'I daursay now, that stick's standing aboot a thousand years: I've counted fourteen hunder rings in the wood of a pine no much bigger. Ou, 'twill mak a gran' mast for a seventy-four—nigh a hunder feet lang, and as straight as a rod.'
Stripping off the bark and dressing the knots was the next work, which would complete its readiness for Devonport dockyards, or perchance for the Cherbourg shipwrights. During this operation the foreman made an excursion to visit his other gangs, and then took his visitors a little aside into the woods to view what he termed a 'regular take-in.' It was a group of fine-looking pines, wearing all the outward semblance of health, but when examined, proving mere tubes of bark, charred and blackened within, and ragged along the seam where the fire had burst out.
'How extraordinary!' said Argent. 'Why were they not burned equally through?'
'I hae been thinkin' the fire caught them in the spring, when the sap rins strong; so the sap-wood saved thae shells, to misguide the puir axmen. I thought I had a fair couple o' cribs o' lumber a' ready to hand, when I spied the holes, and found my fine pines naething but empty pipes.'
He had been fashioning two saplings into strong handspikes, and now offered one each to the gentlemen. 'Ye'll not be too proud to bear a hand wi' the mast aboon: it'll be a kittle job lugging it to the pond; so just lend us a shove now and then.'
The great mass was at last got into motion, by a difficult concerted starting of all the oxen at the same moment.
Round the brilliant log fire, while pannikins of tea circulated, and some flakes of the falling snow outside came fluttering down into the blaze, the lumberers lay on their bunks, or sat on blocks, talking, sleeping, singing, as the mood moved. French Canadians are native-born songsters; and their simple ballad melodies, full of réfrain and repetition, sounded very pleasing even to Argent's amateur ears.
'I can imagine that this shanty life must be pleasant enough,' said Argent, rolling himself in his buffalo robe preparatory to sleep by the fire.
'I'll just tell ye what it is,' returned the foreman; 'nane that has gane lumbering can tak' kindly to ony ither calling. They hae caught the wandering instinct, and the free life o' the woods becomes a needcessity, if I might say sae. D'ye ken the greatest trouble I find in towns? Trying to sleep on a civilised bed. I canna do't, that's the fact; nor be sitting to civilised dinners, whar the misguided folk spend thrice the time that's needfu', fiddling with a fork an' spune. I like to eat an' be done wi' it.'
Which little social trait was of a piece with Mr. Foreman's energy and promptness in all the circumstances of life. In a very few minutes from the aforesaid speech he was sound asleep, for he was determined to waste no time in accomplishing that either.