by John Buchan
The picture vanished; terrace, woodland, and evening sky became a shimmering mist in which only one material object showed, the skin bag containing the mottled stone.
The bag was now the cord which strung together a multitude of swiftly dissolving scenes.
... It was handled and talked over by two old ladies in starched coifs and wide skirts, and thereafter it lay on a shelf in a dark room, becoming a dingy object, so dingy that the writing on the skin could scarcely be read.... Presently came visitors to the old house, and the bag, with other oddments left by Jacques Cartier, was taken to Paris. There learned men peered at it through glasses, and chipped bits from the stone, and a new bag of stout canvas was prepared and the lettering copied on vellum and attached to it.... From Paris it journeyed into the deep country to a great château which was the home of the Marquis de Montmirail, the trusted counsellor of King Louis. There it had more dignified quarters and would now and then be brought into the great dining-hall, where splendid gentlemen spoke of it over their wine.
Then its fortunes changed. Somehow or other it had crossed the ocean and lay in the strong room of the Intendant, in a quaint little castled city, which Donald seemed to recognise as his own Quebec. A grave, weather-worn man who was the Sieur de Troyes was lent it, and carried it with him far up into the northern wilds, to the very shores of Hudson’s Bay.... It was back again in Quebec, in a new linen bag with fresh vellum for the writing, and it lay in a coffer in a vault, while cannon roared from the castle of St. Louis....
After that the mist descended and the bag next appeared in the hands of a British soldier, a young ensign, Malcolm Fraser by name, who took it to his new house at Malbaie, and then to his newer house at Fraserville across the St. Lawrence. There it was a disconsidered possession, lying dustily on a shelf in the seigneur’s little book-room, till a cadet of the family, bound for the University of Edinburgh, annexed it as a curio and took it again across the Atlantic.
In Scotland it had better treatment. It came into the possession of a certain Professor of Natural Philosophy, who kept it in his cabinet in his house in George Square. His grandson, who was a man with business in the Americas, showed it to a friend, a Director of the Hudson’s Bay Company, who had a new bag made for it and new lettering. He went further, for once more chips were taken from the stone and sent to the metallurgists, who seemed to find matter of interest in them, for a memorandum was prepared on the subject and submitted to a Directors’ meeting. But nothing happened, and the bag found lodgment in a Border country-house, where it lay until two young kinsmen of the family, set on its track by the memorandum, discovered it and took it into their keeping....
Once again it seemed that the bag crossed the Atlantic. Donald saw it in Quebec — now very much the city which he knew — and then journeying up the Ottawa river on the road De Troyes had taken....
The mist came down, and when it cleared he was looking at a winter camp among snow-laden pines with, before it, the flat white surface of a lake. The swift panorama had slowed down and he was given a set-piece.
There were three men round the fire, dressed roughly like lumberjacks, with fur bonnets pulled over their ears, since it was forty below. Two wore Hudson’s Bay blanket coats, and one a coarse woollen mackinaw. They had finished their supper of fried ham and flapjacks and tea, and had their pipes lit.
“To-morrow,” said the wearer of the mackinaw, “we will know the best or the worst. Our shaft is down to the reef — if there is a reef.” He took from his pocket a very dirty canvas bag and spilled a bit of rock into his hand.
“There’s our talisman, or whatever you call it. If the thing is a wash-out, I’ll have it ground to powder.... No, I won’t!... I’m bound to keep it as a reminder of the two best fellows God ever made.”
“Tell us about the Hope boys, Shirras,” said one of the others.
“There isn’t much to tell. They were two brothers, Scotch, and this stone and the bit of writing had come down to them through their family. They hadn’t long left school, but they had studied metallurgy some, and had gotten a notion that they had a clue to something big. I struck them at Toronto, and, having just finished a mining course at the Boston Tech.
