CHAPTER X

THE START

The sun was not very high when they pushed off. The wind blew in gusts from the southeast and the sky was obscured by a loose bank of clouds which occasionally gave down a little rain.

The bow paddle was wielded by a gigantic Indian, known as Hamset; while in the stern, occupying the position of steersman, sat a much smaller man, whose unpronounceable Ucletah name had been shortened for convenience to "Jimmie." Between the bow and the stern, seated on rolls of blankets, were the four whites--first, Fannin, then Charlie, the cook, then Hugh, and last of all Jack. Each was provided with a paddle, and they worked two on each side of the canoe. The provisions were stored in one box, the mess kit in another, and the rolls of blankets were placed in the bottom of the canoe so as to trim it properly. The canoe was quite dry, and loose boards on the bottom would keep the cargo from getting wet, even if a little water were shipped.

The breeze which was now blowing was a favorable one; and they had hardly started before it began to rain steadily and to threaten a wet, boisterous day. Fannin was in great spirits at this prospect; for he, better than any one else, knew what a few days of favoring winds would accomplish toward hastening them along on their voyage. As the rain fell harder mats and rubber blankets were spread over the guns and bedding. The sail was hoisted, and all hands except the steersman took in their paddles and sat back with a satisfied air, as if they had nothing to do except to watch the breeze blowing and the land moving by them.

Farther to the southward there had been many islands, which would have cut off the breeze; but here the open waters of the Gulf stretched away to windward for twenty or thirty miles, and there was nothing to break the force of the breeze. As they advanced various islands appeared, Texada showing a high peak above the fog; and then other smaller islands,--Denman and Hornby.

The wind kept blowing harder and harder, until at noon quite a sea was running, and the waves began to break over the sides of the vessel, necessitating bailing. The canoe was heavily loaded and set rather low in the water, cutting through the waves instead of riding over them as it should have done. This pleasant condition of things lasted for some time, but about two o'clock the sky cleared, the wind fell, and it was necessary to take to the paddles once more, for now the sail flapped idly against the mast and the canoe began to float back toward Nanaimo--the tide having turned. The sea became as smooth as glass, the sun glared down from the unclouded sky with summery fierceness, and after a little while the travellers realized that the canoe trip might mean a lot of hard work. More than that, the canoe seemed to be anchored to the bottom, and, so far as could be judged from occasional glances toward the distant shore, did not move at all. The work became harder and harder, and Hugh and Jack at last realized that here was a struggle between the paddles and the tide, with the chances rather in favor of the tide. This, of course, meant that they must work harder. Coats were stripped off, the crew bent to their work, and at last found that the craft did move, although very, very slowly.

After a half hour's hard paddling Jack said to Hugh: "I tell you, Hugh, watching that shore is like watching the hands of a watch. If you look at the shore you would think that we were perfectly motionless. It's only when you take some object on the beach and notice its position, and then, five or ten minutes later, look at it again that you find that our position has changed with relation to it, and that it is farther behind than it was when you last saw it."

"Yes," said Fannin, "I've done lots of canoeing in my time, but I guess I shall learn something on this trip as well as the rest of you. We're pretty heavily loaded, and if we have head winds and tides much of the time we'll have to put in about all the hours every day working at these paddles. Besides that, we've got to figure on being wind-bound for a certain number of days, and, taking it all in all, we can't hope to go very far. Nevertheless, we can go far enough to see a good deal."

The progress of the canoe was made more slow by the fact that its track skirted the shore, following quite closely all its windings, and hardly ever cutting across the bays, large or small, that indented the island.

Jack asked Fannin why the Indians did not go across from one headland to another, thus saving much paddling; and Fannin explained that this was done partly to avoid the force of the tide, and partly from the habitual caution of the east coast Indians. "On the waters of the Gulf," said Mr. Fannin, "gales often spring up without giving much warning, and quite a heavy sea may follow the wind almost at once. These canoes, especially when heavily loaded, as ours is, cannot stand much battering by the waves."

As the sun sank low, after a long spell of paddling, the bow of the canoe was turned into the mouth of Qualicum River; and a little later, when close to the shore, the vessel was turned bow out and the stern pushed shoreward, till it grated gently on the pebbly beach. All hands at once sprang out, and it was a relief to get on firm ground again and to stretch the limbs, contracted by nearly twelve hours of sitting in one position.

