Woodsmen of the West

by Martin Allerdale Grainger

  That afternoon at Hanson Island I burned with fury as I observed similar punctilios of rigid self-respect. Jim should have been helping me, getting wood. He sat idle in the hotel instead. I could resort to violence, you say. Who, then, would help me engineer the Sonora? Short of violence I should figure undignified, weakly querulous, should I upbraid a fellow-worker with not doing his “fair share of work.” Decency prescribed my only course of action. I must do Jim’s share of work for him, let him find it done, heap coals of fire silently upon his vanity; act the perfect logger – with utter foolishness. For beery Jim had long since lost his vanity.

  So it happened that my fuel was put aboard and stacked in the Sonora’s engine-room, that steam was up to 80 lbs. and squirting from every usual joint, and that the Sonora was cast loose and ready to put out before Jim and the Dohertys and Ed Anderson, and a following of other men, came aboard. Then I pushed off with a pole, jangled the engine-room bell, and away we went, jinketty-jonk, into the blackness of the night.

  I opened all the pilot-house windows and leaned out as I steered, straining to glimpse the line where the black shore slopes and their black shadows met. Steering down Western Channel in the dark used to make me sweat all down my back with apprehension. For I have no proper Western confidence to make me oblivious of my lack of skill; and, if you wish to know, a long old tug-boat may be by no means easy to steer, in pitch darkness, in a swirling tide in a channel that narrows appallingly near Low Island, where Jimmy Hill once rammed us on the rocks. Suppose, after a dozen indecisions, you gain a hope that your course is keeping midway down the channel. You pay attention to where the steamer’s bow is going. Then with a start you find the stern is swinging near that shallow place on the starboard bank that shows up slightly whitish against the forest background. Next you think yourself at the proper safe distance from the starboard bank, and suddenly the tide swings you, in appearance, nearly aground upon the port, Oh, horrible channel! wherein you can see nothing safe but the shine of the water near around the bows: wherein all else is blackness: blackness that looks like shadow but proves solid – hills and shore; blackness that looks solid but that of a sudden flits away over the water and joins the blackness, and then comes solid back again elsewhere – shadows on the sea surface. Which is which, and where are you, and what room have you to swing? You wish you had a lantern hung from the bow near water, to shine up the passing shores and give you certainty.

  Some such thoughts were in my head as we went down Western Channel, nearing the narrow place. And then I realised our passengers.

  Any man could travel on the Sonora going to wherever we were going to ourselves; Bill and I would never mind. But we used to avoid making trips from one hotel to the other, lest many drunks should come aboard. Drunks are a nuisance on a boat.

  Now, as I steered, bottles were poked at me in the darkness and friendly voices insisted that I should drink. Five men were sitting in the pilot-house; all had bottles, all were fairly drunk. One man stood beside me and was sober. He discussed the channel, the darkness, the difficulties of my task of steering. He breathed of the desire to take the wheel himself. His name was Charlie Ross. Through the partition I could listen to the noises of my engineer at work; he seemed still on the hither side of drunkenness. Aft I could hear shouting and happy babel. Men, I imagined, filled the cook-house and the cabin. I trembled for my blankets.

  Soon we were in the narrow place, and I craned and used the corners of my eyes, and spun the wheel, watching the swing of the stern, watching the bows, watching the unseen line of shore. At my elbow Charlie Ross was agitated; he craned and watched, and startled me with what he saw. He gave me advice; he became importunate that I should do the right thing that he said; at last he snapped, “For God’s sake PORT!” and placed his hand upon my sleeve – the gesture of a clergyman reproving erring youth.

  Now I was ruffled, because I had had enough of that sort of thing on my first two trips, and because I lack the gift of discouraging impertinence by a right manner. So, there being room, I spun the wheel for starboard, hard, to sicken Charlie Ross. I let my elbow catch him in the ribs – by way of accident and hint, lest I should have to fall upon him. There was a queer noise; the wheel turned slack. The starboard steering gear had broken….

  Luckily the briskness of the wind had gone, there was but little breeze; luckily, too, we could run out into the widening channel, steering with the unbroken gear to port. Out there I stopped the engines, and we drifted, amid black shadow – to a noise of singing from the cabin aft….

