Ungava

by R. M. Ballantyne

  CHAPTER TWO.

  HEADQUARTERS--THE MEN--DISPUTATION AND UNCERTAINTY--NEW USES FOR THESKINS OF DEAD BOYS!--MUTINOUS RESOLVES.

  Moose Fort, the headquarters and depot of the fur-traders, who prosecutetheir traffic in almost all parts of the wild and uninhabited regions ofNorth America, stands on an island near the mouth of Moose River. Likeall the establishments of the fur-traders, it is a solitary group ofwooden buildings, far removed beyond the influences--almost beyond theken--of the civilised world, and surrounded by the primeval wilderness,the only tenants of which were, at the time we write of, a few scatteredtribes of Muskigon Indians, and the wild animals whose flesh furnishedthem with food and whose skins constituted their sole wealth. There waslittle of luxury at Moose Fort. The walls of the houses within thestockade, that served more as an ornament than a defence, were ofpainted, in some cases unpainted, planks. The floors, ceilings, chairs,tables, and, in short, all the articles of furniture in the place, weremade of the same rough material. A lofty scaffolding of wood rose abovethe surrounding buildings, and served as an outlook, whence, at theproper season, longing eyes were wont to be turned towards the sea inexpectation of "the ship" which paid the establishment an annual visitfrom England. Several large iron field-pieces stood before the frontgate; but they were more for the sake of appearance than use, and werenever fired except for the purpose of saluting the said ship on theoccasions of her arrival and departure. The first boom of the cannonunlocks the long-closed portals of connection between Moose Fort andEngland; the second salvo shuts them up again in their frozen domainsfor another year! A century and a half ago, the band of "adventurerstrading into Hudson's Bay" felled the first trees and pitched theirtents on the shores of James's Bay, and successive generations offur-traders have kept the post until the present day; yet there isscarcely a symptom of the presence of man beyond a few miles round theestablishment. Years ago the fort was built, and there it stands now,with new tenants, it is true, but in its general aspect unchanged; andthere it is likely to remain, wrapped in its barrier of all butimpregnable solitude, for centuries to come.

  Nevertheless, Moose is a comfortable place in its way, and whencontrasted with other trading establishments is a very palace and templeof luxury. There are men within its walls who can tell of log-huts andstarvation, solitude and desolation, compared with which Moose is aterrestrial paradise. Frank Morton, whom we have introduced in thefirst chapter, said, on his arrival at Moose, that it appeared to him tobe the very fag-end of creation. He had travelled night and day for sixweeks from what he considered the very outskirts of civilisation,through uninhabited forests and almost unknown rivers, in order to getto it; and while the feeling of desolation that overwhelmed him on hisfirst arrival was strong upon him, he sighed deeply, and called it a"horrid dull hole." But Frank was of a gay, hearty, joyous disposition,and had not been there long ere he loved the old fort dearly. Poorfellow! far removed though he was from his fellow-men at Moose, heafterwards learned that he had but obtained an indistinct notion of thesignification of the word "solitude."

  There were probably about thirty human beings at Moose, when Mr GeorgeStanley, one of the principal fur-traders of the place, received ordersfrom the governor to make preparations, and select men, for the purposeof proceeding many hundred miles deeper into the northern wilderness,and establishing a station on the distant, almost unknown, shores ofUngava Bay. No one at Moose had ever been there before; no one knewanything about the route, except from the vague report of a few Indians;and the only thing that was definitely known about the locality at allwas, that its inhabitants were a few wandering tribes of Esquimaux, whowere at deadly feud with the Indians, and generally massacred all whocame within their reach. What the capabilities of the country were, inregard to timber and provisions, nobody knew, and, fortunately for thesuccess of the expedition, nobody cared! At least those who were tolead the way did not; and this admirable quality of total indifferenceto prospective dangers is that which, to a great extent, insures successin a forlorn hope.

