Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  They reached a place where the cliffs fell back a little, and there they found a settlement of Atnah Indians, who were friendly enough, and provided three horses for the next portage. One of the horses slipped and broke its back on the riverside boulders. There one of the Carriers lost his life, falling into a whirlpool which battered his skull in. The body was recovered, and his companions insisted that the funeral must be in accordance with the custom of his tribe, so they had to retrace their steps to the Atnah village. The Atnahs had the same funeral customs as the Carriers, and the body was burnt with strange incantations.... For the first time in his life Donald knew the sickening smell of roasting human flesh....

  By this time all the party were ragged and dirty; their nails were half off their fingers, their shoes were in shreds, and their feet and hands were masses of blisters. But Fraser never lost his mastery. He sent scouts ahead to prepare the next batch of Indians for their coming, and when they reached them there was that in his dancing eyes and wild merry face that made them his friends. His face was now so lined that he seemed to be perpetually grinning.

  “I’ve a better notion of handling savages than Mackenzie,” he told Magnus. “Sandy couldn’t ‘gree with the Atnahs, and you saw that they’ve been eating out of my hand. Sandy was ower much of the dominie.”

  They reached the land of the Chilcotins and were well received and well fed — fortunately, for after that they had their worst passage. It was a place where portage was impossible, and Magnus decided to trust the thread of glassy current which ran between two maelstroms. It was like a stream in a cave, for the cliffs above narrowed to overhangs which showed only a ribbon of sky. Every man held his breath, as for an hour and more they shot down at a giddy speed, with perdition waiting for them if there was a false paddle stroke. Below that they landed, and all afternoon the crews slept the heavy sleep of men whose nerves had been tried too high.

  Fraser shook Magnus’s hand.

  “Man, you’re the grand guide,” he said. “I’m content always to follow your judgment, but for myself I’d have said yon place was naked death.”

  “So would I, if it hadn’t been for a fish-hawk. The bird kept on steady in front of me, and I got the notion that it was sent for a good omen.”

  Fraser laughed.

  “Good luck to the bird. But trust your own wits, Magnus, lad. They’re safer than freits.”

  Presently the river became a chain of cascades which no craft could pass. They stowed their boats on a high scaffold in the jack-pines, and each man humped his eighty pounds-weight of baggage. Then began a heart-breaking portage till they reached a camp of the Lilloets, who welcomed them with much hospitable ceremony. Fraser had made his ragged regiment shave and spruce themselves for the occasion. There they procured two canoes and a supply of dried salmon.

  Fraser, who had been conferring with the head man, joined the party with a puckered brow.

  “I’m puzzled about this damn river,” he told Stuart. “These Indians have drawn me a plan of where it enters the sea, and it’s not what I have learned of the Columbia’s mouth. Maybe we’ve hit the wrong water.”

  Next day a strong stream came in on their left, and Fraser was more cheerful. He had heard of it, he said, from David Thompson, for whom it had been named, and it was a tributary right enough of the Columbia. His good humour was increased by friendly Indians, who traded him sufficient canoes to embark the whole party.

  And then came an awful ravine where the canoes had to be again abandoned. The portage was for goats, and not for men. Often the trail became a ladder whose sides were poles fixed between trees and boulders....

  It was the last of their tribulations. Beyond it the river settled down in its bed and flowed decorously to the sea. Canoes were obtained again, and on the thirty-fifth day of their journey they were in tidal waters.

  Fraser took his bearings and sat for a long time in deep thought. Then he beckoned Magnus.

  “We’re the better part of three degrees ower far north for the Columbia. You and me, we’ve found a new river.”

  “We’re none the worse for that,” was the answer. “We’ve got to the coast and that was our purpose.”

  “Ay, but we’ve found a dooms rough road. The man’s mad that would follow our trail. It’s not what the Company want, but all the same it’s been a mighty great venture. What’ll we call our river?”

  “The Fraser,” was the answer. “There can be but the one name.”

