal for moose.

We went around there. I suppose we hurried. I know it was billowy off
the point and we shipped water and nearly swamped as we rounded. Behind
the island, close in, lay the other canoe, Eddie waving to us excitedly
as we came up.

"Two calf meese!" he called (meese being Eddie's plural of
moose--everybody knows that mooses is the word). "Little helpless
fellows not more than a day or two old. They're too young to swim of
course, so they can't get on the island. We've got em, sure!"

"Did you hit either of them?" I asked anxiously.

"No, of course not! I only fired for a signal. They are wholly at our
mercy. They were right here just a moment ago. The mother ran, and they
hardly knew which way to turn. We can take them alive."

"But, Eddie," I began, "what will you do with them? They'll have to be
fed if we keep them, and will probably want to occupy the tents, and
we'll have to take them in the canoes when we move."

He was ready for this objection.

"I've been thinking," he said with decision. "Dell and Charlie can take
one of the canoes, with the calves in it, and make straight for Milford
by the shortest cut. While they're gone we'll be exploring the upper
lake."

This was a brief, definite plan, but it did not appeal to me. In the
first place, I did not wish to capture those little mooses. Then, too, I
foresaw that during the considerable period which must elapse before the
guides returned, somebody would have to cook and wash dishes and perform
other menial camp labor. I suspected Eddie might get tired of doing
guide work as a daily occupation. Also, I was sorry for Charlie and Del.
I had a mental picture of them paddling for dear life up the Liverpool
River with two calf mooses galloping up and down the canoe, bleating
wildly, pausing now and then to lap the faces of the friendly guides and
perhaps to bite off an ear or some other handy feature. Even the wild
animals would form along the river bank to view a spectacle like that,
and I imagined the arrival at the hotel would be something particularly
showy. I mentioned these things and I saw that for once the guides were
with me. They did not warm to the idea of that trip up the Liverpool and
the gaudy homecoming. Eddie was only for a moment checked.

"Well, then," he said, "we'll kill and skin them. We can carry the
skins."

This was no better. I did not want those little mooses slaughtered, and
said so. But Eddie was roused now, and withered me with judicial
severity.

"Look here," he said, and his spectacles glared fiercely. "I'm here as a
representative of the British Museum, in the cause of science, not to
discuss the protection of dumb creatures. That's another society."

I submitted then, of course. I always do when Eddie asserts his official
capacity like that. The authority of the British Museum is not to be
lightly tampered with. So far as I knew he could have me jailed for
contempt. We shoved our canoes in shore and disembarked. Eddie turned
back.

"We must take something to tie their hind legs," he said, and fished out
a strap for that purpose. The hope came to me that perhaps, after all,
he might not need the strap, but I was afraid to mention it.

I confess I was unhappy. I imagined a pathetic picture of a little
innocent creature turning its pleading eyes up to the captor who with
keen sheath-knife would let slip the crimson tide. I had no wish to go
racing through the brush after those timid victims.

[Illustration: "I do not like to come upon snakes in that manner."]

I did, however. The island was long and narrow. We scattered out across
it in a thin line of battle, and starting at one end swept down the
length of it with a conquering front. That sounds well, but it fails to
express what we did. We did not sweep, and we did not have any front to
speak of. The place was a perfect tangle and chaos of logs, bushes,
vines, pits, ledges and fallen trees. To beat up that covert was a hot,
scratchy, discouraging job, attended with frequent escapes from accident
and damage. I was satisfied I had the worst place in the line, for I
couldn't keep up with the others, and I tried harder to do that than I
did to find the little mooses. I didn't get sight of the others after we
started. Neither did I catch a glimpse of those little day-old calves,
or of anything else except a snake, which I came upon rather suddenly
when I was down on my hands and knees, creeping under a fallen tree. I
do not like to come upon snakes in that manner. I do not care to view
them even behind glass in a museum. An earthquake might strike that
museum and break the glass and it might not be easy to get away. I wish
Eddie had been collecting snake skins for _his_ museum. I would have
been willing for him to skin that one alive.

I staggered out to the other end of the island, at last, with only a
flickering remnant of life left in me. I thought Eddie would be
grateful for all my efforts when I was not in full sympathy with the
undertaking; but he wasn't. He said that by not keeping up with the line
I had let the little mooses slip by, and that we would have to make the
drive again. I said he might have my route and I would take another. It
was a mistake, though. I couldn't seem to pick a better one. When we had
chased up and down that disordered island--that dumping ground of
nature--for the third time; when I had fallen over every log and stone,
and into every hole on it, and had scraped myself in every brush-heap,
and not one of us had caught even an imaginary glimpse of those little,
helpless, day-old meese, or mooses, or mice for they were harder to find
than mice--we staggered out, limp and sore, silently got into our canoes
and drifted away. Nobody spoke for quite a while. Nobody had anything to
say. Then Charlie murmured reflectively, as if thinking aloud:

"Little helpless fellows--not more than a day or two old----"

And Del added--also talking to himself:

"Too young to swim, of course--wholly at our mercy." Then, a moment
later, "It's a good thing we took that strap to tie their hind legs."

Eddie said nothing at all, and I was afraid to. Still, I was glad that
my vision of the little creatures pleading for their lives hadn't been
realized, or that other one of Del and Charlie paddling for dear life
up the Liverpool, with those little mooses bleating and scampering up
and down the canoe.

What really became of those calves remains a mystery. Nature teaches her
wild children many useful things. Their first indrawn breath is laden
with knowledge. Perhaps those wise little animals laughed at us from
some snug hiding. Perhaps they could swim, after all, and followed their
mother across the island, and so away. Whatever they did, I am glad,
even if the museum people have me arrested for it.




Chapter Twenty-three


  _When the utmost bound of the trail is found--_
    _The last and loneliest lair--_
  _The hordes of the forest shall gather round_
    _To bid you a welcome there._




Chapter Twenty-three


I do not know what lies above the Tobeatic lakes, but the strip of
country between is the true wilderness. It is a succession of swamps and
spruce thickets--ideal country for a moose farm or a mosquito hatchery,
or for general exploration, but no sort of a place for a Sunday-school
picnic. Neither is it a good place to fish. The little brook between the
lakes runs along like a chain pump and contains about as many trout.
There are one or two pretty good pools, but the effort to reach them is
too costly.

We made camp in as dry a place as we could find, but we couldn't find a
place as big as the tent that didn't have a spring or a water hole. In
fact, the ground was a mass of roots, great and small, with water
everywhere between. A spring actually bubbled up between our beds, and
when one went outside at night it was a mercy if he did not go plunging
into some sort of a cold, wet surprise, with disastrous and profane
results. Being the worst camp and the worst country and the poorest
fishing we had found, we remained there two days. But this was as it
should be. We were not fishermen now, but explorers; and explorers,
Eddie said, always court hardships, and pitch their camps in the midst
of dangers.

Immediately after our arrival, Eddie and I took one side of the brook
and the guides the other, and we set out to discover things, chiefly the
upper lake. Of course we would pick the hardest side. We could be
depended on to do that. The brook made a long bend, and the guides, who
were on the short side, found fairly easy going. Eddie and I, almost
immediately, were floundering in a thick miry swamp, where it was hot
and breezeless, and where the midges, mooseflies and mosquitoes gave us
a grand welcome. I never saw anybody so glad to be discovered as those
mooseflies. They were as excited as if we were long lost relatives who
had suddenly turned up with a fortune. They swarmed about us and clung
to us and tapped us in any convenient place. I did not blame them, of
course. Moose diet, year in and year out, would make them welcome
anything by way of a change. And what droves of moose there must be in
that swamp to support such a muster of flies! Certainly this was the
very heart of the moose domain.