  Of the leaders of this expedition the reader already knows something.George Stanley was nearly six feet high, forty years of age, and enduedwith a decision of character that, but for his quiet good humour, wouldhave been deemed obstinacy. He was deliberate in all his movements, andexercised a control over his feelings that quite concealed his naturallyenthusiastic disposition. Moreover, he was married, and had a daughterof ten years of age. This might be thought a disadvantage in hispresent circumstances; but the governor of the fur-traders, a mostenergetic and active ruler, thought otherwise. He recommended that thefamily should be left at Moose until an establishment had been built,and a winter passed at Ungava. Afterwards they could join him there.As for Frank Morton, he was an inch taller than his friend Stanley, andequally powerful; fair-haired, blue-eyed, hilarious, romantic,twenty-two years of age, and so impulsive that, on hearing of theproposed expedition from one of his comrades, who happened to be presentwhen Stanley was reading the dispatches, he sprang from his chair, whichhe upset, dashed out at the door, which he banged, and hurried to hisfriend's quarters in order to be first to volunteer his services assecond in command; which offer was rendered unnecessary by Stanley'sexclaiming, the moment he entered his room--

  "Ha, Frank, my lad, the very man I wanted to see! Here's a letter fromheadquarters ordering me off on an expedition to Ungava. Now, I wantvolunteers; will you go!"

  It is needless to add that Frank's blue eyes sparkled with animation ashe seized his friend's hand and replied, "To the North Pole if you like,or farther if need be!"

  It was evening. The sun was gilding the top of the flagstaff with aparting kiss, and the inhabitants of Moose Fort, having finished theirdaily toil, were making preparations for their evening meal. On the endof the wharf that jutted out into the stream was assembled a picturesquegroup of men, who, from the earnest manner in which they conversed, andthe energy of their gesticulations, were evidently discussing a subjectof more than ordinary interest. Most of them were clad in corduroytrousers, gartered below the knee with thongs of deer-skin, and coarse,striped cotton shirts, open at the neck, so as to expose their sunburntbreasts. A few wore caps which, whatever might have been their originalform, were now so much soiled and battered out of shape by long andsevere service that they were nondescript; but most of these hardybackwoodsmen were content with the covering afforded by their thick,bushy locks.

  "No, no," exclaimed a short, thick-set, powerful man, with a somewhatascetic cast of countenance; "I've seen more than enough o' theserascally Huskies [Esquimaux]. 'Tis well for me that I'm here thisblessed day, an' not made into a dan to bob about in Hudson's Straits atthe tail of a white whale, like that poor boy Peter who was shot by themvarmints."

  "What's a dan?" asked a young half-breed who had lately arrived atMoose, and knew little of Esquimau implements.

  "What a green-horn you must be, Francois, not to know what a dan is!"replied another, who was inclined to be quizzical. "Why, it's a sort ofsea-carriage that the Esquimaux tie to the tail of a walrus or sea-horsewhen they feel inclined for a drive. When they can't get a sea-horsethey catch a white whale asleep, and wake him up after fastening the danto his tail. I suppose they have conjurers or wizards among them, sinceMassan told us just now that poor Peter was--"

  "Bah! gammon," interrupted Francois with a smile, as he turned to thefirst speaker. "But tell me, Massan, what is a dan?"

  "It's a sort o' float or buoy, lad, used by the Huskies, and is made outo' the skin o' the seal. They tie it with a long line to their whalespears to show which way the fish bolts when struck."

  "And did they use Peter's skin for such a purpose?" inquired Francoisearnestly.

  "They did," replied Massan.

  "And did you see them do it?"

  "Yes, I did."

  Francois gazed intently into his comrade's face as he spoke; but Massanwas an adept at what is usually called drawing the long bow, and it waswith the most imperturbable
gravity that he continued--

  "Yes, I saw them do it; but I could not render any assistance to thepoor child, for I was lying close behind a rock at the time, with anarrow sticking between my shoulders, and a score o' them oily varmintsa-shoutin', and yellin', and flourishing their spears in search o' me."

  "Tell us how it happened, Massan. Let's hear the story," chorused themen, as they closed round their comrade.

  "Well then," began the stout backwoodsman, proceeding leisurely to fillhis pipe from an ornamented bag that hung at his belt, "here goes. Itwas about the year--a--I forget the year, but it don't matter--that wewere ordered off on an expedition to the Huskies; 'xactly sich a one asthey wants us to go on now, and--but you've heerd o' that business,lads, haven't you?"

  "Yes, yes, we've heard all about it; go on."

  "Well," continued Massan, "I needn't be wastin' time tellin' you how wefailed in that affair, and how the Huskies killed some of our men andburnt our ship to the water's edge. After it was all over, and theythought they had killed us all, I was, as I said, lyin' behind a greatrock in a sort o' cave, lookin' at the dirty villains as they dancedabout on the shore, and took possession of all our goods. Suddenly Iseed two o' them carry Peter down to the beach, an' I saw, as theypassed me, that he was quite dead. In less time than I can count ahundred they took the skin off him, cut off his head, sewed up the hole,tied his arms and legs in a knot, blew him full o' wind till he was fitto bu'st, an' then hung him up to dry in the sun! In fact, they made a_dan_ of him!"

