We now had on hand, exclusive of the pemmican and other rations still remaining, and the meat cached, eight weeks’ provisions, with plenty of ducks and ptarmigans everywhere, and there seemed to be no further danger from lack of food.
One day, while we were here, five caribou tarried for several minutes within two hundred yards of us and then sauntered off without taking alarm, and later the same day another was seen at closer range; but we did not need them and permitted them to go unmolested.
From a hill near this bay, where we killed the deer, on the eastern side of the lake, we discovered a trail leading off toward a string of lakes to the eastward. This is undoubtedly the portage trail which the Indians follow in their journeys to the Post at Davis Inlet. Toma had told me we might see it here, and that, not far in, on one of these lakes was another Indian camp.
An inordinate craving for fat takes possession of every one after a little while in the bush. We had felt it, and now, with plenty, overindulged, with the result that we were attacked with illness, and for a day or two I was almost too sick to move.
The morning we left Atuknipi, or Reindeer Lake, as we shall call the expansion, a blinding snowstorm was raging, with a strong head wind. Several rapids were run though it was extremely dangerous work, for at times we could scarcely see a dozen yards ahead. At midday the snow ceased, but the wind increased in velocity until finally we found it quite out of the question to paddle against it, and were forced to pitch camp on the shores of a small expansion and under the lee of a hill. For two days the gale blew unceasingly and held us prisoners in our camp. The waves broke on the rocky shores, sending the spray fifty feet in the air and, freezing on the surrounding bowlders, covered them with a glaze of ice. I cannot say what the temperature was, for on the day of our arrival here my last thermometer was broken; but with half a foot of snow on the ground, the freezing spray and the bitter cold wind, we were warned that winter was reaching out her hand toward Labrador and would soon hold us in her merciless grasp. This made me chafe under our imprisonment, for I began to fear that we should not reach the Post before the final freeze-up came, and further travel by canoe would be out of the question. On the morning of September twenty-ninth, the wind, though still blowing half a gale in our faces, had so much abated that we were able to launch our canoe and continue our journey.
It was very cold. The spray froze as it struck our clothing, the canoe was weighted with ice and our paddles became heavy with it. We ran one or two short rapids in safety and then started into another that ended with a narrow strip of white water with a small expansion below. We had just struck the white water, going at a good speed in what seemed like a clear course, when the canoe, at its middle, hit a submerged rock. Before there was time to clear ourselves the little craft swung in the current, and the next moment I found myself in the rushing, seething flood rolling down through the rocks.
When I came to the surface I was in the calm water below the rapid and twenty feet away was the canoe, bottom up, with Easton clinging to it, his clothing fast on a bolt under the canoe. I swam to him and, while he drew his hunting knife and cut himself loose, steadied the canoe. We had neglected—and it was gross carelessness in us—to tie our things fast, and the lighter bags and paddles were floating away while everything that was heavy had sunk beyond hope of recovery. The thwarts, however, held fast in the overturned canoe a bag of pemmican, one other small bag, the tent and tent stove. Treading water to keep ourselves afloat we tried to right the canoe to save these, but our efforts were fruitless. The icy water so benumbed us we could scarcely control our limbs. The tracking line was fast to the stern thwart, and with one end of this in his teeth, Easton swam to a little rocky island just below the rapid and hauled while I swam by the canoe and steadied the things under the thwarts. It took us half an hour to get the canoe ashore, and we could hardly stand when he had it righted and the water emptied out.
Then I looked for wood to build a fire, for I knew that unless we could get artificial heat immediately we would perish with the cold, for the very blood in our veins was freezing. Not a stick was there nearer than an eighth of a mile across the bay. Our paddles were gone, but we got into the canoe and used our hands for paddles. By the time we landed Easton had grown very pale. He began picking and clutching aimlessly at the trees. The blood had congealed in my hands until they were so stiff as to be almost useless. I could not guide them to the trousers pocket at first where I kept my waterproof match-box. Finally I loosened my belt and found the matches, and with the greatest difficulty managed to get one between my benumbed fingers, and scratched it on the bottom of the box. The box was wet and the match head flew off. Everything was wet. Not a dry stone even stuck above the snow. I tried another match on the box, but, like the first, the head flew off, and then another and another with the same result. Under ordinary circumstances I could have secured a light somehow and quickly, but now my hands and fingers were stiff as sticks and refused to grip the matches firmly. I worked with desperation, but it seemed hopeless. Easton’s face by this time had taken on the waxen shade that comes with death, and he appeared to be looking through a haze. His senses were leaving him. I saw something must be done at once, and I shouted to him: “Run! run! Easton, run!” Articulation was difficult, and I did not know my own voice. It seemed very strange and far away to me. We tried to run but had lost control of our legs and both fell down. With an effort I regained my feet but fell again when I tried to go forward. My legs refused to carry me. I crawled on my hands and knees in the snow for a short distance, and it was all I could do to recover my feet. Easton had now lost all understanding of his surroundings. He was looking into space but saw nothing. He was groping blindly with his hands. He did not even know that he was cold. I saw that only a fire could save his life, and perhaps mine, and that we must have it quickly, and made one more superhuman effort with the matches. One after another I tried them with the same result as before until but three remained. All depended upon those three matches. The first one flickered for a moment and my hopes rose, but my poor benumbed fingers refused to hold it and it fell into the snow and went out. The wind was drying the box bottom. I tried another—an old sulphur match, I remember. It burned! I applied it with the greatest care to a handful of the hairy moss that is found under the branches next the trunk of spruce trees, and this ignited. Then I put on small sticks, nursing the blaze with the greatest care, adding larger sticks as the smaller ones took fire. I had dropped on my knees and could reach the sticks from where I knelt, for there was plenty of dead wood lying about. As the blaze grew I rose to my feet and, dragging larger wood, piled it on. A sort of joyful mania took possession of me as I watched the great tongues of flames shooting skyward and listened to the crackling of the burning wood, and I stood back and laughed. I had triumphed over fate and the elements. Our arms, our clothing, nearly all our food, our axes and our paddles, and even the means of making new paddles were gone, but for the present we were safe. Life, no matter how uncertain, is sweet, and I laughed with the very joy of living.