  We were so used to accidents on the Sonora that no one seemed to take much interest in our plight. The most of us, drunk or semi-sober, had a restful feeling that something would be done by somebody to get the steamer safely to Port Browning; and even should she bump her rotten self on rocks and sink, that every one would scramble ashore somehow and somewhere. Why worry – take a drink!

  Passing aft with Charlie Ross, I saw into the engine-room, where, amid the scattered fragments of our fuel supply, two men lay warming themselves by the furnace, their hats jammed low upon their noses, their hands waving before each other’s faces, in drowsy, guttural debate. Passing the cookhouse, I saw the soles of boots upright upon the door-sill. Lying upon the thrown-down plates and pans and kitchen outfit, the man who wore them snored convulsively, his head turned to one side. I reached in and took his broken lantern and threw it overboard, then walked aft to the cabin. It was filled with men, some sleeping (one rolled, the swine! in my blankets), some sitting on the berths, legs dangling, watching Ed and Billy Doherty, who were holding a lantern through a trap-door in the floor to light the cursing Jim below. Jim was the only man aboard who knew, off-hand, where to find the break; by luck, he felt alarm, drink notwithstanding, and showed us what was wrong. We tied up the break with some one’s blanket rope.

  So, soon after midnight, we rather lamely made our way to anchorage at Port Browning; Jim, in the engine-room, cursing noisily because I took away the tins of lantern oil with which he had begun to feed the furnace. You may imagine, if you like, my feelings as I steered those last few miles, racing against Time. Our fuel was burnt to the last stick; our engineer was at the last gasp of consciousness before our voyage was over. The anchor dropped, I helped to throw dead-drunks into a rowboat; I said good-night to other men; and then I was alone, looking with rueful eyes into my smashed-up kitchen. Never again should drunks be let travel on the Sonora, I said, and fell to nursing my uneasy vanity, dissatisfied with the figure I myself had cut among that drunken crowd. You note, perhaps, the limitations of my character displayed so artlessly before your reading eyes. You smile at what you see. And what would you have done yourself? Used the hard fist? Tipped some one overboard? Brought violence among that happy, rowdy crowd of drunks?

  DAN MACDONNELL

  Dan Macdonnell was a quiet, steady man; big-chested, active, cheerful, like the better sort of bluejacket. He was a master of the Western art of makeshift – the art of rough-and-ready and never-at-a-loss – that does not worry if the proper tools are lacking; that will at need make, without fuss, bricks without straw; improvising the “good-enough” that proves to be good enough. When bad times made Ellerson shut down his camp, Dan (who had been blacksmith there) drew a fat cheque and moved over to Port Browning and lived in the hotel. He did not booze; he did not waste his money. Once in a while he would join the boys for a few drinks; but no one ever saw Dan drunk. Not that he was anyways a mean man, you understand. All that was just Dan’s way.

  Now, the previous summer a decrepit old steamboat named the Burt had ventured up the Inlet. The men who owned her meant to hand-log up round Tooya Cove, using the Burt each night to tow their new-cut logs to shelter. But the Burt went aground the first night at high tide, and tipped over at low, and filled and sank when the next tide came. They had a great job raising her, and all their grub was spoiled by the sea-water, and so they gave up hand-logging and left the district, losing about one thousand dollars. The Burt
was left anchored in Port Browning in charge of Bullfrog Todd. Todd got drunk one day. The Burt tipped and sank again, just opposite the hotel.

  Ed Anderson was loafing at Port Browning then. He did not seek work; he had no money; but there was a boom of logs up in Wah-shi-las Bay in which he had an interest. It was not saleable in these hard times; but it gave him standing, and he could trade upon the fact of its existence – for meals and liquor. Wise-looking, ease-loving, experienced Ed Anderson!

  Bullfrog Todd when sober made furious lamentation, finding the Burt had sunk. He preached one of his great sermons, standing on a chair in the bar-room, amid an uproar of applause. “I blame myself, I blame the drink, I blame this blank-blank whisky-hell,” he chose as text, and made one feel that politics had lost in losing Todd. Sprawling, fat, noisy, drunken Bullfrog Todd! They say he is a splendid engineer.

