Chapter Twenty Three.
Sudden Transition from Winter to Spring—Interesting Phenomena—Sam’s Last Great Run with his Dogs—His Unique Adventure—The Open Water—His Novel Raft—Successful Crossing—Frank and Alec’s Duck-shooting Trip—The Mighty Nelson—A Hunter’s Paradise—Returning under Difficulties—One more Shot at the Wild Geese—Frank and Rumours—The Fair Visitants at Sagasta-weekee.
Very rapid indeed is the transformation from one season to another in the high latitudes. When the long, steady winter breaks it does so with a suddenness that is startling to a person who observes it for the first time. The snow disappears with a marvellous rapidity. The ice, that was like granite in hardness and several feet thick on the great lakes, becomes dark and porous, and in spots literally seems to rot away. Then along the great cracks, where it had burst by the power of the terrible frost some months before, it now opens, and soon great fields of it become floating masses on the waters. Under the action of the brilliant rays of the sun it becomes disintegrated, and falls away in crystals that are of various sizes and as long as the ice is thick. This crystallisation begins early, and makes the ice very dangerous and uncertain. The Indians call this slivering of the ice, candling.
Sam had a narrow escape from drowning on account of this rapid transformation of the ice. He had harnessed his dogs and gone out on the shining lake for a run. The snow had all disappeared from the land, and so the great icy expanse was all that was left for an invigorating run with the dogs. The frost had been keen in the night, and so everything was firm and hard when he left in the morning. The day was an ideal April one. The sun was full of brightness, and the south winds were full of warmth. For miles and miles Sam recklessly dashed along with his splendid dogs. He was sorry at the thought that he was so soon to forever leave them behind in that North Land. Soon some pools of water on the ice into which his dogs splashed brought him to his senses, and he turned for the home run to Sagasta-weekee, now perhaps twenty miles away.
“Rip Van Winkle,” said Sam; “sure. I am that same old fellow, to judge by the change since I travelled over this icy lake.”
Great indeed was the transformation which the sun and south wind had made. While there was still plenty of good ice, there were many dark, treacherous spots all around, which had so crystallised by the sun’s rays that, although the ice there was still three or four feet thick, it was unsafe for dogs or boy. Fortunately, dogs become very wise in this matter, and so Spitfire carefully wended his way among these dangerous places, cautiously keeping where the ice was firm and solid. Rapid travelling was in some places impossible, for fear of running into a bit of rotten ice.
Suddenly Sam was stopped by coming to a long stretch of open water. It was a place where, during one of the coldest nights, the ice had suddenly burst open with a report like a great cannon. The crack then made was about twenty or thirty feet wide and some miles in length. So intense was the cold that the ice in a few hours formed again on the water which was in this great opening. But when these great breaks in the thick ice occur, toward the end of the winter, the new ice that forms is never so thick as is the rest, and so when the spring warmth comes it is the first to disappear. It was to one of these open seams that Sam had now come. In the early hours of the morning it had been covered with ice sufficiently strong to hold him, but now it was full of broken fragments that rose and fell on the water that was stirred up by the strong south wind. As far as the eye could reach north and south extended this open channel. Sam was perplexed, and hardly knew what to do. To drive across was impossible, as the seam was much wider than his cariole was long. To wait until the night frost again froze up the water was a risk, as to judge by the warm south wind then blowing, if it so continued there would be no freezing of any consequence. Thus Sam was troubled and annoyed at having allowed himself to be thus caught, especially as he and the other boys had heard Mr Ross and the Indians refer to just such experiences. With his vexation at having thus had his trail so suddenly broken, there flashed into his memory the stories of how some of the Indians, when in just such dangerous places, had escaped by making great rafts of the ice and on them floating across the open water. No sooner had this thought come to Sam than he fairly shouted out: