XIV LOST IN THE FOG

All that night the wind blew a gale, dashing the waves on the rocks, where they broke in showers of foam and spray that gleamed white in the moonlight, for the sky was cloudless and the air clear and cold.

When the gold-seekers looked off across the water next morning they met with a surprise. Far away to the west stretched a dim blue shape like the figure of a gigantic man lying on his back.

“The Cape of Nanabozho,” exclaimed the Indian in an awe-struck tone.

“The Sleeping Giant himself,” the lads cried, and Jean added, “Are we not then far west of our course? Surely we should not be able to see the Pointe au Tonnerre.”

Nangotook shook his head. “Who knows,” he said, “how far the Cape of Thunder may be seen? Is it not the home of Nanabozho himself? Who knows that it may not come and go in the sight of men at the will of the manito?”

“But,” objected Ronald, “you said that island on the east shore was the grave of Nanabozho. What has he to do with the Cape of Thunder?”

Nangotook looked puzzled. “It is true,” he said slowly, “my people say the manito makes his dwelling on that island to the east, but they say also that the Cape of Thunder is formed in his likeness, and they leave offerings to him there. It may be,” the Ojibwa added, his face clearing, “that part of the time he lives in one place, part of the time in the other. Why not? Spirits may be in many places. They do not travel slowly like men, who creep along with much labor. What do the manitos know of paddling and of portages? They cross high hills at a stride, and the land and water are alike to them. Do not the white fathers say that God is a spirit and that He is everywhere?”

“Hush, hush, Etienne!” cried Jean scandalized. “Would you speak of the good God and your heathen manitos in the same breath, and even compare them with Him? And you a Christian! It is sacrilege!”

The Ojibwa looked abashed. “I am a Christian, I worship the one great spirit as the fathers taught me,” he answered somewhat sullenly. He started to turn away, but Ronald spoke to him.

“Surely,” the boy insisted, “we’re out of our course. We’ve been driven too far to the west, and must seek our island towards the east. Is that not true?”

“It may be,” Nangotook grunted, “if that is the true cape.”

“Of course it is the cape. What else could it be?”

“A sign from the manito himself,” growled the Indian, and turned his back.

The lads were not unimpressed by Nangotook’s words and manner. The dim figure, like a great man outstretched in sleep, seemed mysterious and uncanny enough to their imaginations. Thunder Cape is the eastern boundary of Thunder Bay on the northwest shore of Superior, and it is only its highest part that is visible far across the lake, the lower land sinking entirely out of view and leaving the Giant lying solitary on the water.

“Etienne says it is a sign,” Jean remarked in a low voice. “Does he think the omen good or bad, I wonder?”

Ronald shook his head. “I doubt if he knows what he thinks, but what is that to us? If we ever find the gold, we will secure it in spite of all the Indian devils in the lake.” He spoke hotly, eager to prove to himself as well as to his companion that he had no faith in or respect for the power of such heathen spirits and demons.

Jean looked a little frightened at his friend’s bold tone. Nangotook turned on him with a stern face. “Speak not so of the manitos of these waters,” he said peremptorily, “lest you rouse their wrath and bring disaster on us all.” And with a glance of scorn at the offending lad, he walked away.

“Nangotook is but a weak kind of Christian,” Ronald remarked sneeringly. “He still puts his faith in these manitos of his and fears them.” The boy was smarting under the Indian’s rebuke.

Jean shook his head doubtfully. “He is a Christian,” he replied, “but, being an Indian, he has seen instances of the power of the spirits of the lake. I, too, am a Christian, as you very well know, and have no veneration for such savage gods and devils, but I have heard strange tales of their doings and of the power of their priests. Father René says the medicine men’s gifts are surely of the devil, but that good Christians who put their faith in a higher power need have no fear of them. Yet I can see no good in offending the spirits needlessly, and bringing their enmity upon us by foolish speeches.”

To this argument, which indicated that Jean upheld the Indian in his rebuke, Ronald found no ready answer. Indeed in his heart he was not so contemptuous of the manito’s powers as he appeared, and was just a bit uneasy over his own defiance. The feeling was not strong enough, however, to shake his determination to find the wonderful island and to carry off a goodly sample of its golden sands.

The wind was still blowing so strongly from the west as to make traveling impossible. Ronald had suffered no ill effects, except a little stiffness of the muscles, from his soaking and chilling of the day before, but the wound on his forehead and a lump on the back of his head pained him considerably, so he did not care to exert himself. He remained in camp, spending his time mending his clothes and making a hare skin cap to replace the toque he had lost when he fell over the cliff. The others fished on the lea side of the island, visited the snares, and searched for some signs of the man or beast that had attacked the boy. With the exception of some footprints at the edge of the cliff, prints made by a larger moccasin than Ronald wore, there was no trace of the mysterious enemy. The tracks were found in one place only, where a little earth had lodged on the rock. On the almost bare rocks round about, no marks were discernible. Jean and Etienne would have been glad to explore the caves under the cliff, but the high wind of that day and the following one made it impossible to use the canoe on that side of the island.

The second evening after Ronald’s fall from the cliff, a wonderful aurora borealis, more brightly colored than any the boys had ever seen, waved its streamers of green, yellow, orange and flame-red over the northern sky. Nangotook regarded it with awe, and muttered something in his own language that the boys could not understand.