  “I’m not so sure. I was the leader in name, but you were the leader in truth. I think it might be called the Magnus. Magnus is Latin for great, and it’s a great river.... And you’re a great man. You were born without fear.”

  Magnus laughed happily.

  “Not me! I was born with the terror of White Water on me. But I faced it and beat it. And now it’s my servant.”

  Fraser laughed also.

  “A very pretty parable,” he said. “If I were a minister it would be a fine tail to a sermon.”

  * * * *

  Donald saw a sea trout break water in midstream. And then another. There must be a shoal of them. He blinked his eyes. The pool was still and golden, but it seemed to him that a second earlier it had been as choppy as the St. Lawrence in a north-easter.

  THINGS TO REMEMBER

  CHILD, if you would live at ease

  Learn these few philosophies.

  If you fear a bully’s frown,

  Smite him briskly on the crown.

  If you’re frightened of the dark,

  Go to bed without a spark

  To light up the nursery stairs,

  And be sure to say your prayers.

  If your pony’s raw and new,

  Show that you can stick like glue.

  If the fence seems castle-high,

  Throw your heart across and try.

  Whatsoever risk portends,

  Face it and you’ll soon be friends.

  But though many perils you dare

  Mingle fortitude with care.

  Do not tempt the torrent’s brim

  Till you’ve really learned to swim.

  Do not climb the mountain snow

  If inclined to vertigo.

  Do not let yourself be seen

  Mother bear and cubs between;

  Or essay your marksman’s skill

  On a grizzly couched uphill, —

  Else this mortal stage you’ll leave

  And your parents fond will grieve.

  THE FOOT-TRAVELLER

  AT first we went on our own flat feet,

  Moccasined, booted, or bare as at birth,

  Brisk in frost and laggard in heat,

  Bound for the uttermost ends of the earth.

  Hill and prairie and deep muskegs

  Were covered in turn by our aching legs.

  We have sailed on the Ultimate Seas,

  We have tramped o’er the Infinite Plain;

  We have carried our pack to the icebergs and back,

  And by — we will go there again!

  We broke the trail on the winter crust,

  Husky and malamute trotting behind;

  Our pack-train coughed in the alkali dust,

  And strained in the passes against the wind.

  In the prairie loam, on the world’s high roof,

  From dawn to dusk we padded the hoof.

  Canoe and bateau speeded our way,

  But half the time we were wading the creek,

  And the longest portage fell on the day

  When our bellies were void and our legs were weak.

  Like docile mules we shouldered the pack

  And carried a wonderful weight on our back.

  * * * *

  Now behold has a miracle brought

  Ease to our legs and speed to the way;

  Outboards chug where canoemen wrought,

  A month’s toil now is a morning’s play;

  The mountain track is a metalled road

  And motors carry the pack-tr
ain’s load.

  Through the conquered air we speed to our goal;

  Swamps and forests are dim beneath;

  The virgin peak and the untrod Pole

  Fade behind like a frosty breath.

  Freed from the toil of our ancient wars,

  We outpace the winds and outface the stars.

  * * * *

  Yet when we come to the end of our quest,

  The last grim haul in the gully’s heart,

  The uttermost ice of the mountain’s crest,

  The furthest ridge where the waters part,

  The lode deep hid in the cypress fen

  A thousand miles from the eyes of men —

  Then we return to our fathers’ ways,

  For help there is none from earth or heaven;

  Once again as in elder days

  We are left with the bodies that God has given.

  At the end the first and the last things meet

  And we needs must go on our own flat feet.

  We have sailed on the Ultimate Seas,

  We have tramped o’er the Infinite Plain;

  We have carried our pack to the icebergs and back,

  And by — we will go there again!

  CHAPTER VIII. The Faraway People

  ONE day there was a great bustle at the camp where Donald lived. A telegram had come from his father to Celestin Martel to say that an old friend, one Colonel Bellenden, would spend that night in the camp, and asking him to have an eye to his comfort. So Madame Martel and Simone were busy all afternoon tidying up and arranging for the Colonel’s bed and dinner, and Donald a little nervously prepared for his new rôle of host.

