The Red Man's Revenge: A Tale of The Red River Flood

by R. M. Ballantyne

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

  OLD RAVENSHAW GOES EXPLORING AND RESCUING.

  Another fine calm day came to comfort the victims of the flood in themidst of that tempestuous time, with its April character of mingledstorm and sunshine. The rise in the water on the previous night hadbeen almost imperceptible. Feeling, therefore, somewhat easier in hismind, old Mr Ravenshaw determined to embark in his boat for the purposeof paying a visit to those unfortunates who, after being driven fromtheir homes, had taken refuge on the imperceptible eminence which hadbeen styled "The Mountain." Taking with him Lambert and a stout crew,he embarked from his upper bedroom window, bade his wife and daughtersan affectionate adieu, hoisted his sail, and pushed off.

  The hoisting of the sail was a mere matter of form.

  "It's of no use at present, but will be ready to catch the first puffthat may favour us," observed the old gentleman, as he sat down and tookthe tiller. "Give way, lads."

  The oars were dipped, and the Willow Creek mansion was soon but a speckon the horizon of the watery waste.

  And now the old fur-trader learned the full extent of the desolationwith which it had pleased God to visit the settlement at that time.While taken up with the cares and anxieties connected with Willow Creek,he was of course aware that terrible destruction, if not death, musthave been going on around him; but now, when he rowed over the plains,saw the state of things with his own eyes, and heard the accounts ofmany settlers, some of whom he rescued from positions of danger, thefull extent of the damage done by the great flood of 1826 was bornepowerfully in upon his mind.

  The varied stories which some had to tell of their escapes, others oftheir losses, and all, of their sufferings, were sad as well asinteresting. Some of the people had taken shelter in garrets or onstages, where they had to wait anxiously till some boat or canoe shouldturn up to rescue them. Some had been surprised by the sudden rise ofthe flood at night while asleep, and had wakened to find themselves andtheir beds afloat. Two men who had gone to sleep on a rick of hay foundthemselves next morning drifting with the current some three miles belowthe spot where they had lain down. Others, like old Liz, had beencarried off bodily in their huts. Not a few had been obliged to betakethemselves to the housetops until help came. Some there were who tookto swimming, and saved themselves by clinging to the branches of trees;yet, strange to say, during the whole course of that flood only one manlost his life. (See Note 1.)

  It was very different, however, with regard to the lower animals. Whenat its height the water spread out on each side of the river to adistance of six miles, and about fourteen miles of its length, so thatnot only were many horses, cattle, pigs, and poultry drowned in thegeneral stampede, but the pretty little ground squirrels were driven outof their holes, and along with rats, mice, snakes, and insects, perishedin thousands. Even the frogs discovered that too much of a good thingis bad, for they found no rest for the soles of their feet, exceptfloating logs, planks, and stray pieces of furniture, on which many ofthem were seen by our voyagers gazing contemplatively at the situation.

  Everywhere houses and barns were seen floating about, their owners gone,but with dogs and cats in the doorways and windows, and poultry on theroofs; and the barking, mewing, and cackling of these, with thesquealing of sundry pigs, tended to increase the general desolation.Such of the contents of these houses as had been left behind in theflight were washed out of them, and the waters were sprinkled here andthere with bedsteads, chairs, tables, feather-beds, and other property,besides the carcasses of dead animals.

  At certain points of the river, where there were shallows towards whichthe currents set, carts, carioles, boxes, carriages, gigs, fencing, andproperty of every description were stranded in large quantities and indire confusion, but much of the wreck was swept onward and engulfed inLake Winnipeg.

  The unfortunate settlers found refuge ultimately, after being drivenfrom knoll to knoll, on the higher ground of the Assinaboine, on theLittle Mountain, and on a low hill twelve miles from the settlement.

  On his way to the Little Mountain Mr Ravenshaw touched at the missionstation. Here the various groups in the garret of the parsonage, thegallery of the church, and on the stage, were greatly reduced innumbers, many of the refugees having availed themselves of the visits ofseveral settlers and gone off to the mountain in their boats or canoes,with what of their property they had managed to save.

  Among those who remained there was a marked spirit of cheerfulsubmission.

  "You see," said the pastor, in reply to an observation of Mr Ravenshawon this point, "I have endeavoured to impress upon my poor people thatmere quiet submission to the inevitable is not a Christiancharacteristic, that men of all creeds and nations may and do thussubmit, and that it is the special privilege of the follower of Jesus tosubmit _cheerfully_ to whatever befalls--pleasant or otherwise--becausehe has the promise that _all_ things shall work together for his good."

  "Humph!" said the trader with a shrug of his shoulders; "it seems to methat some of us don't avail ourselves much of our privilege."

