Two days later when Marcel went ashore on the Isle of Graves of the Esquimos, to boil his kettle, he found, to his delight, a Fort George goose-boat on the same errand. The Crees who had just left the post to shoot the winter's supply of gray and snowy geese, or "wavies," as they are called from their resemblance in flight to a white banner waving in the sun, had met, two nights before off the mouth of Big River, the canoe he was following. The dog-thieves, who were strangers, did not stop at the post, but had continued south.
With two paddles they were not holding their lead, he laughed to himself, but were coming back. If he hurried he would overhaul them before they reached Rupert. He did not know the Rupert River, and if once they started inland he would be caught by the "freeze-up" in a strange country, so he continued on late into the night.
Then followed day after day of endless toil at the paddle, for he knew he must travel while the weather held. He could not hope to make Rupert, or even East Main before the wind changed; which might mean idling for days on a beach pounded by seas in which no canoe could live. At times, with a stern breeze, he rigged a piece of canvas to a spruce pole and sailed. But one thought dominated him as mile after mile of the gray East Coast slid past; the thought of having his puppy once more in his canoe, fretting at the gulls and ducks and geese, as he headed north.
Only through necessity did he stop to shoot geese, whose gray and white legions were gathering on the coast for the annual migration. At dawn the "gou-luk!" of the gray ganders marshalling their families out to the feeding grounds, which once sent his blood leaping, now left him cold. He was hunting bigger game, and his heart hungered for his puppy, beaten and half-starved, in all likelihood, travelling somewhere ahead down that bleak coast in the canoe of two men who did not know that close on their heels followed an enemy as dogged, as relentless, as a wolf on the trail of an old caribou abandoned by the herd.
And so, after days of ceaseless dip and swing, dip and swing, which at night left his back and arms stiff and his fingers numb, Jean Marcel turned into the mouth of the East Main River and paddled up to the post, where he learned that the canoe of the half-breeds had not been seen, and that no hunters of their description traded there. So he turned again to the Bay and headed south for Rupert House. Off the Wild Geese Islands he met what he had for days been dreading, the first September north-wester, and was driven ashore. For the following three days he rested and hunted geese, and when the storm whipped itself out, went on, and at last, crossing Boatswain's Bay, rounded Mount Sherrick and paddled up Rupert Bay to the famous old post, which, since the days of the Merry Monarch and his favorite, Prince Rupert, the first Governor of the "Company of Merchants-Adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay," has guarded the river mouth—an uninterrupted history of two centuries and a half of fair dealing with the red fur-hunters of Rupert Land.
"So you're the son of André Marcel? Well, well! Time does fly! Why, André and I made many a camp together in the old days. There was a man, my lad!"
Jean straightened his wide shoulders in pride at this praise of his father by Alec Cameron, factor at Rupert. When he had explained the object of his long journey south in the fall, the latter raised his bushy eyebrows in amazement.
"You mean to tell me that you paddled from Whale River in fifteen days, after a dog?"
"Oui, M'sieu Cameron."
"Well, you didn't waste the daylight or the moon either. You're sure a son of André Marcel. It must be a record for a single paddle; and all for a pup, eh?"