IV THE ISLE ROYALE
Shortly after dawn work on the _Otter_ was begun. The water was pumpedout, most of the cargo piled on the beach, and the sloop hauled fartherup by means of a rudely constructed windlass. Then the strained seamswere calked and a few new boards put in. A tall, straight spruce wasfelled and trimmed to replace the broken mast, and a small mainsaildevised from extra canvas. The repairs took two long days of steadylabor. During that time the weather was bright, and, except in the deeplyshaded places, the snow and ice disappeared rapidly.
From the very slight current in the water, Captain Bennett concluded thatthe place where he had taken refuge was a real bay, not a river mouth. Hehad not yet discovered whether he was on the mainland or an island. Therepairs to his ship were of the first importance, and he postponeddetermining his whereabouts until the _Otter_ was made seaworthy oncemore. Not a trace of human beings had been found. The boldness of thewolves and lynxes, that came close to the camp every night, indicatedthat no one, red or white, was in the habit of visiting this lonely spot.
On the third day the sloop was launched, anchored a little way from shoreand rigged. While the reloading was going on, under the eyes of the mate,the Captain, with Baptiste and Hugh at the oars, set out in the smallboat for the harbor mouth.
The shore along which they rowed was, at first, wooded to the water line.As they went farther out and the bay widened, the land they were skirtingrose more steeply, edged with sheer rocks, cliffs and great boulders.From time to time Captain Bennett glanced up at the abrupt rocks andforested ridges on his right, or across to the lower land on the otherside of the bay. Directly ahead, some miles across the open lake, hecould see a distant, detached bit of land, an island undoubtedly. Most ofthe time, however, his eyes were on the water. He was endeavoring tolocate the treacherous reefs and shallows he must avoid when he took hisship out of her safe harbor.
An exclamation from Baptiste, who had turned his head to look to the westand north, recalled the Captain from his study of the unfamiliar waters.Beyond the tip of the opposite or northwestern shore of the bay, faracross the blue lake to the north, two dim, misty shapes had come intoview.
"Islands!" Captain Bennett exclaimed. "High, towering islands."
Baptiste and Hugh pulled on with vigorous strokes. Presently the Captainspoke again. "Islands or headlands. Go farther out."
The two bent to their oars. As they passed beyond the end of the lownorthwestern shore, more high land came into view across the water.
"What is it, Baptiste? Where are we?" asked Hugh, forgetting in hiseagerness that it was not his place to speak.
"It is Thunder Cape," the Captain replied, overlooking the breach ofdiscipline, "the eastern boundary of Thunder Bay, where the Kaministikwiaempties and the New Fort is situated."
"Truly it must be the Cap au Tonnerre, the Giant that Sleeps," Baptisteagreed, resting on his oars to study the long shape, like a giganticfigure stretched out at rest upon the water. "The others to the north arethe Cape at the Nipigon and the Island of St. Ignace."
"We are not as far off our course as I feared," remarked the Captain withsatisfaction.
Hugh ventured another question. "What then, sir, is this land where weare?"
Captain Bennett scanned the horizon as far as he could see. "Thunder Capelies a little to the north of west," he said thoughtfully. "We are on anisland of course, a large one. There is only one island it can be, theIsle Royale. I have seen one end or the other of Royale many times from adistance, when crossing to the Kaministikwia or to the Grand Portage, butI never set foot on the island before." Again he glanced up at the steeprocks and thick woods on his right, then his eyes sought the heaving blueof the open lake. "This northwest breeze would be almost dead against us,and it is increasing. We'll not set sail till morning. By that time Ithink we shall have a change of wind."
Their purpose accomplished, the oarsmen turned the boat and started backtowards camp. Hugh, handling the bow oars, watched the shore close athand. They were skirting a rock cliff, sheer from the lake, itsbrown-gray surface stained almost black at the water line, blotchedfarther up with lichens, black, orange and green-gray, and worn andseamed and rent with vertical cracks from top to bottom. The cracks ranin diagonally, opening up the bay. As Hugh came into clear view of one ofthe widest of the fissures, he noticed something projecting from it.
"See, Baptiste," he cried, pointing to the thing, "someone has been herebefore us."
The French Canadian rested on his oars and spoke to Captain Bennett."There is the end of a boat in that hole, M'sieu, no birch canoe either.How came it here in this wilderness?"
"Row nearer," ordered the shipmaster, "and we'll have a look at it."
The two pulled close to the mouth of the fissure. At the Captain's order,Baptiste stepped over side to a boulder that rose just above the water.From the boulder he sprang like a squirrel. His moccasined feet grippedthe rim of the old boat, and he balanced for an instant before jumpingdown. Hugh, in his heavier boots, followed more clumsily. Captain Bennettremained in the rowboat.
The wrecked craft in which the two found themselves was tightly wedged inthe crack. The bow was smashed and splintered and held fast by the icethat had not yet melted in the dark, cold cleft. Indeed the boat was halffull of ice. It was a crude looking craft, and its sides, which had neverknown paint, were weathered and water stained to almost the same color asthe blackened base of the rocks. The wreck was quite empty, not an oar ora fragment of mast or canvas remaining.
