Stranded in Arcady Part 7

"That means rain, and you are going to get wet," said the young woman, as she was preparing to creep under her canvas. An instant later a gusty blast came down the river, threatening to scatter the fire. Prime sprang up at once and began to take the necessary precautions against a conflagration. In the midst of the haste-making he heard his companion say: "We might drag the canoe up here and turn it over so that you could have it for a shelter."

With the fire safely banked they went together to the river's edge to carry out her suggestion. By this time the precursor blast of the shower was lashing the little river into foam, and the spray from the rapid just above them wet their faces. One glance, lightning a.s.sisted, at the little beach where they had drawn up the canoe was enough. The birch-bark was gone.

The young woman was the first to find speech. At another lightning-flash she cried out quickly:

"There it is! Don't you see it?--going down the river! The wind is blowing it away!"

Immediately they dashed off in pursuit, stumbling through the forest in darkness, which, between the lightning-flashes, was like a blanketing of invisibility. The race was a short one. One flash showed them the canoe dancing down the raceway of a lower rapid, and at the next it had disappeared.

VII

_ROULANT MA BOULE_

AT the disappearance of the canoe Prime called the halt which the black darkness was insisting upon, and they made their way back in the teeth of the storm to the camp-fire. In a few minutes the summer squall had blown itself out, with scarcely enough rain to make a drip from the trees. Weary as he was, Prime took the axe, searched until he found a pine stump, and from it hewed the material for a couple of torches. With these for light they set out doggedly down-stream in search of their lost hope.

Happily, since they were both f.a.gged enough to drop in their tracks, the birch-bark was discovered stranded on their side of the river a hundred yards below the lower rapid. This time they ran no risks, and, though it cost them a half-hour of stumbling toil, they did not rest until they had carried the canoe around the rapid to place it high and dry in the little glade where they had made their camp.

The next morning found them plentifully stiff and sore from their strenuous exertions of the day before, but there was good cheer in the thought that thus far they had triumphed stoutly over difficulty and disaster.

"I feel as if I couldn't put one foot before the other, and I am sure you must be in the same condition," Prime groaned, over the second helping of fried potatoes and bacon, served in Domestic Science's best style. "Just the same, I mean to take a dose of the hair of the dog that bit me and go up after the remainder of our loot. While I am doing it you must stay here and watch the canoe, to see that it doesn't run away again. I wouldn't trust it a single minute, even on dry land."

"No," was the firm rejoinder. "You must get the s.e.x idea out of your head once for all, Donald. It will be time enough for you to make it easy for me when I need it worse than I do now."

"Yesterday I said you were a wonder, Lucetta; to-day I rise to remark that you are two wonders, and mighty plucky ones at that."

"And to-morrow I shall be three wonders, and the next day four, and so on to infinity, I suppose," she said, laughing. "By the way, speaking of days, what day is this?"

Prime drew a notched twig from his pocket.

"Don't ever say after this that I am not the original Robinson Crusoe,"

he grinned. "I cut this twig the second day, just before we began the hike for the river." Then he counted up: "According to my almanac, this ought to be Monday--wash-day."

"Then yesterday was Sunday, which is why we had all our bad luck. We ought to have gone to church. Is it possible that we were both in Quebec no longer ago than last Tuesday night? It seems as if months had elapsed since then--months, I said, but I ought to have said ages."

"Are things changing for you so radically, then?" he asked.

"They are, indeed. And for you?"

"Yes; I guess so. For one thing, I have discovered the habitat of about a million muscles that I didn't know I had; and for another----"

"Well?" she challenged, "why don't you say it?"

"I will say it. For another, I have discovered the most remarkable woman that ever lived."

She laughed joyously. "See what a few days of unavoidable propinquity will do! But you are mistaken--I'm not especially remarkable. You are only doing what Mr. Grider said you ought to do--studying the female of the species at short range."

"Grider was an a.s.s!" was the impatient rejoinder. "If I had him here I'd duck him in the river in spite of his fifty pounds excess. But this isn't getting the remainder of the dunnage. Are you quite sure you want to go along?"

"Quite sure," she returned, and once more they took the riverside trail to the stream-head.

The third carry was lighter than the others had been, and the six-mile tramp was the best possible antidote for stiffened joints and lamed muscles. By the time they had rea.s.sembled themselves and their belongings in the little glade between the rapids they were both in fine fettle, and ready to begin the real journey.

The loading of the canoe was a new thing, but in this they gave common sense a free rein. The camp stuff and provisions were made into packages with the blankets and the tent canvas for wrappings; and each package was securely lashed beneath the brace-bars of the birch-bark, so that in case of a capsize there would still be some chance for salvage. Prime's final precaution was worthy of a real woodsman. Drying the empty whiskey-bottle carefully with a wisp of gra.s.s, he filled it with matches, corked it tightly, and skewered it in an inside pocket of his coat.