Perhaps the reader who has never seen a moosefly may not appreciate the
amplitude and vigor of our welcome. The moosefly is a lusty fellow with
mottled wings. I believe he is sometimes called the deerfly, though as
the moose is bigger and more savage than the deer, it is my opinion that
the moosefly is bigger and more savage than any fly that bites the deer.
I don't think the deer could survive him. He is about the size of the
green-headed horsefly, but of more athletic build. He describes rapid
and eager circles about one's head, whizzing meanwhile in a manner which
some may like, but which I could not learn to enjoy. His family is large
and he has many friends. He brings them all along to greet you, and they
all whiz and describe circles at once, and with every circle or two he
makes a dip and swipes up about a gill of your lifeblood and guzzles it
down, and goes right on whizzing and circling until he picks out a place
for the next dip. Unlike the mosquito, the moosefly does not need to
light cautiously and patiently sink a well until he strikes a paying
vein. His practice on the moose has fitted him for speedier methods. The
bill with which he is accustomed to bore through a tough moosehide in a
second or two will penetrate a man in the briefest fraction of the time.

We got out of that swamp with no unnecessary delay and made for a spruce
thicket. Ordinarily one does not welcome a spruce thicket, for it
resembles a tangle of barbed wires. But it was a boon now. We couldn't
scratch all the places at once and the spruce thicket would help. We
plunged into it and let it dig, and scrape, and protect us from those
whizzing, circling blood-gluttons of the swamp. Yet it was cruel going.
I have never seen such murderous brush. I was already decorated with
certain areas of "New Skin," but I knew that after this I should need a
whole one. Having our rods and guns made it harder. In places we were
obliged to lie perfectly flat to worm and wriggle through. And the heat
was intense and our thirst a torture. Yet in the end it was worth while
and the payment was not long delayed. Just beyond the spruce thicket ran
a little spring rivulet, cold as ice. Lying on its ferny margin we drank
and drank, and the gods themselves cannot create a more exquisite joy
than that. We followed the rivulet to where it fed the brook, a little
way below. There we found a good-sized pool, and trout. Also a cool
breeze and a huge bowlder--complete luxury. We rested on the big
stone--I mean I did--and fished, while Eddie was trying to find the way
out. I said I would wait there until a relief party arrived. It was no
use. Eddie threatened to leave me at last if I didn't come on, and I had
no intention of being left alone in that forgotten place.

We struggled on. Finally near sunset of that long, hard June day, we
passed out of the thicket tangle, ascended a slope and found ourselves
in an open grove of whispering pines that through all the years had
somehow escaped the conflagration and the ax. Tall colonnades they
formed--a sort of Grove of Dodona which because of some oracle, perhaps,
the gods had spared and the conquering vandals had not swept away. From
the top of the knoll we caught a glimpse of water through the trees, and
presently stood on the shore of Little Tobeatic Lake.

So it was we reached the end of our quest--the farthest point in the
unknown. I hardly know what I had expected: trout of a new species and
of gigantic size, perhaps, or a strange race of men. Whatever it was, I
believe I felt a bit disappointed.

I believe I did not consider it much of a discovery. It was a good deal
like other Nova Scotia lakes, except that it appeared to be in two
sections and pretty big for its name. But Eddie was rejoiced over our
feat. The mooseflies and spruce thickets and the miry swamps we had
passed, for him only added relish to this moment of supreme triumph.
Eddie would never be the man to go to the Arctics in an automobile or an
airship. That would be too easy. He would insist on more embroideries.
He would demand all the combined hardships of the previous expeditions.
I am at present planning a trip to the South Pole, but I shall leave
Eddie at home. And perhaps I shall also be disappointed when I get to
the South Pole and find it only a rock in a snowdrift.

We crossed the brook and returned to camp the short way. We differed a
good deal as to the direction, and separated once or twice. We got lost
at last, for the way was so short and easy that we were below the camp
before we knew it. When at last we heard the guides calling (they had
long since returned) we came in, blaming each other for several things
and were scarcely on speaking terms for as much as five minutes. It was
lucky that Charles found a bottle of Jamaica rum and a little pot of
honey just then. A mixture of rum and honey will allay irritation due to
moosefly and mosquito bites, and to a variety of other causes if
faithfully applied.

The matter of mosquitoes was really serious that night. We kept up
several smudge fires and sat among them and smoked ourselves like
herring. Even then we were not immune. When it came time for bed we
brushed the inside of the tent and set our pipes going. Then Eddie
wanted to read, as was his custom. I objected. I said that to light a
candle would be to invite all those mosquitoes back. He pleaded, but for
once I was firm. He offered me some of his best things, but I refused to
sell my blood in that way. Finally he declared he had a spread of
mosquito net and would put it over the door and every possible opening
if I would let him read. I said he might put up the netting and if I
approved the job I would then consider the matter. He got out the net--a
nice new piece--and began to put it up.

It was a tedious job, arranging that net and fastening it properly by
the flickering firelight so that it covered every crack and crevice.
When he pulled it down in one place it left an opening in another and
had to be poked and pinned and stuffed in and patted down a great many
times. From my place inside the tent I could see his nimble shadow on
the canvas like some big insect, bobbing and flitting up and down and
from side to side. It reminded me of a persistent moth, dipping and
dodging about a screen. I drowsily wondered if he would ever get it
fixed, and if he wasn't getting hot and tired, for it was a still,
sticky night. Yet I suppose I did not realize how hot and tired one
might get on such a night, especially after a hard day. When he ceased
his lightsome movements at last and crept as carefully as a worm under
the net, I expected him to light the candle lamp and read. He did not do
so. He gave one long sighing groan of utter exhaustion, dropped down on
his bed without removing his clothes and never stirred again until
morning.

The net was a great success. Only two mosquitoes got in and they bit
Eddie.




Chapter Twenty-four


  _Apollo has tuned his lute again,_
    _And the pipes of Pan are near,_
  _For the gods that fled from the groves of men_
    _Gather unheeded here._




Chapter Twenty-four


It was by no means an unpleasant camp, first and last. It was our
"Farthest North" for one thing, our deepest point in the wilderness. It
would require as much as three or four days travel, even by the quickest
and most direct route to reach any human habitation, and in this thought
there was charm. It was a curious place, too, among those roots and
springs, and the brook there formed a rare pool for bathing. While the
others were still asleep I slipped down there for my morning dip. It was
early, but in that latitude and season the sun had already risen and
filtered in through the still treetops. Lying back in that natural basin
with the cool, fresh water slipping over and about one, and all the
world afar off and unreal, was to know the joy of the dim, forgotten
days when nymphs and dryads sported in hidden pools or tripped to the
pipes of Pan. Hemlock and maple boughs lacing above, with blue sky
between--a hermit thrush singing: such a pool Diana might have found,
shut away in some remote depths of Arcady. I should not have been much
surprised to have heard the bay of her hounds in that still early
morning, and to have seen her and her train suddenly appear--pursuing a
moose, maybe, or merely coming down for a morning swim. Of course I
should have secluded myself had I heard them coming. I am naturally a
modest person. Besides, I garner from the pictures that Diana is likely
to be dangerous when she is in her moods. Eddie bathed, too, later, but
the spell was gone then. Diana was far away, the stillness and sun-glint
were no more in the treetops, the hermit thrush was no longer in the
neighborhood. Eddie grumbled that the water was chilly and that the
stones hurt his feet. An hour, sometimes--a moment, even--makes all the
difference between romance and reality. Finally, even the guides bathed!
We let off fireworks in celebration!

We carried the canoes to the lake that morning and explored it, but
there was not much to see. The lake had no inlet that we could find, and
Eddie and I lost a dollar apiece with the guides betting on the shape of
it, our idea being based upon the glimpse of the evening before. I don't
care much for lakes that change their shape like that, and even Eddie
seemed willing to abandon this unprofitable region. I suspected,
however, that his willingness to take the back track was mainly due to
the hope of getting another try at the little mooses, but I resolved to
indulge myself no further in any such pastime.

[Illustration: "We went down that long, lovely lake in a luxury of idle
bliss."]

