The Curve of Time

by M. Wylie Blanchet

In the Arran Rapids, which are on the other side of Stuart Island from the Yucultas, a Catholic priest was being paddled through them by four Indians in a dugout. The priest was terrified when he saw what they were proposing to take him through, and began to pray out loud.

  “Don’t worry!” the Indians told him. “Our gods will look after us. They always make a straight way for us through the rapids.” The priest said later that, in the middle of all that awful turbulence, there was a straight shining path, leading them the whole way through. When they had safely landed him, he fell on his knees to give thanks to God, and explained to the Indians what he was doing.

  “Uh!” said the Indians. “We give presents to our gods first.”

  THE NIMKISH

  IT WAS UP NEAR THE NIMKISH RIVER THAT I WHISTLED the little duck to bed. John must have been very small that summer, for I had rowed him out to the boat to put him to bed. Friends had come over from the lumber mill to spend the evening with us round our fire on the beach, and it was going to be too late for such a little fellow. John was full of tears and woe, and threats of what he was going to do if I left him alone out there.

  To divert him, I pointed to a little duck that was floating around, all alone at dusk.

  “Poor little duck—he hasn’t got any mummy to put him to bed.”

  “I don’t care,” sniffed John.

  “I’ll whistle to him, and tell him to come and sleep with you.”

  I started a low monotonous whistle—two short, one long; two short, one long; over and over again. The lonely little duck started coming slowly over towards us. John sat up to watch.

  “Don’t talk,” I whispered—my low monotonous whistle would have hypnotized anything. But how did the little duck know that it meant “Come to me, come to me?” He came on, right up to the boat. Still whistling, I slowly put my hand down and gently picked him up. He didn’t struggle—just kept murmuring his own little monotonous triplet.

  I handed him to John, who wasn’t at all sure how to manage. He had never slept with a duck before—and the duck didn’t like being covered up. John finally sighed and passed him back to me.

  “You better keep it,” he suggested, and put his thumb in his mouth—the crisis was evidently over.

  I put the duck in my blazer pocket and rowed ashore. They had all been watching and everyone was convinced that I had strange powers. None of us was sure just what the little duck was. It was like a sea-pigeon or guillemot, but I don’t remember red legs. The youngsters took turns holding it for the rest of the evening. Later they fixed it up in the rowboat for the night. In the morning, much to John’s sorrow, the little duck had gone. Jan and Peter drove me nearly crazy for the rest of the summer trying to whistle ducks to bed. I refused to try again—I thought I would rest on my one success.

  It was a couple of nights later, coming down below the Nimkish, that the cougar kept prowling around and howling all night. I don’t know just where we were and I didn’t know at the time. We were coming down Johnstone Strait in dense fog and with no compass. It had been lost overboard—a painful episode, and full of tears; we won’t go into it. The straits are only a mile wide. You would think that it would be easy to keep straight, for that short distance, and get across. I tried twice without success. Usually, by watching your wake, you can keep a reasonable course. But we couldn’t see our wake for more than a couple of boat lengths.

  The last try, we started from a fixed light on a point—it was high and white and conspicuous, which gave us a good start. Jan and Peter watched the wake and called out directions, while I kept on some imaginary occult kind of a straight line. I was just trying to decide what effect the tide was having on us when Jan called out, “I see trees!” Trees were supposed to be ahead of us.

  “I s-s-ssee a lighthouse!” stuttered Peter, trying to get it out before Jan did.

  I kicked the boat out of gear, and stared at the light looming above us...same height, same cliff—there was no doubt about it, it was the same light.

  So we had to give up trying to get across the strait, and stay on the side we had started from. Later in the day, we followed the curve of the shore into what I was afraid might be an unwanted channel. But it turned out to be a booming-ground, with at least four big booms tied up to the piles. It seemed a good idea to stay right there until we could find out where we were.

  Booms are very handy, and quite all right to tie up to for the night. But you must be willing to accept their disadvantages as well.

