[Raft] Wrecked on the Repojoki.
Of course we all were as wet as water could make us, and our chattels were sodden, and the exertion of making the raft and navigating her had been great; but the incident of crossing the Repojoki had on the whole distinctly cheered us. On every there-and-back crossing, the raft had been swept some two hundred odd yards down-stream; and so by the time the whole train was across, we had perforce gained knowledge of some thousand yards of the farther bank, and at one place came upon indications of a track. There were no footmarks, certainly; but some bushes had been axed away as though to assist a landing, and we set out from these with renewed hopes of finding Ivalomati.
The country, too, tried to cheer us. It was true there were more swamps, and they were even wetter and wider than those we had crossed before, but their bosky pools were gilded with sunshine, and here and there clumps of pink flowers, and white flowers, and blue flowers, caught the eye and tried to gladden it. On some of the marshes, too, there were curlew; and life, after the dead regions we had passed through, is always pleasant to look upon and hear. At one halt, a pair of these curlew got up, screaming, and went through the same pantomime one had seen them in so many times in the foot-hills at home during breeding season. Hayter must needs stroll off to look for their young. But after he had been gone a dozen minutes, I chanced to look down, and saw the chicken he was searching for squatted stolidly on the ground not four inches from my foot. In tint and shape it harmonised wonderfully with its surroundings, and had evidently received instructions to “lie close” whatever befel. Indeed it withstood a good two minutes’ proguing with a grass blade before it deigned to stir; and when the little stilt-legged oddity did get up and run, in three turns it was absorbed into the landscape again beyond human sight. And in the meanwhile its parents were getting more daring. They were making such determined swoops at our heads that we actually had to drive them off. They were as fierce in their respect as nesting Richardson’s skuas on the outlying islets of the Shetlands.
Cloud-berries grew on these swamps, but though we looked thirstily for fruit, we could see none even approaching ripeness. Most of the berries were green, or half formed; only a few were scarlet; none had got the amber tint which one has learned to love so well on a Norwegian shooting. And once, too, on a scrap of stony, rising ground, we saw a woodpecker at work, digging grubs from the trunk of a gaunt, dead pine.
We came into another forest, where the air was heavy with mosquitoes, and the weary carriers could hardly drag one foot up to the other, and still on we plodded. And then through the trees we caught a gleam of broad water.
No word was said, but instinctively the pace quickened. A breeze was blowing towards us, and down it came the faint scent of wood-smoke. It seemed the most delicious smell that had ever met our nostrils.
We came out of the cover and stood on the bank of a broad, sluggish river. On the farther bank was a canoe drawn up, and beyond it stood a rude hut of logs. It was Ivalomati, and we did not forget to congratulate ourselves. Johann exploded into roar after roar of laughter, and became the genial acrobat again, as though he had never been anything else; Pedr turned on the beautiful smile to its most beautiful pitch; and Pat forgot his tiredness, and his sore heel, and danced a jig of triumph, and let out of him a regular string of Irish yells for some one to bring across the canoe.
[Marie], the Sorcerer’s Daughter