It was hard to drag Eddie by those islands. He wanted to cruise around
every one of them and to go ashore and prospect among the dÃ©bris. He
vowed at last that he would come back with Charles from our next camp
and explore on his own account. Then, there being a fine breeze directly
behind us, he opened out a big umbrella which he had brought along for
just such a time, we hitched our canoe on behind, and with that bellying
black sail on the forward bow, went down that long, lovely lake in a
luxury of idle bliss.

We camped at our old place by the falls and next morning Eddie did in
fact return to have another go at the calves. Del was willing to stay at
the camp, and I said I would have a quiet day's fishing nearby. It
proved an unusual day's fishing for those waters. White perch are not
plentiful there, but for some reason a school of them had collected just
by our camp. I discovered them by accident and then gave up everything
else to get as many of them as possible, for they were a desirable
change from trout, and eagerly welcomed. I fished for them by spells all
day. Del and I had them for luncheon and we saved a great pan full to be
ready for supper, when the others should return.

It was dusk when the other canoe came in. Our companions were very
tired, also wet, for it had been a misty day, with showers. Eddie was a
bit cross, too. They had seen some calves, he said, but could not get
them. His guide agreed with this statement, but when questioned
separately their statements varied somewhat as to the reasons of
failure. It did not matter. Eddie was discouraged in the calf moose
project, I could see that. Presently I began boasting of the big day's
sport I had enjoyed, and then to show off I said, "This is how I did
it."

Eddie was washing his hands in my perch pool and I had no idea of
getting anything--one is not likely to when he wishes to exhibit
himself--but I made a cast with the light tackle with two flies on it
and immediately had my hands full. For once, I did actually show off
when I undertook to do it. I think the only two big perch in that pool
seized those flies, and for the next five or ten minutes they were
making my reel sing and giving me such sport as only two big white perch
on a light tackle can. I brought them to the net at last and Eddie
looked on with hungry, envious eyes.

"You don't mean to say you've been taking those things all day," he
said.

"All day, more or less. I merely gave this little exhibition to wind up
on."

But of course I had to show him the size of the others, then, and he was
appeased to the extent of forgetting most of his troubles in a square
meal. That quiet day with the white perch, ending as it did with a grand
finale, remains one of my fondest memories.




Chapter Twenty-five


  _You may pick your place--you may choose your hour--_
    _You may put on your choicest flies;_
  _But never yet was it safe to bet_
    _That a single trout would rise._




Chapter Twenty-five


Back across Tupper Lake and down Sand Brook to the Shelburne. Eddie left
the further wilderness with a sigh, for he felt that his chance of
getting a moose calf for those museum people was getting slim. A
distance--I have forgotten the number of miles--down the Shelburne would
bring us to country known to the guides and not remote enough for moose
at this season. As Eddie is no longer in this country, I may confess,
now, that I was glad.

It was beautiful going, down Sand Brook. There was plenty of water and
the day was perfect. There is nothing lovelier in the world than that
little limpid stream with its pebbly riffles and its sunlit pools.
Sometimes when I think of it now I am afraid that it is no longer there
in that far still Arcady, or that it may vanish through some enchantment
before I can ever reach it again. Indeed as I am writing here to-day I
am wondering if it is really there--hidden away in that quiet unvisited
place, when no one is there to see it, and to hear it sing and
whisper--if anything is anywhere, unless some one is there to see and
hear. But these are deep waters. I am prone to stumble, as we have
seen, and somehow my tallest waders never take me through.

I have already said, and repeated, I think, that there is no better
trout fishing than in the Shelburne. The fish now were not quite so
heavy as they had been higher up, but they were very many. The last half
of the miracle of the loaves and fishes would not have been necessary
here had the multitudes been given some tackle and a few cans of bait.
When we were a little above Kempton Dam, Del pointed out the first place
familiar to him. The woods were precisely the same--the waters just as
fair and fruitful--the locality just as wild; but somehow as we rounded
that bend a certain breath of charm vanished. The spell of perfect
isolation was gone. I had the feeling that we had emerged from the
enchanted borders of No Man's Land--that we were entering a land of real
places, with the haunts and habitations of men.

Kempton Dam itself had been used to catch logs, not so long ago, and
Eddie had visited it on a previous occasion. He still had a fond memory
of a very large trout--opinions differed a trifle as to its exact
size--which he had taken there in a certain pool of golden water, and it
was evident from his talk that he expected to take that trout again, or
some member of its family, or its ghost, maybe, immediately upon
arrival.

It certainly proved an attractive place, and there were any number of
fish. They were not especially large, however. Even the golden water was
fruitful only as to numbers. We waded among the rocks or stood on the
logs, and cast and reeled and netted and returned fish to the water
until we were fairly surfeited. By that time the guides had the camp
ready, and as it was still early we gave them the rods and watched the
sport.

Now a fly-casting tournament at home is a tame entertainment when one
has watched the fishing of Nova Scotia guides. To see a professional
send a fly sailing out a hundred feet or so in Madison Square Garden is
well enough, and it is a meritorious achievement, no doubt, but there is
no return except the record and the applause. To see Del the Stout and
Charles the Strong doing the same thing from that old log dam was a
poem, a picture, an inspiration. Above and below, the rushing water;
overhead, the blue sky; on either side, the green of June--the treetops
full of the setting sun. Out over the foaming current, skimming just
above the surface, the flies would go sailing, sailing--you thought they
would never light. They did not go with a swish and a jump, but seemed
noiselessly to drift away, as if the lightly swinging rod had little to
do with the matter, as if they were alive, in fact, looking for a place
to settle in some cozy nook of water where a trout would be sure to be.
And the trout were there. It was not the empty tub-fishing of a
sportsman's show. The gleam and splash in the pool that seemed
remote--that was perhaps thirty yards away in fact--marked the casting
limit, and the sharp curve of the rod, and the play to land were more
inspiring than any measure of distance or clapping of hands.

Charles himself became so inspired at length with his handsome fishing
that he made a rash statement. He declared that he could take five trout
in fifteen minutes. He offered to bet a dollar that he could do it. I
rather thought he could myself, for the fish were there, and they were
not running over large. Still, it was no easy matter to land them in
that swift water, and it would be close work. The show would be worth a
dollar, even if I lost. Wherefore, I scoffed at his boast and took the
bet.

No stipulations were made as to the size of the trout, nor the manner in
which they should be taken, nor as to any special locality. It was
evident from our guide's preparation that he had evolved certain ideas
of his own in the matter. Previously he had been trying to hook a big
fish, but it was pretty evident that he did not want any big fish now.
There was a little brook--a run-around, as it were--that left the main
water just below the dam and came in again at the big pool several
hundred yards below. We had none of us touched this tumbling bit of
water. It was his idea that it would be full of little trout. He wanted
something he could lift out with no unnecessary delay, for time that is
likely to be worth over six cents a minute is too expensive to waste in
fancy sportsmanship. He selected a short rod and put on some tiny flies.
Then he took his position; we got out our watches and called time.

Now, of course, one of the most uncertain things in life to gamble on is
fishing. You may pick your place, your day and your time of day. The
combination may seem perfect. Yet the fact remains that you can never
count with certainty on the result. One might suppose that our guide had
everything in his favor. Up to the very moment of his wager he had been
taking trout about as rapidly as he could handle them, and from water
that had been fished more or less all the afternoon. He knew the
particular fly that had been most attractive on this particular day and
he had selected a place hitherto unfished--just the sort of a place
where small trout seemed likely to abound. With his skill as an angler
it would not have surprised me if he had taken his five trout and had
more than half the time to spare.

I think he expected to do that himself. I think he did, for he went at
it with that smiling _sang froid_ with which one does a sleight of hand
trick after long practice. He did not show any appearance of haste in
making his first cast, but let the flies go gently out over a little
eddying pool and lightly skim the surface of the water, as if he were
merely amusing himself by tantalizing those eager little trout. Yet for
some reason nothing happened. Perhaps the little trout were attending a
party in the next pool. There came no lively snap at those twitching
flies--there was not even a silver break on the surface of the water.

