Adventure, November 1915 — page 121: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Posts of Pillage “Fair grand!’ whispered Ivan. ‘Not even a Montagnais abroad. Swift with the embarking. Francois, we will be towing your small canoe behind the large ones till it is time to transfer. Carefully, men, and never a rock-scrape or paddle-thump for 1?? the lives of you! asia AS SILENT as phantoms they est drifted out from the secret landing place, wriggled under the arching tamarack root and pointed bows up-river, six long canoes each manned by a dozen paddles, with Lavergne’s eighteen-footer ~ towing empty behind. They went in single file upon the water as well.as upon the land, so that the leading canoe might break the current’s force for the others. In the bow of the first canoe sat Chakoni, long-bodied, straight-backed, lithe-limbed, rigid-elbowed, plying his blade as his ancestors unto remote generations had plied theirs. He knew the Northern waters as he knew the loom of Chimo, and in eddy, chute or boulder-studded passage he was never at fault. Sunlight or. star- light, it was all the same to him, and when he could not see in the dark where the nar- row, balsam-shrouded shores leaned in, he seemed to sense his way by some primitive instinct. Behind Chakoni sat the Factor, and Francois, the latter even after his race wielding paddle with the best of them, breathing the canoe-man’s deep breaths and trying to keep his heart from hammering in the excitement and suspense, and ranged in pairs behind them again were two of the Seven Islands men, two of the Moisie, two of the Mingan and two of the Romaine men, all picked paddlers, paddlers to set the terrific pace for the hinder ones to keep. While in the steersman’s place huddled the thick-set, black-bearded Sachelle, twisting the stern of the great craft this way or that with the magic of a somber demon and glinting his white teeth through his dark beard every time he dipped his blade. And at a terrific pace they bored up- stream, their speed impressive, incontest- able by dint of the very harmonious unity of the flashing paddles. Their skill seemed to upset the natural law of resistance, and rather than the rushing current impeding them, they with blades strangely slanted in its depths, took advantage of its force to make their canoes glide up as of themselves. 119 The identical impetus with which the snarling Manikuagan hurled itself against them, glanced them, as it were, from its foaming breast upon their upward way. Above them the sky domed like dark- blue velvet, strewn with the infinite stars, but the starlight fell very weak, as if the planets had drawn aloof from the earth into a nebulous mist. Brighter than the star-gleam glared the Summer lightning, puffing skyward at intervals like exploding magnesium over Mushalagan Lake to the northwards. | The wilderness night droned in its many voices all about them, and again Lavergne heard the flapping wild ducks, the splashing ‘moose, the hoot of owl, cry of night-hawk, flop of fish, boom of frogs and, like an evil symphony stringing through it all, the blood-whine of the mosquitoes. Upward, ever upward they drove, main- taining their speed with an ease and cer- titude well-nigh uncanny, the double rows of paddles working with unfailing precision, like the arms of some smooth-oiled machine. But a half-mile below the bend of the river which curved into the flat rock-beach of Manikuagan Portage, the Factor gave Chakoni the word to slow. | “Here is where we can be flushing no wild-fowl flock and stampeding no crazy moose,’”’ he whispered. “Quiet and canny and secret is the way we go. If you hear drinking game, lay to in a crack.” _As silent as floating Autumn leaves go . down a stream, the Factor’s brigade forged up. Close in to the bank they hung till they reached the bend around which La- vergne plunged from Masita’s view in his mad dash down-stream, and here, without disturbance of any game, they held their canoes motionless in the slow tug of the shore-eddy circling in the lee of the head- land. “Pass up Lavergne’s canoe,’ ordered Ivan in a low voice. ‘And you, Chakoni, hold a blanket between the gunwales for fear the eddy smites them too hard as we embark.” Up from the rear came the eighteen-foot craft, passed from hand to hand of the crews and riding lightly as-a cork in its emptiness, till it was alongside the big leading fur- craft. The Nascaupee fort-runner leaned out and passed a fold of blanket between the two crafts for a buffer and steadied the EOLPMICLOOOKS (E@)