Now the rolls of blankets were tossed on the beach, the provision box and mess kit and other property were unloaded and carried up to the meadow above. In a few moments a fire had been kindled, and preparations for the evening meal were begun. Now, Jack and Fannin began putting together their fishing rods; Hugh took his rifle and looked it over, wiping off the moisture that had accumulated on it, and got out some ammunition. The party wanted fresh meat and was going to try hard to get it. Meantime the Indians had taken out the boards from the canoe, placed them on the beach, and were sliding the vessel up, far above high-water mark.

Before Jack had made many casts he had a rise or two, and he was doing his best to hook a fish when Charlie's shout of "Dinner" caused them all to lay aside their tools and repair to the fire for supper. It was a simple meal of bacon, bread, and coffee; but the work of the day had given all hearty appetites and they enjoyed it. Then, a little later, Jack went back to his fishing, and Fannin, Hugh, and Hamset put off in the canoe and disappeared behind a bend of the river.

Being unable to do anything with the fish, which were now jumping everywhere at the mouth of the river, Jack worked along up the stream, and around the next point was more successful. A fish rose to his flies and was hooked, and, after a brief struggle, was dragged up on the beach. It was a beautiful trout, only weighing half a pound, to be sure, but none the worse on that account, if regarded simply from the point of view of so much food. Encouraged by this success, Jack fished faithfully and carefully, and before long had killed half a dozen others, all about the same size as the first. Most of these were taken in more or less shallow water near the beach, but at length he came to a place where an eddy of the stream had dug out a big hole not far from the edge of the bank, and casting over this two or three times, he had a rise which almost made his heart stop beating. The fish missed the fly, but rose again to another cast, and this time was hooked on a brown hackle. And then for a little while Jack had the time of his life. The fish was far too strong for him to handle, and for a little time kept him running up and down the beach, following its powerful rushes, taking in line whenever he could, and yielding it when he must. Once or twice the rush of the fish was so prolonged that almost all the line went off the spool, and he even ran into the river up to his knees in the effort to save some of his line. At last, however, the runs grew shorter, and the fish yielded and swayed over on its side and was towed up to the beach. But as soon as it saw Jack it seemed to regain all its vigor, and darted away with a powerful rush. This was its last effort. Gradually Jack drew it into water which was more and more shallow, and finally up, so that its head rested on the beach. Then seizing the leader he dragged it well in, and in a moment he had it in his hands. It was a beautiful and very powerful fish, and must have weighed between four and five pounds. A little later another fish was taken, not quite so large, to be sure, but big enough to give the angler a splendid fight; and then, as the sun had disappeared behind the forest, Jack strung his trout on a willow twig and made his way back to camp. Charlie received him with delight.

"Well," he said, "you're the kind of a man I like to be out with--somebody that can go out and get food to eat. I bet them other fellows won't bring in anything; but we've got enough here nearly for breakfast and dinner to-morrow. I wish if you have time you'd go out to-morrow morning and catch some more."

"I'd like to," said Jack. "Those two big fellows over there gave me as much fun as I ever had in my life."

"Well," said Charlie, "you'll have better fun than that to-morrow morning when you're eating that fish."

"No," said Jack, "I don't believe it. I think that I would rather have the fun of catching those two fish than eating the best meal that was ever cooked."

From the camp Jack wandered away along the beach and over the meadows back toward the forest that came down from the higher land. Here he saw that this must be quite a camping place for Indians, and that some had been there within a few days. There were the remains of recent fires, tent poles that had been cut only a few days before; and some little way back from the beach, and hardly to be seen among the timber, was an Indian house in which Jack discovered four canoes.

When he returned to camp, Charlie said: "I heard them fellows shooting, but I reckon they didn't get nothing; maybe a duck or two, but nothing fit to eat, like them fish you brought in."

"Yes," said Jack, "I heard the shot, but it was from the shot-gun, not from a rifle."

In the meantime the party in the canoe had pushed its way quite a long distance up the river. There was a possibility that a deer might be seen along the bank, or a brood of ducks feeding in the shallow water, and rifles and shot-gun were ready to secure anything that might make its appearance. For a long way the canoe advanced through the dense forest without much difficulty. Then it came to a series of shallow rapids, up which so large a craft could not be taken. The canoe was then drawn as near the bank as possible. The Indian carried the two white men ashore on his shoulders, and all three followed up the stream through the now darkening woods. They found many old tracks of deer, and from time to time passed the fresher slide of an otter; but no game was seen. As the light grew more and more dim, they faced about, went back to the canoe, and turned its nose down the stream.