  I do not know what queer intentions brought the three men together – Dan and Ed and Bullfrog Todd. I know they joined, a company, in raising the sunken Burt. They floated her successfully; they cleaned out her machinery. Soon I was annoyed to see them cutting up a log I had meant to use myself; they were getting fuel for a voyage on board the Burt. Dan Macdonnell had bought the necessary grub and engine-room supplies. The Burt was to be taken cruising round the Islands and in the Straits, picking up and towing floating logs – beach-combing.

  One day I got up steam on board the Sonora and (a friend steering) took her down the harbour to a little creek where steamboats often go to fill their tanks. Late in the afternoon there came a sudden mist, filling Port Browning. We crept back cautiously to the usual anchorage, shadows guiding us. Just before I meant to stop the engines something in them clicked and broke. We anchored then. Early next morning I went to where the Burt was anchored to seek the help of Bullfrog Todd. He, it seems, had been on a furious “bust;” he was all drink-bleary and haggard, his hands shaking. But he came and saw my engines. “Get a blacksmith,” he advised. “Who’ll I get?” said I. “Dan Macdonnell’s your man,” said Todd; and I rowed him back aboard the Burt.

  Now it is not difficult to find a man you want to see in such a place as Port Browning. You try the bar-room first, then take a look around the rocks near the hotel, then look at faces in the beds upstairs. That failing, you row over to the store and make inquiry. Your man not being there, you row across to Felton’s shack, and stop at Ben the Englishman’s, and then row up to Pete’s.

  I did all this. I did not find my man. Dan Macdonnell was not at Port Browning! Then where the deuce was he? …

  Later that morning my friend Mitchell, the owner of the store, came rowing up to where I worked. “Come and row down the harbour with me,” he shouted. “Charlie Leigh’s gasoline1 came in just now, and Charlie says he could see a boat ashore below the bluffs. He thinks it’s some boat that’s drifted there.”

  Mitchell was a man who felt responsibility, as our leading citizen and postmaster. Moreover, in this case it was clear that some one would have to go and rescue the stranded boat and keep it till the owner should appear. So I and Mitchell rowed down the harbour to the place that Charlie Leigh had spoken of. There we found, at high-tide mark, just underneath the boughs of trees, resting comfortably among the rocks, undamaged – the rowboat of the Burt!

  And Dan Macdonnell no one ever saw again. He had dropped, that sturdy man, into infinity; he had vanished from our world. You see his name before you on this page. That is now all I know of that Dan has left behind.

  Just for the moment, when Mitchell and I returned to the hotel, Dan’s disappearance roused a general interest. Jem the bar-tender, good-hearted little man, at once took out a search party, and cross-examined Ed and Todd. Mitchell went over to his store and wrote a letter to Vancouver to the police; he hoped they would send some one, some time, to Port Browning to report. Then we had our dinner, long after it was due….

  We had to hurry over eating; darkness was not far off, and we had certain work to do. For there was a pig upon the warehouse raft, in a big cage. The steamer Cassiar had left it there for Revellor, who had a ranche on Galiano Island. The wretched pig was getting sick for want of exercise, and Mitchell, after dinner, asked some men from the hotel to help him raft the huge fat animal ashore. So there was great shouting – and fun. Side-splitting laughter shook us when a man, old Spot, fell in the sea and stood waist-deep, too drunk to get ashore. The pig was landed and all the dogs collected, and there was a pig-hunt and several dog-fights. Mitchell of course put up the drinks for every one, by way of thanks for their assistance. Then we watched the boys rollicking along the beach and round the house – a lively scene. Mitchell stood silent; then suddenly he said to me, “He was a damned decent fellow.” It was, I guessed, Dan’s epitaph.

  1. Motor-boat.

  LAST VOYAGE AND SINKING OF THE SONORA

  The wind seemed very fickle as we wound our way among the islets of the narrow channel; it came in flaws and gusts, from here, from there; cutting the tops of wavelets into small driving showers of spray, rattling the broken windows of the pilot-house. We knew a strong sou-’easter must be blowing down the open Inlet.

