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Text originally published in 1961 under the same title.
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Publisher’s Note
Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.
We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.
THE CURVE OF TIME
BY
M. WYLIE BLANCHET
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS 3
FOREWORD 8
THE CURVE OF TIME 10
LAKES 23
SHINERS 26
A FISH WE REMEMBER 28
COUGAR 31
DESOLATION 35
MIKE 41
INDIAN VILLAGES 46
NORTHWARD TO SEYMOUR INLET 55
SUNDAY HARBOUR 65
KARLUKWEES VILLAGE 67
THE SKULL 69
MAMALILACULLA 71
KNIGHT INLET 74
FOG ON THE MOUNTAIN 79
SPEAKING OF WHALES 84
THE NIMKISH 88
ENGINES 92
OLD PHIL 97
COASTWISE 99
OF THINGS UNPROVED 104
MISTAKEN ISLAND 108
TROUBLE 116
A WHALE...NAMED HENRY 121
THE GATHERING IN 135
LITTLE HOUSE 137
SEVEN ACRES 141
REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 147
FOREWORD
THIS IS NEITHER A STORY NOR A LOG; IT IS JUST AN ACCOUNT OF MANY LONG SUNNY SUMMER MONTHS, during many years, when the children were young enough and old enough to take on camping holidays up the coast of British Columbia. Time did not exist; or if it did it did not matter, and perhaps it was not always sunny.
Our world then was both wide and narrow—wide in the immensity of sea and mountain; narrow in that the boat was very small, and we lived and camped, explored and swam in a little realm of our own making.
At times we longed for a larger boat; for each summer, as the children grew bigger, the boat seemed to grow smaller, and it became a problem how to fit everyone in. She was only twenty-five feet long, with a beam of six and a half feet, and until later, when the two oldest girls went East to school, she had to hold six human beings and sometimes a dog as well.
There were narrow bunks in the cockpit, butting into what we called the “back seat” which ran across the stern. Elizabeth slept in one, over the bedding and clothes locker. I slept in the other, over the gas tank and small food locker. We were quite comfortable. It was Peter, sleeping on the back seat over the big food locker, who complained when we slipped down too far in our bunks and got tangled up with either his head or his feet.
Up in the engine-room, which was separated from the cockpit by a solid bulkhead with a small door, there was a wedge-shaped bunk just for’ard of the engine. It started off with a width of four feet, but tapered to six inches in the peak. That was where the two smaller girls slept. There was no headroom in there—we had to crouch to get through the little door, and we had to crouch all the time we were in there—unless the hatch was open. But the children were quite comfortable, and with the hatch open at night they could lie there tracking down the different stars they knew, and gradually adding others.
That left John. John slept on a long pad down what he called the “crack,” which was the eighteen-inch space between my bunk and Elizabeth’s. In the early days no one could think what to do with John, until he solved the problem all by himself. We were busy one afternoon, cleaning up the boat, and nobody was paying any attention to what he was doing on shore. Once he came back to get the saw; then he spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach, very busy over something. Just before supper he climbed on board—the saw under one arm and a neat bundle of wood under the other.
“I’m not going to sleep down that old crack any more,” he announced, as he spread out his bundle of wood and showed us. He had sawn up twelve twenty-two by three-inch boards and joined them all together with heavy fishing line, like a Venetian blind. It fitted across the space between the two bunks, and under the two mattresses. The slats could not slip apart, for the line held them; yet it could be rolled up in the daytime and easily stowed away. The long narrow pad still fitted. He had anticipated all possible objections—there was nothing we could say. John had thought of a way to get himself up out of that crack, and was up to stay.
There was a two-by-two-foot steering seat just for’ard of Elizabeth’s bunk, over a locker that held pots and pans and everyday stores. The gasoline stove fitted on top of the steering seat when in use, and folded up like a suitcase for stowing away. Its place was between the five-gallon demijohn of water and my bunk. Everything had to have its exact place, or no one could move.
We were very comfortable in the daytime with everything stowed away. The cockpit was covered, and had heavy canvas curtains that fastened down or could be rolled up. There was a folding table whose legs jammed tightly between the two bunks to steady it. And it was camping—not cruising. We washed our dishes (one plate, one mug each) over the side of the boat; there was a little rope ladder that could be hung over the stern, and we used that when we went swimming.
We may have grumbled about the accommodation; not about the boat herself. Lightly built (half-inch cedar) and well designed, she never hesitated to attempt anything we wanted her to try. She was uncomfortable in much of a beam sea, so for all our sakes we humoured her by working crab-fashion along the coast, first one way and then the other. But it was a following sea that she loved best; and after a long, tiring day it was never by her wish that we would give up and slip in to the sudden calm of a sheltered anchorage, where she had to lie, all quiet, and only gently stirring....
Four of the stories in the book have appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine.
M.W.B.
