by Ian Roberts
Against the wild onslaught, they fight, desperate to at least keep the canoe pointing downstream in line with the current. They’re at the river’s mercy. No line better than another in the wide, foaming torrent that surrounds them. They dive down through a churning white mass of foam, then released, explode up facing the black sides of the canyon. Down again into a sea of white and another surge up, the black walls looming above them. Thrust up, sucked down. Over and over, the river holds them in its frenzied grip. They fight desperately to stay upright and afloat, the canoe heaving again with the weight of the water they have taken in.
They hurtle out of the seething, cascading foam into a swift black stretch of smooth water. The gorge closes in tighter on both sides. The canyon walls close in propelling the canoe faster and faster. They can feel the angle of the river drop, steeper. And steeper. The vertical ramparts of rock squeeze tighter. The canoe charges down a cascading funnel, a narrow chute dropping fifteen feet. At the bottom a massive white wall of water curls back towards them, its clutches ready to engulf and crush them. Brulé, in one last effort, drives his paddle in deep, holding it, holding it, pulling the canoe around, pulling it so just as they crash into the bottom of the chute they are sliding sideways. The canoe smashes against the massive standing wave and rolls, narrowly escaping being ripped in half by the force of the water folding and crashing over its length.
All sense of up or down, left or right is obliterated. Brulé is torn, pulled, buffeted, smashed by the fury of the water. He’s hurled up, sucked down, pounded against rocks along the bottom, churned up and spat out. A deep laugh, harsh and maniacal, fills his ears as he pitches helplessly through the punishing, brutal barrage. He keeps hitting something, bouncing off it, something soft, but he can’t understand what it is. His lungs rage for air, and then he realizes he’s surrounded by sunlight for an instant, racing over smooth water. He’s at the top of a waterfall and going over. He’s falling. He’s falling and LeCharon bolts through his awareness as he hits the explosive fury of the roiling mass of water under the falls. His body feels like it’s being ripped apart in several directions at once, flung down savagely against the bottom of the river, smashed against the rocks, then sucked up toward the light, then rammed to the bottom hard.
The mocking roar of the panther’s laughter fills his ears, abusive, gripping him, clutching him, pulling him to her. He bounces again against something soft as he’s thrown violently back up into the light. This time as he’s rammed back to the bottom, his feet hit first and he pushes off to one side. He’s churned, pulled up and thrown back down. But the turmoil is less. He gets a sense of his bearings and as he hits bottom he pushes off in the same direction. The next time he hits bottom with one more push, he feels the churning calm, and it’s gone. The laughter of the panther falls away. His lungs scream for air as his head bursts through the surface of the water.
He gasps for breath as he looks around. The falls drop thirty feet in front of him. His hand holds something. Clutched in a spasm of tension, his hand grips the collar of LeCharon’s robe, the priest on his knees in the water beside him, coughing and hacking, fighting to get his breath back. Brulé looks desperately for Savignon. The undertow had sucked them down several times before Brulé found his feet on the bottom for just an instant to push out of its grip. Otherwise, they would still be in there beneath the falls.
He stands, slogs through the knee-deep water at the edge of the pool. Mists and spray obscure his view. Below the falls, the walls of the gorge spread out and pools and eddies form on both sides of the river. He scans the water and sees Savignon, floating face down on the far side slowly swinging back into the whirlpool where he would be sucked back down again beneath the falls. He looks desperately for some way to get to him.
Not ten feet away, a log leans against the wall of the gorge. Before his thought has caught up with his actions he heaves against the log’s weight, pushing it up, up until it tilts over and falls out into the river straight towards the waterfall. He leaps onto it, the log buoying his weight. It shoots straight into the falls but being too long to get sucked under, it pitches wildly, then pivots, swinging Brulé over to the other side of the river.