I was ready for a spell of prospecting. We took our bearings from Temiskaming — that’s the Indian for Deep and Slow, the name of the lake in the script. Well, we pushed north, and got badly eaten by flies, and came to this lake, where we decided to start work. That was early in August’14. We had not begun when word came of the war in Europe, and the Hopes were off next morning like a brace of wild duck. Being an American citizen, it didn’t concern me, but I felt sort of lonesome without them, and decided to put off my prospecting job. They left me the bag and the stone to do what I liked with. I guess they knew they wouldn’t come back.”
“They didn’t?”
“Nope. Both got done in the first year. They may have been green, but, by God, they weren’t yellow. When I heard of their deaths I got restless and joined up with the French in the Escadille Lafayette. That old war didn’t do me any good.”
Shirras stuck out his left leg which was shorter by some inches than his right.
“This show is theirs as well as ours,” he said.
“If we get a mine it’s going to be called the Hope-Shirras.”
The picture blurred, but cleared again. It showed the cold light of a winter afternoon. Out of a hole in the earth a man emerged. In his hand were some fragments of mottled rock which he laid on the snow, and from his pocket he drew the bag and the stone.
“The dead spit,” he said, and his voice was solemn.
The others had joined him with excited faces.
“We’ve got to have the report from the mine office before we can be sure,” said one.
“Yep,” said Shirras, “but I’ve a hunch that it’s all right. Say, Dick! get the pannikins out of the tent. There’s a drop of whisky left, and we’re going to drink to the Hope boys and the old birds long before them that started this racket.”
* * * *
The set picture faded and the panorama began again.... Again it was a winter day, but the bush had gone. In its place was a town, with street-cars, and tall buildings, and the slim headgear of mines. Aeroplanes equipped with skis were landing on the frozen lake.... In a huge mill quantities of mottled rock were being ground to a fine dust.... In a stifling furnace-room ingots of pale gold were being moulded....
Then came the sound of speech and the scene seemed to be laid in a great city, in a room where many people were congregated. Someone was speaking, and snatches of his voice could be heard.... “No longer a speculation but an industry.... The Hope-Shirras, Canada’s foremost gold-mine.... Canada, now third of the world’s gold producers and destined one day to be the first.”...
Donald rubbed his eyes. Staring into the pool had made him a little dizzy. He had no memory of anything except the sunset light. It was time to look after the sea-trout at the river mouth. Negog had stopped attending to his little fire and was looking at him curiously. The saffron tint was just going out of the flame, so the reverie by the waterside could only have lasted for a second or two.
THE FORERUNNERS
You may follow far in the blue-goose track
To the lands where spring is in mid-July;
You may cross to the unmapped mountains’ back,
To lakes unscanned by the trapper’s eye.
You may trace to its lair the soft Chinook,
And the North Wind trail to the Barrens’ floor;
But you’ll always find, or I’m much mistook,
That some old Frenchman’s done it before.
You may spirit wealth from despisèd dust,
Gold from the refuse and gems from the spoil;
You may draw new power from the torrent’s thrust,
And bend to your use the ocean’s toil;
You may pierce to Nature’s innermost nook,
And pluck the heart of her secret lore;
But y
ou’ll always find, or I’m much mistook,
That some old Frenchman’s done it before.
You may hunt all day for the fitting word,
The aptest phrase and the rightful tune,
Beating the wood for the magic bird,
Dredging the pond to find the moon.
And when you escape (in the perfect book)
From the little less and the little more,
You’re sure to find, or I’m much mistook,
That some old Frenchman’s done it before.
CHAPTER III. The Wonderful Beaches
NEXT day Negog took the sailing dory and went down the river to Petits Capucins to see the carpenter there, a famous man, one Narcisse Jobin, about a new coble for the Manitou ferry. Narcisse was the best builder of boats on the St. Lawrence, as good as any in Cape Breton or Halifax, but he was a difficult fellow to deal with, being odd in his temper and uncertain in his habits. It was said his father had killed a bear in the mountains and omitted the proper ceremonies; and that thereafter he had been a little mad and had transmitted this frailty to his son. Anyhow, Narcisse had to be approached carefully and coaxed into any job. To an order by letter or casual word of mouth he paid not the slightest attention.