As the vessel swept noiselessly along the swift current, two or three broods of ducks were surprised by its sudden approach from behind the bend. On the upward journey the birds, warned by the noise of the paddles, had seen the craft before it was near them, and had crept ashore and hidden themselves in the grass. But now there was not time for this. A flock of mallards, startled from the water, sprang away in flight, and two of them were stopped by Fannin, and fell back into the stream, to be picked up by Hamset as the canoe swept by.

It was only gray light next morning when all hands were astir. While the breakfast was being cooked bundles of bedding were rolled up and transported to the shore; and as soon as breakfast was over and the dishes washed, the canoe was pushed off and loaded; the paddlers took their places, and they set out again at just six o'clock by Mr. Fannin's watch.

The day was bright and pleasant, with light airs from half a dozen quarters, but no breeze strong enough to justify the setting of the sail.

Just after they had pushed out of the mouth of the river, Jack called Fannin's attention to a flock of birds sitting on the water; and they were presently made out to be scoter ducks, of two kinds. There was an enormous multitude of them, and almost all seemed to be males. When too closely approached, fifty or five hundred of them would rise on the wing, swing out over their fellows, and then alight on the outside of the flock.

"Where in the world do all those birds come from, Mr. Fannin?" asked Jack. "These are the birds that we call coots down on the Atlantic coast; but I don't think at any one time I ever saw so many of them as we see this morning."

"I don't know just what they're doing here," said Fannin. "But, as nearly as I can see with my glasses, they seem to be all males; and I shouldn't be a bit surprised if the females were all ashore, at little springs or lakes, raising their broods. Pretty soon these birds will begin to moult, and then the Indians will try to get around them and drive them ashore and kill them. But this is a method that seldom succeeds with these birds. If they see that they are going to be forced on the shore they will dive and swim back under the boat."

"That's pretty smart," said Jack. "I have heard of the loons doing something like that, but I didn't suppose a coot had sense enough for that."

"Yes," said Fannin, "that's what they're said to do."

As they paddled along the head of a seal appeared above the water, close to them, and after watching them for a moment or two sank back out of sight.

"Son, why don't you try one of those fellows with your rifle," suggested Hugh. "It looks as if there were time enough to draw a bead on one and kill it. I hear these Indians eat that sort of meat; and I suppose what they can do we can too, if we get a chance."

Jack pulled his gun out of its case, put a couple of cartridges in his vest pocket, and declared he would try the seals the next time one gave him a chance. He did so, but the animals kept their heads above water so short a time that he was unable to get a satisfactory sight on one, and did not fire.

"Well," said Hugh, "these fellows are pretty watchful and pretty quick; and as you don't know when they're coming up, it's a pretty hard matter to shoot at them."

"So it is," said Fannin, "and yet I think if one had practice enough they would be easy to kill. Certainly the Indians here, and still more to the north, get a great many of them, shooting them and then paddling quickly up and putting a spear in them before they sink. These little seals that we see are, of course, nothing but the common harbor seal; but when the big fur-seal herds pass up the coast the Indians get a good many of them in that way, though many are killed by paddling up close to them when they are asleep on the water and spearing them. A long line is attached to the lance, the head of which is barbed, so that it will not draw out; and at length they pull the seal up close to the canoe and kill it, either with a club or by spearing it again. Seal meat and seal oil are pretty important parts of the native food supply on this coast; but more so to the north than down here, where the food is more varied."

"Well," said Hugh, "we've surely got to get some fresh meat of one kind or other, on this trip; if we don't, our grub will give out, and we'll have to travel back to the settlement hungry. There seems to be a world of food lying around,--deer, and fish, and seals, and all that. You see, Fannin, Jack and I are prairie men, and don't know how to earn a living on this water. If we were travelling back on the plains, or in the mountains, we'd think it mighty queer if we couldn't keep the camp in meat; but here we don't know how to go to work to do it. Don't either of these Indians understand how to catch these fish or to kill these animals?"

"I expect the Indians do," said Fannin, "but I don't, for I never have had occasion to live in the country along the shore here. I'm something like you, a mountain hunter. But we ought to be able to catch some salmon, and to do it right here. You know that in a few days or weeks now all the rivers along the coast will be full of salmon, running up toward the heads of the stream to spawn. At the present time they are gathering in the salt water, each fish pushing toward the mouth of the river, in which it was hatched, and down which it made its way toward the sea. They say that all salmon go back to the streams in which they were bred to spawn. Now, when they are in salt water, and before they reach the mouths of the rivers, the salmon will bite, and a great many of them are caught by trolling, either with bait or with a spoon. Haven't you some fishing tackle there that you could throw overboard now, and let the bait follow the canoe? If we could get a few fish it would help out mightily with our eating."