The moment he sees he’s free of the falls, he pushes off and swims hard to the far shore. His feet bounce along the bottom, he stumbles to get his footing in the fast current, then he’s into shallow water and racing back up the shore. Savignon, still face down, drifts in an arc back towards the undertow of the falls. Brulé scrambles to the rock face behind the waterfall, dives in pushing off the rock wall towards Savignon. He snatches at Savignon’s legging as his feet touch bottom. He hunches low, grinds his feet into the stones, clutches for rock with his free hand, and digs against the current trying to pull Savignon back into the undertow. He claws toward shore, Savignon tight in his grip. Then his feet have purchase on the bottom and he hauls himself and Savignon into shallow water.
Brulé grasps Savignon in a tight grip of loss and despair. Why had he done this? Why had he made this mad decision to come down the river? He is besieged with guilt and anger, anger at himself, at the river, at the guns, at the Iroquois, and the English. He’s on his knees in the water and the violence of his embrace and his awkward angle pushes hard into Savignon’s belly. Savignon suddenly retches a stream of water down Brulé’s back. He hacks and heaves, pushing away from Brulé to get air into his lungs. Savignon’s revival breaks Brulé’s attention — Atsan!
He stands, scanning the falls. Tonda, he sees now, kneels in the shallow water on the far side. Spent but alive. But Atsan, where is he? He sees no sign of him. He slogs back into the water trying to see into the pounding foam and mist at the base of the falls. He can’t think what to do. Should he dive below the falls? He pushes deeper into the water looking for his son in the churning foam. He stumbles and loses his balance. The current sucks at him, as he dives and crouches, grinding his feet into the gravel and rocks and clawing his way against the pull of the undertow back into shallow water. As he turns to look again at the river he sees Atsan. Fifty feet downstream his son wades up the river through a quiet eddy waving his arms to get his father’s attention. Behind him a canoe floats in the shallow, quiet water of the eddy. Brulé throws his arms to the sky in relief and yells, the sound lost over the roar of the falls. Savignon has crawled further out of the water and lies on his side still heaving and retching. Tonda sits on the far shore looking at the falls, the priest beside him.
An hour later on a wide, smooth rock a hundred yards further down the river, they regroup. The walls of the gorge below the falls open into a broad canyon. The current, still swift, flows flat and smooth. They had found three of their five paddles and their second canoe, well below the falls, ripped apart and flattened, lodged between rocks, the leather pack still lashed into the wreckage.
They sit close to a fire to warm themselves. With what they are able to scavenge, they repair their one damaged, but surviving canoe. Brulé scrapes pine tar from the ruined canoe as Tonda stitches a bark patch to the gunnel of the salvaged one with a long, slender pine root. Heating the tar, Brulé smooths it with a heated rock over another patch.
Withdrawn, Tonda has said nothing for some time. Now he looks up, “Did you hear her laughter? She is evil that one. I could feel her claws gripping me. Pulling me down.” He’s still clearly shaken.
Savignon, stretched out on a nearby rock, also struggles to come to terms with how very close he’d been to death. “I was hers. I fought, but she had me. Screaming, taunting.” He shivers.
“I thought I had lost you, my friend,” says Brulé.
Tonda looks at Brulé, “You were fearless in the face of our dread and yet somehow we are all still here.”
“Tonda, my connection to Wendat spirit, cannot run as deeply as it does in you,” offers Brulé, as he runs his hands over the smooth patch. “Yours was a different fear to mine. And Atsan, you missed her completely.”
“I could hear her laughter through the rapids,”
says Atsan. “But was free of her in the falls.” He had by chance arrived at the top of the falls at the same moment as his capsized canoe. He had slid on top of it and in a graceless, slippery leap had jumped just far enough to be clear of the undertow below.
Brulé looks up at the sun. “The river runs flat from here. I have come upriver from the other direction to the portage into the Lake of Many Bays. It cannot be far. We could, I think, still be in Champlain’s camp by night fall.”
“The Iroquois could be there already,” warns Savignon.
Atsan has spread all their supplies from the packs out on the rocks. All five of them and their supplies must now fit in the one canoe. He lifts the two leather satchels of gold coins to hand to Brulé. Tonda, closer, takes them to pass them on, but is surprised at the weight. He looks inside, pulling out several coins. He has seen them before but never so many.