I thought our guide's smile faded the least trifle, and that he let the
flies go a bit quicker next time. Then when nothing, absolutely nothing,
happened again, his look became one of injured surprise. He abandoned
that pool and stepping a rock or two downstream, sent the flies with a
sharp little flirt into the next--once--twice--it was strange--it was
unaccountable, but nothing--not a single thing happened again. It was
the same with the next pool, and the next.

There were no special marks of self-confidence, or anything that even
resembled deliberation, after this. It was business, strictly business,
with the sole idea of taking five fish out of that run, or getting down
to a place where five fish could be had. It was a pretty desperate
situation, for it was a steep run and there was no going back. To
attempt that would be to waste too much precious time. The thing to do
was to fish it straight through, with no unnecessary delay. There was no
doubt but that this was our guide's programme. The way he deported
himself showed that. Perhaps he was not really in a hurry--I want to be
just--but he acted as if he was. I have never seen a straddle-bug, but
if I ever meet one I shall recognize him, for I am certain he will look
exactly like Charles the Strong going down Tommy Kempton's Run. He was
shod in his shoepacks, and he seemed to me to have one foot always in
the air wildly reaching out for the next rock--the pair of flies,
meanwhile, describing lightning circles over every pool and riffle,
lingering just long enough to prove the futility of the cast, to be
lying an instant later in a new spot, several yards below. If ever there
is a tournament for swift and accurate fly-casting down a flight of
rugged stone stairs I want to enter Charles for first honors against the
world. But I would not bet on any fish--I want that stipulated. I would
not gamble to that extent. I would not gamble even on one fish after
being a witness to our guide's experience.

That was a mad race. The rest of us kept a little to one side, out of
his way, and not even Del and Eddie could keep up with him. And with all
that wild effort not a fish would rise--nor even break water. It was
strange--it was past believing--I suppose it was even funny. It must
have been, for I seem to recall that we fairly whooped our joy at his
acrobatic eagerness. Why, with such gymnastics, Charles did not break
his neck I cannot imagine. With the utmost watchfulness I barely missed
breaking mine as much as a dozen times.

The time was more than half-expired when we reached the foot of the run,
and still no fish, not even a rise. Yet the game was not over. It was
supposable that this might be the place of places for fish. Five fish in
five minutes were still possible, if small. The guide leaped and waded
to a smooth, commanding stone and cast--once--twice, out over the
twisting water. Then, suddenly, almost in front of him, it seemed, a
great wave rolled up from the depths--there was a swish and a quick
curving of the rod--a monstrous commotion, and a struggle in the water.
It was a king of fish, we could all see that, and the rest of us gave a
shout of approval.

But if Charles was happy, he did not look it. In fact, I have never seen
any one act so unappreciative of a big fish, nor handle it in so
unsportsmanlike a manner. If I remember his remark it had damn and hell
mixed up in it, and these words were used in close association with that
beautiful trout. His actions were even worse. He made no effort to play
his catch--to work him gradually to the net, according to the best form.
Nothing of the kind. You'd have supposed our guide had never seen a big
trout before by the way he got hold of that line and yanked him in, hand
over hand, regardless of the danger to line and leader and to those
delicate little flies, to say nothing of the possibility of losing a
fish so handled. Of course the seconds were flying, and landing a fish
of that size is not an especially quick process. A three-pound trout in
swift water has a way of staying there, even when taken by the main
strength and awkwardness system. When only about a yard of line
remained between Charlie and the fish, the latter set up such a
commotion, and cut up such a series of antics, that it was impossible
for one man to hold him and net him, though the wild effort which our
guide made to do so seemed amusing to those who were looking on. In
fact, if I had not been weak with laughing I might have gone to his
rescue sooner. One may be generous to a defeated opponent, and the time
limit was on its last minute now. As it was, I waded over presently and
took the net. A moment later we had him--the single return in the
allotted time, but by all odds the largest trout thus far of the
expedition. You see, as I have said, fish are uncertain things to gamble
on. Trying for five small ones our fisherman captured one large fish,
which at any other moment of the expedition would have been more
welcome. Yet even he was an uncertain quantity, for big, strong and
active as he was, he suddenly gave a great leap out of the net and was
back in the water again. Still, I let him be counted. That was generous.

You might have supposed after that demonstration, Eddie would have been
somewhat reticent about backing his skill as a fisherman. But he wasn't.
He had just as much faith in his angling, and in his ability to pick
good water as if he hadn't seen his guide go down to ignominy and
defeat. He knew a place just above the dam, he said, where he could make
that bet good. Would I give him the same terms? I would--the offer was
open to all comers. I said it was taking candy from children.

[Illustration: "It was worth the dollar to watch the way he sought to
wheedle and coax and fascinate those trout."]

We went up to Eddie's place and got out the watches. Eddie had learned
something from his guide's exhibition. He had learned not to prance
about over a lot of water, and not to seem to be in a hurry. It was such
things that invited mirth. He took his position carefully between two
great bowlders and during the next fifteen minutes gave us the most
charming exhibition of light and delicate fly-casting I have ever
witnessed. It was worth the dollar to watch the way in which he sought
to wheedle and coax and fascinate those trout, and to study the deft
dispatch and grace with which he landed a fish, once hooked. Still he
hadn't learned quite enough. He hadn't learned to take five trout in
fifteen minutes in that particular place and on that particular evening.
Perhaps it was a little late when he began. Perhaps fifteen minutes is a
shorter period than it sometimes seems. Three trout completed his score
at the end of the allotted time--all fairly large.

Yet I must not fail to add here that a few days later, in other water,
both Eddie and his guide made good their wager. Each took his five
trout--small ones--in fifteen minutes, and had time to spare. As I have
remarked once or twice already, one of the most uncertain things in life
to gamble on is fishing.




Chapter Twenty-six


  _Oh, the waves they pitch and the waves they toss,_
    _And the waves they frighten me;_
  _And if ever I get my boat across_
    _I'll go no more to sea._




Chapter Twenty-six


We were met by a surprise at our camp. Two men sat there, real men, the
first we had seen since we entered the wilderness. Evidently they were
natives by their look--trappers or prospectors of some sort. They turned
out to be bear hunters, and they looked rather hungrily at the
assortment of fish we had brought in--enough for supper and breakfast.
Perhaps they had not been to fish so frequently as to bear. I believe
they were without tackle, or maybe their luck had been poor--I do not
remember. At all events it developed presently that they needed fish,
also that they had a surplus of butter of a more recent period than the
little dab we had left. They were willing to dicker--a circumstance that
filled us with an enthusiasm which we restrained with difficulty. In
fact, Del did not restrain his quite enough. He promptly offered them
all the fish we had brought in for their extra pound of butter, when we
could just as easily have got it for half the number of fish. Of course
the fish did not seem especially valuable to us, and we were willing
enough to make a meal without them. Still, one can never tell what will
happen, and something like six dollars worth of trout--reckoned by New
York prices--seems an unnecessary sum to pay for a pound of butter,
even in the Nova Scotia woods, though possibly trout will never be worth
quite that much there.

All the same, the price had advanced a good deal by next morning, for
the wind had shifted to the northeast and it was bleak and blustery.
Everybody knows the old rhyme about the winds and the fish--how, when
the winds are north or east, the fish bite least, and how, when the
winds are south and west, the fish bite best. There isn't much poetry in
the old rhyme, but it's charged with sterling truth. Just why a
northerly or easterly wind will take away a fish's appetite, I think has
never been explained, or why a southerly and westerly wind will start
him out hunting for food. But it's all as true as scripture. I have seen
trout stop rising with a shifting of the wind to the eastward as
suddenly as if they had been summoned to judgment, and I have seen them
begin after a cold spell almost before the wind had time to get settled
in its new quarter. Of course it had been Del's idea that we could
easily get trout enough for breakfast. That was another mistake--we
couldn't. We couldn't take them from the river, and we couldn't take
them from our bear hunters, for they had gone. We whipped our lines
around in that chill wind, tangled our flies in treetops, endangered our
immortal souls, and went back to the tents at last without a single
thing but our appetites. Then we took turns abusing Del for his
disastrous dicker by which he had paid no less than five dollars and
seventy-five cents a pound too much for butter, New York market
schedule. Our appetites were not especially for trout--only for hearty
food of some kind, and as I have said before, we had reached a place
where fish had become our real staple. The conditions were particularly
hard on Del himself, for he is a hearty man, and next to jars of
marmalade, baskets of trout are his favorite forage.