"Why, yes," said Jack; "of course there's some fishing tackle. Let's get it out and try them."

Hugh bent down; and after fumbling in the provision box for a few moments, brought out a package which he passed over to Fannin, saying to him: "You know more about these things than either of us, and you'd better pick out the lines and baits that are to be used."

The long, strong line, with a lure of metal and feathers attached to it, was soon overboard, and dragging in the long sinuous wake that stretched out behind the canoe. Jack held it in one hand as he wielded the paddle. All the power that they had was needed to push the boat along; and if one man should sit and fish in idleness it would not have been fair to the others.

Jack sat hopefully, expecting each moment to feel a tug on the line, but none came. "Tell me, Mr. Fannin," he asked, "don't salmon bite after they get into the fresh water? You said that when in salt water they were caught in numbers. Does that mean that they do not take the bait in fresh water?"

"Yes," replied Fannin, "that's just what it means. When they get into the fresh water they seem to lose all interest in the food question, and will not take the bait or rise to a fly. Some friends of mine, who are great fishermen, have tried bait,--spoons, flies, and grasshoppers,--but no attention was paid to any of these things. There's a story, you know, about some British commissioner, sent out years ago, when England and the United States were quarrelling over the question of who owned Oregon and Washington, and they say that this commissioner was a great salmon angler. They say that he was here during the salmon run, and fished the streams faithfully for them, without even getting a rise, though he could see millions of them. The story goes that he was so disgusted with the way the salmon acted that he went back to England and reported that the great territory in dispute was not worth quarrelling about, and not worth holding by Great Britain, because the salmon in the stream would not rise to a fly."

"That's sure comical," said Hugh; "but after all there's a good deal of human nature in it. We're all likely to look at things from our little narrow point of view and to think only of matters as they interest us."

Before very long Jack found the holding of the trolling line something of a nuisance, and at Fannin's suggestion passed it over to Jimmie, the steersman, who tied it about one of his arms and kept up the work of paddling. That there was salmon about now was very evident, for great silvery fish were frequently seen jumping out of the water, or floundering about on the surface, throwing shining drops about them in showers.

"Why do these fish jump in that way, Mr. Fannin?" asked Jack. "It's common enough to see fish jump out of the water and then fall back, but these, when they strike the water, act almost like a fish thrown on the shore, and flopping there."

"The Indians say," replied Fannin, "and I guess very likely it's true, that this flopping around by the salmon is done for the purpose of ridding themselves of certain parasites that are attached to their bodies. I've often seen these parasites. They are flat, oval crustaceans, and a good deal like the common sow bugs--those little flattish, purple, many-legged bugs that we find under the bark of dead trees or sometimes under stones, back in the East. Almost all salmon caught in salt water have some of these things stuck to them, sometimes only one and sometimes a dozen. They will be found chiefly about the fins, and especially on those of the back. They cling closely to the skin, and some force is needed to dislodge them; but as soon as the fish get in the fresh water they die and drop off."

They were paddling along, not very far from a kelp bed, which lay north and south, along the channel that they were following for a mile or more, when suddenly Jimmie dropped his paddle and began to haul in on his line. A moment's work, however, showed that he had no fish on it, and he let it go again. But Fannin told him to draw in the line and see that the spoon was all right; for it occurred to him that the current might have carried the spoon in among the leaves of the kelp bed, that it might have caught in one of them, and been torn off. When the end of the line was recovered it appeared that this was just what had happened; and Fannin, grumbling at the Indian's carelessness, put on another spoon and threw the line overboard, but this time kept it in his own hand. It had hardly straightened out, when there was a violent tug on it, and Fannin dropped his paddle and began to haul in the line rapidly, hand over hand. Every one in the boat was more or less excited at the capture, and they all stopped paddling. The great fish was drawn nearer and nearer; sometimes out of sight, and sometimes struggling on the surface of the water and making a great splashing. It was not very long before it was close to the side. All the paddles were taken in; and Fannin, being very careful to keep the fish away from the side of the canoe, let his right hand down close to the line, and grasped the fish close behind the gills, and lifted it into the canoe. Jack, Hugh, and Charlie cheered vigorously, and the Indians grinned with delight.

It was a fine silvery fish, of ten pounds weight, fat and firm, promising delicious food. The fish was passed aft for the inspection of Hugh and Jack; and Fannin called their especial attention to the presence on its back of three of the parasites of which they had been talking only a few moments ago. Then, after they had all admired the fish, it was laid aside in a shady place and the canoe went on.