“It is what white men do,” explains Brulé. “They save gold. For years I have wondered why I still do it. What it was for. Until now.”
They load the canoe and push off down the river. The rock walls soon open out and give way to forest. The canoe rides low in the smooth, fast water, slowly leaking despite their patchwork. They paddle hard and in less than two hours begin to scan the shore for the portage trail.
“There it is,” says Savignon and they pull into shore.
“It is a long, hard portage,” says Brulé, “but it leads to the Lake of Many Bays.”
Brulé shoulders the canoe and starts up the trail. The others grab packs and paddles, racing after him. Atsan grips LeCharon by the sleeve, forcing him to keep up. The portage ascends away from the river. Now, despite their exhaustion, they must reclimb the vertical drop they have descended, both the long, steep hike all morning down from their campsite of the night before to the river, plus the drop in the steep descent of the length of the river itself.
Tonda relieves Brulé, taking the canoe from him as they keep climbing. They set a grueling pace, Atsan prodding and pulling LeCharon to ensure he keeps apace, the priest cursing with every step.
The steep trail levels out and disappears into a swamp of thick cattails. Knee-deep water over thick mud oozes and sucks at their feet. They plod through hauling their feet free with each step until they are out the other side where the trail ascends yet more steeply up through the trees. LeCharon stumbles and lurches through the swamp. He finally staggers the last few steps out onto the trail and collapses.
“Oblivious and driven madmen,” mutters the priest.
Atsan yells up to Brulé, who drops his pack and quickly races back down the trail. He looks at the pitiful, broken figure of LeCharon and in one deft movement slings the priest over his shoulder and starts back up the path.
The trail becomes steeper yet through the trees. Their pace is punishing. Atsan now takes the lead, scrambling on his hands and feet up steep outcrops of rock and over boulders, pulling his way using the trees to help himself against the weight of his pack. He climbs over yet more rocks, hoists his body up and finds himself looking down a long slope of land. He yells to the others, “I see the lake!”
Savignon helps Tonda heave and steer the canoe through the trees and rocks up the last sheer pitch. Brulé’s legs scream with the strain of the priest’s weight on his back. He staggers up the last steep steps to the top and then rolls LeCharon onto the ground. He takes Savignon’s pack, nods to him to take the priest and runs after Atsan. Spread out below them the Lake of Many Bays gleams through the trees in the afternoon sun.
Savignon prods LeCharon to his feet. The priest raises his arms to heaven petitioning for some kind of mercy. As he begins to sag, Savignon leans into him, throws him over his shoulder and lurches down the trail after the others.
They race down the long slope. The glint of sunlight on the lake shimmers from time to time through the trees, until one by one they arrive and fall exhausted in the clearing at the edge of the lake.
Savignon arrives last, staggering the final steps to the shore, where he drops LeCharon next to the others. The priest stares dull-eyed out at the water. The others scan the lake carefully. Forest surrounds it except for several outcroppings of grey rock. A mile away on the far side a hundred and fifty foot outcrop juts straight out of the water.
Brulé turns to LeCharon. “This is the Lake of Many Bays. And there is Champlain’s camp. We have made it.”
LeCharon squinting out over the lake, fails to see anything. Confused, he turns to Brulé, who points to one side of the high outcrop on the far shore. “There.” Still, the priest fails to see the camp. “You can smell it,” says Brulé. “The cook fires. And listen, chopping….And there, the Iroquois.”
“We have beaten them.” says Atsan.
LeCharon grips Brulé’s arm in alarm at the mention of the Iroquois.
“You see those glints of light way down there on the lake,” explains Brulé. “Those are their paddles catching the sunlight.”
Tonda looks up at the late afternoon light, judging how far the Iroquois must still come. “They will not attack today. By the time they paddle to this end of the lake it will be getting dark. They will wait until morning.”
“The Iroquois have no reason to think Champlain will try and escape tonight,” says Brulé. “If we move the camp after dark, back up this portage and onto the Smoke River, we could escape or at least defend ourselves there. We should go.”