The next night the wind went down with the sun, but when the lads crept into their blankets, the long roll of the waves had not subsided enough to make launching the canoe safe. Since they had learned of the presence of an enemy on the island, one or another of the three had kept awake and watchful all night. When Ronald took his turn before dawn, he left the wigwam and scrambled down the rocks to get a drink of water. He was pleased to find that the waves had smoothed out into long, gentle swells. “We can surely cross to that other land to-day,” he thought. He was too impatient to put off departure, however. Why wait till daylight? The sun would come up in another hour or two. If they started at once, they could make the trip before there was any danger of the wind rising again, and, moreover, their enemies, who might be on the watch somewhere, would be less likely to see them go.

The lad returned to the shelter, aroused the others and explained his plan. Jean was eager to go, and Nangotook grunted his assent. The idea of stealing a march on their enemies appealed to the Indian’s love of strategy. Dawn was just beginning to break, when everything was ready. But Nangotook suddenly became reluctant to start out. He pointed to the mist that lay on the water and dimmed the stars. “Fog come soon,” he said.

“’Tis only the morning haze,” replied Ronald. “’Tis not thick enough to hinder us, and it will disappear at sunrise.”

“We shall be there by sunrise if we start now,” Jean added confidently. “That land is not far away. An hour’s paddling will surely take us there.”

“Better wait and see,” said the Ojibwa.

But the boys insisted. They were impatient to be gone, and could not endure the thought of further delay. Ronald especially was stubbornly determined. He knew better than to accuse Nangotook openly of cowardice, but he hinted so plainly that the Indian might be influenced by fear, that the latter’s pride was touched. Suddenly breaking short the argument, he picked up the canoe, stalked into the water with it, and held it ready for the lads to step in.

They began their trip in silence. During the stay on the island Nangotook had whittled out two paddles to replace the ones they had lost, and now, as was his custom, he took the bow, with Jean in the stern. In the dim light and the haze they could not make out the land to which they were going, but they knew the direction, and had no fear of missing the place unless the mist grew denser.

It did grow denser. The light breeze was almost directly south now and it brought the fog. Gradually, and at first almost imperceptibly, the haze thickened. Nangotook and the boys paddled with all their strength and speed, the latter confident that they would soon reach their destination, the Indian so silent and stolid that it was impossible to guess at his thoughts. Then suddenly, all in a moment as it seemed, the fog folded them in its thick white blanket. Nangotook grunted as if to say “I told you so,” but did not lessen the speed of his stroke. To turn back was useless. There was better chance of keeping their direction true if they went ahead, for in turning they would almost inevitably lose their bearings.

The breeze was driving the fog, and as they went on, Jean and Ronald were sure, from the angle at which they took the waves and the way the breeze struck them, that they were keeping the course and would soon reach land. They strained their ears for the sound of water lapping on rocks or sand beach, and peered through the thickness for the shadowy, looming shape of cliffs or trees.

On and on they went. The fog whitened with the coming of dawn, but did not lessen or disperse. It blew and shifted from time to time, but never thinned enough to give them a clear view for more than a few feet in any direction. Either the land they had seen was much farther away than they had estimated, or they were out of their course. The Indian had nothing to say, and the lads could not tell whether he had really lost his bearings and knew it, or believed himself to be going in the right direction. When they questioned him, he answered only with grunts. They had scorned his advice, and had hurt his pride by implying that he was afraid to set out. Now he was letting them take their punishment.

They were certainly being well punished. As they paddled on through the fog, without a sound or glimpse of anything that suggested land, both boys grew very uneasy. After all, perhaps Nangotook had been right, perhaps the sleeping Nanabozho had actually shown himself to them as a warning to their rashness, or perhaps Ronald’s bold speech had really offended some manito. Neither boy would have admitted to the other that he had such thoughts, but they lived in a superstitious age, and there were many strange tales current among the voyageurs of the powers of the Indian spirits and of their priests or shamans.

The brightening of the fog showed the advance of day. Yet the adventurers went on and on and on. The thought occurred to both lads that the land they had seen might not be real at all, but only a mirage or a false appearance sent by the evil spirits to lure them to their deaths. There in that dense, chilling mist, cut off as it seemed from the world of men, and going perhaps into the very middle of the great lake, whose mysteries neither Indian nor white man had ever fully penetrated, such thoughts were far from pleasant.

Even fear could not still the pangs of hunger in healthy boys, however, or make them quite forget that they had had no breakfast. The birch basket still held the remains of the hare stew from their evening meal, so Ronald helped himself to a share of it, and then took the stern paddle while Jean breakfasted. Nangotook, however, refused to give up his paddle or to eat.

The day wore away, and still the blades dipped with regular rhythm. The stroke was slower and easier now, for there was no reason, lost as they were for haste or speed. They paddled merely to keep headway on the canoe and to strike the waves at the right angle. And still, hour after hour, they went on and on, Jean and Ronald taking turns at the stern paddle, the Indian never yielding up his place in the bow.

Ronald was plying his paddle mechanically, a dull apathy having settled down on his spirit, as the hour of silence and white mist passed, and Jean, stretched out on the bottom of the canoe, had fallen asleep when Nangotook, who had been sullenly silent all day, spoke suddenly. “Land,” he said and jerked his head towards the left.

Ronald woke from his stupor at once. The first thing he noticed was that the mist was a little less thick, for he could see Nangotook more distinctly, the next thing he observed was that the water was perfectly smooth, without even a ripple, and the third and most important was a dim, scarcely discernible something, a shadow of a shape, on the left hand. He called to Jean and the latter sat up and stared at the shadow.

At the Indian’s order Ronald swerved the canoe in that direction. There was no sound of surf, yet the approach must be made cautiously, for rock shores are far more common on Lake Superior than sand beaches. A careful stroke and paddles lifted, another stroke and paddles lifted again, and then the bow grated gently. Without hesitation Nangotook stepped over the side, while Ronald held the canoe stationary with his paddle.