"You are learning," Lucetta observed; and then: "Did you get that out of a story?"

"No, indeed; I dug it up whole out of my literary imagination. If I should tumble overboard you want to be sure to save the pieces, if you ever hope to see a fire again. Are we all ready?"

Five minutes later they had taken their lives in their hands and were shooting the rapids. With the laden canoe the paddling was an entirely different proposition. Mile after mile the quick water held, with only the shortest of reaches between Scylla and Charybdis for the breath-catching. At first the keen strain of it keyed nerve and muscle to the snapping-point; but after a time the fine wine of peril had its due and exhilarating effect, and they shouted and laughed, calling to each other above the turmoil of the waters, gasping joyously when the spray from the white-fanged boulders slapped them in the face, and having the luck of the innocent or the drunken, since disaster held aloof and they escaped with nothing more serious than the spray wettings.

Though light-heartedness thus sat in the saddle--or knelt on the paddling-mat--prudence was not wholly banished. At noon, when they pulled out at the foot of a quiet reach to make a pot of tea, they found that they were at the head of a rapid too swift and tortuous to offer anything but certain catastrophe. While the tea water was heating Prime went ahead to reconnoitre.

"Too many chances," he reported on his return. "And, besides, the carry is only a few hundred yards. It means more hard work, but we can't afford to run the risk."

"Oh, dear me!" sighed the young woman in mock despair; "have we got to unload that canoe piece by piece, and then carry and load it all over again?"

"We shall doubtless have to do it so many times that we shall count that day lost when we are denied the opportunity," Prime laughed. "But, Heaven helping us, we shall make no more three-mile portages, as we did yesterday."

The task did not seem quite so formidable after they had broken their fast. Moreover, in the repeated packings and unpackings, they were gaining facility. With the dunnage transported they were ready to attack the birch-bark, and Lucetta had an inspiration.

"Haven't I seen a picture somewhere of the old _voyageurs_ carrying their canoes on their heads?" she asked.

"Why, of course!" said Prime. "Why didn't we think of that last night? I believe I could carry it that way alone. Now, then, over she goes and up she goes; you set the pace, and for pity's sake don't stumble."

n.o.body stumbled, and in due time the canoe was launched below the rapids, was reloaded, and the paddling was resumed. This day, which ended in a snug camp at the foot of a stretch of slow water which had kept them paddling all the afternoon, was a fair sample of their days through the remainder of the week. Night after night, after they had been shooting rapids, or making long carries, or paddling steadily through stretches where the current did not go fast enough for them, Prime found Lucetta's prophecy as to his growth coming true. Day by day he was finding himself anew, advancing by leaps and bounds, as it seemed, into a stronger and fresher and simpler manhood.

And as for the young woman--there were times when the realization that in a few hours of a single mysterious night she had pa.s.sed from the world of the commonplace into a world hitherto unpictured even in her wildest imaginings, was graspable, but these moments were rare.

Adaptable, even under the fetterings of the conventions, Lucetta Millington was finding herself fairly gifted now that the fetterings were removed. From childhood she had longed for an opportunity to explore the undiscovered regions of her own individuality, and now the opportunity had come. It pleased her prodigiously to find that Prime seemed not to be even remotely touched by their unchaperoned condition.

From the first he had been merely the loyal comrade, and she tried consistently to meet him always upon his own ground--tried and succeeded.

On the Sat.u.r.day night they found themselves at the head of a long portage, still in the heart of the wilderness, and having yet to see the first sign of any human predecessor along the pathway traced through the great forest by their little river.

"I can't understand it," Prime said that night over the camp-fire. "We have covered a good many miles since last Monday, and still we don't seem to be getting anywhere. Another thing I don't fancy is the way the river has changed its course. Have you noticed that for the last three days it has been flowing mainly northward?"

The young woman became interested at once. "I hadn't noticed it," she admitted, and then: "Why don't you like it?"

"Because it seems a bit ominous. It may mean that we were carted clear over to the northern side of the big watershed, though that doesn't seem possible. If we were, we are going painstakingly away from civilization instead of toward it. That would account at once for the fact that we haven't come across any timber-cuttings. The northern rivers all flow into Hudson Bay."

Lucetta's gaze became abstracted. "Besides that, we are still groping in the blind alleys of the mysteries," she put in. "Have you given up the Mr. Grider idea?"

"I can't give it up wholly and save my sanity," Prime averred. "Think a minute; if we throw that away, what have we to fall back upon? Nothing, absolutely nothing! Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the sane mind.

Don't mistake me; I haven't the slightest idea that Grider let us in for any such experience as this, meaning to. But he took a chance, as every practical joker does, and the result in our case has spelled disaster.

I am only hoping that it has spelled disaster for him, too, confound him!"

She smiled sweetly.