  The guest arrived at nightfall in a cabin cruiser, which tied up to the little wharf at the Manitou’s mouth. He was a huge man of fifty-odd years, who, since he retired from soldiering, had been looking for rare animals in outlandish places. Now his quest was the Arctic char, which in all Quebec was found only in one place, the Grand Lac de Manitou. Celestin Martel had arranged his transport, and next day they were to set out.

  It seemed that the Colonel and Father Laflamme had met in the North, and that the Father’s cousin and close friend, Charles Monpetit, had been with him in Baffin Land. So Father Laflamme was bidden to dinner, and a very self-conscious boy played host at the head of the table.

  Donald had had a heavy day in the sun and wind, and was both hungry and sleepy, but he forgot hunger and drowsiness as he listened to the talk of the two men, for they spoke of secret and wonderful things in the very far North.

  First they talked of the Arctic char. They argued about its exact kind. Was it the Salvelinus nitidus, the shining char of the books? Or a separate species found only in the Grand Lac de Manitou? Anyhow, it was of the same family as was found in the waters of the far North, from Great Bear Lake to Greenland.

  “In Baffin Land the Eskimos call it angmalook,” said Colonel Bellenden. “At least that is their name for a particularly shiny variety of the fish. I’ve caught it, and I want to see if yours are like it.”

  “Theocritus described it three centuries ago,” said Father Laflamme, and he quoted a Greek line. “Can you translate that, Donald? It means ‘the sacred fish that men call silver-white.’”

  Then they spoke of how the fish came to be there.

  “Left behind from the Ice Age,” said the Colonel, “as the ice retired northward. But I’m hanged if I can see how it happened. I suppose that even the Ice Age had some sort of summer and that there were lakes deep enough not to freeze to the bottom. Anyhow, it is a link between our own day and the prehistoric. When it and its kind filled the waters here the Laurentians were not mere rubbed-down stumps but high mountains, and the Appalachians across the river were about the size of Everest.”

  The talk rambled on until even Donald’s interest was overwhelmed by slumber, and he was picked up from the floor by Father Laflamme and carried to bed. But though drunk with sleep he had heard words which made him burrow his head into the pillow in a confused glow of happiness.

  The Colonel had said, “The boy seems keen. Why not take him with us to-morrow?”

  Donald long remembered the next day’s journey. The Martels’ buckboard was not the smoothest of vehicles at the best, and the road was a staircase among rocky hills. They had to pass the twenty-mile stretch where the Manitou flowed in deep canyons before they reached the plateau and the tributary which led to the Grand Lac. Donald and Father Laflamme found it more comfortable to walk most of the way.

  But at last they came to the Grand Lac, drowsing on its hilltop under a summer sky, and rimmed with woods which at that height still wore their delicate spring green. They had to wait until late afternoon for the rise, when a species of mayfly came in flights over the little bays, and the water boiled with rising fish. Donald had no luck with the Arctic char, for the shining creatures rose swiftly, like a bar of light, and he was too slow on the strike. But he caught a three-pound speckled trout and went to bed happy.

  Next day at the morning rise he was more fortunate, and after a sharp tussle brought to the net no less than three of the bright fish, with their tiny scales of very pale gold. Colonel Bellenden also did well, and a contented little company sat down to luncheon, content and comfortable since a light breeze kept the flies at a distance. It was a leisurely meal, for there would be an interval in the fishing till the evening brought the second rise.

  They spoke of the far North, and Donald drank in the talk with thirsty ears.

  Colonel Bellenden lifted one of the char from the rush-lined creel. Its splendour was slowly dimming, but it was still a wonderful and spectacular thing as contrasted with the brook trout, who is apt to be a dingy object in death.

  “The rearguard of the North!” he said. “A gallant rearguard too, for they have been in action for a good many thousand years. You would have to get well down Hudson’s Bay before you met these gentry again. There’s an extraordinary interest in anything left over from a remote past. Think if we could find a corner where the mammoth still carried on! I’ve known fellows who thought that possible.”

