“What think ye of that, boy?” said Stanley to Frank Morton, as they leaped from their respective canoes, and stood gazing at the rugged glen from which the rapid issued, and the wild appearance of the hills beyond. “It seems to me that report spoke truly when it said that the way to Clearwater Lake was rugged. Here is no despicable portage to begin with; and yonder cliffs, that look so soft and blue in the far distance, will prove to be dark and hard enough when we get at them, I warrant.”
“When we get at them!” echoed Mrs Stanley, as she approached, leading Edith by the hand. “Get at them, George! Had any one asked me if it were possible to pass over these mountains with our canoes and cargoes, I should have answered, ‘Decidedly not!’”
“And yet you were so foolish and reckless as to be the first to volunteer for this decidedly impossible expedition!” replied Stanley.
“There you are inconsistent,” said Mrs Stanley, smiling. “If reckless, I cannot be foolish, according to your own showing; for I have heard you give it as your opinion that recklessness is one of the most essential elements in the leaders of a forlorn hope. But really the thing does seem to my ignorant mind impossible.—What think you, Eda?”
Mrs Stanley bent down and looked into the face of her child, but she received no reply. The expanded eyes, indeed, spoke volumes; and the parted lips, on which played a fitful, exulting smile, the heightened colour, and thick-coming breath, told eloquently of her anticipated delight in these new regions, which seemed so utterly different from the shores of the bay: but her tongue was mute.
And well might Mrs Stanley think the passage over these mountains impossible; for, except to men accustomed to canoe travelling in the American lakes and rivers, such an attempt would have appeared as hopeless as the passage of a ship through the ice-locked polar seas in winter.
Not so thought the men. Already several of the most active of them were scrambling up the cliffs with heavy loads on their backs; and, while Stanley and his wife were yet conversing, two of them approached rapidly, bearing the large canoe on their shoulders. The exclamation that issued from the foremost of these proved him to be Bryan.
“Now, bad luck to ye, Gaspard! can’t ye go stidy? It’s mysilf that’ll be down on me blissid nose av ye go staggerin’ about in that fashion. Sure it’s Losh, the spalpeen, that would carry the canoe better than you.”
Gaspard made no reply. Bryan staggered on, growling as he went, and in another minute they were hid from view among the bushes.
“What do you see, Frank?” inquired Stanley; “you stare as earnestly as Bryan did at the white bear last week. What is’t, man? Speak!”