Jack the Young Canoeman: An Eastern Boy's Voyage in a Chinook Canoe

by George Bird Grinnell

  CHAPTER XVII

  JACK MEETS A SEAL PIRATE

  From the camp at Twin Falls the course was southeast, and passingbetween Captain and Nelson Islands the canoe entered Agamemnon Channel.Early in the afternoon they came out on Malaspina Straits. A freshbreeze carried the canoe along at a good rate of speed, and in theevening camp was made on the mainland, a little beyond Merry Island.

  The following day, as they were approaching an Indian village, situatednear the point where the trail from the head of Seechelt Inlet camedown to the shore of the Gulf, they saw a trading schooner anchored offit. Provisions were growing low, and it was determined to visit thevessel and see whether food could be purchased. As they paddled towardit, a dog which was running up and down the deck barked loudly at themin seeming salutation, and they saw the figure of a man watching themfrom the stern. Presently they were near enough to hail him, and heinvited them to come aboard, which they did. The Indians remained inthe canoe, and kept it from rubbing against the schooner's side.

  The man was a splendid, big, hearty young fellow, but a cripple, havinglost his leg just below the knee. He talked with them about where theyhad been, what they had done and seen, and spoke of the vessel's owner,who had gone inland with a back load of trade goods, to try to securesome furs that were said to be at an Indian camp some miles inland."I ought to have gone with him," he said, "but you see I can't getaround very easily with only one leg. In this country there is so muchmoisture and so many rocks, that it's pretty hard for a man to getaround at all. He needs two legs, and good ones at that. I can't walkfar or long, and this confounded pin of mine sometimes gets stuck inthe soft ground or wedged between rocks, and keeps me anchored until Ican pull it out. So, really, I am no good except to keep shop and helpto work the ship. It seems mighty good to see the white folks again; wehave been out all summer, and I've not seen anybody except the Indians,and I don't care much for them.

  "Now, you two," he said, as he pointed to Jack and Hugh, "you come frommy country. This man," he said, pointing to Fannin, "belongs here. Heis a Canuck."

  "You are an American, sir?" asked Jack.

  "Yes," said the man, "I am an American; just about as much American asanybody can be. I come from the state of Maine, and that's about as fareast as the United States goes."

  "That's so," said Jack. "The old Pine Tree State is a great state."

  "Right you are, young fellow," said the man. "She's a great state, andshe has sent out some good men; it's a pity I wasn't one of them--butI wasn't. My name is Crocker, and I was born right near the shore,and have been a fisherman and a sailor all my life. The worst luckever happened to me was when I drifted along this coast and kept onsailoring here. This is the way that I lost my leg."

  "Well," said Hugh, "that was sure a piece of bad luck. I should thinkon one of these boats a man would need two good legs, just as much ashe does on a horse. I have seen some one-legged men who could ride allright, but they were never so sure in the saddle as if they had twolegs."

  "No, I expect not," said Crocker. "I would have had two good legs rightnow if I hadn't come round on this coast and took to sealing."

  "Why," exclaimed Jack, "how did sealing make you lose your leg?"

  "Well," said Crocker, "it was in this way: I made two or three voyages,as mate of a sealing schooner,--first with Indians, and then with Japs.The last voyage we made with the Indians we didn't get any skins, andthe captain proposed to me that we cross over to Japan, and get a crewof Japs and then go north to the Commander Islands, and make a raid onthem, and steal seals from the Russians. Of course I said it was a go,and just before the next season began we went over and got a crew often Japs and sailed.

  "When we came in sight of the islands we found that there was a Russiangun-boat anchored near them, and so we stood out to sea for two orthree days, and then, going back to the islands, we found the gun-boathad gone. Now we thought we had a sure thing on a load of seal skins.We sailed in pretty close to the shore, and then I took a boat and sixJaps and we started in for the beach, the schooner standing off, justoutside the rocks. As we rowed in towards the beach we could see thatthe rookery was a big one and that seals were plenty. It seemed as ifthings were going our way. We pulled in hard toward the rookery, andjust as the boat was going to ground and the bowman got ready to holdher off a lot of Russian soldiers raised their heads up over the bluffand fired at us.

