In the morning our teams lined up again. My brother headed for Log-Cabin, thence Vancouver, then Eastern Canada and home. I to travel wearily on for another day towards a mining camp with all its unknown problems for me as a green missionary. I was homesick, anxious, and physically felt almost useless. Maybe I had some unshed tears in my eyes as we stood together a moment before saying good-bye, for John said, "Well, George, you're just at the present moment the 'wateriest-looking' preacher I think I've ever seen." It was "good medicine" for it made us all laugh and so we parted.
The rest of the trip was luckily easy for me. Stewart had left part of his load at the Tepee and I was able to ride on the sleigh whenever I wished. By noon my appetite asserted itself with redoubled force. We stopped at the Half-Way House and had a satisfying dinner. By the time we came within sight of Atlin, across the five miles of frozen lake, the clouds had cleared away and I felt the zest for adventure and love for my work, that had brought me north, coming into their own again.
It was a week before I got the stiffness of that run over the "Fan-Tail" out of my muscles. My memory will ever hold a clear-cut and painful recollection of it.
II
Down the Yukon on a Scow
Sains-en-Gohelle is a neat little mining town not far from Lens where the Canadian Camerons on several occasions put in their short "rest" periods after their turn in the trenches.
I remember the place more distinctly because it was there I first donned the kilts. The Quartermaster, Medical Officer, and Chaplain were attached to the battalion for rations and duty only, and on such matters as uniform were not under the authority of the battalion commander. So I had never changed from the usual khaki dress. But our new O.C., Lt.-Col. Urquhart, was keen to have us all in kilts so that on parade we three would not look, as he put it, "like stray sheep." The M.O. and the Q.M. (both named MacKenzie) were willing enough. They were stout built fellows. I hesitated. I am of the grey-hound type, built for speed not beauty, and feared that I would look a spectacle in kilts. Indeed, I was apparently not alone in my opinion for Major Tommie Taylor advised me if I put them on not to go out too much when it was getting dusk. "The police might arrest you, padre," he said, "for not having any visible means of support."
The O.C's wishes prevailed at last and Macpherson and I went over to see Henderson, the regimental tailor. We picked out a good kilt from the stores, my measurements were taken and next day I had a try on. It took quite a while before everything was right and I was ready for the road. I walked down the little village street that first time in kilts with something the same unpleasantly self-conscious feeling you have when in a dream you find yourself in a front seat at some public gathering with only pyjamas on. I saw two French peasant girls coming. I blushed all over and felt like "taking to the tall timber." But I faced the music with a fearfully conscious bravado. My fears and self-conceit fell in ruins together for they never gave me so much as a glance as we passed. Of course I might have known that "kilties" were a common sight to them and that they had seen many better legs than mine!
At dinner I had Colonel Urquhart look me over and he decided I was first-class (said so, anyway!), a little white about the knees but the sun would mend that. I soon felt quite at home in the kilt on parade and off it, and in the six months I wore them nothing happened to justify Tommie Taylor's warning.
I recollect that one day during a "rest" I happened in to one of the huts where they were discussing for the "nth" time the famous naval battle of Jutland fought the year before. Someone had picked up an old newspaper, a Sunday Observer, giving a critical account of the whole engagement, and they were talking it over again. All were agreed that it was a real victory for our Navy, for while the action was costly and the German fleet was not destroyed, yet the glorious fact remained that the Huns had had to "beat" it. We patted our Navy on the back again in several different styles and gloated over the return of the enemy's fleet to its compulsory hermitage at Kiel. Then someone started to talk about the relative merits of land and sea fighting from the standpoint of discomfort and danger to the fighting man. "Smiler" McDermid was all for the Navy. "Those big battleships are just floating fortified hotels," he said. "Every man has his own bunk, blankets warm and dry, regular hours, good grub, and no pack to carry. They don't average a fight a year and then the scrap is over one way or the other in an hour or two. Besides they're always getting in to port to coal up or be dry-docked and then there is shore-leave every night in dear old Blighty. No long marches, no mud, no trenches, dirt or vermin. Give me the Navy for a cushy job every time." "Shorty" Montgomery didn't think it would be as good as it sounded—"You would get fed up with the ship after a few months. It would be your prison for weeks at a time. There would be nothing to look at but the ocean, nowhere to go but walk around your own limited quarters. On the other hand, we are constantly moving from one front to another and in and out of the line and seeing new towns and villages. It's a sort of free Government tour through France and Flanders. Our life, although hard, is not so monotonous nor the discipline so strict as it must be in the Navy. In a scrap, if the ship goes down, you go with it, while on land you have a fighting chance to save your own life anyway."