  The pastor could scarcely repress a laugh at the grumpy tone in whichhis visitor spoke.

  "You are right, Mr Ravenshaw, none of us come nearly up to the mark inour Christian course. The effort to do so constitutes much of thebattle that we have to fight, but our comfort is, that we shall be morethan conquerors in the long-run. There sits a widow now," he continued,pointing to an Indian woman seated on the stage who was busy making apair of moccasins for a little child that played by her side, "who isfighting her battle bravely at present. Not a murmur has yet escapedher lips, although she has lost all her possessions--except her boy."

  "Ah! except her boy!" The old trader did not speak. He only thought ofTony and quickly changed the drift of the conversation.

  Soon after leaving the mission station a breeze sprang up; the sailfilled; the oars were pulled in, and they went more swiftly on. Erelong they sighted the stage on which the women had been previouslydiscovered singing hymns. They did not sing now. Their provisions werefailing, their hopes of an abatement in the flood were dying out, andthey no longer refused to accept deliverance from their somewhatperilous position.

  "Have you seen anything of Herr Winklemann lately?" asked Lambert of oneof the women.

  "Nothing; but John Flett and David Mowat passed our stage yesterday in acanoe, and they told us that the hut of old Liz Rollin has been carriedaway with her and her father and Winklemann's mother, and they say thather son has been seen in a small canoe rangin' about by himself like amadman searchin' for her."

  "The moment we reach the Mountain I'll get hold of a canoe and go insearch of him," said Lambert.

  "Right, boy! right!" said Ravenshaw; "I fear that something may havehappened to the poor lad. These small canoes are all very well when youcan run ashore and mend 'em if they should get damaged, but out here,among sunk posts and fences, and no land to run to, it is dangerousnavigation.--Hist! Did ye hear a cry, lads?"

  The men ceased to talk, and listened intently, while they gazed roundthe watery waste in all directions.

  Besides a stranded house here and there, and a few submerged trees,nothing was to be seen on the water save the carcasses of a few cattle,above which a couple of ravens were wheeling slowly.

  The cry was not repeated.

  "Imagination," muttered old Ravenshaw to himself, after Lambert hadgiven a lusty shout, which, however, elicited no reply.

  "It must have been; I hear nothing," said Lambert, looking rounduneasily.

  "Come, out oars again, lads," said the old gentleman, as the sailflapped in the failing breeze. "Night will catch us before we reach--.Hallo! back your oars--hard! Catch hold of 'im."

  A living creature of some sort came out from behind a floating log atthat moment, and was almost run down. The man at the bow oar leanedover and caught it. The yell which followed left no shadow of doubt asto the nature of the creature. It was a pig. During the next twominutes, while it was being haule
d into the boat, it made the air ringwith shrieks of concentrated fury. Before dismissing this pig, we maystate that it was afterwards identified by its owner, who said it hadbeen swept way from his house two days before, and must therefore havebeen swimming without relief for eight-and-forty hours.

  "That accounts for the cry you heard," said Louis Lambert, when thescreams subsided.

  "No, Louis; a pig's voice is too familiar to deceive me. If it was notimagination, it was the voice of a man."

  The old trader was right. One of the objects which, in the distance,resembled so closely the floating carcass of an ox was in reality anoverturned canoe, and to the stern of that canoe Herr Winklemann wasclinging. He had been long in the water, and was almost too muchexhausted to see or cry. When the boat passed he thought he heardvoices. Hope revived for a moment, and he uttered a feeble shout, buthe failed to hear the reply. The canoe happened to float between himand the boat, so that he could not see it as it passed slowly on itscourse.

  Poor Winklemann! In searching wildly about the wide expanse of waterfor his lost mother, he had run his canoe violently against the top railof a fence. The delicate birch bark was ripped off. In another minuteit sank and turned bottom up. It was a canoe of the smallest size,Winklemann having preferred to continue his search alone rather thanwith an unwilling companion. The German was a good swimmer; a mereupset might not have been serious. He could have righted the canoe, andperhaps clambered into it over the stern, and baled it out. But with alarge hole in its bottom there was no hope of deliverance except in apassing boat or canoe. Clinging to the frail craft, the poor youthgazed long and anxiously round the horizon, endeavouring the while topush the wreck towards the nearest tree-top, which, however, was a longway off.

  By degrees the cold told on his huge frame, and his great strength beganto fail. Once, a canoe appeared in the distance. He shouted with allhis might, but it was too far off. As it passed on out of sight heraised his eyes as if in prayer, but no sound escaped his compressedlips. It was noon when the accident occurred. Towards evening he feltas though his consciousness were going to forsake him, but the love oflife was strong; he tightened his grasp on the canoe. It was just thenthat he heard the voices of Ravenshaw's party and shouted, but the cry,as we have said, was very feeble, and the poor fellow's sense of hearingwas dulled with cold and exhaustion, else he would have heard Lambert'sreply.