  Bill came up to discuss plans. The engines were working good, he said; there was lots of wood aboard; we had the big skiff towing astern, and not the rotten rowboat. The skiff was buoyant and did not leak. Besides, our new way of towing her, with the Sonora’s hawser (as thick as a man’s arm) looped right round under her keel and lashed with good strong rope, would guarantee her safety. Therefore, Bill thought, we should pay no attention to the weather.

  It was dark before we turned into the Inlet, from the end of Western Channel. We caught the first shock of wave. We began to pitch. Fortunately our course was head-on to the sea.

  Coming further from behind the land, we met the wind – real sou-’easter and no mistake. The Sonora bumped and bashed into the waves, rude horseplay for a poor old tug. Spray smashed at the pilot-house and drenched me, as I steered, through the shattered windows. There was a high, whining noise of wind in the ropes that stayed the tall funnel; we might, for the sound of it, have been an ocean liner.

  Through the thin partition behind me I could hear the babel-racket from the engine-room, where Bill was tinkering with fevered hands, his dear machines all a-rattle and a-bump. Slam, jingle, clank!

  There would be a moment’s breathless pause. Then the screw would race – the whole ship shivering, to set your teeth on edge. Then there would be a noise of fire-rake, and Bill could be heard hurling wood into the furnace. The hurried way he would slam the furnace doors told me everything. I could picture him, sweating with a very proper impatience, flying back to nurse his engines with a spanner; listening to mutterings and hammerings with discriminating ear; tightening nuts that were coming loose; keeping a wary eye on this and that; persuading the time-eaten machinery to miracles of cohesion.

  The skiff, towing behind in the darkness, could take its chance! I could not leave the wheel; Bill could not leave the engine-room. We could do no good to the skiff, anyway, in such a sea. The hawser would hold, even were the skiff to swamp; and after passing the mouth of Sergeant’s Passage, where the tide rip danced with high-pointed waves, the sea had come steadily from ahead, and a following boat was in some shelter.

  About two in the morning Bill came into the pilot-house.

  “Nice weather for a rowboat trip!” We grinned to one another in the darkness.

  “Nice weather for us,” said Bill resentfully; “here we aren’t up to Boulder Point yet – not ten miles in eight hours! I’ve got to be firing all the time to keep up any steam; we’ve used up a terrible lot of wood. We ain’t got enough wood to go on bucking this wind up to Sallie Point; that’s sure.”

  Now, in this sou-’east wind Boulder Point anchorage was no earthly use to us. We hated to turn back and run for Protection Point. Bill said Andy Horne had told him once that there was anchorage in a little pocket of a bay that you would hardly notice, passing, just beyond Boulder Point.

  We d
ecided to go and see – a hateful job to me, for I loathed strange harbours and narrow waters. The Sonora was such a brute to steer, and, backing, would not answer her helm. Besides, her captain was not skilful.

  We reached the place; we had luck; we sidled into the very centre of the tiny dark bay. The anchor held; there was no wind.

  It was five o’clock on Wednesday morning. We had been a-work since Sunday morning, sleeping four hours on Monday night, while sleepy passengers had steered and stoked. Now we stumbled into the Sonora’s bunk-house, by a last effort removed our boots, and fell into our blankets. Sleep extinguished us….

  We awoke some time in the afternoon. The Sonora was riding close to shore – so close that we might have thrown our axes into the mossy rocks. Splintered wood, in tangles, lay among the big drift-logs on the narrow beach; and we marked a fallen tree with bark that looked easy to loosen; and there was a pile of rejected stove wood beside a roofless cabin. Hand-loggers or trappers must have lived there once. After eating we made two journeys with the skiff, filling her each time with a great load of wood and bark. We looked out on the Inlet, and the wind seemed no longer so furious. About nightfall we hoisted anchor, backed our way zigzag to the open sea, and continued our voyage.

  The wind was blowing steady, no trouble to us. But alas! something very definite was wrong with the engines. Something pounded – pounded hard – something that was not used to pound before. We knew so many rhythms, so many notes of the music of our engine-room. This sound, oh hark! was new.