The Curve of Time

by M. Wylie Blanchet

  I called to my agitated children to come out and have a cup of tea. I would have to think it out before I took a chance with another bang like that....The children looked a little dubious about coming on board at all. John asked to see the blood—a bang is not a bang to him unless there is blood. I showed him my knuckle, which quite satisfied him.

  Then I sorted out the jumble of things I knew about engines...and of course it must have fired on the exhaust stroke. If I turned the engine over until No. 1 came on top again, perhaps that would be the firing stroke. No, that would still be firing on exhaust stroke. Out came the nail again and I redid all that part. Only then did I remember that the markings on my flywheel would have told me quite a bit. The subconscious is all very well, but it is sometimes not very practical.

  The children fled to the safety of the shore. I put in my rubber earplugs—switched on—and pulled her up. At first I wasn’t sure if anything had happened—but there was the flywheel whizzing round. Then I remembered the earplugs...there she was...purring away. Me and my subconscious solemnly shook hands.

  The engine is normally so well checked over in the spring that nothing very much is likely to happen—I am sure the pin will never come out of that shaft again. But there is no accounting for dry batteries. The engine started on coil ignition from a dry battery, and then I, personally, had to switch it over to magneto. That was one of Peter’s chief duties as mate—to see that I had made the switch. He used to get rather bored, as I hardly ever forgot. So now and again I would pretend to and he would feel most important.

  Then the life of dry batteries seems to vary—or I like to think it does and so divide the blame.

  We had spent two weeks poking into all the unknown bays and inlets to the north of the approach to Knight Inlet, checking on all the white-shell beaches, and generally exploring.

  Then our bread gave out, and the sourdough that old Mike had given me died (I forgot to feed it) and we had to find some place for provisions. If we left in time, before the fishermen got all the fresh provisions, we should be able to get bread. There were only two trading stores and gas in half a day’s run—one away over off Blackfish Sound, and the other back on Minstrel Island.

  So, we packed up the boat for running. Peter was shortening up the dinghy rope, Jan had pulled out the chart, and John had climbed up on the steering seat.

  “All set?” I asked, glancing round.

  I pulled the rear starter up sharply. Again—and again—and again. “If it isn’t spark, it’s gas, and if it isn’t gas it’s spark.” I reminded myself. I checked the gas tank, and the shut-off valve. I raised the float-level in the carburettor and enriched the mixture a little. I switched on and tried again...so it must be spark. I took a terminal off the battery and tried the spark...the most sickly, yellow, slow spark.

  “You may as well go on shore and play,” I said. “The battery is practically dead.”

  They looked at each other silently—and faded away.

  We were at least thirty miles from where there was any hope of finding another dry battery. There was practically no chance of another boat passing our way—to get a tow. We had purposely gone where we would be by ourselves.

  I put the battery out on deck in the sun. I polished the terminals. I took out all the sparkplugs and cleaned them. Knocked their points a little closer, and laid them all out in the sun with the battery to get hot. I would give everything another hour to really heat up—including the engine room, before I tried again.

  I studied the chart—it would have been impossible to find a more out of the way place, or a more awkward place to try to tow a boat. By cheating a little in measuring the course I gained three miles. But in terms of trying to tow a twenty-five foot boat—it didn’t help much. If I got the engine started, and made for Blackfish Sound, we would likely strike wind. We couldn’t stop and take shelter, for I might never get started again. If we headed for Minstrel we would strike bad tides—but it was the only possible place to tow to; so either way, it had better be Minstrel.

  I reached for the tide book. Tides would have to be worked out chiefly in relation to towing. I couldn’t possibly tow more than one tide—so there had to be a good place to hole up for the night at the end of six hours...that meant waiting here until noon. That would be better, even if the engine started.

  I called for someone to come out and get me. Then I lay on the beach and tried to think how many hours’ rowing it would take to tow the boat thirty miles—even with the tide. By the time the tide was at the right stage to try the engine again, I had used up enough energy thinking about it to have towed the boat there and back.

  We rowed off to the boat. I rechecked everything. I connected the hot battery—I primed each cylinder with naphtha gas—I screwed in each hot sparkplug. Then I pulled up hard on the crank. “Grr-r-r-r-p-p-p,” she started, and when I hurriedly threw the switch over onto magneto she settled down with a melodious “pur-r-r.”

  I nursed that throttle for ten minutes before I dared to leave it long enough to pull up the anchor. If she faltered, I should never be able to get to the throttle from the forward deck in time.

  We were all singing as we worked our way out of that god-forsaken little hole. For the moment, I had lost my taste for places where no one else ever went—a state of mind begotten of a dead battery.

  OLD PHIL

  PHIL LAVINE, THE OLD FRENCHMAN IN LAURA COVE, WAS full of calamities when we ran in to see him in July. He had had a bad winter. In the late fall he had something wrong with him, and had to go into the hospital at Powell River for a while. Then he had to come home sooner than he should have because the fisherman who was looking after his place for him wouldn’t stay any longer on account of the cougars.

  Then Mike’s old place in Melanie Cove had been taken over by some fellow from Vancouver.

