They did not attempt to build a shelter, but cut evergreen branches, shook the water from them, and covered the ground under the canoe. The driving rain prevented them from finding food. Not an animal or bird ventured forth, and fishing from the shore was without result. So the three went supperless. When their canoe had disappeared from the burning island, the one remaining blanket had gone with it, for the blankets, folded or rolled, were always carried in the canoe to kneel upon or lean against. So the campers had no cover that night but the damp spruce and balsam branches they burrowed into, in the attempt to keep warm. Jean was the worst off, for he did not even have a coat.
[XXIX]
NEAR STARVATION
The next morning was foggy, but the water was calm, so the voyageurs made an early start. As they had nothing to eat, they did not have to delay for breakfast. In the thick mist, navigation was difficult, however, even for the experienced Ojibwa. Disaster came quickly. They ran too close to an island that lay off the end of the point separating their camping ground from the open lake, struck upon a sharp, submerged rock, and tore a bad hole in the bottom of the canoe. The water came in so rapidly that, to reach shore, Ronald and the Indian had to put all their strength and speed into their paddling, while Jean bailed as fast as he could. It was fortunate that they were only a few hundred feet from the point, or they could not have gained it before the boat filled. They had no time to choose a landing place, and, striking the rocks, damaged the canoe still more.
The bark covering was so badly torn that mending it would take considerable time. So the three decided that breakfast was the first essential. While Ronald gathered fire-wood and Etienne attempted to coax a blaze from the wet materials, Jean looked for a place where he could fish from the shore. From a pool among the rocks, he dipped up some tiny fish that he could use for bait, but neither he nor Ronald succeeded in catching anything large enough to be eaten. Finally they breakfasted on two squirrels that Ronald brought down with stones, scanty fare indeed for three men who had fasted for nearly twenty-four hours.
After they had finished the last drop of the squirrel stew, the two boys decided to go back around the shore to the mouth of a stream they had noticed the day before. There they might be able to catch some brook trout, while Etienne was repairing the canoe.
Accordingly, the two lads scrambled along the rocky point, to the head of the narrow little bay where they had spent the night. They knew that the stream entered the lake at the upper end of another subsidiary bay, that lay parallel to the one where they were. Instead of going around the intervening point, they risked losing themselves in the fog, and struck off through the woods. After climbing a ridge, they came upon the stream they sought, running through a swampy valley. It was not a favorable place for trout, so they continued on down the brook to its mouth, around the end of the little bay, and along higher ground for about two miles, to another larger and more rapid stream, that discharged into the lake through a break between the ridges. The fog was so thick that the lads, had they not been guided by the ridge they traveled along, might easily have become lost and have failed to find the stream they were seeking. Indeed they had underestimated the distance, and had begun to fear they had missed the place, when they came suddenly to the edge of the ravine where the brown waters flowed swiftly down to the lake. The little trout were biting so eagerly that the fishermen soon had fine strings. These were primitive, uneducated trout that had never been fished for, and did not have to be lured with bright colored, artificial flies, but were ready to rise to minnows and even to bare hooks.
The fog was still dense when the boys, well laden with fish, started to make their way back to their camping place, but when they climbed out of the ravine, they found it was no longer a motionless curtain of mist that hung about them, but waves of moisture driven before a raw northeast wind. Before they reached the point where Etienne was at work on the canoe, the fog had turned to rain, cold, fine and mist-like.
“Northeaster coming,” grunted the Indian, without even glancing at the strings of trout. “Find better place and make wigwam quick.”
Hungry though they were, the three did not even wait to cook their fish, but, seizing the canoe, made speed back along the point to look for a sheltered camping spot. The northeast wind swept the whole length of the bay, and it was not until they reached thick woods at its head, that they found a good place. A bit of partly open ground surrounded by trees was hastily cleared and leveled, and a wigwam erected. Not until the hut was finished and a good supply of fire-wood cut and piled inside, did Nangotook allow the boys to even clean their fish. By that time the cold rain was coming down hard, and the wind was bending the tree tops. Within their bark shelter the three, wet, chilled and painfully hungry, sat around their little fire and waited impatiently for the fish to broil. It was well that the lads had brought back long strings, for to their hunger one little trout was scarcely more than a mouthful.