by John Buchan
Donald felt that he liked this boy whose name was Magnus Sinclair, and he could see right into his heart. He saw that this son of generations of fishermen and sailors had the one fear which could paralyse an otherwise bold spirit. Death, except by drowning, he was ready to face with coolness, but the horror of deep water and wild water had an icy grip on his heart. It was partly a physical shrinking from a special kind of violence, just as another man fears a wild horse. But the old folks said it was a spell. Magnus’s grandfather had seen a mermaid on the skerries and she had laid a curse on him which was now working on his descendant. The village thought no less of Magnus for this shrinking, for he was bold enough in other things; it was an affliction sent from God, like a deaf ear or a blind eye; and the neighbours heartily approved of his plan of going to Canada when the Hudson’s Bay Company had their annual summer recruitment.
The course of Magnus’s life flowed under Donald’s eye like a smooth stream. He saw a scared and sea-sick boy decanted at York Factory on the muddy shore of Hudson’s Bay. He saw him in the prentice stage, learning how to judge the furs that the Indians brought in, and what price in “made beaver” should be set on the fruits of their trapping and the store goods supplied to them. Presently Magnus went up-country and was stationed at Norway House, and there he met his old enemy, water, and the struggle began....
He was a good servant to the Company, for he was quick to pick up the Indian tongues, and he could handle discreetly both the Indian trappers and the French voyageurs. With the latter, indeed, he was far the most popular of the “Arcanis,” as they called the Orkney men. He had a good head for trading, and he was honest as the day, never making up fur pacquettons on his own to spoil the Company’s business. Indeed, there was nothing in his job which he did not do well, except travel by water. Now and then he had to make a trip with the fur brigades, up the Saskatchewan or down the Nelson, and once overland to the Churchill and up that river in the long traverse to the Athabasca. When he was only a passenger it was not so bad, for he could avert his eyes from the perils and give all his mind to keeping his nerves still. But sometimes he was in charge of a party, and then it was pure torment, and the boatmen looked anxiously at his distraught eyes, and were puzzled by the tremor in a voice commonly so firm and clear.
He struggled to overcome the fear, but failed lamentably, and lapsed into a mood of sullen resentment against fate. There came a day when his weakness lost his employers a fine load of beaver skins and imperilled the lives of the crew. He was reprimanded and, miserably conscious of his fault, answered rudely and was fiercely taken to task. In a fury, which was directed more against himself than against his masters, he flung up the post and joined the rival Northwesters who had long been angling for him.
At first all went well there. His post was far up the Red Deer river in the mountains, and the journeys he had to make were all by land with only inconsiderable hill torrents to ford. But the time came when he was sent north to the Peace river and given charge of all the district between Lake Athabasca and the Rockies. Here most of his movements must be by water, up the Peace, the Smoky, and the Athabasca, even as far as the great Mackenzie, not to mention an infinity of lakes.
And now things came to a crisis. He had begun to feel the pride of achievement and to enjoy the sense of power. Dreams of great enterprises which should conquer for his masters the land beyond the mountains began to hold his mind. But always in the forefront stood the grim barrier of his fear. Until he could vanquish that there was no hope for him; any day he might shipwreck on it, and the Company would send him packing.
He brooded over the matter until something rose in his heart which was stronger than any fear; anger at himself, anger and bitter contempt. He resolved to conquer his weakness or flee from the wilds and hide his self-loathing in some humble trade in a landward town.
First he learned to swim, and that was no easy business. He had to conquer his aversion to deep water, and his first attempts convinced him that he must have company to succeed. Now, few of the North-westers, or indeed of the Hudson’s Bay people, could swim. Not an Orkney man, for those islanders, who perished generally by drowning, held that swimming only prolonged the agony. Not the French voyageurs, whose pride it was to handle boats so that swimming would be needless. Not the Indians, who held that devils lived in deep water and seized a man’s legs and pulled him down beside them.