  “A city man,” said Phil scornfully, “‘e didn’ know ‘ow to live in country like dis—‘e was scared to deat’ all de time.”

  In April, fish-boats that tried to anchor close in in Melanie Cove—the way they did in old Mike’s time—complained that someone was taking potshots at them. No one was hurt, and the police were a little sceptical.

  “I knowed it was de trut’,” Phil said. “Dat fellow was gettin’ more crazy every day.”

  The climax came one day when the fellow suddenly appeared and pushed his way into Phil’s cabin, with his rifle in his arms. Old Phil was sitting in front of the stove, smoking. The man didn’t say anything, but sat down in a chair opposite Phil with his gun across his knees, his finger on the trigger.

  “‘is eyes were crazy,” said Phil. “It’ ought it was de end of me.” Every time he tried to talk to the man, he pointed the gun at him. They sat there all afternoon—Phil smoking, but otherwise afraid to move.

  Finally, the man, who had been getting more and more agitated, said, “Phil, you won’t laugh at me, will you?”

  “My God!” Phil stuttered, “I ain’t got nuttin’ to laugh about!” and then added quietly, “I’ll make up de fire, an’ you stay an’ ‘ave supper wid me.”

  The man let him get up, and he made up the fire and put the kettle on. He continued talking quietly to him, and the man gradually relaxed.

  Phil finally decided to risk it...he put the pot of stew on the stove, brought an armful of wood in from outside the door; he filled a tin with grain from a sack under the table, said he had to feed the hens before it got dark, and asked the man to watch the fire and stir the stew.

  Then, still talking, he opened the door and went out and over to the hen house. He didn’t dare look back to see if he were being watched, but once round the end of the hen house where he couldn’t be seen from the house, he put the tin down and took the trail to the woods at a run. “I knowed I ‘ad to get out of gun range before ‘e discovered I weren’t comin’ back.”

  He had a small mountain to climb before he could get help from anyone. It was only a rambling goat-trail, and it was dark when he finally stumbled
into the Salter place. The two old brothers finally interpreted Phil’s French, gasps and signs—he had no English left. The three of them fell into the old fish-boat and didn’t stop until they reached Bliss Landing four hours later, and got in touch with the police boat.

  “An’ we stayed right der until de police take ‘im away, ‘e was quite crazy, and now ‘e’s locked up for good,” said Phil, rubbing his hands.

  Phil was out of tobacco, and he was drying some green tobacco leaves over the stove—trying to hurry them up. Long before tobacco was produced commercially in Canada, the French habitants or farmers in the country districts of Quebec all had their own little tobacco patch, and grew and cured their tobacco for the winter. Phil had brought this frugal habit with him from Quebec. He showed us the little drying shed he had outside, where bunches of tobacco leaves hung from poles, drying slowly.

  A baby goat bunted me suddenly and expertly, and the children laughed. I bunted him back with my fists and he jumped straight up in the air and landed with his four little black hooves bunched together.

  “No more cougars, Phil?” I asked.

  He pointed to two skins to the end of the woodshed, and shrugged: “Always de cougar, but wort’ forty-dollar bounty.”

  COASTWISE

  SOMEONE AT BLISS LANDING, HEARING THAT WE WERE going up Toba Inlet, asked if we would leave a message for two brothers who had a small place on Homfray Channel, which was on our way to Toba. We spent a couple of days in Melanie Cove where old Mike lives, and then set out along the shore of Homfray to try to find the place. The shores were very steep and rocky, and disappeared down into the sea at the same angle—one of these no-bottom shores. Then in a bit of a bay we saw a small float, tight up against the shore, held off with poles. A fish-boat was tied alongside.

  We had just tied up when one of the brothers came down to the float. I gave him the message, and as he was very insistent, we followed him up to the hidden cabin.

  We were quite unprepared for what we found. I had thought they were probably fishermen, with a small summer shack. But evidently they lived here all the year round and only fished occasionally. The cabin was quite large, and neat. Half a dozen loaves of bread, just out of the oven, were cooling on the table, and jars there were of fresh cherry jam. This brother did all the cooking and kept house. We sat down for tea with him—hot bread, honey from their own hives, butter from their goats.

  Before we were finished, the other brother came bounding in—a regular dynamo of a man. I have never seen so much seething energy in anyone. And full of what his brother called his “schemes.”

  They showed us all over the place. There were acres of walnut trees, just beginning to bear and now too big to transplant. One of his schemes—he had expected to sell the trees and make thousands of dollars out of them. Something had gone wrong—too expensive to get them to the right market or something.

  Then there was trench after trench of Cascara saplings, now five or six feet high and hopelessly crowded. He had intended to set out a plantation of them, but the price of Cascara bark had dropped so low that it wasn’t worth bothering with. If he had set them out, the price later was so high that he would have made his thousands out of them. He seemed to be a man that conceived and rose to tremendous crests, but was not capable of being interested in the troughs that surely followed.

  They had a wonderful vegetable garden. Water was piped down from the mountains in three-inch pipes, and the growth was prodigious. Then we had to climb up to the spring from which they piped water to the cabin. There was a small pool at the source, perhaps about four feet by four, made by a low dam. And in the small pool lived a fourteen-inch trout. It had been put in the pool as a fingerling and had lived there for almost five years.