Part 3
The French make camp on a long, thin point of land jutting out into the Lake of Many Bays. Soldiers cut straight, pine saplings, dig trenches where they can and lash the pine poles to trees where they can’t. The palisade will, when finished, cross and enclose the point of land from one side to the other. They leave a three-foot opening at one end of it between the palisade and the shore to serve as a gate. The Algonquin, along with a few French aides, set up tents, collect firewood and set kettles on the fire to begin the evening meal.
The priest Du Barre kneels performing Mass alone. The nobles’ table has been set, but sits empty, looking as incongruous as ever in the wilderness. De Clemont stands, huddled with three soldiers, but after a few minutes, joins de Valery as he watches Champlain quietly plotting his calculations on a map spread out before him. Champlain looks up as de Clemont arrives. He no longer rises, or even thinks of it, such court protocols now long gone.
“We get the idea,” says de Clemont. “Lakes and forests. Then more lakes and forests. I am ready to go home.”
“We have pushed hard, I admit. But now we will rest. We can hunt for meat. Brulé should be here in a few days. When he arrives, he will lead us to the Land of the Wendat. Introduce us. The land there is different. You will see. Open, with meadows and small rivers and lakes.”
“At this rate we may not get back to Québec before the ships leave for the winter.”
“That is possible,” admits Champlain.
“No, that is not possible!” counters de Clemont. “I plan to get back to Québec.” He looks over his shoulder to see where du Barre is and if anyone can overhear them, then adds, “ I intend to go back now, back to France.”
“Now,” exclaims de Valery. “But…how?”
“I have been busy. I have made friends with three of du Barre’s soldiers. They too have had enough. We plan to head back tomorrow. I have guaranteed to protect them against charges of desertion. And I intend to pay them lavishly when we get back to France.”
“Tomorrow? You play a game far more dangerous than you imagine,” cautions Champlain.
“I know what he stands to gain with this expedition,” motioning towards du Barre. “Richelieu said he would make sure he gets to Rome. Du Barre is rabid,” explains de Clemont. “I thought you two might be interested in joining me. Certainly you, Jean-Marie. And I know this whole journey must vex you, Monsieur Champlain.”
Their conversation is abruptly interrupted as two men standing on the shore of the lake call to Champlain, beckoning him to come. He looks over, relieved to have an excuse to interrupt
de Clemont’s treasonous thoughts. Champlain excuses himself from the nobles and approaches the two men. The nobles follow.
The remains of a ten-foot wooden cross lie decomposed on the shore, its shape now only defined by the moss reclaiming it.
“How strange,” says de Valery. “What is it doing here?”
“We passed through this lake twenty-five years ago,” explains Champlain. “This was the biggest lake we had been on and the point had such a commanding view of the whole vista it seemed ideal. We claimed it all in the name of France. A symbol of our possession.”
The cross engrosses Champlain. He remembers so vividly being out here with Brulé so many years ago. How much he had enjoyed the wide, open simplicity of living in the wilderness. To really understand and appreciate New France, he felt he should come out every two or three years. That at any rate is what he told himself at the time. But he never did again. All the relentless details of building a colony and raising interest and money in France, had engulfed him. The cross was but a decaying reminder.
Yes, this expedition itself seemed a wild fantasy. And he ached at the thought of what was, no doubt, unfolding in Québec without him. He knew he was being replaced. Richelieu had insisted on his coming with the expedition, so the Crown could install someone new without interference. With his responsibilities lifted, he realized his role in Québec was probably over.
In the first days of the expedition, he naturally assumed a leadership role, only to find du Barre frustrate and override him time and again, humiliate him really, until he had let it go and released himself from any commanding role. And slowly he’d found he enjoyed it. With time to reflect, he realized he wasn’t actually unhappy now at all. Frustrated with du Barre certainly, but not unhappy. Perhaps when they returned he could move up river to Trois Rivières and help establish a new fort and leave behind all the vexing administrative duties as Governor.
