The camp-kettle was an invention of McBain’s. It was, indeed, a multum in parvo, for in it could be stored not only the saucepans and a frying-pan, but the plates, and knives and forks, and spoons, and even the saucers and salt. Seth was cook, and when I have told you that, it is a waste of ink to say that about dinner-time a wolf or two would generally drop round. They would not come too near, but would stand well down to leeward, sniffing all the fragrance they could, smacking their lips and licking their chops in the most comical way imaginable. This was what Rory called “dining on the cheap.” After dinner it was very pleasant, rolled in Highland plaids, to lounge around the camp fire for an hour or two before turning in. What wonderful stories of a trapper’s life Seth used to tell them, and with what rapt attention Rory used to listen to them.
“Wherein he spake of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field,
Of hair-breadth ’scapes,
On rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven.”
Perhaps the greatest charm about these yarns of Seth’s was their truthfulness. They were as far above your ordinary traveller’s tales as the moon in the sky is from the moon in the mill-dam—as substance from shadow.
When gloaming deepened into night, when the call of the wild drake resounded far beneath them, and the cry of the white owl fell on the ear, when the north star looked down on them with its bright, clear, kindly eye, then, spreading their blankets under the tents, and wrapping their plaids more closely around them, they committed themselves to Heaven’s protection, and sweetest dreamless slumber.
The few days succeeding a “big shoot” were nearly always spent in fishing. Strange to say, the fish in the river, of which there were abundance, could not be got to look at the flies our heroes had brought with them from home, so Seth came to the front again. He busked great gaudy flies, that the daintiest trout hadn’t the heart to resist.
It was autumn now, the leaves in the forest had first turned a dingier green, then the sunset of life stole over them. Rory had never seen such tinting before. You may be sure our dreamy boy couldn’t resist a temptation like this. He was painter as well as poet, and so he forgot to fish, forgot to shoot, forgot everything in his wanderings except the gorgeous scenery around him. He sketched and sketched, and stored his portfolio.
“How delighted she will be!” he often caught himself thinking, if not saying, when he succeeded with some happier effect than usual.
Autumn waned apace.
They went less often now to the distant shooting-grounds, but they went to the forest, McBain and all his merry men—at least, all that could be spared. They went to fell the trees and bring them home, for the captain had an idea, and this idea became a plan, and the plan was to build a house close to the shore near which lay the Snowbird—not a living-house, but a hall in which the men could take exercise, during the short and stormy days of the long Arctic winter that would very soon surround them. So every morning now a party went to the woods, with axe and adze, to fell and trim the pine-trees. The portion of the forest which was chosen stood high over a little green and bosky glen, adown which a streamlet ran, joining the great river about a mile below. One by one the trees were hurled down the steep sides of the glen, and dragged to the rivulet; they were then floated on to the river, and here formed into a raft, which could be guided seawards with long poles; the rest of the journey was easily accomplished by help of the cutter and gig. And so the work went cheerily on.
Old Ap was in his element now; his turn seemed to have come for enjoyment. He had rehabilitated himself in that wonderful old head-to-feet apron and his paper cap, and bustled about as lively as a superannuated cricket from “morning’s sun till dine,” giving orders here and orders there, and always humming a song, and never without his snuff-box.