In fact, we rather lost interest in our camp, and disagreeable as it
was, we decided to drop down the river to Lake Rossignol and cross over
to the mouth of the Liverpool. It was a long six-mile ferriage across
Rossignol and we could devote our waste time to getting over. By the end
of the trip the weather might change.

The Shelburne is rough below Kempton Dam. It goes tearing and foaming in
and out among the black rocks, and there are places where you have to
get out of the canoes and climb over, and the rocks are slippery and
sometimes there is not much to catch hold of. We shot out into the lake
at last, and I was glad. It was a mistake, however, to be glad just
then. It was too soon. The wind had kicked up a good deal of water, and
though our canoes were lighter than when we started, I did not consider
them suited to such a sea. They pitched about and leaped up into the
air, one minute with the bow entirely out of water, and the next with
it half-buried in the billow ahead. Every other second a big wave ran on
a level with the gunwale, and crested its neck and looked over and
hissed, and sometimes it spilled in upon us. It would not take much of
that kind of freight to make a cargo, and anything like an accident in
that wide, gray billowy place was not a nice thing to contemplate. A
loaded canoe would go down like a bullet. No one clad as we were could
swim more than a boat's length in that sea.

As we got farther on shore the waves got worse. If somebody had just
suggested it I should have been willing to turn around and make back for
the Shelburne. Nobody suggested it, and we went on. It seemed to me
those far, dim shores through the mist, five miles or more away, would
never get any closer. I grew tired, too, and my arms ached, but I could
not stop paddling. I was filled with the idea that if I ever stopped
that eternal dabbing at the water, my end of the canoe would never ride
the next billow. Del reflected aloud, now and then, that we had made a
mistake to come out on such a day. When I looked over at the other canoe
and saw it on the top of a big wave with both ends sticking out in the
air, and then saw it go down in a trough of black, ugly water, I
realized that Del was right. I knew our canoe was doing just such
dangerous things as that, and I would have given any reasonable sum for
an adequate life preserver, or even a handy pine plank--for anything,
in fact, that was rather more certain to stay on top of the water than
this billow-bobbing, birch-bark peanut shell of a canoe.

I suppose I became unduly happy, therefore, when at last we entered the
mouth of the Liverpool. I was so glad that I grew gay, and when we
started up the rapids I gave Del a good lift here and there by pushing
back against the rocks with my paddle, throwing my whole weight on it
sometimes, to send the canoe up in style. It is always unwise for me to
have a gay reaction like that, especially on Friday, which is my unlucky
day. Something is so liable to happen. We were going up a particularly
steep piece of water when I got my paddle against a stone on the bottom
and gave an exceptionally strong push. I don't know just what happened
next. Perhaps my paddle slipped. Del says it did. I know I heard him
give a whoop, and I saw the river coming straight up at me. Then it came
pouring in over the side, and in about a minute more most of our things
were floating downstream, with Del grabbing at them, and me clinging to
the upset canoe, trying to drag it ashore.

We camped there. It was a good place, one of the best yet selected.
Still, I do not recommend selecting a camp in that way. If it did not
turn out well, it might be a poor place to get things dry. One needs to
get a good many things dry after a selection like that, especially on a
cold day. It was a cold night, too. I dried my under things and put
them all on.

"Did you ever sleep in your clothes in the woods?" I have been asked.

I did. I put on every dry thing I had that night, and regretted I had
left anything at home.




Chapter Twenty-seven


  _It is better to let the wild beast run,_
    _And to let the wild bird fly:_
  _Each harbors best in his native nest,_
    _Even as you and I._




Chapter Twenty-seven


Perhaps it was the cold weather that brought us a visitor. There was a
tree directly over our tent, and in the morning--a sharp sunny morning,
with the wind where it should be, in the west--we noticed on going out
that a peculiar sort of fruit had grown on this tree over night. On one
of the limbs just above the tent was a prickly looking ball, like a
chestnut burr, only black, and about a hundred times as big. It was a
baby porcupine, who perhaps had set out to see the world on his own
account--a sort of prodigal who had found himself without funds, and
helpless, on a cold night. No doubt he climbed up there to look us over,
with a view of picking out a good place for himself; possibly with the
hope of being invited to breakfast.

Eddie was delighted with our new guest. He declared that he would take
him home alive, and feed him and care for him, and live happy ever
after. He got a pole and shook our visitor down in a basket, and did a
war-dance of joy over his new possession. He was a cute little
fellow--the "piggypine" (another of Eddie's absurd names)--with bright
little eyes and certain areas of fur, but I didn't fancy him as a pet.
He seemed to me rather too much of a cross between a rat and a pin
cushion to be a pleasant companion in the intimate relations of one's
household. I suspected that if in a perfectly wild state he had been
prompted to seek human companionship and the comforts of civilized life,
in a domestic atmosphere he would want to sit at the table and sleep
with somebody. I did not believe Eddie's affection would survive these
familiarities. I knew how surprised and annoyed he might be some night
to roll over suddenly on the piggypine and then have to sit up the rest
of the night while a surgeon removed the quills. I said that I did not
believe in taming wild creatures, and I think the guides were with me in
this opinion. I think so because they recited two instances while we
were at breakfast. Del's story was of some pet gulls he once owned. He
told it in that serious way which convinced me of its truth. Certain
phases of the narrative may have impressed me as being humorous, but it
was clear they were not so regarded by Del. His manner was that of one
who records history. He said:

"One of the children caught two young gulls once, in the lake, and
brought them to the house and said they were going to tame them. I
didn't think they would live, but they did. You couldn't have killed
them without an ax. They got tame right away, and they were all over the
house, under foot and into everything, making all kinds of trouble. But
that wasn't the worst--the worst was feeding them. It wasn't so bad
when they were little, but they grew to beat anything. Then it began to
keep us moving to get enough for them to eat. They lived on fish,
mostly, and at first the children thought it fun to feed them. They used
to bait a little dip net and catch minnows for the gulls, and the gulls
got so they would follow anybody that started out with that dip net,
calling and squealing like a pair of pigs. But they were worse than
pigs. You can fill up a pig and he will go to sleep, but you never could
fill up those gulls. By and by the children got tired of trying to do it
and gave me the job. I made a big dip net and kept it set day and night,
and every few minutes all day and the last thing before bedtime I'd go
down and lift out about a pailful of fish for those gulls, and they'd
eat until the fish tails stuck out of their mouths, and I wouldn't more
than have my back turned before they'd be standing on the shore of the
lake, looking down into that dip net and hollering for more. I got so I
couldn't do anything but catch fish for those gulls. It was a busy
season, too, and besides the minnows were getting scarce along the lake
front, so I had to get up early to get enough to feed them and the rest
of the family. I said at last that I was through feeding gulls. I told
the children that either they'd have to do it, or that the gulls would
have to go to work like the rest of the family and fish for themselves.
But the children wouldn't do it, nor the gulls, either. Then I said I
would take those birds down in the woods and leave them somewhere. I
did that. I put them into a basket and shut them in tight and took them
five miles down the river and let them loose in a good place where there
were plenty of fish. They flew off and I went home. When I got to the
house they'd been there three hours, looking at the dip net and
squalling, and they ate a pail heaping full of fish, and you could have
put both gulls into the pail when they got through. I was going on a
long trip with a party next morning, and we took the gulls along. We fed
them about a bushel of trout and left them seventeen miles down the
river, just before night, and drove home in the dark. I didn't think the
gulls would find their way back that time, but they did. They were there
before daybreak, fresh and hungry as ever. Then I knew it was no use.
The ax was the only thing that would get me out of that mess. The
children haven't brought home any wild pets since."