  "Oh! mine moder! mine moder!" he sighed, as his head drooped helplesslyforward, though his fingers tightened on the canoe with the convulsivegrasp of a drowning man.

  Night descended on the water. The moon threw a fitful gleam now andthen through a rift in the sailing clouds. All was still and dark anddesolate above and around the perishing man. Nothing with life wasvisible save a huge raven which wheeled to and fro with a solemn croakand almost noiseless wing.

  But the case of Winklemann was not yet hopeless. His chum, LouisLambert, could not shake himself free from a suspicion that the cry,which had been put down to imagination, might after all have been thatof some perishing human being--perhaps that of his friend. Arrived atthe Little Mountain, Louis lost no time in obtaining a canoe, also anIndian to take the bow paddle.

  The mountain, which was a mere undulation of the prairie, presented astrange scene at that time. Many settlers--half-breeds, Canadians, andIndians--were encamped there; some under tents of various sizes, othersunder upturned boats and canoes; not a few under the wider canopy of theheavens. Intermingled with the men, women, and children, were horses,cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry, dogs, cats, and pets of the featheredtribe, besides goods, household furniture, carts, etcetera, so that nowords can adequately describe the scene. It was confusion worseconfounded!

  Many were the hospitable proposals made here to Louis Lambert that heshould remain all night, for he was a general favourite, but to allthese he turned a deaf ear, and set out on a searching expedition, inthe canoe, just after the sun had gone down.

  At first he made as straight as he could for the place where MrRavenshaw had fancied he heard the cry, but on consideration came to theconclusion that, as the current must have carried all floating objectsconsiderably farther down the settlement by that time, he ought tochange his course. Soon it grew too dark to see objects distinctly, butan occasional gleam of moonshine came to his aid. He passed severalfloating barns and cow-houses, but found them empty. He also nearly ranagainst several dead animals, but the silent Indian in the bow was waryand vigilant. Hope was at last beginning to die within Louis's breast,when he observed a raven circling round some floating object.

  "Ho! there's something yonder. Strike out, old copper-nose," heexclaimed, as he directed the canoe towards it.

  The light craft cut the water like a knife, and was quickly alongside.

  "Why, it _is_ a canoe, bottom up. Have a care. Ha! hold on!"

  Lambert nearly overturned his own canoe as he made a sudden grasp atsomething, and caught a man by the hair.

  "Hallo! I say, let go your canoe and hold on to _me_," cried Lambert,in excitement, but the man spoken to made no reply, and would not let gothe wrecked canoe.

  Lambert therefore hauled him powerfully and slowly alongside until hisvisage was level with the gunwale. Just then a gleam of moonlight brokeforth and revealed the face of Herr Winklemann! The difficulties thatnow beset the rescuers were great, for the poor German, besides beingstupefied, had grasped his canoe with tremendous power, and could not bedetached. To get an active and living man out of the water into a birchcanoe is no easy matter; to embark a half-dead one is almost impossible;nevertheless Lambert and his red-skinned comrade managed to do itbetween them. Raising his unconscious friend as far out of the water aspossible, Louis caught one of his hands and wrenched it from its hold.Meanwhile the Indian leaned out of the opposite side of the canoe so asto balance it. Another violent wrench freed the other hand. It alsofreed Winklemann's spirit to some extent, and called it back to life,for he exclaimed, "Vat is dat?" in a tone of faint but decided surprise.

  "Here, lay hold of my neck," said Lambert, in a peremptory voice.

  Winklemann obeyed. Lambert exerted all his strength and heaved. TheIndian did not dare to lend a hand, as that would have upset the canoe,but he leaned still farther over its other side as a counterpoise. Atlast Lambert got his friend on the edge, and tumbled him inboard. Atthe same moment the Indian adroitly resumed his position, and Winklemannwas saved!

  "You'll soon be all right," said Lambert, resuming his paddle. "Haven'tswallowed much water, I hope?"

  "No, no," said Winklemann faintly; "mine lunks, I do tink, are free ofvatter, but mine lecks are stranchly qveer. I hav no lecks at all!'Pears as if I vas stop short at zee vaist!"

  Herr Winklemann said no more, but was swiftly borne, in a state ofsemi-consciousness, to his friends on the Little Mountain.

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  Twenty-six years later, in 1852, Red River Settlement was visited by aflood very similar in its main features to that of 1826, abovedescribed; and it is a curious coincidence that only one man lost hislife during the latter flood; also, that the waters of the floods ofboth years began to subside on exactly the same date.