  "It was about the first bunch of soldiers I ever saw that could hitanything; but they certainly hit us. Four of the Japs were killed atthe first firing. One more was shot through the lungs and anotherthrough the thigh, breaking the bone. I got a shot through this leg,below the knee. I tried mighty hard to push off so as to get away, butthe soldiers ran down to the beach and into the water, caught the boatand hauled it ashore. They threw the Japs overboard, for both of thewounded ones died pretty soon, and they carried me up onto the bluffand over to the little houses where the sealers lived.

  "You see these Russian soldiers didn't care anything about the Japs,but they treated me pretty well. They gave me a good bed and tried toset my leg, but both bones were badly smashed, and I made up my mindthat without a doctor there if they tried to set the leg they wouldmake a botch of it, and the leg would go bad and I would croak. Soafter a day or two I picked out one of the nerviest of the chaps andhad him take my leg off. He didn't know what to do, but I sat up andhelped him, saw that the arteries were taken up right and tied, andthat the bone was squarely sawed off, with good flaps left that weresewed up. Three or four days after the leg was gone the gun-boat cameback and her surgeon came ashore. He looked at the leg, dressed it,and said that it was a good job, and that he wondered that any ofthose soldiers had known how to take a leg off like that. You see, hecould talk a little English and good French, and I could talk a littleFrench and good English, so we got on pretty well. He seemed to take akind of a shine to me, too, and after I got a little strength he hadme brought on board the ship, and after a little while we sailed forPetropaulovski. Before we got there I learned from something that hesaid that the soldiers had told him about my sitting up and tellingthem how to take off the leg. He seemed to think that was a great thing.

  "When we got to town they carried me ashore and up to the jail and tookme in. But before they had fairly got me locked up, the doctor, whohad left the ship before I did, came in and showed the governor ofthe jail an order, and then I was taken to a mighty comfortable house,and stopped there for quite some time. The doctor used to come in twoor three times a day and talk to me. Finally I got able to get up andbe around, and by that time the doctor had had a carpenter make me awooden leg; so I pegged around with that leg and a cane, and got tohaving a pretty good time; but, of course, I didn't know what they weregoing to do with me.

  "There was a prince in town, a Russian prince. He was the head, sothey said, of the Russian Fur Company. Once or twice he sent for meand questioned me about the seal stealing, and I told him all I knew,for there wasn't any use of making any secret of it. He seemed to be apretty good sort of a fellow, and at length one day, after I had beenthere some months--it was winter, and mighty cold at that, you bet--hesaid to me: 'I ought to send you to the mines, but I don't believe youwould be very useful there, with that one leg of yours, and I think thebest thing to do with you in spring, when the weather opens, is to sendyou to Yokohama on some vessel.' Of course I didn't have any ambitionto go to the mines, and I was mighty glad to be let off as easy asthat. So when spring came, they found a little schooner that was goingto sail to Japan, and they put me on board of it, and off I went. Andwhat do you think that prince did? Just as I was going to step intothe boat to be carried out to the schooner he suddenly appeared, shookhands with me, and wished me good luck and handed me a little canvasbag, which was pretty heavy, and said: 'Take good care of that, andmake it go as far as you can'; and, by Jove! when I opened that bag andcounted what was in it there was six hundred dollars.

  "That doctor and
that prince," he said slowly, as he rubbed his chin,"were mighty good to me. They treated me white. I wish though that thedoctor had got around to the island four or five days before he did,and maybe I would have two legs now."

  They had listened with much interest to the sealstealing story, andJack was anxious to ask Crocker many questions about the strangeanimals that he must have seen during his voyage in the North Pacific,when he followed the seal herds after they left the islands, and aboutthe great journey that the seals make south and west and east and northagain, back to their starting point. But Fannin was anxious to get on,and after he had purchased from Crocker the provisions they needed,with a hearty handshake and with many good wishes the canoe travellersstepped over the side and pushed off.

