By degrees the cold told on his huge frame, and his great strength began to fail. Once, a canoe appeared in the distance. He shouted with all his might, but it was too far off. As it passed on out of sight he raised his eyes as if in prayer, but no sound escaped his compressed lips. It was noon when the accident occurred. Towards evening he felt as though his consciousness were going to forsake him, but the love of life was strong; he tightened his grasp on the canoe. It was just then that he heard the voices of Ravenshaw’s party and shouted, but the cry, as we have said, was very feeble, and the poor fellow’s sense of hearing was dulled with cold and exhaustion, else he would have heard Lambert’s reply.
“Oh! mine moder! mine moder!” he sighed, as his head drooped helplessly forward, though his fingers tightened on the canoe with the convulsive grasp of a drowning man.
Night descended on the water. The moon threw a fitful gleam now and then through a rift in the sailing clouds. All was still and dark and desolate above and around the perishing man. Nothing with life was visible save a huge raven which wheeled to and fro with a solemn croak and almost noiseless wing.
But the case of Winklemann was not yet hopeless. His chum, Louis Lambert, could not shake himself free from a suspicion that the cry, which had been put down to imagination, might after all have been that of some perishing human being—perhaps that of his friend. Arrived at the Little Mountain, Louis lost no time in obtaining a canoe, also an Indian to take the bow paddle.
The mountain, which was a mere undulation of the prairie, presented a strange scene at that time. Many settlers—half-breeds, Canadians, and Indians—were encamped there; some under tents of various sizes, others under upturned boats and canoes; not a few under the wider canopy of the heavens. Intermingled with the men, women, and children, were horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry, dogs, cats, and pets of the feathered tribe, besides goods, household furniture, carts, etcetera, so that no words can adequately describe the scene. It was confusion worse confounded!
Many were the hospitable proposals made here to Louis Lambert that he should remain all night, for he was a general favourite, but to all these he turned a deaf ear, and set out on a searching expedition, in the canoe, just after the sun had gone down.
At first he made as straight as he could for the place where Mr Ravenshaw had fancied he heard the cry, but on consideration came to the conclusion that, as the current must have carried all floating objects considerably farther down the settlement by that time, he ought to change his course. Soon it grew too dark to see objects distinctly, but an occasional gleam of moonshine came to his aid. He passed several floating barns and cow-houses, but found them empty. He also nearly ran against several dead animals, but the silent Indian in the bow was wary and vigilant. Hope was at last beginning to die within Louis’s breast, when he observed a raven circling round some floating object.
“Ho! there’s something yonder. Strike out, old copper-nose,” he exclaimed, as he directed the canoe towards it.
The light craft cut the water like a knife, and was quickly alongside.
“Why, it is a canoe, bottom up. Have a care. Ha! hold on!”