But at last he found two men who had mastered the art. One was Lamallice, a Frenchman from the lower St. Lawrence who had learned to swim as a boy among the eel-pots. The other was White Partridge, who, being an Ojibway, came from a country where white water was the rule, and a traveller must learn to ford turbulent streams. In the company of these two Magnus began his course in the backwaters of the Saskatchewan.
He entered the water with a quaking heart, and he was very clumsy while learning from Lamallice the rudiments. But suddenly the whole thing seemed ridiculously easy and familiar. He lost his shrinking from the element and felt at home in it. Presently, with his broad chest and long arms, he developed remarkable skill. Lamallice showed him how to dive, and in a week he had far outdistanced his master, and for a minute or two could explore the floor of the deepest pools. White Partridge taught him how to breast a current, yielding to it, but always stealing an inch or two, and how to let a strong stream carry him down with no damage to limbs. Soon he had as far outdistanced White Partridge as White Partridge at this special game outshone Lamallice. He began to rejoice in the buffeting of rapids and the clutching arms of whirlpools. A river from a menace became a playmate, and an angry river a friend to be humoured and embraced.
Magnus had mastered the first test — to accustom his body and mind to white water. The next was to learn the art by which a man, while remaining in the upper air, could use white water as his servant. For this purpose a heavy York boat was of no use, for their handling was a corporate effort; he had to acquire a private and personal skill. Here Lamallice was an expert, and under his guidance Magnus learned how to thread acres of foam in a birch-bark canoe, and how to pole such a canoe up-stream, taking advantage of every patch of shoal water at the edge and every eddy in the main current. He learned how to avoid the deadly peril of a “cellar,” where the river flowed over a sunken rock and dropped into a deep pit with sheer glassy sides and a deadly undertow. He learned when boldness was the path of safety. He learned how by a turn of the wrist to shave, with a millimetre to spare, a boulder which would have torn out the side of his canoe. He learned when a floating log might be a menace and when a convenient shelter.
His trips with the fur brigades were no longer nightmares, but seasons of apprenticeship to which he greatly looked forward. He had Lamallice as his chief attendant, and with him he explored faraway waters. He ran most of the Peace rapids above Hudson’s Hope, and one of the three pitches where the Slave river becomes a torrent, and a dozen ugly places on the rough trail from the Churchill to the Athabasca. Once on the Nelson river, at the spot now called the Kettle rapids, he made an error in judgment, had his canoe stove in, and was washed up a quarter of a mile down-stream with two ribs broken and a wrenched ankle. Lamallice, who helped to pull him out, approved the adventure. “A white-water man,” he said, “must three times look death in the face. If he still lives, water is no more a peril to him. You have had your first look.”
Then Simon Fraser came upon the scene, and for Magnus the course of life was changed.
Fraser was lean, with a pale skin that no sun or wind could tan, and with dark eyes that had leaping fires in them. His speech was the pleasant singsong of the northern Highlands. For months, at Rocky Mountain House on the Peace river where Magnus was stationed, recruits had been drifting in from the east for a great advance across the mountains which was to carry the Company’s front to the western sea. Fraser’s first visit was brief. He had two officials of the Company with him, Stuart and McDougall. They crossed the passes and ascended the southernmost of the two rivers which met at the forks, tha
t called the Parsnip, which Alexander Mackenzie had followed a decade earlier. They borrowed Lamallice from Magnus, after they had spent an evening with their pipes and a jorum of rum, thumbing maps and retailing the gossip of the West.
Then for a little Donald saw a wonderful panorama — the shuttles of the pioneers weaving trails across the ranges, posts installed in the high, wild country beyond the Rockies, big lakes where trout could be taken as big as salmon, Indians of a gentler breed than the Plains tribes, and through it all a great river ravening its way south into the iron hills.
There were sallies forth from Rocky Mountain House in spring and autumn, and even in deep winter, till there came a morning in May when the hour struck for the last and boldest enterprise.
