“Yes, sir, that suits me fine,” replied be promptly, and in a tone that left no doubt of the fact that he was glad to go.
“Well, this is Thursday. I’ll write my letters tomorrow, and you may go on Saturday.”
“All right, sir.”
The letters were all written and ready for Duncan on Friday night, and he packed sufficient provisions into a waterproof bag I gave him to carry him out, and prepared for an early start in the morning. But the rain that had been falling for several days still poured down on Saturday, and he decided to postpone his departure another day in the hope of better weather on Sunday. He needed the time anyway to mend his sealskin boots before starting back, for he had pretty nearly worn them out on the sharp rocks on the portages. The rest of us were well provided with oil-tanned moccasins (sometimes called larigans or shoe-packs), which I have found are the best footwear for a journey like ours. Pete’s khaki trousers were badly torn; and Richards and Easton, who wore Mackinaw trousers, were in rags. This cloth had not withstood the hard usage of Labrador travel a week, and both men, when they bad a spare hour, occupied it in sewing on canvas patches, until now there was almost as much canvas patch as Mackinaw cloth in these garments. Richards, however, carried an extra pair of moleskin trousers, and I wore moleskin. This latter material is the best obtainable, so far as my experience goes, for rough traveling in the bush, and my trousers stood the trip with but one small patch until winter came.
Sunday morning was still stormy, but before noon the rain ceased, and Duncan announced his intention of starting homeward at once. We raised our flags and exchanged our farewells and Godspeeds with him. Then he left us, and as he disappeared down the trail a strange sense of loneliness came upon us, for it seemed to us that his going broke the last link that connected us with the outside world. Duncan was always so cheerful, with his quaint humor, and so ready to do his work to the very best of his ability, that we missed him very much, and often spoke of him in the days that followed.
We had made the best of our enforced idleness in this camp to repack and condense and dry our outfit as much as possible. The venison, at the first imperfectly cured, had been so continuously soaked that the most of what remained of it was badly spoiled and we could not use it, and with regret we threw it away. The erbswurst was also damp, and this we put into small canvas bags, which were then placed near the stove to dry.
A rising barometer augured good weather for Monday morning. A light wind scattered the clouds that had for so many days entombed the world in storm and gloom, and the sun broke out gloriously, setting the moisture-laden trees aglinting as though hung with a million pearls and warming the damp fir trees until the air was laden with the forest perfume. It was as though a pall had been lifted from the world. How our hearts swelled with the new enthusiasm of the returned sunshine! It was always so. It seemed as if the long-continued storms bound up our hearts and crushed the buoyancy from them; but the returning sunshine melted the bonds at once and gave us new ambition. A robin sang gayly from a near-by tree—a messenger from the kindlier Southland come to cheer us—and the “whisky jacks,” who had not shown themselves for several days, appeared again with their shrill cries, venturing impudently into the very door of our tent to claim scraps of refuse.
I was for moving forward that very afternoon, but some of our things were still wet, and I deemed it better judgment to let them have the day in which to dry and to delay our start until Monday morning.
After supper, in accordance with the Sunday custom established by Hubbard when I was with him, I read aloud a selection from the Testament—the last chapter of Revelation—and then went out of the tent to take the usual nine o’clock weather observation. Between the horizon and a fringe of black clouds that hung low in the north the reflected sun set the heavens afire, and through the dark fir trees the lake stretched red as a lake of blood. I called the others to see it and Easton joined me. We climbed a low hill close at hand to view the scene, and while we looked the red faded into orange, and the lake was transformed into a mirror, which reflected the surrounding trees like an inverted forest. In the direction from which we had come we could see the high blue hills beyond the Nascaupee, very dim in the far distance. Below us the Crooked River lost itself as it wound its tortuous way through the wooded valley that we had traversed. Somewhere down there Duncan was bivouacked, and we wondered if his fire was burning at one of our old camping places.