We crawled down to the ground, stiff with cold, and dumb with disappointment. I knew it was a complete miss, but "hope springs eternal in the human breast," and we lighted matches and searched the ground and leaves for bloodstains. We searched his trail thus for twenty yards, then gave up, went back to camp and under our blankets. Patton was very decent about it. He knew how I felt. Once only did he make reference to my failure. The next day we were nearing Dawson, where our friends would come and inspect our "bag," when he said, "Well, George, wouldn't it be pleasant to pull into Dawson with a fine moose lying between us in the boat?" "Don't say another word, Tom," I replied, "or I'll burst into tears!"
I felt my almost inexcusable failure very keenly, for I made three separate trips, alone, to Indian river, and hunted there persistently, and very uncomfortably too, for that moose, but he never gave me another chance.
XV.
An Old Prospector
The good ship Araguaya of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Line was under commission during the war as a Canadian hospital ship on the North Atlantic. She and her sister ship the Essequibo, with the Llandovery Castle and Letitia, composed the fleet used to convey our wounded from the old land to Canada. The Letitia was wrecked in a fog on the rocks near Halifax with no loss of lives. The Llandovery Castle was sunk by a submarine while returning empty to England. Mostly all the ship's officers, M.O.'s, nurses, and crew were drowned or shot by the fiend who commanded the U-boat. The chaplain, Capt. McPhail, was killed. By strange chance his body, with life-belt, was carried towards France and months afterwards was found on the beach and buried.
Thank God all the German submarines were not run by such as sank the Llandovery. I have a snapshot taken from the deck of the Essequibo of a U-boat which stopped that ship, searched her thoroughly but courteously and then let her go unharmed.
I spent ten months as chaplain on the Araguaya and a happy time it was. That was the "cushiest" job I have ever had. We were under cover all the time, had abundance of good food and luxuries for everyone, and every device that money could buy to entertain our patients on their nine-day trip across. Besides, in my special work I had a flock which never strayed far from me. They couldn't!
Practically all the staterooms had been taken out, only sufficient being left for M.O's, nurses, and ship's officers. This made fine, large, airy wards for the bed cases, fitted with swinging cots so that they did not feel the roll of the vessel. I had a comfortable room all to myself, for Col. Whidden and later Col. Murray were both very considerate of my comfort.
You will be interested to know that at the celebration of the completion of the Kiel Canal, the Araguaya was loaned by the R.M.S.P. Co. to the Kaiser for use as his private yacht during the regatta, as a token of British goodwill. The suite of rooms our O.C. used had been the Kaiser's, and mine was one of those that "Little Willie" had occupied!
The ship's officers and crew were all first-class seamen of heroic stuff. The majority of them had been through the dread experience of being torpedoed, some two or three times, and had seen many of their mates shot down or drowned. Yet here they were from stoke-hold to pilot-house carrying on as cheerfully as ever.