The river across the Rockies was beyond doubt the great Columbia, whose outlet on the Pacific had been known for two generations. Here lay the true road to the West, a water route, it was said, with few portages, which would bring the rich furs of the coast, the sea otter and the seal, to the North-west depots at Montreal. Nay more, it would enable the Company to trade its furs across the Pacific to the China markets, and bring back tea and silks and rare porcelains — a second East India Company which needed no Government charter.
Simon Fraser, leaner and more sallow than ever, spoke of this to Magnus.
“We’ll make your fortune for you, Magnus lad,” he said. “We’ll set you up as our wintering partner on the coast, and your commission will soon be like a king’s ransom. And we need you. Make your account for that, my dear. This is not a pleasure trip, and God knows what kind of country we’ll have to go through before we win to the sea. The Carriers — that’s the name they have for the Indians in those parts — say it’s one dooms great waterfall, and the folk here tell me you’re the best white-water man that ever came out of the North. The thing has been arranged. I’ve got Duncan McGillivray’s instructions for the loan of you in his own hand of write. So it’s ‘Bundle and go’ for you the morn’s morn.”
In the pleasant spring weather they crossed the Peace river pass, followed the Parsnip to the height of land, and then struck westward to the big lakes called Macleod and Stewart, where Company posts had been set up. Here there was much delay, for a new fort had to be built, and since that year the salmon had failed to run, there was something like a famine among the Indians. In the fall, however, the food supply improved, and it was possible to lay down stores of pemmican and dried fish for the next year’s venture. At the tail of winter two Company’s men, Quesnel and Farris, came through from Rocky Mountain House with trade goods for barter.
Four stout boats were got together — two of them of bark, and two bigger and heavier dug-outs of the kind used by the Haidas on the coast. The canoes were odd things to eastern eyes. Their bark was spruce not birch, and instead of curving bows and sterns they ran out at either end to a point under water. The dug-outs were long and narrow to prevent their being swung about by the river eddies. The party numbered twenty-five all told: Fraser himself, Stuart, Quesnel, and Magnus; nineteen voyageurs, French and half-breeds, with Lamallice among them; and two Carriers as guides, clad chastely in breech cloths and necklets of grizzlies’ claws.
They slipped down-stream from the lake posts till they reached a strong river coming down from the north-east at a point where it swung to the south. Fraser laughingly took off his hat to it.
“Hail Columbia!” he said. “We’re going to give you a mighty fine chance to drown us. You’re a braw river, but there’s a wanchancy look about you. You’re ower fierce for decency.”
Fierce it was, but at the start it was a friendly ferocity which bore the flotilla swiftly, with no need of paddling, from one bivouac to another. The brisk current kept the flies away when camp was made at night on the shore. Food was ample, for the boatmen knocked down many partridges, Magnus’s rifle killed a sheep or two and a caribou buck, and the Indians (whom the Frenchmen called Fish Eaters, that being the name of contempt used by the hunting tribes of the Peace for their kin beyond the mountains) set their lines each evening, and there was broiled trout for breakfast.
“This is fine travelling,” Simon Fraser said, “but it’s ower easy. The morn, or maybe the day after, we’ll be battling with some infernal Niagara.”
The change came suddenly. About noon on the third day the mountains seemed to rush under and choke the river into a funnel. At first the pace of the boats was only quickened; the current ran more fiercely, but still equably, with the even unbroken flow of a gigantic mill-lade. The spirits of the voyageurs soared, for the river was doing their work for them, and their boat-songs rose above the drone of the water. But Lamallice’s brows were drawn. He saw that the channel was beginning to twist, and he knew that at the turns there would be troublesome eddies.
Sure enough there came a patch of wild water, a sharp-angled precipice, and then a broad reach where the river foamed among boulders and sunken rocks. This was the kind of thing familiar to the voyageurs, and they threaded it deftly. But at the next bend the river narrowed into a belt like smooth grey glass. It split at a rock into two streams, each of which dropped in a dizzy glide into a great churning pot. Magnus, who was in the leading canoe, by a lucky instinct took the right-hand stream; if he had taken the other the flotilla must have been cut to pieces on a grid of under-water rock. As it was they were swirled into the right bank, and managed to make fast to its fringe of alders. There was a slender track along the shore, and Stuart, who had charge of the baggage, made them unload and back-pack it, and line the empty boats out of the maelstrom. This took the last three hours of daylight, and it was a wet and weary company that made camp on a spit of gravel, and watched the river burrowing beyond them into the gloom of a still narrower gorge.