VANCOUVER ISLAND
BRITISH COLUMBIA
THE CURVE OF TIME
ON BOARD OUR BOAT ONE SUMMER WE HAD A BOOK BY Maurice Maeterlinck called The Fourth Dimension, the fourth dimension being Time—which, according to Dunne, doesn’t exist in itself, but is always relative to the person who has the idea of Time. Maeterlinck used a curve to illustrate Dunne’s theory. Standing in the Present, on the highest point of the curve, you can look back and see the Past, or forward and see the Future, all in the same instant. Or, if you stand off to one side of this curve, as I am doing, your eye wanders from one to the other without any distinction.
In dreams, the mind wanders in and out of the Present, through the Past and the Future, unable to distinguish between what has not yet happened and what has already befallen. Maeterlinck said that if you kept track of your dreams, writing them down as soon as you woke, you would find that a certain number were of things that had already happened; others would be connected with the present; but a certain number would be about things that had not yet happened. This was supposed to prove that Time is just a dimension of Space, and that there is no difference between the two, except that our consciousness roves along this Cur
ve of Time.
In my mind, I always think of that summer as the Maeterlinck summer—the year we wrote down our dreams. The children always called it—the Year of the Bears.
Towards the end of June, or it might have been July, we headed up Jervis Inlet. This inlet cuts through the Coast Range of British Columbia and extends by winding reaches in a northerly direction for about sixty miles. Originally perhaps a fault in the earth’s crust, and later scoured out by a glacier, since retreated, it is roughly a mile wide, and completely hemmed in on all sides by stupendous mountains, rising from almost perpendicular shores to heights of from five to eight thousand feet. All the soundings on the chart are marked one hundred fathoms with the no-bottom mark...right up to the cliffs. Stunted pines struggle up some of the ravines, but their hold on life is short. Sooner or later, a winter storm or spring avalanche sweeps them out and away; and next summer there will be a new cascade in their place.
Once you get through Agamemnon Channel into the main inlet, you just have to keep going—there is no shelter, no place to anchor. In summer-time the wind blows up the inlet in the morning, down the inlet from five o’clock on. In winter, I am told, the wind blows down the inlet most of the time—so strong and with such heavy williwaws that no boat can make against it. I know that up at the head of the inlet most trappers’ cabins are braced with heavy poles towards the north.
For some reason that I have forgotten, probably the hope of trout for supper, we decided to anchor in Vancouver Bay for lunch. Vancouver Bay is about half-way up Jervis, and only makes a very temporary anchorage good for a couple of hours on a perfectly calm day. It is a deep bay between very high mountains, with a valley and three trout-streams. You can drop your hook on a narrow mud bank, but under your stern it falls away to nothing.
After lunch I left the youngsters playing on the beach, and taking a light fishing line I worked my way back for perhaps half a mile. The underbrush was heavy and most uncomfortable on bare legs, and I had to make wide detours to avoid the devil’s club. Then I had to force my way across to the stream, as my trail had been one of least resistance. It was a perfect trout-stream, the water running along swiftly on a stony bottom; but with deep pools beside the overhanging banks, cool shade under fallen tree-trunks. The sunshine drifted through the alders and flickered on the surface of the running water. Somewhere deeper in the forest the shy thrushes were calling their single, abrupt liquid note. Later, when the sun went down, the single note would change to the ascending triplets. Except for the thrushes, there was not a sound—all was still.
I didn’t have a rod—you can’t cast in this kind of growth, there is no room. I didn’t use worms, I used an unripe huckleberry. An unripe huckleberry is about the size and colour of a salmon egg—and trout love salmon eggs. Almost at once I landed a fair-sized one on the mossy rocks. Another...and then another. I ran a stick through their gills and moved to another pool.
But suddenly I was seized with a kind of panic....I simply had to get back to my children. I shouldn’t be able to hear them from where I was, if they called. I listened desperately....There was just no sense to this blind urge that I felt. Almost frantic, I fought my way back by the most direct route—through the salmonberry, salal, and patches of devil’s club.
“Coming—coming!” I shouted. What was I going to rescue them from? I didn’t know, but how desperately urgent it was!
I finally scrambled through to the beach—blood streaming down my legs, face scratched, hands torn—blood everywhere. Five wondering faces looked at me in horror. The two youngest burst into tears at the sight of this remnant of what had once been their Mummy.
“Are you all right?” I gasped—with a sudden seething mixture of anger and relief at finding them alive and unhurt.
After an interval, the three girls took my fish down to the sea to clean, the two little boys helping me wash off the blood as I sat with my feet in the stream. Devil’s club spikes are very poisonous and I knew their scratches would give me trouble for days.
“There’s a man along at the other end of the beach,” volunteered Peter. “He’s been watching us.”
“All day!” broke in John. “And he’s all dressed in black.” I glanced up—a tall figure was standing there, against the trees, up behind the drift-logs at the top of the beach. Just standing there, arms hanging down, too far away to be seen plainly. Peculiar place for a clergyman to be, I thought inanely; and went back to the more important business of washing off the blood. Then I put on the shoes I had washed.