  The next morning was notable for the passage of the canoe throughmultitudes of black sea ducks, which Jack said were coots. The flock,or succession of flocks, were as numerous as those observed some weeksbefore off Comox Spit. There must have been many thousands of thesebirds scattered over several miles of water, and continually rising asthe canoe disturbed them, either flying back over it or off to one side.

  Late in the afternoon the travellers, as usual, began to look for acamping place along the shore, and for some time without success.The rocky shores rose straight up from the water and seemed veryinhospitable; but at length a little bay, the most encouraging place insight, invited the tired travellers to investigate it, and it was foundthat, although the little beach was almost everywhere piled high withdriftwood, there was a narrow pebbly place where, by squeezing up closetogether, there would be room enough for the white men to sleep. A tinytrickle of water through a streak of wet moss ran down each side towardthe bay, and it seemed that camp might be made here. The canoe wasunloaded and its cargo carried up over the raft of floating drift logsto the beach. A little hole was scraped in the sand to catch the waterthat fell, drop by drop, from crevices in the rock. The largest stoneswere removed from the spot where the beds were to be spread, and a firewas kindled.

  Long ago there had fallen from the shelf of the cliff, many feet abovethe beach, a giant fir tree, whose roots still rested where they hadalways been, and whose top was supported by the bottom of the bay. Thespot where the beds were to be spread was directly beneath this leaningstick of timber, which, as it was six or eight feet through, would evenoffer a little shelter in case it should rain that night. Charlie,however, suggested that this was not a safe place for the white manto sleep, as during the night the tree might fall and crush them. Butthe other men laughed at him, and pointed out to him that as the stickhad never changed its position for forty or fifty years, the chanceswere that it would not break or slip on this particular night. Charliesaid that this might be true and went about his cooking. His spirits,however, were not high, for, even with what had just been bought fromCrocker, the provision box was still very light. The fresh meat hadbeen nearly all eaten, the baking powder had all been used, there wasleft nothing but a little bacon, a few cans of tomatoes, some flour,coffee, and raisins. To relieve the impending famine, Jack and Fanninwent up on the hills to look for game, and, although they had foundno deer, they started three or four grouse, of which two were securedand brought to the camp for the next morning's breakfast. As the partyturned into their blankets that night Charlie looked at the great stickof timber which overhung them and said: "Well, I hope we'll be alive inthe morning."

  "Oh," said Hugh, "you go to bed, Charlie; you're like a cow-puncher Ionce knew. He called himself a fatalist, and said that he believed'whatever was to be would be, whether it happened so or not.'"

  Fannin said: "The only thing I am afraid of for to-night is that maybethis tide will rise so high that it will drown us out, and we will befloated off among this drift."

  When they turned in, the fire, by which dinner had been cooked, wasstill glowing brightly under the old drift log against which Charliehad built it; and the only sound heard in camp was the lapping of thewater against the beach.

  That night Jack had a curious dream. He thought that he was asleep inhis room at his home in Thirty-eighth street, when suddenly he wasawakened by a bright light, and, rushing to the window, saw that thehouse across the street was blazing and that a number of policemenclad in white were dancing in front of the fire. As he watched them,and wondered anxiously about the fire, the smoke from the houseseemed to turn and move in a thick cloud straight into his window,causing him to choke and cough. At this Jack awoke, and sitting up inhis blanket he saw the great drift log, against which the fire hadbeen built, glowing like a furnace. Charlie, clad only in his shirtand drawers, was darting about with a bucket of water in his hands,dashing it on the flames. The fire was soon put out; and next morning,on reckoning up their losses, it was found that they were not veryserious. A few cooking utensils, a towel or two, and a coat were theonly things seriously damaged. If the fire had burned a little longerand communicated itself to the rest of the drift stuff, the members ofthe party might have been very uncomfortable, and their loss might havebeen serious.