Negog and Donald pushed off on a fine June morning, with a wind blowing up-stream which would bring them swiftly home in the afternoon.
They had to tack far out in the river to make Petits Capucins, so they saw little of the curious northern shore. Donald knew all about that shore, for his father had told him the story. It is written in the Flatey Book of the Icelanders that four years after Leif the Lucky had discovered the coast of Maine another company sailed out of Greenland with Thorfinn Karlsevni at its head. They sailed first to the island of Disko, and then south to the Labrador, which they called Flatstoneland, because of the great reefs on the shore. Then they came to the Belle Isle Strait and turned west into the Gulf, passing north of Anticosti till they reached Petits Capucins, where they wintered in considerable distress. They called the place Furdurstrandir, the “Wonderful Beaches.” This at any rate was the way Donald’s father read the story in the saga, and he knew a good deal about these things.
There was no doubt about the Beaches. They were there to-day as wonderful as ever, a good place for a picnic on a spring afternoon. For nearly four miles there was a space of about a quarter of a mile between the wooded cliffs of the mainland and the river, and all that space was filled with great banks and dunes of shingle, with a selvedge of fine sand at the water’s edge. It was a splendid place for sea-trout, and this was the season for them, for the moon was full. Donald had brought his rod and a variety of double-hooked lures and hoped to induce Negog to tarry on the way home.
The visit to Petits Capucins was a lengthy business. Narcisse was in a bad temper, for the night before he had been revelling. He had been with his friend P’eitsie Leblond and had drunk far too much bagosse — a fearsome brew of “whisky blanc” (which is raw spirits) in which a beaver’s tail has been steeped. The result was that he had a headache and was more difficult than usual. Donald left Negog conducting the slow negotiations, and went down to the mouth of the little Capucins river to watch the sea-trout. There he ate his sandwiches, and then found an eel-fisher who took him out to inspect his string of pots. It was not until after four o’clock that Negog appeared and the dory sailed for home.
The up-stream wind carried them soon to the Beaches. There, to Donald’s surprise, Negog made no objection to a halt for fishing. He let down a heavy stone as an anchor about twelve yards from the shore, where the water was some six feet deep. The breeze crisped the river and for half an hour Donald’s new lure proved effective, and he achieved some satisfactory long casting. The sea-trout in brackish water, if you fish with a light rod and fine tackle, will tax any angler’s skill, and Donald was twice broken. But he had five fish, three of them over four pounds in weight, before they suddenly stopped taking.
For the next half-hour Donald cast in vain, and as he looked at the Beaches, yellow and umber in the evening light, he began to think of the old Norsemen who had once anchored there. There had been several galleys; long craft with high prows and sterns, each with double banks of oars, and stumpy masts with square sails — his father had once drawn a picture of them. They had been a big company, for they had come to look for a settlement, and they had cows on board which had scared the natives. These men had come to Greenland out of Norway, and, not content with crossing the broad Atlantic, had pushed on into the sunset. Had there ever been stouter hearts?
“Who do you think discovered America?” he asked Negog. But the Indian did not understand him.
“What people came here first?”
“My people have been here from the beginning,” was the answer.
“Oh, I know that. But I mean, what Europeans? There was a wop called Columbus who gets the credit of it, but hundreds of years before him the Norsemen came here. They stuck it out all winter on these very beaches. It’s too bad they’re not more famous.”
“Of that I know nothing,” said Negog, who was pulling up the anchor. “I think we go ashore and eat supper. I have food, and much talking with Narcisse has made me hungry.”
“What about the flies?” the boy asked. The Beaches were a notoriously bad place for these pests, not only the black fly, his special enemy, but the horrid little brutes like hot sand which the French call bruleaux, and the Indians “No-see-’ems.”