  “You’re more likely,” said Father Laflamme, “to find something of that kind with human beings. They can adapt themselves better to change than animals.”

  “True. Fifteen hundred years ago we had the Picts in parts of Scotland, little hairy men who fought with stone arrow-heads and had the secret of the heather ale. Some people think that they survived right down almost into our own day, and were the Brownies you hear of in the Galloway moors. There are authentic records of the Brownie there up to about a century ago.”

  “There may be a survival in Canada. You were at Cape Dorset with Charles Monpetit? Didn’t they ever tell you about the Toonits?”

  “Yes, by Jove! and I saw one of their houses. They were little chaps like the Picts, weren’t they? and lived in stone houses and not in snow igloos and skin tents. If I remember right, they are believed to have been cleaned out a thousand years ago by the present Eskimos, the Tunnit, who came in from the West.”

  Father Laflamme laughed.

  “Charles would not agree to that,” he said. “Didn’t he tell you of the Eskimo who went hunting in the central plateau towards the Carlos river? Suddenly, up from behind a hillock, pops a little square man with a drawn bow. The Eskimo ran for dear life and never halted till he was back with his tribe a hundred miles off. Charles said he was a dependable man who could neither dream nor lie. He is convinced that up in that forsaken Baffin Land interior there is a Toonit remnant still alive.”

  “Great Scot!” Colonel Bellenden removed his disgraceful old hat and put a hand through his thinning hair. “There’s a yarn for you! Better than the ‘Horrible Snow Men’ in the Himalayas. A real live Toonit would be enough to drive an anthropologist mad. I must get hold of Monpetit and get details. Where’s he to be found?”

  “I had a letter from him last week,” said Father Laflamme. “He came out about a month ago and at this moment he should be in Quebec.
He is not very communicative, but I gather that last winter he had a wild journey in the far north of Baffin Land and pretty nearly came by his end. He says he has a lot to tell me, so perhaps he has seen a Toonit himself.”

  There was only an hour of fishing left, for they were due to start off home at seven o’clock.

  Donald caught no more shining fish, but he had several fine speckled trout to his credit. Somehow or other his fishing ardour had ebbed a little. He was alone in a little bight of the lake, and was looking west at a sea of mountains, whose tops were foreshortened, like ships coming over an horizon. The westering sun was on the water, and it was as golden as the back of a char. He was thinking of that wild North of which there had been talk at luncheon.

  The gold in the water seemed to change to a murky orange. The sky above was as dead and still as a rock, with no movement of sound or light. The earth below was also dead and motionless. There were tall cliffs of black basalt scarred and puckered with snow, and on their crest a great ice cornice. The sea, too, was puckered and crevassed since the wind had driven the ice pack against the shore. Ice cap above and ice pack below, and between cliff and sea a snow-slabbed beach. It was desperately cold, forty or fifty below zero. Donald, by the shore of that sunlit lake, did not feel the cold, but his other senses were alive to it; he saw it — the cruel orange firmament, the unearthly stillness, the colourless world. There was something terrible about the icy cupola of sky, which was ruddy like a flame.

  A little party of men was making its way along the shore, and the strange thing was that Donald knew all about them. There were twelve dogs in the team that drew the sledge, and an Eskimo driver, whose name was Ecka-look or The Trout, and who by a turn of the wrist could, with his twenty-foot whip, remind a dog of its duty. Another Eskimo, Pitsulak, or The Sea Pigeon, went on in front to break the trail. In the rear walked a tall figure, which Donald knew was Charles Monpetit, the Oblate Father who was a cousin of his own Father Laflamme. He was dressed in sealskin pants over corduroy breeches, the long boots called kamiks, with soles made from the square-flapper seal and uppers of ordinary sealskin, thick duffel stockings, woollen shirt below a dickey of caribou-skin, and on his head a parka with the face opening lined with wolverine fur.