  When they started the next morning, the surface of the water was smoothand unbroken. There was no breath of air, and great clouds obscuredthe sky. Before them was seen the white lighthouse of Port Atkinson,and on either side of the channel they were following rose a low,rock-bound, fir-fringed coast. Here, for almost the first time sincethe trip had been begun, no striking mountain ridges or snow-cappedpeaks were seen. The tide was running straight against them, and theyhad to work hard to advance at all. After they had passed the PortAtkinson lighthouse the Inlet broadened and spread out over wideflats. The canoe kept close to the shore, to avoid the ebbing tide,and startled from the grassy shore a number of blue herons which wereresting or fishing at the water's edge. Sometimes, as they rounded alittle point, a group of hogs were encountered, eagerly rooting inthe bare flats for shell-fish. The first one of these groups that hesaw astonished Jack, because the hogs were accompanied by a numberof crows. About each hog, on the ground or resting on its back, orflying about it with tumultuous cries, were three or four black-wingedattendants, which wrangled bitterly over the fragments of fish that thepig unearthed and failed to secure. Sometimes a crow would pounce ona clam or other edible morsel actually under the nose of the hog, andwould snatch it away before the hog realized what was happening.

  "Fannin," said Hugh, as they were passing along, "does this sort ofthing happen regularly? Do these crows follow the hogs around all thetime?"

  "No," said Fannin, "crows know too much for that. They only gettogether and follow them when they come down to the flats looking forclams. They have learned that the hogs turn up a great deal of stuffthat they themselves like; and they have become regular attendants onthem. You know it isn't so very long since they didn't have any loosehogs in this country. It is only within the last few years that theyhave turned them out to look out for themselves."

  "Well," said Hugh, "of course there's lots of difference in size, butthese crows flapping about these hogs remind me more than anything ofthe way the buffalo birds act out on the prairie. They are just asfamiliar and at home with the buffalo and cattle and horses as thesecrows are with the hogs here."

  "It's comical," said Fannin, "how familiar any set of birds will getwith animals and people or anything else, just as soon as they findthat they don't hurt them."

  They were now at the mouth of Burrard Inlet and had only a few milesmore to go before reaching Hastings where Fannin lived, and where theircanoe voyage would end. They had been about a month afloat.

  The sand flats, over whose shoal waters the canoe was passing, seemedto be the home of a multitude of flat fish or flounders. They lay onthe bottom, and so closely resembled it in color that it was impossibleat the distance of a few feet to distinguish them from the sand. Thefish remained absolutely motionless until the bow of the canoe waswithin two or three feet of them; and then they swam quickly away witha flapping motion that did not seem to carry them off very rapidly ascompared with the arrow-like darting motions of m
ost fish; but theystirred up a cloud of sand and mud that effectually concealed them.

  "These flat fish are mighty queer animals, Mr. Fannin," remarked Jack."They don't look to me like anything I have ever seen before in theworld."

  "No," said Fannin, "I guess they are not. They are mighty queer kind offish; and, if I understand it right, they are all skewed around."

  "How do you mean?" asked Jack.

  "Why," said Fannin, "I understand when they are hatched they are rightside up like other fish; but soon after that they have to lie on theirside. That covers one of their eyes, and that eye works its way upthrough the head onto the top; so that, as a matter of fact, the twoeyes on a flat fish which you see when you are looking down on him areboth of them looking out of the same side of the head. What looks toyou and me like the back, is really his side, and what looks to you andme like his white belly is really his other side. I don't understandabout it very clearly, but there's a man back East who has worked thatwhole thing out. Somebody sent me a copy of his paper one time, and Iguess I have got it somewhere in the shop now."

  Before night had come the canoe had gone up the Inlet to Fannin's shop.Here they went ashore, and that night, for the first time in weeks,sat down at a table and slept in beds. It was learned at Hastings thatthe Indians were catching a good many salmon at the head of the NorthArm; and it was proposed that instead of ending the trip here, thecanoe should keep on up the Arm and see the fishing. The next morning,therefore, they went on up the Inlet.

