XXIX NEAR STARVATION

The next morning was foggy, but the water was calm, so the voyageurs made an early start. As they had nothing to eat, they did not have to delay for breakfast. In the thick mist, navigation was difficult, however, even for the experienced Ojibwa. Disaster came quickly. They ran too close to an island that lay off the end of the point separating their camping ground from the open lake, struck upon a sharp, submerged rock, and tore a bad hole in the bottom of the canoe. The water came in so rapidly that, to reach shore, Ronald and the Indian had to put all their strength and speed into their paddling, while Jean bailed as fast as he could. It was fortunate that they were only a few hundred feet from the point, or they could not have gained it before the boat filled. They had no time to choose a landing place, and, striking the rocks, damaged the canoe still more.

The bark covering was so badly torn that mending it would take considerable time. So the three decided that breakfast was the first essential. While Ronald gathered fire-wood and Etienne attempted to coax a blaze from the wet materials, Jean looked for a place where he could fish from the shore. From a pool among the rocks, he dipped up some tiny fish that he could use for bait, but neither he nor Ronald succeeded in catching anything large enough to be eaten. Finally they breakfasted on two squirrels that Ronald brought down with stones, scanty fare indeed for three men who had fasted for nearly twenty-four hours.

After they had finished the last drop of the squirrel stew, the two boys decided to go back around the shore to the mouth of a stream they had noticed the day before. There they might be able to catch some brook trout, while Etienne was repairing the canoe.

Accordingly, the two lads scrambled along the rocky point, to the head of the narrow little bay where they had spent the night. They knew that the stream entered the lake at the upper end of another subsidiary bay, that lay parallel to the one where they were. Instead of going around the intervening point, they risked losing themselves in the fog, and struck off through the woods. After climbing a ridge, they came upon the stream they sought, running through a swampy valley. It was not a favorable place for trout, so they continued on down the brook to its mouth, around the end of the little bay, and along higher ground for about two miles, to another larger and more rapid stream, that discharged into the lake through a break between the ridges. The fog was so thick that the lads, had they not been guided by the ridge they traveled along, might easily have become lost and have failed to find the stream they were seeking. Indeed they had underestimated the distance, and had begun to fear they had missed the place, when they came suddenly to the edge of the ravine where the brown waters flowed swiftly down to the lake. The little trout were biting so eagerly that the fishermen soon had fine strings. These were primitive, uneducated trout that had never been fished for, and did not have to be lured with bright colored, artificial flies, but were ready to rise to minnows and even to bare hooks.

The fog was still dense when the boys, well laden with fish, started to make their way back to their camping place, but when they climbed out of the ravine, they found it was no longer a motionless curtain of mist that hung about them, but waves of moisture driven before a raw northeast wind. Before they reached the point where Etienne was at work on the canoe, the fog had turned to rain, cold, fine and mist-like.

“Northeaster coming,” grunted the Indian, without even glancing at the strings of trout. “Find better place and make wigwam quick.”

Hungry though they were, the three did not even wait to cook their fish, but, seizing the canoe, made speed back along the point to look for a sheltered camping spot. The northeast wind swept the whole length of the bay, and it was not until they reached thick woods at its head, that they found a good place. A bit of partly open ground surrounded by trees was hastily cleared and leveled, and a wigwam erected. Not until the hut was finished and a good supply of fire-wood cut and piled inside, did Nangotook allow the boys to even clean their fish. By that time the cold rain was coming down hard, and the wind was bending the tree tops. Within their bark shelter the three, wet, chilled and painfully hungry, sat around their little fire and waited impatiently for the fish to broil. It was well that the lads had brought back long strings, for to their hunger one little trout was scarcely more than a mouthful.

Nangotook’s prophecy was correct. Another northeaster was upon them, not quite so violent as the one they had passed through a short time before, but even more long continued. Four days, the cold, driving storm of rain, wind, sleet and snow lasted, with never a long enough lull to let the waves, that dashed furiously the length of the big, open bay, subside so a canoe could be launched. It was a time of misery for the three wanderers. They had no blankets or furs for covering, but could only burrow down among evergreen branches to keep out the bitter cold. Jean did not even have a coat, and his shirt, like Ronald’s, was worn and ragged. Neither boy had a change of clothing left. Their moccasins were in rags, and they had no deerskin to make new. Fuel was plenty, but hard to get in the icy storm, and slow to dry so it would burn well enough to give off anything but smoke.

Their greatest misery, however, was due to lack of food. If there were any animals in that part of Minong, they kept to their holes and dens. It was impossible to go out in the canoe, and fishing from the shore brought little result. Once when the storm lulled slightly, Nangotook and Ronald tried to reach the stream where the boys had caught the trout, but before they had fought their way through snow and wind for half a mile, the storm came on again with such violence that they were obliged to turn back. In the quieter intervals they sought for anything eatable that the woods near their wigwam afforded, digging through the frozen snow for roots, picking every nut and seed and dried berry that remained on the bushes, and even stripping the tender inner bark of willows and birches and chewing it. To ease his hunger, Nangotook smoked incessantly. He was out of tobacco, but used bearberry leaves and willow bark in his pipe. He spent most of his time, when compelled by the storm to remain within the lodge, making new bows and arrows and twisting stout cord from the inner bark of the white cedar to weave into a fishing net. In this work the boys joined him.

They attempted to forget their suffering in talk. Jean told all the strange French-Canadian tales and sang all the songs he could remember, from “Marlborough Has Gone to War,”

a song brought from old France many years before, to the purely Canadian “Petit Rocher de la Haute Montagne.”

The two lads had heard the latter song many times and were familiar with its story, but they had never felt the tragedy of it so strongly before. It is the death lament of the brave Cadieux, voyageur, trader and interpreter. Cadieux was living with his Algonquin wife and others of her tribe at the Portage of Sept-chutes, or Seven Falls, on the Ottawa River, when news arrived of the approach of a party of Iroquois. The Iroquois would certainly ambush the portage. The only way of escape lay through the rapids. Some one must draw the enemy into the woods and far enough away to give the refugees chance to escape by water unseen. Cadieux and a young Algonquin volunteered for the perilous service. Exposing themselves to view, they drew the Iroquois away from the river, while the rest of the little settlement ran the rapids and escaped. Cadieux and his Algonquin companion became separated, either by accident or design, and the Indian was killed. Three days and nights the Iroquois pursued the white man, who went without sleep all that time. In the meantime his wife and her companions reached safety. Days passed, and Cadieux did not rejoin them as he had agreed to. At last three men set out to seek for him. At Sept-chutes, near the Petit Rocher, or Little Rock, they found a lodge of branches, and beside it, lying in a shallow trench with a cross at its head, the wasted body of Cadieux. On his breast, under his folded hands, was a sheet of birch bark covered with writing, the words, according to tradition, of his death lament. He had become lost in his wanderings and had returned to his starting place, where he had died of exhaustion and starvation.

Suffering from cold and hunger, huddled around the fire in their little wigwam, the wind roaring through the trees overhead, and the snow and sleet beating upon the bark, the lads realized as never before the tragedy of Cadieux’s fate. Unless the storm ceased soon and they found food promptly, they, too, might perish in the wilderness far from human aid. It was no wonder that Jean’s voice, hoarse from cold and weak from hunger, trembled as he sang the closing lines.