As Mr Ross was anxious to get news from Sagasta-weekee and hear how his family and home had fared during the cyclone, Alec and the Indians started on their return trip early the next morning, taking with them a new canoe to replace the one that had been destroyed by a falling tree. They tarried not on the way, except to shoot a few ducks that were directly in their route. The result was they arrived early in the forenoon at the Old Fort, and were glad to bring the good news that all were well at Sagasta-weekee, and that the storm had passed by several miles away from them.
Of course the story of the destruction of the cache by the wolverine, and then his being killed, had to be told, much to the delight of Frank and Sam, as well as to the satisfaction of the older members of the party, who all rejoiced that at length that cunning fellow, that had so long been a terror and a nuisance, had been destroyed.
As the storm had completely died away, and the weather seemed fine and settled, it was decided to have an early dinner, then push on to Spider Islands, and there camp for the night. The rearrangement of their outfit was soon completed and the journey commenced.
Lake Winnipeg is nearly three hundred miles long, and about eighty wide in its northern part. It is thus like a great inland sea. Great storms sweep over it at times with tremendous fury. It has many shallows and sunken rocks.
The result is, it requires careful navigation for vessels that need any considerable depth of water.
There are some laughable stories afloat about the nervous, excitable captain of the first schooner, who carefully came up to the northern end of the lake from Manitoba and pushed on as far as Norway House. He had secured as a guide an old Hudson Bay voyageur, who had piloted many a brigade of boats from Fort Garry to York Factory, on the Hudson Bay. Of course the small boats to which he was accustomed did not draw nearly as many feet of water as this three-masted schooner. Still he imagined he knew where all the rocks and shoals were, and quickly accepted the offered position as guide or pilot for the first schooner.
In spite of his skill and care several times the vessel bumped against a rock, much to the terror and alarm of the captain, but all the satisfaction he could get out of the imperturbable old native was, as they repeatedly struck them:
“Ah, captain, I told you there were many rocks, and there is another of them.”
Fortunately these rocks are very smooth, and as the vessel was moving along very slowly she was not at all injured by the merely touching them. When, however, she had in passing over some sunken ones nearly stranded on one or two, the peppery old captain could stand it no longer, and so he shouted to the guide:
“Look here, old fellow, I’ll not have my ship’s bottom scratched any more like this.”