That you see is just unembellished history, and convincing. I regret
that I cannot say as much for Charlie's narrative. It is a likely story
enough, as such things go, but there are points about it here and there
which seem to require confirmation. I am told that it is a story well
known and often repeated in Nova Scotia, but even that cannot be
accepted as evidence of its entire truth. Being a fish-story it would
seem to require something more. This is the tale as Charlie told it.

"Once there was a half-breed Indian," he said, "who had a pet trout
named Tommy, which he kept in a barrel. But the trout got pretty big and
had to have the water changed a good deal to keep him alive. The Indian
was too lazy to do that, and he thought he would teach the trout to live
out of water. So he did. He commenced by taking Tommy out of the barrel
for a few minutes at a time, pretty often, and then he took him out
oftener and kept him out longer, and by and by Tommy got so he could
stay out a good while if he was in the wet grass. Then the Indian found
he could leave him in the wet grass all night, and pretty soon that
trout could live in the shade whether the grass was wet or not. By that
time he had got pretty tame, too, and he used to follow the Indian
around a good deal, and when the Indian would go out to dig worms for
him, Tommy would go along and pick up the worms for himself. The Indian
thought everything of that fish, and when Tommy got so he didn't need
water at all, but could go anywhere--down the dusty road and stay all
day out in the hot sun--you never saw the Indian without his trout. Show
people wanted to buy Tommy, but the Indian said he wouldn't sell a fish
like that for any money. You'd see him coming to town with Tommy
following along in the road behind, just like a dog, only of course it
traveled a good deal like a snake, and most as fast.

"Well, it was pretty sad the way that Indian lost his trout, and it was
curious, too. He started for town one day with Tommy coming along
behind, as usual. There was a bridge in the road and when the Indian
came to it he saw there was a plank off, but he went on over it without
thinking. By and by he looked around for Tommy and Tommy wasn't there.
He went back a ways and called, but he couldn't see anything of his pet.
Then he came to the bridge and saw the hole, and he thought right away
that maybe his trout had got in there. So he went to the hole and looked
down, and sure enough, there was Tommy, floating on the water,
bottom-side up. He'd tumbled through that hole into the brook and
drowned."

I think these stories impressed Eddie a good deal. I know they did me.
Even if Charlie's story was not pure fact in certain minor details, its
moral was none the less evident. I saw clearer than ever that it is not
proper to take wild creatures from their native element and make pets of
them. Something always happens to them sooner or later. We were through
breakfast and Eddie went over to look at his porcupine. He had left it
in a basket, well covered with a number of things. He came back right
away--looking a little blank I thought.

"He's gone!" he said. "The basket's just as I left it, all covered up,
but he isn't in it."

We went over to look. Sure enough, our visitor had set out on new
adventures. How he had escaped was a mystery. It didn't matter--both he
and Eddie were better off.

But that was a day for animal friends. Where we camped for luncheon,
Eddie and I took a walk along the river bank and suddenly found
ourselves in a perfect menagerie. We were among a regular group of grown
porcupines--we counted five of them--and at the same time there were two
blue herons in the water, close by. A step away a pair of partridges ran
through the brush and stood looking at us from a fallen log, while an
old duck and her young came sailing across the river. We were nearing
civilization now, but evidently these creatures were not much harassed.
It was like the Garden of Eden before the Fall. It is true the old duck
swam away, calling to her brood, when she saw us; the partridges
presently hid in the brush, and the blue herons waded a bit further off.
But the porcupines went on galumphing around us, and none of the
collection seemed much disturbed. During the afternoon we came upon two
fishermen, college boys, camping, who told us they had seen some young
loons in a nest just above, and Eddie was promptly seized with a desire
to possess them.

In fact we left so hastily that Del forgot his extra paddle, and did not
discover the loss until we were a half-mile or so upstream. Then he said
he would leave me in the canoe to fish and would walk back along the
shore. An arm of the river made around an island just there, and it
looked like a good place. There seemed to be not much current in the
water, and I thought I could manage the canoe in such a spot and fish,
too, without much trouble.

[Illustration: "I never realized before what a crazy thing a canoe can
be when you want it to do something out of its regular line of work."]

It was not as easy as it looked. Any one who has tried to handle a canoe
from the front end with one hand and fish with the other will tell you
so. I couldn't seem to keep out of the brush along the shore, and I
couldn't get near some brush in the middle of the river where I believed
there were trout. I was right about the trout being there, too. Eddie
proved that when he came up with his canoe. He had plenty of business
with big fellows right away. But the fact didn't do me any good. Just
when I would get near the lucky place and ready to cast, a twitch in the
current or a little puff of wind would get hold of the stern of my
craft, which rode up out of the water high and light like a sail, and my
flies would land in some bushes along the bank, or hang in a treetop, or
do some other silly thing which was entertaining enough to Eddie and his
guide, apparently, but which did not amuse me. I never realized before
what a crazy thing a canoe can be when you want it to do something out
of its regular line of work. A canoe is a good sort of a craft in its
place, and I would not wish to go into the woods without one, but it is
limited in its gifts, very limited. It can't keep its balance with any
degree of certainty when you want to stand up and fish, and it has no
sort of notion of staying in one place, unless it's hauled out on the
bank. If that canoe had been given the versatility of an ordinary
flat-bottomed john-boat I could have got along better than I did. I said
as much, and disparaged canoes generally. Eddie declared that he had
never heard me swear with such talent and unreserve. He encouraged me by
holding up each fish as he caught it and by suggesting that I come over
there. He knew very well that I couldn't get there in a thousand years.
Whenever I tried to do it that fool of a canoe shot out at a tangent and
brought up nowhere. Finally in an effort to reconstruct my rod I dropped
a joint of the noibwood overboard, and it went down in about four
hundred feet of water. Then I believe I did have a few things to say. I
was surprised at my own proficiency. It takes a crucial moment like that
to develop real genius. I polished off the situation and I trimmed up
the corners. Possibly a touch of sun made me fluent, for it was hot out
there, though it was not as hot as a place I told them about, and I
dwelt upon its fitness as a permanent abiding place for fishermen in
general and for themselves in particular. When I was through and empty I
see-sawed over to the bank and waited for Del. I believe I had a
feverish hope that they would conclude to take my advice, and that I
should never see their canoe and its contents again.

There are always compensations for those who suffer and are meek in
spirit. That was the evening I caught the big fish, the fish that Eddie
would have given a corner of his immortal soul (if he has a soul, and if
it has corners) to have taken. It was just below a big fall--Loon Lake
Falls I think they call it--and we were going to camp there. Eddie had
taken one side of the pool and I the other and neither of us had caught
anything. Eddie was just landing, when something that looked big and
important, far down the swift racing current, rose to what I had
intended as my last cast. I had the little four-ounce bamboo, but I let
the flies go down there--the fly, I mean, for I was casting with one (a
big Silver Doctor)--and the King was there, waiting. He took it with a
great slop and carried out a long stretch of line. It was a test for the
little rod. There had been unkind remarks about the tiny bamboo whip;
this was to be justification; a big trout on a long line, in deep, swift
water--the combination was perfect. Battle now, ye ruler of the rapids!
Show your timber now, thou slender wisp of silk and cane!

But we have had enough of fishing. I shall not dwell upon the details of
that contest. I may say, however, that I have never seen Del more
excited than during the minutes--few or many, I do not know how few or
how many--that it lasted. Every guide wants his canoe to beat, and it
was evident from the first that this was the trout of the expedition. I
know that Del believed I would never bring that fish to the canoe, and
when those heavy rushes came I was harrassed with doubts myself. Then
little by little he yielded. When at last he was over in the slower
water--out of the main channel--I began to have faith.