  Children love booms—but mustn’t be allowed to play on them. The great sections of floating logs look compact and solid, but any one of the logs, if stepped on, might roll over and catch you in between. Or open out a gap and throw you into the water—then close over you again. A log up to five feet in diameter and fifty or eighty feet long is not a thing to fool with. Without a peavy and help of some kind you would be practically powerless to get a child out, if one had ever gone under the logs. Yet booms have an irresistible attraction for children.

  Wasps love them too—these yellow-and-black-striped, lethal creatures are wonderful paper makers. They take mouthfuls of wood off the logs and chew it up with their formic acid (I suppose, I haven’t looked it up in the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” yet). But anyway, the result is the thin grey paper material that they build their big hanging nests with. The queen wasp starts it off—she being the only one that survives the winter. The start is just a tiny grey paper thing, not any bigger than a bantam egg. She carefully makes a certain number of cells in the prescribed manner inside, and lays an egg in each one. Then sits down and waits, having done the only stint of actual labour she has to do in her whole life.

  Then from each cell comes forth a worker-wasp, a ready-made slave for the queen. She claps her hands, or her feet, and the workers run to groom and feed her. Then they start chewing more wood to make more cells for the queen to lay more eggs in. As the workers increase, the cells increase—round and round and round, and the wasps on the booms increase. They have to eat as well...and the simplest way is to come on board when they smell our food cooking and help themselves.

  Tugs love booms—they love to collect them in the middle of the night. You are awakened up by a searchlight and a shrill “Toot-toot-toot.” They are just as disgusted to see you as you are to see them. They have tied a tow-rope onto a string of sections, each 80 feet wide by perhaps 160 feet long, and may want to take ten of them together.

  There is nothing you can do, except climb out on the slippery logs and try to get your ropes off. You have suspended your boat half-way between the ends of a section—the ends being the only place where there are coupling chains to tie on to. As long as you are beside the boat, you are all right—you can put one hand on the boat. But after that you just have to balance, and a boom-log in the dark seems as narrow as a tight-rope. You have safely made about fifteen feet of it, when the tugmen suddenly shine their searchlight on you—and you stand there teetering—completely blinded. After a few minutes they realize what they are doing—that it is not modesty that is making you wave your arms round in front of your face. The searchlight turns aside, and you make the last ten feet and grab the ring-bolt—then untie your rope.

  Once you manage to get back to the boat with the wet slimy rope, then you can pull the boat up to where you are tied at the other end. You just manage to get that untied when the tug toots again, signifying that it is tired of waiting. You spring and clamber back onto the deck and grab a pike pole to fend off with. They turn the spotlight on you again, and you wave to let them know you are all clear. The whole boom moves slowly...out past you...and you are left forsaken and drifting in the dark. With a boat full of sleeping children it is easier to tow the boat than start up the engine. The seat of the dinghy is very wet, and your feet are clamped tight on a coil of wet rope. You tow the boat slowly towards the next boom—if there is one, or perhaps a pile that your boom was held by.

  That night, however, we had no boom troubles. We rowed into the beach befor
e dark. There were several big streams and the beach was covered with smooth round stones—loosely piled, just as they had come down with the spring freshets. We should have liked to explore a bit, but the fog was turning to rain; and we soon crowded back into the boat to get dry.

  It was some time during the darkest part of that dark night that we were all suddenly jolted out of deep sleep by the most bloodcurdling yowls from the beach—like a cat, but magnified fifty times.

  “Mummy! Mummy! What is it?” called terrified voices.

  “Listen....” I shu-ushed. You could hear the knock, knock of the round stones as some soft foot trod on them.

  Then again the long drawn-out yowl of a beast in sorrow...calling for something he couldn’t find. Again we all shivered in terror, and again the stones tipped and knocked.

  “I’m sure it wouldn’t yowl like that if it were hunting,” I said, but it didn’t make us feel much happier.

  From one end of the beach to the other it wandered—every now and then letting off a wail.

