Robert Michael Ballantyne - The Big Otter

“Have a care, Blondin,” said our chief, in a warning voice, as the bowman made a sudden and desperate shove with his pole. A side current had swept us too far in the direction of a forbidding ledge, to touch on which might have been fatal. But Henri Coppet, who acted as steersman as well as carpenter, was equal to the occasion. He bent his lanky form almost double, took a magnificent sweep with the oar, and seconded Blondin’s shove so ably that we passed the danger like an arrow, with nothing but a slight graze.

That danger past we were on the brink of another, almost before we had time to think. At the time I remember being deeply impressed, in a confused way, with the fact that, whatever might await us below, there was now no possibility of our returning up stream. We were emphatically “in for it,” and our only hope lay in the judgment, boldness, and capacity of the two men who guided our frail bark—doubly frail, it seemed to me, when contrasted with the waters that surged around, and the solid rocks that appeared to bar our way in all directions. Even some of our men at the oars, whose only duty was to obey orders promptly, began to show symptoms of anxiety, if not of fear.

“Smooth water ahead,” muttered Lumley, pointing to a small lake into which the turbulent river ran about a quarter of a mile further down.

“All right soon,” I said, but just as I spoke the boat lightly touched a rock. Blondin saw that there was not sufficient depth in a passage which he had intended to traverse. With a shout to the steersman he thrust his pole over the side with all his might. The obedient craft turned as if on a pivot, and would have gone straight into a safe stream in another second, if Blondin’s pole had not stuck fast either in mud or between two rocks.

In a moment our bowman was whisked over the side as if he had been a feather. Letting go the pole he caught the gunwale and held on. The boat was carried broadside on the rocks, and the gushing water raised her upper side so high that she was on the point of rolling over when all of us—I think instinctively—sprang to that side and bore her down.

“Over the side, some of you,” cried Lumley, leaping into the water on the lower side, followed by six of us, including myself. Some of us were breast deep; others, on rocks, stood higher.

“Now—together—shove!—and hold on!”

There was no need to give us the latter caution.

Our boat shot into deep water and we all held on for life. Fortunately the more open part of the rapid had been gained. The steersman without aid could keep us in deep water, and, before we had fairly scrambled back into our places, we were floating safely on the quiet lake into which the river ran.

You may be sure that we had matter not only for gratulation but for conversation that night at supper; for, after discussing our recent adventure in all its phases, nearly every one of our party had numerous similar incidents to tell of—either as having occurred to himself, or to his friends. But the pleasure of that night’s intercourse and repose was materially diminished by a pest with which for some time previously we had not been much afflicted.

Who has not heard of mosquitoes? We may inform those who have never seen or felt them that they are peculiarly virulent and numerous and vicious and bloodthirsty in the swampy lands of North America, and that night we had got into a region of swamps. It may also, perhaps, be unknown to some people that mosquitoes do not slumber—unless, indeed, they do it on a preconcerted plan of relieving guard. Either there is a “day and night shift” or they do not rest at all. As a consequence we did not rest. Groans and maledictions were the order of the night. We spent much time in slapping our own faces, and immolated hundreds of the foe at each slap, but thousands came on to refill the ranks. We buried our heads under our blankets, but could not sleep for suffocation. Some of the men left their faces exposed, went to sleep in desperate exhaustion, after hours of fruitless warfare, and awoke with eyes all but shut up, and cheeks like dumplings. Others lay down to leeward of the fire and spent the night in a compound experience of blood-sucking and choking. One ingenious man—I think it was Salamander—wrapped his visage in a kerchief, leaving nothing exposed save the point of his nose for breathing purposes. In the morning he arose with something like a huge strawberry on the end of his prominent feature.

Indeed, it was a wearing night to follow such a trying day!

Availing myself now of that wonderful power which we possess of projecting the mind instantaneously through space and time, I will leave our adventurous fur-traders, and, conveying my reader still deeper into the heart of the great wilderness, set him down on the margin of one of those lesser sheets of water which lie some distance in a south-westerly direction from that mighty fresh-water ocean called Athabasca.

This lake, although small when compared with the vast reservoirs which stud those northern wilds, is, nevertheless, of goodly dimensions, being about six miles in diameter, and studded here and there with numerous islets, some of which are almost bare rocks of a few yards in extent, while others are not less than a quarter of a mile in circumference, and thickly wooded to the edge.

It is a somewhat peculiar lake. It does not lie, as many lakes do, in the bottom of a valley, from which the spectator lifts his eye to surrounding heights, but rests in a little hollow on a height of land from many points of which the eye looks down on the surrounding low country. It is true, that in one direction, westward, a line of distant blue hills is seen, which are obviously higher than our lake, for the land rises gently towards them; but when you ascend a wooded knoll close by, the summit of which is free from underwood, it is seen at a glance that on all other sides the land is below you, and your eye takes in at one grand sweep all round the compass a view of woodland and plain, mound and morass, lake, river, and rivulet, such as is probably unequalled—certainly unsurpassed—in any other part of the known world.

Solitude profound—as far as men and their works are concerned—marked this lovely region at the time of our arrival, though there was the most telling evidence of exuberant animal life everywhere, to the ear as well as to the eye; for the air was vocal with the plaintive cries and whistling wings of wild-fowl which sported about in blissful enjoyment of their existence, while occasional breaks in the glassy surface of the water, and numerous widening circles, told that fish were not less jovial in the realms below. This was at last the longed-for Lake Wichikagan.

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