So he came in, slowly, slowly, and as he was drawn nearer to the boat,
Del seized the net to be ready for him. But I took the net. I had been
browbeaten and humiliated and would make my triumph complete. I brought
him to the very side of the boat, and I lifted him in. This time the big
fish did not get away. We went to where the others had been watching,
and I stepped out and tossed him carelessly on the ground, as if it were
but an everyday occurrence. Eddie was crushed. I no longer felt
bitterness toward him.

I think I shall not give the weight of that fish. As already stated, no
one can tell the truth concerning a big fish the first trial, while more
than one attempt does not look well in print, and is apt to confuse the
reader. Besides, I don't think Eddie's scales were right, anyway.




Chapter Twenty-eight


  _Then breathe a sigh and a long good-by_
    _To the wilderness to-day,_
  _For back again to the trails of men_
    _Follows the waterway._




Chapter Twenty-eight


Through the Eel-wier--a long and fruitful rapid--we entered our old
first lake, Kedgeemakoogee, this time from another point. We had made an
irregular loop of one hundred and fifty miles or more--a loop that had
extended far into the remoter wilderness, and had been marked by what,
to me, were hard ventures and vicissitudes, but which, viewed in the
concrete, was recorded in my soul as a link of pure happiness. We were
not to go home immediately. Kedgeemakoogee is large and there are
entering streams, at the mouth of which the sport at this season was
good. Besides, the teams that were to come for us would not be due yet
for several days, if we had kept proper account of time.

It was above the Eel-weir, at George's Run, that Eddie had his first and
only success with dry flies. It was just the place--a slow-moving
current between two islands, with many vicious and hungry trout. They
would rise to the ordinary fly, two at a cast, and when Eddie put on the
dry fly--the artificial miller that sits upright on the water and is an
exact imitation of the real article--and let it go floating down, they
snapped it up eagerly. It is beautiful fishing--I should really have
liked to try it a little. But Eddie had been good to me in so many ways:
I hadn't the heart to ask him for one of his precious dry flies.

During our trip across Kedgeemakoogee, Del--inspired perhaps by the fact
that we were getting nearer to the walks and wiles of men--gave me some
idea of Nova Scotia political economies. He explained the system of
government there, the manner of voting and the like. The representation
is by districts, of course, similar to our own, and the parties have
similar methods of making the vote of these districts count on the right
side. In Queens, for instance, where we had been most, if not all, of
the time, the voters are very scattering. I had suspected this, for in
our one hundred and fifty miles travel we had seen but two natives, and
only one of these was believed to have political residence. Del said the
district had been gerrymandered a good deal to make the votes count
right, and it was plain enough that if this man was the only voter in
that much country, and he chasing bears most of the time, they would
have to gerrymander around a good deal to keep up with him. Del said
that when election time came they would go gunning for that voter over
the rocks and through the burnt timber, and would beat up the brush for
him as if he were a moose, and valuable. Somehow politics did not seem
to belong in this place, but either Del exaggerated, this time, or there
is a good deal of it to the individual. I suppose it's well to have it
condensed in that way.

We camped that night at Jim Charles's Point, our old first camp, and it
was like getting home after long absence. For the time seemed an age
since we had left there. It was that. Any new and wonderful experience
is long--as long as eternity--whether it be a day or a decade in
duration. Next morning, across to the mouth of West River--a place of
many fish and a rocky point for our camp, with deep beds of sweet-fern,
but no trees. That rocky open was not the best selection for tents.
Eddie and his guide had gone up the river a little way when a sudden
shower came up, with heavy darkness and quick wind. Del and I were
stowing a few things inside that were likely to get wet, when all at
once the tents became balloons that were straining at their guy ropes,
and then we were bracing hard and clinging fast to the poles to keep
everything from sailing into the sky.

It was a savage little squall. It laid the bushes down and turned the
lake white in a jiffy. A good thing nobody was out there, under that
black sky. Then the wind died and there came a swish of rain--hard rain
for a few minutes. After that the sun once more, the fragrance of the
fern and the long, sweet afternoon.

Looking at those deep tides of sweet-fern, I had an inspiration. My
stretcher had never been over comfortable. I longed to sleep flat. Why
not a couch of this aromatic balm? It was dry presently, and spreading
the canvas strip smoothly on the ground I covered it with armfuls of the
fern, evenly laid. I gathered and heaped it higher until it rose deep
and cushiony; then I sank down upon it to perfect bliss.

This was Arcady indeed: a couch as soft and as fragrant as any the gods
might have spread by the brooks of Hymettus in that far time when they
stole out of Elysium to find joy in the daughters of men. Such a couch
Leda might have had when the swan came floating down to bestow celestial
motherhood. I buried my face in the odorous mass and vowed that never
again would I cramp myself in a canvas trough between two sticks, and I
never did. I could not get sweet-fern again, but balsam boughs were
plentiful, and properly laid in a manner that all guides know, make a
couch that is wide and yielding and full of rest.

Up Little River, whose stones like the proverbial worm, turned when we
stepped on them and gave Eddie a hard fall; across Frozen Ocean--a place
which justified its name, for it was bitterly cold there and we did
nothing but keep the fire going and play pedro (to which end I put on
most of my clothes and got into my sleeping-bag)--through another stream
and a string of ponds, loitering and exploring until the final day.

It was on one reach of a smaller stream that we found the Beaver
Dam--the only one I ever saw, or am likely to see, for the race that
builds them is nearly done. I had been walking upstream and fishing some
small rapids above the others when I saw what appeared to be a large
pool of still water just above. I made my way up there. It was in
reality a long stillwater, but a pond rather than a pool. It interested
me very much. The dam was unlike any I had ever seen. For one thing, I
could not understand why a dam should be in that place, for there was no
sign of a sluice or other indication of a log industry; besides, this
dam was not composed of logs or of stone, or anything of the sort. It
was a woven dam--a dam composed of sticks and brush and rushes and
vines, some small trees, and dirt--made without much design, it would
seem, but so carefully put together and so firmly bound that no piece of
it could work loose or be torn away. I was wondering what people could
have put together such a curious and effective thing as that, when Del
came up, pushing the canoe. He also was interested when he saw it, but
he knew what it was. It was a beaver dam, and they were getting mighty
scarce. There was a law against killing the little fellows, but their
pelts were worth high prices, and the law did not cover traffic in them.
So long as that was the case the beavers would be killed.

I had heard of beaver dams all my life, but somehow I had not thought of
their being like this. I had not thought of those little animals being
able to construct a piece of engineering that, in a swift place like
this, could stand freshet and rot, year after year, and never break
away. Del said he had never known one of them to go out. The outlet was
in the right place and of the proper size. He showed me some new pieces
which the builders had recently put into the work, perhaps because it
seemed to be weakening there. He had watched once and had seen some
beavers working. They were as intelligent as human beings. They could
cut a tree of considerable size, he said, and make it fall in any chosen
direction. Then he showed me some pieces of wood from which they had
gnawed the sweet bark, and he explained how they cut small trees and
sank lengths of them in the water to keep the bark green and fresh for
future use. I listened and marveled. I suppose I had read of these
things, but they seemed more wonderful when I was face to face with the
fact.

The other canoe came up and it was decided to cut a small section out of
the dam to let us through. I objected, but was assured that the beavers
were not very busy, just now, and would not mind--in fact might rather
enjoy--a repair job, which would take them but a brief time.

"They can do it sometime while I'm making a long carry," Charlie said.

But it was no easy matter to cut through. Charlie and Del worked with
the ax, and dragged and pulled with their hands. Finally a narrow breach
was made, but it would have been about as easy to unload the canoes and
lift them over. Half-way up the long hole we came to the lodge--its top
rising above the water. Its entrance, of course, was below the surface,
but the guides said there is always a hole at the top, for air. It was a
well-built house--better, on the whole, than many humans construct.