The old boat had one marked peculiarity which could be seen even in thedim light of the crack. The thwart that bore the hole where the mast hadstood was painted bright red, the paint being evidently a mixture ofvermilion and grease. It was but little faded by water and weather, andon the red background had been drawn, in some black pigment, figures suchas the Indians used in their picture writing. Hugh had seen birch canoesfancifully decorated about prow and stern, and he asked Baptiste if suchpaintings were customary on the heavier wooden boats as well.
"On the outside sometimes they have figures in color, yes," was thereply, "but never have I seen one painted in this way."
"I wonder what became of the men who were in her when she was driven onthese rocks."
Baptiste shook his head. "It may be that no one was in her. What would hedo so far from the mainland? No, I do not think anyone was wrecked here.This bateau was carried away in a storm from some beach or anchorage onthe north or west shore. There is nothing in her, though she was rightside up when she was driven in here by the waves. And here, in thislonely place, there has been no one to plunder her."
"Do no Indians live on this big island?" queried Hugh.
"I have never heard of anyone living here. It is far to come from themainland, and I have been told that the Indians have a fear of the place.They think it is inhabited by spirits, especially one bay they call theBay of Manitos. It is said that in the old days the Ojibwa came heresometimes for copper. They picked up bits of the metal on the beaches andin the hills. Nowadays they have a tale that spirits guard the copperstones."
"If there is copper on the island perhaps this boat belonged to somewhite prospector," suggested Hugh.
Baptiste shrugged his shoulders. "Perhaps, but then the Indian manitosmust have destroyed him."
"Well, at any rate the old manitos haven't troubled us," Hugh commented.
Again Baptiste shrugged. "We have not disturbed their copper, and--we arenot away from the place yet."
The inspection of the wreck did not take many minutes. When Baptiste madehis report, the Captain agreed with him that the boat had probablydrifted away from some camp or trading post on the mainland, and had beendriven into the cleft in a storm. As nothing of interest had been foundin the wreck, he ordered Baptiste and Hugh to make speed back to camp.
By night the reloading was finished and everything made ready for anearly start. After sunset, the mate, adventuring up the bay,
shot ayearling moose. The crew of the _Otter_ feasted and, to celebrate thecompletion of the work on the sloop, danced to Baptiste's fiddle. Fromthe ridges beyond and above the camp, the brush wolves yelped in responseto the music.
Baptiste's half superstitious, half humorous forebodings of what theisland spirits might do to the crew of the _Otter_ came to nothing, butCaptain Bennett's prophecy of a change of wind proved correct. The nextday dawned fair with a light south breeze that made it possible for thesloop to sail out of harbor. She passed safely through the narrower partof the bay. Then, to avoid running close to the towering rocks which hadfirst appeared to her Captain through the falling snow, he steered acrosstowards the less formidable appearing northwest shore. That shore provedto be a low, narrow, wooded, rock ridge running out into the lake. Whenhe reached the tip of the point, he found it necessary to go on somedistance to the northeast to round a long reef. The dangerous reefpassed, he set his course northwest towards the dim and distant SleepingGiant, the eastern headland of Thunder Bay.
To the relief of Hugh Beaupre, the last part of the voyage was made ingood time and without disaster. The boy looked with interest and some aweat the towering, forest-clad form of Thunder Cape, a mountain top risingfrom the water. On the other hand, as the _Otter_ entered the great bay,were the scarcely less impressive heights of the Isle du Pate, calledto-day, in translation of the French name, Pie Island. Hugh askedBaptiste how the island got its name and learned that it was due to somefancied resemblance of the round, steep-sided western peak to a Frenchpate or pastry.
By the time the sloop was well into Thunder Bay, the wind, as if to speedher on her way, had shifted to southeast. Clouds were gathering and rainthreatened as she crossed to the western shore, to the mouth of theKaministikwia. The river, flowing from the west, discharges through threechannels, forming a low, triangular delta. The north channel is theprincipal mouth, and there the sloop entered, making her way about a mileup-stream to the New Fort of the Northwest Company.
From the organization of the Northwest Fur Company down to a short timebefore the opening of this story, the trading post at the Grand Portage,south of the Pigeon River, and about forty miles by water to thesouthwest of the Kaministikwia, had been the chief station andheadquarters of the company. The ground where the Grand Portage poststood became a part of the United States when the treaty of peace afterthe Revolution established the Pigeon River as the boundary line betweenthe United States and the British possessions. Though the NorthwestCompany was a Canadian organization, it retained its headquarters southof the Pigeon River through the last decade of the eighteenth century. Inthe early years of the nineteenth, however, when the United Statesgovernment proposed to levy a tax on all English furs passing throughUnited States territory, the company headquarters was removed to Canadiansoil. Near the mouth of the Kaministikwia River on Thunder Bay was builtthe New Fort, later to be known as Fort William after WilliamMcGillivray, head of the company.