  On the way they met three canoe loads of returning Indians, and eachcanoe was piled high with beautiful silvery salmon, weighing eight orten pounds each, which the Indians had caught with spears and gaffs inthe Salmon River. Fannin, who spoke with the Indians, told the othersthat this was the fishing party, and that now there were no Indians atthe head of the North Arm. It was, nevertheless, decided to go up there.

  When they reached the mouth of the river they found the tide lowerthan it had been when they had been there some weeks ago; but soon itcommenced to rise, and as the water deepened they began to pole thecanoe up the stream, though frequently all hands were obliged to jumpoverboard and push and lift the canoe over the shoals and into thedeeper water. As the tide continued to rise this became necessary lessfrequently, and before long the water was so good that they could pushalong with but little effort. During the passage up the shallow streammany salmon were seen in the clear water--fine, handsome fish, darkblue above; sometimes showing, as they darted away from the approachingcanoe, the gleaming silver of their shapely sides.

  The sight of these beautiful fish greatly excited Jack, and severaltimes he struck at them with his paddle, but always miscalculated thedistance, and could never feel even that he had touched a fish. Atlength he called out: "Mr. Fannin, can't we stop here and try to catchsome of these fish? They are so big and splendid that I want to gethold of one."

  "Oh," said Fannin, with a laugh, "wait a bit. You are going to a placewhere you'll see a hundred for one that you see now."

  "Well," said Jack, rather grumblingly, half to himself and half toHugh, "I suppose he is right, but it seems as if we might stop righthere and catch some of them. The sight of these fish is enough to makeany man a fisherman right off."

  Again he called out: "Do you think we will be able to catch any fishto-night?"

  "Yes," said Fannin; "I think that with the spear or the gaff we oughtto get all we want."

  "But just think," said Jack, "what fun it would be to catch one ofthese with a rod. It looks to me as if they would break any tackle thatwe have."

  "No," said Fannin, "you can't catch them on a hook when they get intothe fresh water. I thought I had told you that before. The salmon infresh water will not take a hook. They will take one in the salt water,but as soon as they enter the river, no. I'll tell you about thatto-night when we get into camp."

  After several hours' work the canoe reached a point in the river wherethere was a high jam of drift logs, which it was impossible to pass.The sticks of the jam were too large to be chopped through, and thecanoe was far too large to be carried about the jam to a point fartherup the river; besides, it was well on toward sundown. Camp was madetherefore on a smooth sandbar just below the jam, and in a short whilethe spot had assumed a comfortable, home-like appearance. On the shoreof the river was a rather neatly built shed, which had evidently beenrecently occupied by Indian fishermen. This served as a storehousefor provisions and the mess kit, and a sleeping place for Charlie andthe Indians. A little farther up the stream was placed the white tentfly, closed at the back with an old sail and in front with a mosquitonetting. Near the storehouse a cheery fire crackled against an oldcedar log, and on the beach, farther down, drawn out of the water, wasthe canoe.

  After dinner was over, and when they were sitting about the fire, Jack,whose mind was still full of the salmon he had seen, addressed Fannin."Now, Mr. Fannin, what more can you tell me about the salmon not takingbait in the fresh water? I believe you spoke to me about it when we sawour first salmon, but I have forgotten what you said."

  "Well," said Fannin, "I can't tell you why they do not feed in freshwater, but all fishermen say that they do not, and it is certain thatnone of them are caught on a hook after they begin to run up a stream.Down in California, where the rivers are all muddy, people explaintheir refusal to feed by saying that in those waters the fish cannotsee the fly or bait, and so do not take it; but such an explanationwill not answer for a clear-water stream such as the one we are on. Youmust have noticed that the water here to-day was as pure and clear asin any trout stream you ever fished."

  "Yes," said Jack, "I don't see how anything could be clearer than thiswater; and I am sure the fish could see the bait or a fly."

  "Yes," said Fannin, "they certainly could; and if they wanted a flythey would rise to it. There's a man down here at Moody's Mills who isa great fisherman, and he has fished in these streams for trout andsalmon for fourteen years. He says that in all that time he has hookeda salmon only twice, and he believes in each of these cases the fishaccidentally fouled the hook. No; when the fish get into the freshwater, they seem to forget everything except their desire to get up tothe head of the water and spawn."