  A loud shout of laughter greeted this startling conclusion. In truth,we must do Massan the justice to say, that although he was much in thehabit of amusing his companions by entertaining them with anecdoteswhich originated entirely in his own teeming fancy, he never actually_deceived_ them, but invariably, either by a sly glance or by theastounding nature of his communication, gave them to understand that hewas dealing not with fact but fiction.

  "But seriously, lads," said Francois, whose intelligence, added to agrave, manly countenance and a tall, muscular frame, caused him to beregarded by his comrades as a sort of leader both in action and incouncil, "what do you think of our bourgeois' plan? For my part, I'mwilling enough to go to any reasonable part o' the country where thereare furs and Indians; but as for this Ungava, from what Massan says,there's neither Indians, nor furs, nor victuals--nothin' but rocks, andmountains, and eternal winter; and if we do get the Huskies about us,they'll very likely serve us as they did the last expedition to RichmondGulf."

  "Ay, ay," cried one of the others, "you may say that, Francois. Nothin'but frost and starvation, and nobody to bury us when we're dead."

  "Except the Huskies," broke in another, "who would save themselves thetrouble by converting us all into dans!"

  "Tush, man! stop your clapper," cried Francois, impatiently; "let ussettle this business. You know that Monsieur Stanley said he wouldexpect us to be ready with an answer to-night.--What think you, Gaspard?Shall we go, or shall we mutiny?"

  The individual addressed was a fine specimen of an animal, but not byany means a good specimen of a man. He was of gigantic proportions,straight and tall as a poplar, and endowed with the strength of aHercules. His glittering dark eyes and long black hair, together withthe hue of his skin, bespoke him of half-breed extraction. But hiscountenance did not correspond to his fine physical proportions. True,his features were good, but they wore habitually a scowling, sulkyexpression, even when the man was pleased, and there was more of sarcasmthan joviality in the sound when Gaspard condescended to laugh.

  "I'll be shot if I go to such a hole for the best bourgeois in thecountry," said he in reply to Francois' question.

  "You'll be dismissed the service if you don't," remarked Massan with asmile.

  To this Gaspard vouchsafed no reply save a growl that, to say the bestof it, did not sound amiable.

  "Well, I think that we're all pretty much of one mind on the point,"continued Francois; "and yet I feel half ashamed to refuse after all,especially when I see the good will with which Messieurs Stanley andMorton agree to go."

  "I suppose _you_ expect to be a bourgeois too some day," growled Gaspardwith a sneer.

  "Eh, tu gros chien!" cried Francois, as with flashing eyes and clinchedfists he strode up to his ill-tempered comrade.

  "Come, come, Francois; don't quarrel for nothing," said Massan,interposing his broad shoulders and pushing him vigorously back.

  At that moment an exclamation from one of the men diverted the attentionof the others.

  "Voila! the canoe."

  "Ay, it's Monsieur Stanley's canoe. I saw him and Monsieur Morton startfor the swamp this morning."

  "I wonder what Dick Prince would have done in this business had he beenhere," said Francois to Massan in a low tone, as they stood watching theapproach of their bourgeois' canoe.

  "Can't say. I half think he would have gone."

  "There's no chance of him coming back in time, I fear."

  "None; unless he prevails on some goose to lend him a pair of wings fora day or two. He won't be back from the hunt for three weeks good."

  In a few minutes more the canoe skimmed up to the wharf.

  "Here, lads," cried Mr Stanley, as he leaped ashore and dragged thecanoe out of the water; "one of you come and lift this canoe up thebank, and take these geese to the kitchen."

  Two of the men instantly hastened to obey, and Stanley, with the gun andpaddles under his arm, proceeded towards the gateway of the fort. As hepassed the group assembled on the wharf, he turned and said--

  "You'll come to the hall in an hour, lads; I shall expect you to beready with an answer by that time."

  "Ay, ay, sir," replied several of the men.

  "But we won't go for all your expectations," said one in an undertone toa comrade.

  "I should think not," whispered another.

  "I'll be hanged, and burnt, and frozen if _I_ do," said a third.

  In the meantime Mr Stanley walked briskly towards his dwelling, andleft the men to grumble over their troubles and continue their debate asto whether they should or should not agree to go on the pendingexpedition to the distant regions of Ungava.