XVI ISLAND OR MAINLAND?

To navigate Lake Superior on a raft was a perilous undertaking, but the attempt had to be made. Hoping to reach their destination before the wind came up again, the castaways started at dawn, while the mists still lay on the water and the land to north and west showed shadowy and indistinct. When the three, with their scanty equipment, had taken their places, the rude raft had all it would carry. It seemed as if an added pound or two might easily sink it. Etienne and Ronald knelt one on each side to ply the paddles, which fortunately had not been blown away, while Jean, who was of lighter build, sat between them, legs extended. The course was northwest, for in that direction the land seemed nearest.

All went well at first, but progress was very slow, and, before they had gone two miles, the wind was rising with the advancing day, and was threatening to make the raft unmanageable. As the mists cleared away, the voyageurs discovered that the land in front of them extended as far as they could see in either direction. On the left, to the southwest, it curved around and shut off the lake, but did not furnish much protection, for the shore on that side lay at least ten miles away. Evidently they were in a large bay, ten or twelve miles long and three or four broad, protected on the west and north by high land, partly cut off from the lake by rock islands to the south and southeast, but open to the northeast, and affording little shelter for small craft. As the wind rose and the ripples changed to waves, the peril of their position increased, and Ronald and the Ojibwa had their hands full guiding their clumsy craft and making headway. Every few moments a wave washed on it and sometimes over it, and the three were soon wet to their waists. But they managed to stick to the raft and continued to make some progress towards land.

The danger increased momentarily, and, as they approached a rocky shore, they lost control of the raft in the rising wind. The paddles were no longer of avail in handling the unwieldy thing. Wind and water took it wherever they would, the Indian and the boys washed and rolled about by the waves, but clinging with fingers and toes to the roots and bark ropes that bound the logs together. The boys’ only hope was that they would be carried ashore.

Unluckily rocks off the shore were in the way. A gust of wind bore the raft full on a jagged, upturned edge of rock, a sharp point penetrated between two of the slender poles and ripped through the fastenings. The raft hung suspended at an angle, the waves washing it, the castaways clinging to the slanting surface. The raft was doomed. It could not last many minutes without splitting in two. If they were to gain the shore, they must swim for it. Fortunately it was only a few feet away.

Ronald, who was the best swimmer of the three, went first, his blanket and the rest of his belongings fastened to his shoulders, Etienne’s gun, for Ronald had lost his own, held over his head with one hand, while he swam with the other. The waves bore him along, but his greatest danger was from the rocks, and he had to be on the lookout for a place where he could land without bruising himself against them. He rounded a projecting point, which broke the force of the water, and succeeded in making a landing just beyond. Then, having pulled himself up a steep, slippery slope, he turned to see how his companions were faring.

Jean and the Ojibwa had left the raft at the same moment, but the latter, like many Indians, was a poor swimmer. In spite of the fact that he was not burdened with a gun and could use both arms, he had fallen behind Jean and was making bad work of the short passage. In safety Jean passed the point Ronald had gone around, but Etienne, caught by an unusually large wave, was borne against a rock, striking the side of his head.

The moment Ronald saw what had happened, he plunged into the water again, shouting to Jean as he did so. Jean turned back at once, ducking through an advancing wave like a sea-gull. The Indian had gone under, and a receding wave had dragged him back from the rock. Just as he was being washed against it again, Jean, dropping his gun, seized him with one hand. He was unconscious, and Jean could hardly have managed him alone in such a heavy sea. Ronald reached him in a moment, however, and together they towed the inert body to shore, and succeeded in dragging and hoisting it up the rocks to safety.

It was the blow on the side of the head that had made Nangotook lose consciousness, for he had not swallowed much water. The boys laid him face downward and lifted him at the waist to get rid of what little water he had taken in, but it was several minutes before he came to. He had nothing to say about the accident and offered no thanks for the rescue, but it was evident from his changed manner that he was not unmindful that his companions had saved his life. Ever since Ronald had defied the manitos and had appeared to question Nangotook’s courage, the latter had been morose, gruff and silent, and had shown plainly that the Scotch lad had offended him deeply. Now, however, he seemed to think they were quits, for the angry mood had passed and he was himself again.

The adventurers were disappointed to find they had not reached the mainland, but were on an island about a mile long and half a mile wide in its broadest part. It was of irregular shape, two little bays running into it on the east and west, almost cutting it in two. The island was covered with trees, among them birches large enough to make the construction of a canoe possible. Other islands lay near at hand, while what they took to be the main shore was not more than half a mile away. Reaching it would be a simple matter, as soon as they had built a canoe.

The most important thing at the moment, however, was food. They had eaten nothing that day, and nothing the day before but a very insufficient amount of gull flesh. In a birch bark receptacle wrapped in Jean’s blanket, was the small quantity of corn, not more than two handfuls, they had saved so carefully. Convinced that they would soon be able to reach the land to the west, and that there must be game on so large a tract, they decided to eat this last remnant of their provisions. Etienne made another bark cooking vessel and prepared a rather thin soup of the corn. They made way with every drop and hungered for more.

Then Ronald sought for game while the Indian and Jean began canoe making. Ronald met with no success. Not a trace of game of any kind could he find. Apparently there was not even a squirrel on the island, and no gulls frequented it. He tried fishing from shore and rocks, but did not get a bite. Once more the wanderers were obliged to lie down for the night supperless, while from somewhere across the water an owl hooted derisively.

