Ungava. Robert Michael Ballantyne

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СКАЧАТЬ to his master’s call; but, like many dogs and not a few men, he owned a higher power than that of a master. The voice of his little mistress sounded sweetly in his ear, like the sound of a silver bell. “O Chimo, Chimo! my darling pet! come here—here.” It was a soft, tiny voice at the loudest, and was quite drowned amid the talking and laughter of the men, but Chimo heard it. Turning at a sharp angle from his course, he swept past the light canoe, and bounding into that of Mr Stanley, lay down beside Eda and placed his head in her lap, where it was immediately smothered in the caresses of its young mistress.

      Mr Stanley smiled and patted his little girl on the shoulder, as he said, “That’s right, Eda; the love of a faithful dog is worth having and cherishing.” Then turning towards the stern of the canoe, where Massan stood erect, with his steering paddle ready for action, he said to that worthy—

      “Now, Massan, all ready; give the word.”

      “Ho, ho, boys; forward!”

      The paddles dipped simultaneously in the water with a loud, gurgling sound; the two large canoes shot out into the stream abreast of each other, preceded by the light one, which, urged forward by the powerful arms of Frank and the two Indians, led the way among the floating fields of ice. The people on shore took off their caps and waved a last farewell. Dick Prince, who possessed a deep, loud, sonorous voice, began one of those beautiful and wild yet plaintive songs peculiar to the voyageurs of the wilderness. The men joined, with a full, rich swell, in the chorus, as they darted forward with arrow-like speed—and the voyage began.

      Chapter Six.

      Character partially developed—Ducks for supper—A threatened “nip”—Bundled out on the Ice

      Fortunately the wind veered round to the south-east soon after the departure of the canoes from Moose Fort, and although there was not enough of it to ruffle the surface of the river, it had the effect of checking the influx of ice from James’s Bay. The tide, too, began to ebb, so that the progress of the canoes was even more rapid than it appeared to be; and long before the sun set, they were past the point at the mouth of the river, and coasting along the shores of the salt ocean.

      Outside of them the sea was covered with hummocks and fields of ice, some of which ever and anon met in the cross currents caused by the river, with a violent shock. Close to the shore, however, the thickness of the ice caused it to strand, leaving a lane of open water, along which the canoes proceeded easily, the depth of water being much more than sufficient for them, as the largest canoe did not draw more than a foot. Sometimes, however, this space was blocked up by smaller fragments, and considerable difficulty was experienced in steering the canoes amongst them. Had the party travelled in boats, they would have easily dashed through many of these checks; but with canoes it is far otherwise. Not only are their bark sides easily broken, but the seams are covered with a kind of pitch which becomes so brittle in ice-cold water that it chips off in large lumps with the slightest touch. For the sea, therefore, boats are best; but when it comes to carrying the craft over waterfalls and up mountain sides, for days and weeks together, canoes are more useful, owing to their lightness.

      “Take care, Massan,” said Mr Stanley, on approaching one of these floes. “Don’t chip the gum off if you can help it. If we spring a leak, we shan’t spend our first night on a pleasant camping-ground, for the shore just hereabouts does not look inviting.”

      “No fear, sir,” replied Massan. “Dick Prince is in the bow, and as long as his mouth’s shut I keep my mind easy.”

      “You appear to have unlimited confidence in Prince,” said Stanley, with a smile. “Does he never fail in anything, that you are so sure of him?”

      “Fail!” exclaimed the steersman, whose paddle swept constantly in a circle round his head, while he changed it from side to side as the motions of the canoe required—“fail! ay, that does he sometimes. Mortal man must get on the wrong side o’ luck now and then. I’ve seen Dick Prince fail, but I never saw him make a mistake.”

      “Well, I’ve no doubt that he deserves your good opinion. Nevertheless, be more than ordinarily careful. If you had a wife and child in the canoe, Massan, you would understand my anxiety better.” Stanley smiled as he said this, and the worthy steersman replied in a grave tone,—“I have the wife and child of my bourgeois under my care.”

      “True, true, Massan,” said Stanley, lying back on his couch and conversing with his wife in an undertone.

      “’Tis curious,” said he, “to observe the confidence that Massan has in Prince; and yet it would be difficult to say wherein consists the superiority of the one over the other.”

      “Perhaps it is the influence of a strong mind over a weaker,” suggested his wife.

      “It may be so. Yet Prince is an utterly uneducated man. True, he shoots a hair’s-breadth better than Massan; but he is not a better canoe-man, neither is he more courageous, and he is certainly less powerful: nevertheless Massan looks up to him and speaks of him as if he were greatly his superior. The secret of his power must lie in that steady, never-wavering inflexibility of purpose, that characterises our good bowman in everything he does.”

      “Papa,” said Edith, who had been holding a long conversation with Chimo on the wonders of the scene around them—if we may call that a conversation where the one party does all the talking and the other all the listening—“papa, where shall we all sleep to-night?”

      The thought seemed to have struck her for the first time, and she looked up eagerly for an answer, while Chimo gave a deep sigh of indifference, and went to sleep, or pretended to do so, where he was.

      “In the woods, Eda. How do you think you will like it?”

      “Oh, I’m sure I shall like it very much,” replied the little one. “I’ve often wished to live in the woods altogether like the Indians, and do nothing but wander about and pull berries.”

      “Ah, Jessie,” said Stanley, “what an idle little baggage your daughter is! I fear she’s a true chip of the old block!”

      “Which do you consider the old block,” retorted Mrs Stanley—“you or me?”

      “Never mind, wife; we’ll leave that an open question.—But tell me, Eda, don’t you think that wandering about and pulling berries would be a very useless sort of life?”

      “No,” replied Edith, gravely. “Mamma often tells me that God wants me to be happy, and I’m quite sure that wandering about all day in the beautiful woods would make me happy.”

      “But, my darling,” said Stanley, smiling at the simplicity of this plausible argument in favour of an idle life, “don’t you know that we ought to try to make others happy too, as well as ourselves?”

      “Oh yes,” replied Eda, with a bright smile, “I know that, papa; and I would try to make everybody happy by going with them and showing them where the finest flowers and berries were to be found; and so we would all be happy together, and that’s what God wants, is it not?”

      Mr Stanley glanced towards his wife with an arch smile. “There, Jessie, what think you of that?”

      “Nay, husband, what think you?”

      “I think,” he replied in an undertone, “that your sagacious teaching against idleness, and in favour of diligence and attention to duty, and so forth, has not taken very deep root yet.”

      “And I think,” said Mrs Stanley, “that however wise you men may be in some things, you are all most incomprehensibly СКАЧАТЬ