“Mummy!” called Elizabeth. I glanced up. The three of them were looking towards the other end of the beach.
“The man is coming over,” said Fran. “He’s...!”
“Mummy!” shrieked Jan. It didn’t take us two minutes to drag the dinghy into the water, pile in, and push off. The man was coming—but he was coming on all fours.
The bear ate the fish that the children had dropped. Then, as we pulled up the anchor, not thirty feet away, she looked at us crossly, swung her nose in the air to get our scent, and grumbled back along the beach to meet her two cubs. They had suddenly appeared from behind the logs and were coming along the beach in short runs. Between runs they would sit down—not quite sure what their mother was going to think about it. She didn’t think it was a good idea at all. She cuffed them both, and they ran back whimpering to the logs. She followed, and then stood up again—tall, black, arms hanging loosely down, and idly watched us leave the bay.
“Mummy!” demanded the children, when they were quite sure they were safe. “That bad dream you had last night that woke us all up that you said you couldn’t remember—was it about bears?”
“No...at least, I don’t think so.” But even as I spoke, I could remember how very urgent and terrifying something had been in that dream. I hesitated—and then I decided not to tell them about the strange, blind panic I had felt by the stream—I could have smelt the bear downwind. But I knew that the panic and sense of urgency by the stream, and the feeling in my dream, had been one and the same.
Marlborough Heights flanks the northern side of Vancouver Bay, swinging boldly out in a ten-mile curve and making the inlet change its course. It rises straight up out of the sea, and straight up to six thousand feet. And nobody knows how deep it goes. The chart just states in chart language—one hundred fathoms, no bottom, right off the cliffs. The children always hang over the gunwale trying to see—they don’t know quite what—but it must be something awful in anything so deep.
Peter and John were still moaning about the trout the bear had eaten—so I said I would stop and we would try to see what mysterious something we could catch. I stopped the engine, and Elizabeth held us off the cliff with the pike-pole, while we knotted all our fishing lines together. We tied on a two-pound jigger, which is a flat, rounded piece of lead, with a rigid hook at the lower end. Then we baited it with bacon, and down...down...down...and everybody watched and pushed for better places to see. After a while I thought I could feel something like bottom—it was so far away that I couldn’t be sure. But I jigged the line up and down—up and down. Then something caught and held it and jigged back—somewhat like getting in touch with another planet.
I pulled in, and in, and in....The children watched breathlessly, but still there was more to come. It was now definitely something. I told Jan to bring the dinghy in closer, and I leapt the gap, still pulling. I didn’t know what might live at that great depth—I’d bring it alongside the dinghy, have a look at it first and then decide.
Foot after foot...after foot...Then “Ah’s!” from the children. A bright scarlet fish was goggling at me from beside the dinghy. It was about two feet long and thick through. It didn’t struggle—it just lay there gasping. I took the gaff and lifted it gently into the boat by its gills, for water didn’t seem to be its proper medium. Again it didn’t struggle. It just lay on the floorboards and gasped and goggled as though it would have liked to tell me something, but couldn’t.
“Put the
poor thing back! Put it back!” pleaded the children, wringing their hands.
But just then, a great inflated tongue-like thing came out of its mouth and stayed out. Then I remembered what the fishermen up at the Yuculta Rapids had told us about the Red Snappers that were sometimes chased up from great depths. Without the pressure of the depths, this sack or bladder inflates, and they have to die. They can never go back to where they belong—and just flounder about on the surface until the eagles or seagulls put them out of their misery. They are very good to eat—but after seeing this one’s goggling eyes and listening to its pleading gasps, I didn’t think any of us would want to. I killed it quickly and put it over the side.
The wind hit us as we came opposite Britain River, just as it usually does. It blows out of the deep valley of the Britain River, and then escapes out through Vancouver Bay. After we had slopped ahead out of that, we met the wind that blows out of Deserted Bay and down the full length of Princess Royal Reach. So for the next ten miles or so we battled wind. It is not a nice wind in among the mountains. It picks you up in its teeth and shakes you. It hits you first on one side and then on the other. There is nowhere to go, you just have to take it. But finally, everybody tired and hungry, we rounded Patrick Point into the gentle Queen’s Reach—and there, there was no wind at all.
An hour or so later we were at the entrance to little Princess Louisa Inlet. But the tide was still running a turbulent ten knots out of the narrow entrance—so we tied up to the cliff and ate our supper while we waited for slack water.
We were inextricably associated with Captain George Vancouver, R.N., in our summer-long trips up the coast. He explored, surveyed and charted the coast of British Columbia in 1792, and named practically every island, inlet and channel—names that are still used. Every bay we anchor in, every beach we land on—Vancouver or his lieutenants had been there first.
Vancouver of course had no charts—he was there to make them. But from old sources he had certain reports of a great inland sea in those latitudes—and he seemed to be convinced that it existed. Even when he was confronted with the whole stretch of the snow-capped Coast Range, he was still sure he was going to find a channel through the mountains to that Mediterranean sea.
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