  “Mummy! That one was closer!” called Jan from her bunk in the bow. It certainly was....I grabbed the flashlight and swung its beam across the boom. Two yellow eyes...definitely nearer than the shore. Then they disappeared, and once more the stones rattled. After that I kept turning on the flash whenever the yowls seemed closer.

  I had just swung the light along the shore when two shots rang out—there was a strangled sort of snarl—then the sound of men’s voices. We sat for another half-hour, listening; and then went back to sleep.

  Next morning we saw two men working on the booms near the shore and rowed round to talk to them. It was they who had shot the cougar in the night. They had shot its mate two nights before, when it had killed their dog right on the porch of their cabin, which was on the high point at one end of the bay.

  “We were glad you kept turning on your flash,” they said. “That gave us our chance to shoot.”

  ENGINES

  WE HAD JUST GOT THROUGH LEWIS CHANNEL, BETWEEN Redonda and the north end of Cortes Island, and had hardly worked round Bullock Point and got out of the tide which was bothering us—when the engine stopped. It was almost dark, nine-thirty, and we were still five miles from the inlet on the north side of Cortes, and there was no place else to go. I cranked and cranked, again and again—evidently there was something really wrong. I couldn’t crank and watch the engine at the same time, so it was hard to find out just what it was. We couldn’t stay where we were. There was just one continuous cliff and forty-seven fathoms right off it. There was nothing else to do but tow the boat the five miles to the inlet.

  I helped John into his sleeping bag, in spite of his pleas that he was not sleepy; told Jan to steer and follow the dinghy—and took Peter with me in the dinghy. There was a slight current with us, which might increase later if the tide ebbed that way. It might go either way; for we were close to where the tides from the south met the tides from the north. The tides in these minor channels could easily vary in direction according to their height.

  There was no use trying to hurry—we had a long pull ahead of us. If it were not blowing at this hour, it was not likely to later. If it did blow, it would be just too bad. I settled down to a short steady stroke, trying not to let the rope slacken. If it did, you took the weight suddenly on your shoulders and neck. After two hours, I had a rest, ate some peanut butter, and made Peter go to bed. Then, with Jan, we looked at the chart again. We decided that we could probably anchor in a cove where the cliff ended, about a mile our side of the entrance to the inlet. That would leave only about one more mile. It had taken two hours to come less than three miles.

  I told Jan to use the flash in half an hour’s time to try to pick out the end of the cliff and the beginning of the cove. In about three-quarters of an hour she hailed me and shone the light again for me to see for myself. That was obviously the end of the cliff, and there was the cove beyond. I kept on for some distance, and then turned in at about the centre of the cove. The arms of the cove gradually folded about us and shut out the wide sea....I let the boat gradually lose way, and sounded with a fish-line. Two...three...four fathoms. I let the anchor down slowly—worked my way along the side deck, and stepped on board. Jan was already in her bunk. She must be tired too—it was a long watch for a small girl, but I couldn’t have managed alone. I crawled into my bag...could anyone as tired as I was possibly recover?

  It was nine the next morning before we woke. I looked over the engine while I drank my second cup of coffee and soon found out what was wrong—a pin had come out of the coupling on the timing shaft that ran off the magneto. Another look at the breeze that was coming up, and I decided that I should have to tow another mile into the inlet. There we would be completely sheltered; there was a stream of fresh water, and I could take my time over the engine. The missing pin meant that the whole inner workings of the engine were upset. It might mean quite a long job.

  In the end it was about a two-mile tow, because I wanted to get in as far as the stream. The tide was flooding into the inlet, so after I limbered up a little, it wasn’t so bad. Once anchored, we got into our bathing suits, put all our clothes into a pool in the stream to soak, and tumbled into the lukewarm sea water.

  After lunch, the children went ashore to tread out their clothes and get them out to dry. I went reluctantly into the engine room and had a tentative look at the engine. I wasn’t in any particular hurry to find out that I didn’t know how to retime an engine. As long as I thought I could, I was reasonably cheerful. After all, I knew the theory of the thing. It would have been sheer madness to take the trips on the part of the coast where we did unless I knew something about an engine. After a lot of thinking I decided to leave it until the next day. I was stiff and tired with the towing, and I hadn’t got to bed until after two that morning.