Lamallice spoke. “The Fish Eaters say that beyond this it gets worse, and that no man has ever travelled that road. There’s still time to go back. There’s not much of a shore path but enough to line the bateaux up-stream to where we started.”
Fraser was peering into the dark.
“What say you, Johnnie?” he asked Stuart, without turning round.
Stuart, prim, neat in his dress, always smacking somewhat of the city, had no doubts.
“I’m for back,” he said. “It was a daft-like ploy from the start. What’s to hinder this river from flinging itself over a thousand-foot precipice and taking us with it? It’s fair suicide to gang on.
“The Indians say there’s no big waterfall, only rapids,” said Magnus.
“Ay, but they also say that the rapids are ower fearsome for a boat to live in.”
Fraser swung round. “We’re travelling a road no man has travelled before,” he said, “and I’m not denying theie’s danger in it. I’ll drown no man without his consent, so we’d better take a vote.”
The vote was equal, the Indians being left out — eleven to go on, eleven to turn back.
“It seems we’re a divided house,” said Fraser. “Well, the casting vote falls to me, and I give it for going on. There’ll be bad bits, and we’ll have to make shift to line the boats past them. The Company’s credit is in our hands, and, by God! it’s not going to suffer by me. We’re taking no worse risks than Sandy Mackenzie, and he won through to the Pacific. Providence is on the side of mettled folk.”
No one disputed the verdict, for his quiet audacity had laid its spell on the company. That night Magnus slept little, for he knew better than the rest the hazards of the venture. He looked up to the sky, which above the gorge was a thin band of sable, in which the stars burned like hanging lamps with an eerie brilliance. He had faced White Water and conquered it — nay, he had made it his friend. But this was the ultimate challenge. There was a curious excitement in his blood, and a tremor, too, at the pit of his stomach. He had moved far since the days when he had lived in dread of the Orkney seas.
He found one of the Carriers beside him sniffing the night air like a dog on the trail.
“We shall get through,” he said.
“
We shall get through,” the Indian repeated, “but not all.”
And now Donald with enthralled eyes was a witness of a drama which hourly quickened in speed. He saw not only action and movement, but the hearts of the men — fear rising to resolution or sinking to despair, doubt even in the bravest, and at the back of all Fraser’s fatalism and Magnus’s doggedness unconsciously supporting the rest. And his other senses were as keen as his eyes. He heard the thunder of the cataracts reverberating between the rock walls, the scream of eagle and fish-hawk, the songs of the voyageurs in their scanty hours of rest, and he smelt the bitter odour of broken water, and the incense of the pines and the crags, and the sweetish, sickly smell of the oiled Indians.
Magnus and Lamallice, at bow and stern, were in the first canoe. It was their business to prospect, and if they judged a stretch impossible, to guide the flotilla into the shore and arrange a portage. It was a tricky job, and they made mistakes, avoiding rapids which were reasonably safe and venturing on some which brought them to the edge of disaster. One awful place they encountered on the fifth day, when for nearly two miles the river was constricted to a channel of some thirty yards in which no boat could live for five seconds. On each side the cliffs rose almost sheer, though there was a faint Indian trail among the talus on the right bank. Moreover, they had been warned by the Carriers of unfriendly tribes, and had to post guards on the rock shoulders. The portage was a desperate affair. The boats were lined down, tossing and circling in the whirlpools. The shore trail was widened with hoes, and somehow or other the baggage was carried and the canoes lined past the danger-point....
Donald’s heart was in his mouth, for a false step would have meant instant destruction. He noticed Fraser descending the cliffs like a mountain goat, for his Highland boyhood had made him sure-footed, and he marvelled to see him driving his dagger into the ground and using it as a hand-hold....
