The Island of Yellow Sands: An Adventure and Mystery Story for Boys

by Ethel C. Brill

  XXIX

  NEAR STARVATION

  The next morning was foggy, but the water was calm, so the voyageursmade an early start. As they had nothing to eat, they did not have todelay for breakfast. In the thick mist, navigation was difficult,however, even for the experienced Ojibwa. Disaster came quickly. Theyran too close to an island that lay off the end of the point separatingtheir camping ground from the open lake, struck upon a sharp, submergedrock, and tore a bad hole in the bottom of the canoe. The water came inso rapidly that, to reach shore, Ronald and the Indian had to put alltheir strength and speed into their paddling, while Jean bailed as fastas he could. It was fortunate that they were only a few hundred feetfrom 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 takeconsiderable time. So the three decided that breakfast was the firstessential. While Ronald gathered fire-wood and Etienne attempted to coaxa blaze from the wet materials, Jean looked for a place where he couldfish from the shore. From a pool among the rocks, he dipped up some tinyfish that he could use for bait, but neither he nor Ronald succeeded incatching anything large enough to be eaten. Finally they breakfasted ontwo squirrels that Ronald brought down with stones, scanty fare indeedfor three men who had fasted for nearly twenty-four hours.

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

  Accordingly, the two lads scrambled along the rocky point, to the headof the narrow little bay where they had spent the night. They knew thatthe stream entered the lake at the upper end of another subsidiary bay,that lay parallel to the one where they were. Instead of going aroundthe intervening point, they risked losing themselves in the fog, andstruck off through the woods. After climbing a ridge, they came upon thestream they sought, running through a swampy valley. It was not afavorable place for trout, so they continued on down the brook to itsmouth, around the end of the little bay, and along higher ground forabout two miles, to another larger and more rapid stream, thatdischarged into the lake through a break between the ridges. The fog wasso thick that the lads, had they not been guided by the ridge theytraveled along, might easily have become lost and have failed to findthe stream they were seeking. Indeed they had underestimated thedistance, and had begun to fear they had missed the place, when theycame suddenly to the edge of the ravine where the brown waters flowedswiftly down to the lake. The little trout were biting so eagerly thatthe fishermen soon had fine strings. These were primitive, uneducatedtrout that had never been fished for, and did not have to be lured withbright colored, artificial flies, but were ready to rise to minnows andeven to bare hooks.

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

  "Northeaster coming," grunted the Indian, without even glancing at thestrings 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 asheltered camping spot. The northeast wind swept the whole length of thebay, and it was not until they reached thick woods at its head, thatthey found a good place. A bit of partly open ground surrounded by treeswas hastily cleared and leveled, and a wigwam erected. Not until the hutwas finished and a good supply of fire-wood cut and piled inside, didNangotook allow the boys to even clean their fish. By that time the coldrain 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 tobroil. It was well that the lads had brought back long strings, for totheir hunger one little trout was scarcely more than a mouthful.

  Nangotook's prophecy was correct. Another northeaster was upon them, notquite so violent as the one they had passed through a short time before,but even more long continued. Four days, the cold, driving storm ofrain, wind, sleet and snow lasted, with never a long enough lull to letthe 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 thethree wanderers. They had no blankets or furs for covering, but couldonly 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 wornand ragged. Neither boy had a change of clothing left. Their moccasinswere in rags, and they had no deerskin to make new. Fuel was plenty, buthard to get in the icy storm, and slow to dry so it would burn wellenough to give off anything but smoke.

  Their greatest misery, however, was due to lack of food. If there wereany 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 shorebrought little result. Once when the storm lulled slightly, Nangotookand Ronald tried to reach the stream where the boys had caught thetrout, but before they had fought their way through snow and wind forhalf a mile, the storm came on again with such violence that they wereobliged to turn back. In the quieter intervals they sought for anythingeatable that the woods near their wigwam afforded, digging through thefrozen snow for roots, picking every nut and seed and dried berry thatremained on the bushes, and even stripping the tender inner bark ofwillows and birches and chewing it. To ease his hunger, Nangotook smokedincessantly. He was out of tobacco, but used bearberry leaves and willowbark in his pipe. He spent most of his time, when compelled by the stormto remain within the lodge, making new bows and arrows and twistingstout cord from the inner bark of the white cedar to weave into afishing net. In this work the boys joined him.

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

  "Malbrouk se'n va-t-en guerre, Mironton, mironton, mirontaine,"

  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 withits story, but they had never felt the tragedy of it so strongly before.It is the death lament of the brave Cadieux, voyageur, trader andinterpreter. Cadieux was living with his Algonquin wife and others ofher tribe at the Portage of Sept-chutes, or Seven Falls, on the OttawaRiver, when news arrived of the approach of a party of Iroquois. TheIroquois would certainly ambush the portage. The only way of escape laythrough the rapids. Some one must draw the enemy into the woods and farenough 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 accidentor design, and the Indian was killed. Three days and nights the Iroquoispursued the white man, who went without sleep all that time. In themeantime his wife and her companions reached safety. Days passed, andCadieux did not rejoin them as he had agreed to. At last three men setout to seek for him. At Sept-chutes, near the Petit Rocher, or LittleRock, they found a lodge of branches, and beside it, lying in a shallowtrench with a cross at its head, the wasted body of Cadieux. On hisbreast, under his folded hands, was a sheet of birch bark covered withwriting, the words, according to tradition, of his death lament. He hadbecome 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 littlewi
gwam, the wind roaring through the trees overhead, and the snow andsleet beating upon the bark, the lads realized as never before thetragedy of Cadieux's fate. Unless the storm ceased soon and they foundfood promptly, they, too, might perish in the wilderness far from humanaid. It was no wonder that Jean's voice, hoarse from cold and weak fromhunger, trembled as he sang the closing lines.

  "Ces done ici que le mond m'abandonne, Mais j'ai secours en vous, Sauveur des hommes! Tres-Sainte Vierge, ah, m'abandonnez pas, Permettez-moi d'mourir entre vos bras!"

  "Here all alone the world abandons me, In the Saviour of men may my help still be! Most blessed Virgin, let me not forsaken lie, But clasped in thine arms, oh allow me to die!"