In the camp all was silent. The men had chosen their several beds according to fancy, under the shadow of a bush or tree. The fires had burned low—so low that it was with difficulty Charley, as he lay, could discern the recumbent forms of the men, whose presence was indicated by the deep, soft, regular breathing of tired but, healthy constitutions. Sometimes a stray moonbeam shot through the leaves and branches, and cast a ghost-like, flickering light over the scene, which ever and anon was rendered more mysterious by a red flare of the fire as an ember fell, blazed up for an instant, and left all shrouded in greater darkness than before.
At first Charley continued his sad thoughts, staring all the while at the red embers of the expiring fire; but soon his eyes began to blink, and the stumps of trees began to assume the form of voyageurs, and voyageurs to look like stumps of trees. Then a moonbeam darted in, and Mr. Addison stood on the other side of the fire. At this sight Charley started, and Mr. Addison disappeared, while the boy smiled to think how he had been dreaming while only half asleep. Then Kate appeared, and seemed to smile on him; but another ember fell, and another red flame sprang up, and put her to flight too. Then a low sigh of wind rustled through the branches, and Charley felt sure that he saw Kate again coming through the woods, singing the low, soft tune that she was so fond of singing, because it was his own favourite air. But soon the air ceased; the fire faded away; so did the trees, and the sleeping voyageurs; Kate last of all dissolved, and Charley sank into a deep, untroubled slumber.
CHAPTER X.
Varieties, vexations, and vicissitudes.
Life is checkered—there is no doubt about that; whatever doubts a man may entertain upon other subjects, he can have none upon this, we feel quite certain. In fact, so true is it that we would not for a moment have drawn the reader’s attention to it here, were it not that our experience of life in the backwoods corroborates the truth; and truth, however well corroborated, is none the worse of getting a little additional testimony now and then in this sceptical generation.
Life is checkered, then, undoubtedly. And life in the backwoods strengthens the proverb, for it is a peculiarly striking and remarkable specimen of life’s variegated character.
There is a difference between sailing smoothly along the shores of Lake Winnipeg with favouring breezes, and being tossed on its surging billows by the howling of a nor’-west wind, that threatens destruction to the boat, or forces it to seek shelter on the shore. This difference is one of the checkered scenes of which we write, and one that was experienced by the brigade more than once during its passage across the lake.
Since we are dealing in truisms, it may not, perhaps, be out of place here to say that going to bed at night is not by any means getting up in the morning; at least so several of our friends found to be the case when the deep sonorous voice of Louis Peltier sounded through the camp on the following morning, just as a very faint, scarcely perceptible, light tinged the eastern sky.
“Lève, lève, lève!” he cried, “lève, lève, mes enfants!”
Some of Louis’s infants replied to the summons in a way that would have done credit to a harlequin. One or two active little Canadians, on hearing the cry of the awful word lève, rose to their feet with a quick bound, as if they had been keeping up an appearance of sleep as a sort of practical joke all night, on purpose to be ready to leap as the first sound fell from the guide’s lips. Others lay still, in the same attitude in which they had fallen asleep, having made up their minds, apparently, to lie there in spite of all the guides in the world. Not a few got slowly into the sitting position, their hair dishevelled, their caps awry, their eyes alternately winking very hard and staring awfully in the vain effort to keep open, and their whole physiognomy wearing an expression of blank stupidity that is peculiar to man when engaged in that struggle which occurs each morning as he endeavours to disconnect and shake off the entanglement of nightly dreams and the realities of the breaking day. Throughout the whole camp there was a low, muffled sound, as of men moving lazily, with broken whispers and disjointed sentences uttered in very deep, hoarse tones, mingled with confused, unearthly noises, which, upon consideration, sounded like prolonged yawns. Gradually these sounds increased, for the guide’s lève is inexorable, and the voyageur’s fate inevitable.