  "Well," said Jack, "Eastern salmon come into the stream to spawn justas these fish do. They also try to get to the heads of the rivers forthis one purpose; yet we all know that the fishermen go salmon fishing,and expect to catch salmon on the Atlantic coast just at the time thatthe fish are running up the river, and we know that they do catch them,big ones, running, I believe, up to thirty-five or forty pounds."

  "Well," said Fannin, "I know that is true, and I don't know just whythere should be such a difference in the fish of the two coasts; butI believe that it exists. Some day, very likely, we will be able toexplain it; but I can't do it now, and I don't believe I know anybodywho can."

  The next morning Jack and Hugh were up long before breakfast, and weretalking about the difference between the surroundings of this campand those to which they had been accustomed for the last few weeks.Ever since their departure from Nanaimo they had spent practically alltheir time on the water or on the seashore; and, except in a few cases,had hardly been a hundred yards from the beach. The present camp,therefore, had about it something that was new. They could not hearthe soft ripple of the beach or the roar of the great waves poundingunceasingly against the unyielding cliff. The water which hurried bythe camp was sweet and fresh. All about them were green forests, whosepale gray tree trunks shone like spectres among the dark leaves. Thebirds of the woods moved here and there among the branches or came downto the water's edge to drink or bathe. Except for the canoe, and butfor the character of the rocks, they might have imagined themselves onsome mountain stream, a thousand miles from the seacoast.

  Said Jack to his companion: "We have had lots of surprises on thistrip, Hugh, and this camp is one of the greatest of them."

  "Yes," said Hugh, "I know just what you mean. It seems mighty pleasanthere to be in the t
imber with that creek running by; and yet I don'tknow but I like the open sea better, where a man has a chance to lookabout and see what is near him."

  "Well," said Jack, "we certainly have seen lots of different country onthis trip, and I wish we were just starting out instead of just gettingin."

  "Well," said Hugh, "I believe I feel a little that way myself; though,to tell the truth, I shan't be sorry to get back to a country wherethere are horses, and where a man can look a long way around and seethings."

  "Oh, Hugh!" said Jack, interrupting the talk, "look at those littledippers there! Let's go and watch them."

  They strolled to the edge of the beach and there saw a number of thequeer little birds. They were, as usual, bowing, nodding, and workingtheir wings, or tumbling into the water, disappearing there to cometo the surface again some distance away, when they would rise on thewing and fly to the beach or to some almost submerged boulder in thecurrent. Some of them were walking along the shore, from time to timestopping and nodding as if to their shadows in the water; or againtaking their flight from point to point near the little stretch ofbeach that, upon examination, appeared barren of food. Sometimes one ofthe birds would bring up out of the water some little insect or worm,which it would beat against the stones and then devour. Jack and Hughwatched them for some time, but presently the coming of others to theborder of the stream disturbed the dippers, and they flew away up ordown the stream. They did not particularly mind being looked at by twomen, but they thought that five were too many, and they all disappeared.

  At breakfast it was suggested that they should take a short tripon foot up the stream to see what the river would offer. They werecrossing the jam when Hugh's keen eye detected a movement in the waterbeneath them. Kneeling down on the floating logs they were astonishedto see that the deep pool beneath the jam was full of salmon. Theyall stretched out at full length on the logs and stared down into theclear water beneath them. Through the openings between the logs everymovement of the shoal of great fish, slowly moving about but a few feetfrom their faces, could be seen. The water was beautifully transparent,and it was easy to distinguish the color and form of each fish. Thehumped back and hooked jaw of the most fully developed males could bereadily distinguished, and were in strong contrast with the slim andgraceful forms of the female fish. There were probably between four andfive hundred salmon in the pool, which was not a very large one. Thefish crowded together so thickly that it was only occasionally possibleto see the pebbly bottom. It was not long before Jack remembered thesalmon spear in the canoe, and soon after he had thought of it, he andone of the Indians started back to get it. The salmon were so closetogether in the pool and seemed so near to the surface of the waterthat he thought that the spear could not be thrust down into the slowmoving mass without transfixing one or two of them.

