Little Rivers: A Book of Essays in Profitable Idleness

by Henry Van Dyke

It was interesting to see how closely the guides could guess at the weight of the fish by looking at them. The ouananiche are much longer in proportion to their weight than trout, and a novice almost always overestimates them. But the guides were not deceived. “This one will weigh four pounds and three-quarters, and this one four pounds, but that one not more than three pounds; he is meagre, M’sieu’, but he is meagre.” When we went ashore and tried the spring balance (which every angler ought to carry with him, as an aid to his conscience), the guides guess usually proved to be within an ounce or two of the fact. Any one of the senses can be educated to do the work of the others. The eyes of these experienced fishermen were as sensitive to weight as if they had been made to use as scales.

Below the last fall the Peribonca flows for a score of miles with an unbroken, ever-widening stream, through low shores of forest and bush and meadow. Near its mouth the Little Peribonca joins it, and the immense flood, nearly two miles wide, pours into Lake St. John. Here we saw the first outpost of civilisation—a huge unpainted storehouse, where supplies are kept for the lumbermen and the new settlers. Here also we found the tiny, lame steam launch that was to carry us back to the Hotel Roberval. Our canoes were stowed upon the roof of the cabin, and we embarked for the last stage of our long journey.

As we came out of the river-mouth, the opposite shore of the lake was invisible, and a stiff “Nor’wester” was rolling big waves across the bar. It was like putting out into the open sea. The launch laboured and puffed along for four or five miles, growing more and more asthmatic with every breath. Then there was an explosion in the engine-room. Some necessary part of the intestinal machinery had blown out. There was a moment of confusion. The captain hurried to drop the anchor, and the narrow craft lay rolling in the billows.

What to do? The captain shrugged his shoulders like a Frenchman. “Wait here, I suppose.” But how long? “Who knows? Perhaps till to-morrow; perhaps the day after. They will send another boat to look for us in the course of time.”

But the quarters were cramped; the weather looked ugly; if the wind should rise, the cranky launch would not be a safe cradle for the night. Damon and I preferred the canoes, for they at least would float if they were capsized. So we stepped into the frail, buoyant shells of bark once more, and danced over the big waves toward the shore. We made a camp on a wind-swept point of sand, and felt like shipwrecked mariners. But it was a gilt-edged shipwreck. For our larder was still full, and as if to provide us with the luxuries as well as the necessities of life, Nature had spread an inexhaustible dessert of the largest and most luscious blueberries around our tents.

After supper, strolling along the beach, we debated the best way of escape; whether to send one of our canoes around the eastern shore of the lake that night, to meet the steamer at the Island House and bring it to our rescue; or to set out the next morning, and paddle both canoes around the western end of the lake, thirty miles, to the Hotel Roberval. While we were talking, we came to a dry old birch-tree, with ragged, curling bark. “Here is a torch,” cried Damon, “to throw light upon the situation.” He touched a match to it, and the flames flashed up the tall trunk until it was transformed into a pillar of fire. But the sudden illumination burned out, and our counsels were wrapt again in darkness and uncertainty, when there came a great uproar of steam-whistles from the lake. They must be signalling for us. What could it mean?

We fired our guns, leaped into a canoe, leaving two of the guides to break camp, and paddled out swiftly into the night. It seemed an endless distance before we found the feeble light where the crippled launch was tossing at anchor. The captain shouted something about a larger steamboat and a raft of logs, out in the lake, a mile or two beyond. Presently we saw the lights, and the orange glow of the cabin windows. Was she coming, or going, or standing still? We paddled on as fast as we could, shouting and firing off a revolver until we had no more cartridges. We were resolved not to let that mysterious vessel escape us, and threw ourselves with energy into the novel excitement of chasing a steamboat in the dark.

Then the lights began to swing around; the throbbing of paddle-wheels grew louder and louder; she was evidently coming straight toward us. At that moment it flashed upon us that, while she had plenty of lights, we had none! We were lying, invisible, right across her track. The character of the steamboat chase was reversed. We turned and fled, as the guides say, à quatre pattes, into illimitable space, trying to get out of the way of our too powerful friend. It makes considerable difference, in the voyage of life, whether you chase the steamboat, or the steamboat chases you.

Meantime our other canoe had approached unseen. The steamer passed safely between the two boats, slackening speed as the pilot caught our loud halloo! She loomed up above us like a man-of-war, and as we climbed the ladder to the main-deck we felt that we had indeed gotten out of the wilderness. My old friend, Captain Savard, made us welcome. He had been sent out, much to his disgust, to catch a runaway boom of logs and tow it back to Roberval; it would be an all night affair; but we must take possession of his stateroom and make ourselves comfortable; he would certainly bring us to the hotel in time for breakfast. So he went off on the upper deck, and we heard him stamping about and yelling to his crew as they struggled to get their unwieldy drove of six thousand logs in motion.

All night long we assisted at the lumbermen’s difficult enterprise. We heard the steamer snorting and straining at her clumsy, stubborn convoy. The hoarse shouts of the crew, disguised in a mongrel dialect which made them (perhaps fortunately) less intelligible and more forcible, mingled with our broken dreams.