“I make a fire,” said Negog. “There will be no flies.”
Negog had brought a good supper for the boy: sandwiches cut thick, the leg of a chicken, and a wedge of cake; he had also his own queer Indian food, into which Donald did not enquire. There was nothing to cook, but he lit a fire as a smudge, for the flies were beginning to come out of the undergrowth in the cliffs, scenting a human prey. He made his fire on the sand very near the water’s edge, and Donald as he stood beside it, sniffed the same queer odour as on the previous night. He had a sandwich in his hand, but he did not begin on it, for his attention was caught by the eerie light on the river.
The setting sun had made the still water near the shore a band of pure gold. Donald’s head was full of the Norsemen who a thousand years ago had made camp here and seen the snow cover the hills and the river solid ice from bank to bank. A comfortless time they must have had, with fish hard to come by, and the deer far away up in the mountains. He could picture the big, fair-haired, grey-eyed men, like a Swedish engineer who had been his father’s friend, their cheeks hollow with hunger and their armour dull with frost. Cattle, too! How had the beasts wintered in this fodderless land?
And then suddenly in the gold depths of the water a picture appeared.
* * * *
Three long shallow boats were being launched at a slip in a deep valley, where between the mountains lay a silver strip of firth. On the shore was a little town of wooden dwellings, black with smoke and weather, with one big building which was partly stone. There was a concourse of people at the tide’s edge.
Donald knew all about the picture, though no one had told him. This was Hightown under Sunfell, thousands of miles away in the Norland country, and these were the Wick people whose king was Thorwald the Lucky. There was no blood on the rollers which launched the galleys, not even the blood of goats, for this was not a hosting for war, but a voyage of discovery. The tall man in command was called Hallward, who two years before had led an expedition to the West, and had found a habitable country. There he had left his wife and children and some of his folk, and was now returning with other settlers, and the usual settlers’ gear.
Ploughs and harrows were taken aboard, and a little herd of the small black Norland cattle. Food, too, for the voyage — salted fish, and dried beef, and casks of strong ale. The thralls took their places at the thwarts, and then the old seaman Thorwolf Cranesfoot, who had often sailed the Western seas. Then came the adventurers, a dozen in all, five of them with wives and children — mostly young Bearsarks from
the Shield Ring. Last came the leader, Hallward, an older man who alone wore byrnie and helm, since he was ceremonially bidding farewell to Thorwald the king....
The galleys turned a corner of hill and Donald could trace them as they made their way from the Norland sea to the Atlantic. They were miraculously lucky, for they had for most of their course a following wind, so that the broad sails were filled and the oars were shipped and lashed under the bulwarks, and the thralls could sit idle and play on knuckle-bones. Nor was there any need to sling the shields out-board, for they touched at no land and saw no other craft. Under Cranesfoot’s guidance they avoided Snowland (as they called Iceland), and steered a course between Shetland and the Faeroes. None of the portents which were legendary among their people appeared to trouble them. Icebergs, indeed, they saw in plenty, but not the Curdled Sea, of which they had been told, and which looked like a river of milk and brought down dragons in its tides; or the terrible Sea-walls which were the edge of the world. At the end of the second month after leaving Hightown they turned the butt of Greenland and reached the little port called the Eastern Settlement. Men and cattle were lean and travel-worn, but only one cow had died....
It was now high summer. The little fleet did not tarry, but sailed due west on the course which Hallward had laid two years before. They had got in a fresh store of food in Greenland, but not much, for the Eastern Settlement was always on short commons. But now they were in closer touch with the land, and Hallward promised that soon they should have fine fare, juicy bear steaks and the pied ptarmigan of their own Norland hills. At first they had misty weather—” Ran is heating her ovens,” said Cranesfoot the steersman; and then the wind blew from the northeast and carried them into the channel called Guanengagap, which led to what Hallward called the outer sea.