“If that fellow comes over here where we can get him, he’ll be howling in a different tone,” growled Ronald. He was so hungry he would not have rejected an owl, in spite of its animal diet.

“The great horned one is far too wise to come close enough for us to catch or shoot him,” Jean replied.

All three had worked late by firelight that night. They were expert at canoe building, and, though they did not appear to hurry, but performed each step of the operation carefully and thoroughly, they wasted few motions. Without any ready made materials, however, and no tools except their axes, knives and a big, strong needle for sewing, the task was necessarily a slow one and could not be completed in one day. They had felled suitable trees, white cedar for the frame and birch for the covering, and had skilfully peeled the birch bark, stripping a trunk in a single piece and scraping the inner surface as a tanner scrapes leather. Their ball of wattap and chunk of gum were gone, so they had to dig small spruce roots and gather spruce gum, soak, peel and split the roots and twist the strands into cord, and boil the gum to prepare it for use. Ribs, gunwales, cross pieces and sheathing had to be hewed and whittled out of the tough, elastic, but light and easily cut cedar wood, and soaked to render them as pliable as possible.

An open space, with soil deep enough to hold stakes, had been selected, and the stakes cut and driven in to outline the shape of the canoe. Within them the frame was formed, large stones being placed on the ribs to keep them in shape until dry. Slender cross pieces or bars strengthened and held the ribs in place, and the ends were pointed and fitted into holes in the rim, then bound with wattap. The pieces of bark, which had been sewed together, were fitted neatly over this frame, and wattap was wrapped over and over the gunwale and passed through bark and ribs. Next to the bark, and held in place by the ribs, strips of cedar, shaved as thin as the blade of a knife, were placed to form sheathing. The last process was the gumming of the seams to make them water-tight. The gum, softened by heat, was applied, and the seams carefully gone over with a live coal held in a split stick, while, with the thumb of the other hand, the canoe maker pressed in the sticky substance.

The boat was done at last, and, though made without saw, hammer, chisel, plane, nails, boards or paint, was, when completed and put in the water, a strong, sound, light, graceful, well-balanced craft that satisfied even the Indian’s critical eye. It floated buoyantly, and was water proof in every seam.

During the boat building, a few small fish had been caught, but no one had had half enough to eat. As the three paddled away in their new canoe, they debated whether they had better land at once or skirt the shore looking for possible beaches. They were not yet fully convinced that they might not be near the yellow sands. Food, not sand, was the first necessity, however, and Nangotook and Jean expressed themselves in favor of landing immediately and looking for game. But Ronald pointed out that they had scarcely any ammunition left, and that to catch game with snares and traps would be slow work. They had better try for fish first, he said, and they could do that while going along shore. Jean at once agreed, and Nangotook, when he saw the others were both against him, grunted his assent. So, when close to a gently sloping rock beach, they turned and paddled northeast, with a fishing line attached to the stern paddle.

They had gone but a little way, when a pull at the line signaled a bite. The fish did not make as hard a fight as the lake trout they had caught before, while fishing in the same manner, and when Jean pulled it over the side, he was disappointed to find that it was a siskiwit or lake salmon. Siskiwit are not very good eating for they are very fat and this was a small one weighing not over three pounds. Hungry as they were, they decided to try their luck again, in the hope of getting a better and larger fish, but after paddling for fifteen or twenty minutes and catching another larger siskiwit, they could wait no longer.

They put in to the rock beach very carefully, stepping out into the water before the bow grounded, to avoid scraping the new canoe. There on the rock Ronald and Etienne made a fire of moss, bark and birch wood, while Jean cleaned the fish. The boiled siskiwit was very fat and oily, but the three were so nearly starved that it seemed a feast to them. As they had not been accustomed to use salt with their food they did not miss that luxury. While the lads were preparing the meal, Etienne had discovered a well defined hare runway. The boys had to admit that a supply of food was a prime necessity, and they agreed to camp where they were until next day and make every attempt to secure game.

After Etienne had gone to set his snares, Ronald and Jean crossed the sloping rock beach, which was rough and scored. A little back from the water’s edge it was covered more or less thickly, first with lichens, and then with moss, bearberry plants and creeping evergreens. Looking for signs of game, they pushed their way through spruce and birch woods, stopping several times to set snares where hares had made a runway or squirrels had left a little pile of cone scales, with the seeds neatly extracted, at the foot of a spruce. The two had been going through the woods for perhaps half a mile, when they came out suddenly on the shore of a body of water.

“A bay,” exclaimed Jean, “who would have looked for one here?”

“It looks more like a lake,” Ronald replied. “The water is brownish like the little streams we’ve seen, and there is no opening in sight.”

Jean shook his head. “Just because we cannot see an opening is no sign that there is none,” he said. “Shores that look continuous are not always so, as you well know. Unless we have reached the mainland, this must be a landlocked bay. It is surely too large for a lake within an island.”

“It looks to me as if we had reached the mainland,” Ronald answered. “See how high the land towers beyond this lake or bay. If this is an island it must be Minong or Philippeau, and our Island of Yellow Sands lies far to the east. Let us go back for the canoe and cross this lake or skirt its shores. We have time enough before darkness comes.”