  It rose to the surface as soon as we leant over the pool. The quiet brother took a crust out of his pocket and scattered crumbs on the surface. The trout made great swirls and ate them eagerly. It looked sleek and healthy but must have missed all the best of a fish’s life. If it were turned loose now in a stream it would have no instincts of any kind. Any fisherman could catch it in a landing net without bothering with a lure.

  We returned to the cabin by another path, under trees laden with cherries. The children were turned loose with a pail to fill with cherries to take back with us, as well as all they could eat.

  Weekly the brothers took a load of fruit and vegetables to logging camps ten to twenty-five miles away. The quiet brother canned and bottled all they could eat for the winter. The rest they gave away or it was wasted. “There’s enough of everything for an army,” the quiet brother groaned. But there was always another plan ahead for the dynamic dreamer—something that kept him glowing with vigour.

  The quiet brother showed me their storehouse—double walled, of logs. In the dark cool interior were shelves full of bottled venison and salmon—pickled beets and onions—bottles of fruit. Lastly, a roothouse all ready for the fall root crop.

  All that was the quiet brother’s achievement—survival in the wilderness with practically no money. I know of two couples who tried this living off the country and what you can produce—as an experiment to see if it could be done. One was a writer, and he and his wife and two children tried it for a year. They proved that it could be done, if you had or could make about thirty-five dollars a month for clothes, sugar, flour—things you couldn’t produce. However, they owned their own place and already had a garden. They knew how to fish and hunt and can the surplus. And the beach in front of their place was covered with driftwood. I think they had had the idea of starting a back-to-the-woods campaign for people living in town on relief. Most city dwellers could not have done it at all.

  We bought all the vegetables the boat would hold from the brothers, but had to accept the pail of cherries and a loaf of home-made bread. And also to give a promise that we would call in again.

  At the very last moment, when we were talking on the wharf, they spoiled our trip up Toba. As soon as I mentioned that we were heading up Toba, they were all against it. Did I know that there was no anchorage of any kind, except in Salmon River? And Salmon River at this time of the year was full of cinnamon bears after the salmon. They were light brown in colour, and more like the grizzlies in habits. Also, they were very aggressive, and apt to charge you on sight. We shouldn’t be able to get off the boat. Well, I only half believed it all, but they had fished up there a good many years, and should know. I had also been told by others that the head of the inlet was low and swampy and bad for mosquitoes, and so we gave up the idea.

  Instead, we went on up to the Yucultas and tied up at the wharf of people we knew in the big bay half-way up Stuart Island. You get quite a swirl and strong current when the rapids are running at their hardest, but it is perfectly safe. There were two little girls there who were being brought up by their grandmother. We used to walk back with them to a lake in the interior of the island to swim. It was a peculiar little lake in the middle of what I think must be muskeg. The muskeg was all right if you kept walking. But if you didn’t you began to sink. So we would change into our bathing suits while on the move, hang our clothes on a bush, and ooze into the water, which was warm and very soft. I don’t think the lake was very deep, we never investigated closely. We didn’t like that bottom—it was soft and sinking, and full of unknowns.

  I left all the children playing together one evening, and went off with the father and an older boy to watch them fish with lines at the edge of the whirlpools. We used an open gas-boat they had, and shot round the S.E. point that swings out to the edge of the rapids. Then they worked out of the current and up the back currents into the little bay just beyond the point. There they had an old scow tied up. It was anchored at one end by a line that went out into the swirls of the current as it swept round the point. The other end was tied to a tree on the shore.

  We climbed on board, and they slacked off on the shore line and pulled the scow out on the anchored line until they were just on the edge of where the whirlp
ools formed. They baited the fishing line by cutting a herring in half and running a wire lead through the tail half, and then attaching a hook—no weights, no spoons. The current was so strong that it carried the line out and down, and the current kept the herring tail wagging and spinning. The pull was so hard that I was sure I had a ten-pounder on from the very start. The scow twisted this way and that way, and when they saw an extra large whirlpool approaching, the men would slack off on the anchor end and rapidly pull us out of reach with the shore line. You could see right down the whirlpool’s throat as it sucked and reached at us. Then off it would twirl, and we would pull ourselves out to the edge again.

  There was a man fishing off the tip of the point just beyond us. He was on a high platform that stretched ten feet out over the water. Suddenly, with a great shout, he started pulling in his line. You don’t play your fish with this kind of fishing—you use a wire lead and a heavy line, and haul. That man fought his line for fifteen minutes before he finally got his fish clear of the water and up onto the narrow platform. Then, before he could gaff it, the hook evidently worked out, for with a yell the man flung himself on the fish, and sat there with it clasped in his arms, laughing and shouting for help. Someone came out to his rescue and they got the big spring salmon to shore.

  “At least a sixty-pounder,” the man with me said.

  A minute later he was himself busy trying to land a thirty-pounder. The boy shouted, and I grabbed the shore line and helped him pull the scow out of danger. I think the man would have let us sink rather than lose his fish.

  Then it was too dark to fish any longer and the water was running too hard—and we walked home through the woods.