"They'll be scrambling around, pretty soon," Charlie said, "when they
find the water getting lower in their sitting room. Then they'll send
out a repair gang. Poor little fellers! Somebody'll likely get 'em
before we come again. I know one chap that got seven last year. It's too
bad."

Yes, it is too bad. Here is a wonderful race of creatures--ingenious,
harmless--a race from which man doubtless derived his early lessons in
constructive engineering. Yet Nova Scotia is encouraging their
assassination by permitting the traffic in their skins, while she salves
her conscience by enacting a law against their open slaughter. Nova
Scotia is a worthy province and means well. She protects her moose and,
to some extent, her trout. But she ought to do better by the beavers.
They are among her most industrious and worthy citizens. Their homes and
their industries should be protected. Also, their skins. It can't be
done under the present law. You can't put a price on a man's head and
keep him from being shot, even if it is against the law. Some fellow
will lay for him sure. He will sneak up and shoot him from behind, just
as he would sneak up and shoot a beaver, and he will collect his reward
in either case, and the law will wink at him. Maybe it would be no
special crime to shoot the man. Most likely he deserved it, but the
beaver was doing nobody any harm. Long ago he taught men how to build
their houses and their dams, and to save up food and water for a dry
time. Even if we no longer need him, he deserves our protection and our
tender regard.[6]

FOOTNOTES:

[6] I have just learned from Eddie that Nova Scotia has recently enacted
a new law, adequately protecting the beaver. I shall leave the above,
however, as applying to other and less humane districts, wherever
located.




Chapter Twenty-nine

  _Once more, to-night, the woods are white_
    _That lee so dim and far,_
  _Where the wild trout hide and the moose abide_
    _Under the northern star._




Chapter Twenty-nine


Perhaps the brightest spot of that sad period when we were making ready
to leave the woods, with all their comfort, their peace and their
religion, and go back to the harrying haunts of men, to mingle with the
fever and fret of daily strife, is the memory of a trip to Jeremy's Bay.
I don't know in the least where Jeremy's Bay is, but it is somewhere
within an hour's paddle of Jim Charles's Point, and it is that hour and
the return that sticks with me now.

It was among the last days of June--the most wonderful season in the
north woods. The sun seems never ready to set there, then, and all the
world is made of blues and greens and the long, lingering tones of
evening.

We had early tea in preparation for the sunset fishing. It was best, Del
said, in Jeremy's Bay about that time. So it was perhaps an hour earlier
when we started, the canoes light.

In any one life there are not many evenings such as that. It is just as
well, for I should account it a permanent sadness if they became
monotonous. Perhaps they never would. Our course lay between shores--an
island on the one hand, the mainland on the other. When we rounded the
point, we were met by a breeze blown straight from the sunset--a breath
that was wild and fresh and sweet, and billowed the water till it caught
every hue and shimmering iridescence that the sky and shores and setting
sun could give.

We were eager and rested, for we had done little that day, and the empty
canoes slipped like magic into a magical sea of amethyst and emerald
gold, the fresh breeze filling us with life and ecstasy until we seemed
almost to fly. The eyes could not look easily into the glory ahead,
though it was less easy to look away from the enchantment which lay
under the sunset. The Kingdom of Ponemah was there, and it was as if we
were following Hiawatha to that fair and eternal hunting-ground.

Yet when one did turn, the transformation was almost worth while. The
colors were all changed. They were more peaceful, more like reality,
less like a harbor of dreams and visions too fair for the eyes of man to
look upon. A single glance backward, and then away once more between
walls of green, billowing into the sunset--away, away to Jeremy's Bay!

The sun was just on the horizon when we reached there--the water already
in shadow near the shore. So deep and vivid were its hues that we seemed
to be fishing in dye-stuff. And the breeze went out with the sun, and
the painted pool became still, ruffled only where the trout broke water
or a bird dipped down to drink.

I will not speak of the fishing there. I have already promised that I
would not speak of fishing again. But Jeremy's Bay is a spot that few
guides know and few fishermen find. It was our last real fishing, and it
was worthy. Then home to camp, between walls of dusk--away, away from
Jeremy's Bay--silently slipping under darkening shores--silently, and a
little sadly, for our long Day of Joy was closing in--the hour of return
drew near.

And postpone it as you will, the final moment must come--the time when
the rod must be taken down for good; the leaders stripped and coiled in
their box, the fly-book tenderly gone over and the last flies you have
used fitted into place and laid away.

One does not go through that final ritual without a little sentiment--a
little tugging about the heart. The flies were all new and trim and
properly placed when you set out. They were a gay array and you were as
proud of them as of a little garden. They are in disarray now. They have
an unkempt look. The shells are shredded, the feathers are caked and
bitten, the hackle is frazzled and frayed out. Yet you are even more
proud of them than in the beginning. Then they were only a promise, fair
and beautiful to look upon; now they conjure up pictures of supreme
fulfillment--days and moments so firmly set upon the past that they
shall not soon fade away. That big Silver Doctor--from which the shell
has twice been broken, and the feathers wrapped and rewrapped--that must
have been wound with a special blessing, for when all else failed it was
a certain lure. The big trout below Loon Lake rose to that fly, and
accordingly this battered thing will forever be preserved. This scarlet
Breck, with almost every gay feather gone and the silver wrapping
replaced with tinfoil--even when it displayed a mere shred of its former
glory it proved far more fatal than many a newer fly. How vividly it
recalls a certain wild pool of strange, dim lucence where, for me, the
trout would take no other lure. And this Montreal--it has become a magic
brush that paints a picture of black rocks and dark water, and my first
trout taken on a cast. For a hundred years, if I live that long, this
crumpled book and these broken, worn-out flies will bring back the
clear, wild water and the green shores of a Nova Scotia June, the
remoter silences of the deeper forest, the bright camps by twisting
pools and tumbling falls, the flash of the leaping trout, the feel of
the curved rod and the music of the singing reel.

I shall always recall Eddie, then, and I shall bless him for many
things--and forgive him for others. I shall remember Del, too, the
Stout, and Charles the Strong, and that they made my camping worth
while. I was a trial to them, and they were patient--almost unreasonably
so. I am even sorry now for the time that my gun went off and scared
Del, though it seemed amusing at the moment. When the wind beats up and
down the park, and the trees are bending and cracking with ice; when I
know that once more the still places of the North are white and the
waters fettered--I shall shut my eyes and see again the ripple and the
toss of June, and hear once more the under voices of the falls. And some
day I shall return to those far shores, for it is a place to find one's
soul.

Yet perhaps I should not leave that statement unqualified, for it
depends upon the sort of a soul that is to be found. The north wood does
not offer welcome or respond readily to the lover of conventional luxury
and the smaller comforts of living. Luxury is there, surely, but it is
the luxury that rewards effort, and privation, and toil. It is the
comfort of food and warmth and dry clothes after a day of endurance--a
day of wet, and dragging weariness, and bitter chill. It is the bliss of
reaching, after long, toilsome travel, a place where you can meet the
trout--the splendid, full-grown wild trout, in his native home, knowing
that you will not find a picnic party on every brook and a fisherman
behind every tree. Finally, it is the preciousness of isolation, the
remoteness from men who dig up and tear down and destroy, who set
whistles to tooting and bells to jingling--who shriek themselves hoarse
in the market place and make the world ugly and discordant, and life a
short and fevered span in which the soul has a chance to become no more
than a feeble and crumpled thing. And if that kind of a soul pleases
you, don't go to the woods. It will be only a place of mosquitoes, and
general wetness, and discomfort. You won't care for it. You will hate
it. But if you are willing to get wet and stay wet--to get cold and stay
cold--to be bruised, and scuffed, and bitten--to be hungry and thirsty
and to have your muscles strained and sore from unusual taxation: if you
will welcome all these things, not once, but many times, for the sake of
moments of pure triumph and that larger luxury which comes with the
comfort of the camp and the conquest of the wilderness, then go! The
wilderness will welcome you, and teach you, and take you to its heart.
And you will find your own soul there; and the discovery will be worth
while!


THE END




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