  When the spear was finally brought to the log jam each one of thecompany secretly wished to be the first to catch a salmon, yet each wastoo polite to say what he wished, and they passed the implement fromhand to hand, asking each other to make the first attempt. Fannin andHugh seemed to want Jack to make the first attempt, but he declinedflatly and said: "You ought to do it, Mr. Fannin, because you are moreskilful than either of us, but if you don't want to do it let Hugh tryhis hand; he is the oldest person present."

  Hugh also declined with great promptness and positiveness, but was atlength prevailed to take the spear. He lay down on the logs with hisface close to an opening, into which he introduced the points of thespear, lowering it through the pellucid water until the end of theshaft was in his hands and he had fitted his fingers into the notchescut there. Then he watched until he saw a fish precisely under him,and made a forcible thrust, driving the spear deep down into the waterand causing a little flurry among the salmon, which moved their tailsa little and then darted away. Then Hugh arose with a mortified lookand said: "Well, I thought I had one that time, but it seems not. Youfellows will have to try your hands now."

  Fannin was the next to make a thrust, and made half a dozen withouteffect. The fish did not even dodge the strokes, but each time thespear went down toward them there was a general quivering of thewhole school, as if each fish had started a little. The thrower ofthe implement looked at them with a somewhat perplexed expression,and said: "It certainly seemed to me as if that spear went throughthe whole school." When he had recovered the spear he passed to Jackand told him to try his hand, but Jack's luck was no better than thatof his companions. To him, as he lay on his face looking down intothe pool, shadowed by the log jam, the depth of the water seemed tobe about five or six feet, yet as he thrust his spear into it and itpassed down toward the fish, the handle being in his hand, he could seethat the points were still quite a long distance above the backs of thefish, and no matter how hard he threw the spear, it created but littledisturbance. Hugh, Jack, and Fannin were now stretched out at differentpoints on the log jam, gazing at the fish beneath them. For some timethey did not realize where the difficulty lay, and now and then one ofthem would say: "Oh, please let me have the spear for just a minute;they are so thick here that I know I can't help catching one if I onlythrust it at them." But all thrusts were futile. At last, going ashore,and cutting a slender pole more than twenty feet in length, the depthof the water was measured, and it appeared that the spear was far tooshort to reach the fish. The excitement was too great to leave thingsin this condition and return to camp, so Hugh and Fannin soon added sixor eight feet to the length of the salmon spear and besides made a longgaff. With these two implements they returned to the pool, and found nodifficulty in catching salmon enough to supply the table.

  All along the river, which they followed up for several miles, theyfound great numbers of salmon, and with the salmon were a great manytrout, some of them of very large size. Fannin explained that thesefish followed up the salmon to feed on the spawn as it was deposited.He declared that while the salmon were running the trout would pay noattention to a fly. Certain it was that all Jack's efforts to get atrout to rise to the fly were unsuccessful.

  The evening after the day they had reached this camp they discussedthe question as to whether they should climb the mountains and haveanother goat hunt. After a little discussion it was decided to do so;but the next morning when they got up they found that it was rainingheavily. It rained continuously during the day until noon, when theyregretfully broke camp, and paddled down the Inlet to Hastings,where they paid off and dismissed the Indians and their canoe. Theunemotional savages shook hands calmly with their companions of thelast month. They arranged in the canoe their blankets and provisionsand the few cooking utensils which had been given them, and thenpaddled off down the Inlet and were soon out of sight, bound forNanaimo.

  A day or two later the travellers started for New Westminster, toreturn to Victoria. Jack and Hugh were loath to part with Fannin, andthey persuaded him to go with them on the stage as far as the town andto see the last of them when they took the steamer back to the island.

  The next morning all three boarded the stage, and, after a delightfulride through the great forest of the peninsula, they found themselvesonce more in New Westminster and shaking hands with Mr. James.