  We swam and fished, and caught a good-sized salmon. We lay in the sun. We explored. Jan and Peter rowed back, all excited, saying that they had found a salt water waterfall. So John and I had to row back with them to see it too. There was about a six foot fall, and it was perfectly salt. It must fill at high tide. We climbed up beside the fall, but it was impossible to explore. It just disappeared round comers, like a meandering lake, but salt. I think it must have had another, wider entrance somewhere. Cortes is a very large island, with many deep bays and gorges. On the chart, this salt water lake is just marked with a circle of unexplored dots. The dots would have to remain—we couldn’t explore it either.

  That evening we made a fire on the sloping rocks and ate our supper on shore. We grilled salmon steaks over the hot bark embers, and ate without benefit of forks or knives. It is really the only way I enjoy fish, fresh from the sea, to the grid, and eaten round a fire on the beach.

  The sparks floated up like fireflies in the quiet darkness. Then I had to tell the children what fireflies were and describe them. We don’t have them on the Pacific coast. A grouse was drumming on some tree or log. We had a guessing game on what direction it was coming from. One moment you could swear it was coming out of the rocks you were sitting on. Then it would be somewhere from overhead...then back in the woods again. It was quite unearthly, and vaguely disturbing. When the granite under our fire exploded with a loud bang, John said he thought he would like to go to bed. The other two didn’t argue at all...we rowed out to the boat, and the grouse drummed no more.

  I lay in my bag, long after the children were asleep, thinking about the engine. I hoped my subconscious mind would sort it all out, in the night, better than I could.

  I put the children ashore after breakfast with strict orders that I was to be left alone and not interrupted.

  “We wouldn’t even want to,” said Peter, sitting down on a point as close to the boat as he could get—he likes to hand me wrenches.

  Engines were invented and reared by men. They are used to being sworn at, and just take advantage of you; if you are polite to them—you get absolutely nowhere. The children were better on shore. Peter woul
d soon get tired of sitting there.

  I sat on my heels, cursing softly when the wrench slipped and took a chunk off my knuckle. Finally the sparkplug co-operated, and came out with the porcelain still intact. Then I stuck the screwdriver through the hole and felt around for No. 1 piston. That piston seemed quite inert...but after some turns of the flywheel it came up on top. No. 1 valve should be either opening or closing, I wasn’t sure which. The only valve I could see through the small hole was doing either one or the other. Then I decided that that part of the internal workings must be coupled together and had probably not been upset...well and good.

  Then I turned to the shaft where the pin had come out of the coupling. “Hell’s bells!” All that bother with No. 1 piston being on top dead centre would be wasted if it didn’t fire at that moment...the magneto must be the key to the whole thing. The engine was an old four-cylinder Kermath with a low-tension magneto. The distributor was on the face of the magneto, and the wires from the sparkplugs led down to the distributor....(Dots for a very long time.) Then I found that, by turning the shaft by hand until opening of the points on the magneto coincided with No. 1 lead, then No. 1 sparkplug at the end of that wire—fired.

  I made myself a cup of coffee and drank it while thinking that one over—I wasn’t quite ready to believe it yet. It seemed just a little too easy to be true. Then I remembered my subconscious that had worked all night on the subject, and I rather grudgingly gave it the credit, while all the glory I had was a bashed knuckle. I finally committed my subconscious and me, put a nail in place of the errant pin in the coupling, and secured it with some electric tape. Good! That hadn’t been so hard. Everyone should know how before they go off cruising in a boat. On the other hand, this had taken years to happen: I might have been worrying all that time if I had known it could happen.

  I connected the battery, I turned on the switch, I consulted my subconscious, and I pulled the crank....The most awful backfire shook the boat from stem to stern. Looking towards the shore, I could see the children jumping up and down and could see that they were shouting, but I couldn’t hear them....I switched off and sat down limply—I was completely shattered.