Part 7 (1/2)

It was still early in the afternoon, but with a thick mist falling Blackmore thought best to stop where we were. The next available camping place was below the half-mile-long third cascade, and no old river man likes to go into a rapid when the visibility is poor. We pitched the tent in a hole cut out of the thick-growing woods on a low bench at the inner angle of the bend. Everything was soaking wet, but it was well back from the falls, and for the first time in two days we were able to talk to each other without shouting. Not that we did so, however; from sheer force of habit we continued roaring into each other's ears for a week or more yet.

The great pile of logs on top of the flat-topped rock above the whirlpool had fascinated me from the first. Over a hundred feet square, forty feet high, and packed as though by a t.i.tanic hydraulic press, it must have contained thousands and thousands of cords of wood. On Blackmore's positive a.s.surance as a timberman that there was nothing in the pile of any value for lumber, even in the improbable contingency that a flood would ever carry it beyond the big drifts of Kinbasket Lake, I decided to make a bonfire of it. Never had I had such an opportunity, both on the score of the sheer quant.i.ty of combustible and the spectacular setting for illumination.

The whirlpool was _whouf-whoufing_ greedily as it wolfed the whole cascade when I clambered up just before dark to touch off my beacon. It was fairly dry at the base, and a pile of crisp shavings off a slab from some distant up-river sawmill caught quickly. From a spark of red flickering dimly through the mist when we sat down to supper, this had grown to a roaring furnace by the time we had relaxed to pipes and cigarettes. An hour later the flames had eaten a clear chimney up through the jam and the red light from their leaping tips was beginning to drive back the encompa.s.sing darkness. Roos, who had read about India, thought it would have been fine if we only had a few widows to cast themselves on the flaming pyre and commit _suttee_. Andy and Blackmore, both sentimental bachelors, were a unit in maintaining that it would be a shame to waste good widows that way, especially on the practically widowless Big Bend. All three were arguing the point rather heatedly when they crawled into their blankets. For myself, with a vision of the wonder about to unroll impinging on my brain, I could not think of turning in for hours yet.

By ten o'clock the pile was well alight underneath, but it was not until nearly midnight, when the mist had turned to snow and a strong wind had sprung up, that it was blazing full strength. I hardly know what would have been the direction of the wind in the upper air, but, cupped in the embrasure of the bend, it was sucking round and round, like the big whirlpool, only more fitfully and with an upward rather than a downward pull. Now it would drag the leaping flame-column a hundred feet in the air, twisting it into lambent coils and fining the tip down to a sharp point, like that of the Avenging Angel's Sword of Fire in the old Biblical prints, now sweep it out in a s.h.i.+vering sheet above the whirlpool, now swing it evenly round and round as though the flame, arrow-pointed and attenuated, were the radium-coated hand of a Gargantuan clock being swiftly revolved in the dark.

But the wonder of wonders was less the fire itself than the marvellous transformations wrought by the light it threw. And the staggering contrasts! The illuminated snow clouds drifting along the frosted-pink curtain of the tree-clad mountain walls made a roseate fairyland; even the foam covered sweep of the cascade, its roar drowned in the sharp crackle of the flames, was softened and smoothened until it seemed to billow like the sunset-flushed canvas of a s.h.i.+p becalmed: but the whirlpool, its sinister character only accentuated by the conflict of cross-shadows and reflections, was a veritable Pit of d.a.m.nation, choking and coughing as it swirled and rolled in streaky coils of ox-blood, in fire-stabbed welters of fluid coal-tar.

Wrapped in my hooded duffle coat, I paced the snow-covered moss and exulted in the awesome spectacle until long after midnight. I have never envied Nero very poignantly since. Given a fiddle and a few Christians, I would have had all that was his on the greatest night of his life--and then some. Father Tiber never had a whirlpool like mine, even on the day Horatius swam it ”heavy with his armour and spent with changing blows.”

The next morning, though too heavily overcast for pictures, was still clear enough to travel. The head riffles of the third fall of Surprise Rapids began a little below our camp, so that we started lining almost immediately. Three or four times we pulled across the river, running short stretches and lining now down one side and now the other. There was not so great a rate of drop as at the first and second falls, but the whole stream was choked with barely submerged rocks and lining was difficult on account of the frequent cliffs.

It was about half way down that I all but messed things up by failing to get into action quickly enough at a crossing. The fault, in a way, was Blackmore's, because of his failure to tell me in advance what was expected, and then--when the order had to be pa.s.sed instantly--for standing rather too much on ceremony in the manner of pa.s.sing it. We were about to pull to the opposite side to line down past a riffle which Blackmore reckoned too rough to risk running. There was about a ten-mile current, and it would have required the smartest kind of a get-away and the hardest kind of pulling to make the other bank without being carried down onto the riffle. The boat was headed up-stream, and, as Blackmore had not told me he intended to cross, I took it for granted he was going to run. So, when Roos shoved off and jumped in, I rested on my oar in order that Andy could bring the boat sharply round and head it down stream. Blackmore's excited yell was the first intimation I had that anything was wrong. ”Pull like h.e.l.l! You!... Mister Freeman!”

That ”Mister,” and his momentary pause before uttering it, defeated the purpose of the order. I pulled all right, and so hard that my oar-blade picked up a very sizable hunk of river and flung it in Blackmore's face.

That upset my balance, and I could not recover quickly enough to keep the boat's head to the current. With characteristic presence of mind, Blackmore changed tactics instantly. ”Got to chance it now!” he shouted, and threw such a pull onto his steering paddle that the handle bent to more than half a right angle where he laid it over the gunwale. There was one jutting rock at the head of the riffle that _had_ to be missed; the rest was all a matter of whether or not the next couple of hundred yards of submerged boulders were deeply enough covered to let us pa.s.s _over_ them. There was no way of avoiding them, no chance to lay a course _between_ them.

Blackmore was a bit wilder about the eyes than I had seen him before; but he had stopped swearing and his mouth was set in a hard, determined line. Andy, with chesty grunts, was fairly flailing the water with swift, short-arm strokes. I did not need to be told to refrain from pulling in order that the others could swing her head as far toward the west bank as possible before the rock was reached. Instead, I held ready for the one quick backing stroke that would be called for in the event a collision seemed imminent at the last moment. It was the wave thrown off by the rock itself that helped us most when the showdown came. Shooting by the jagged barrier so close that Andy could have fended with his hand, the boat plunged over a short, sharp pitch and hit the white water with a bang.

That was by long odds the roughest stuff we had been into so far. The waves were curling up well above our heads, and every one we hit left a foot or two of its top with us--solid green water, most of it, that began acc.u.mulating rather alarmingly in the bottom of the boat. There was no regularity in the way they ran, either. One would come mushrooming fairly over the bows, another would flop aboard over the beam, and every now and then a wild side-winder, missing its spring at the forward part of the boat, would dash a shower of spray over the quarter. From the bank she must have been pretty well out of sight most of the time, for I often saw spray thrown ten or fifteen feet to either side and twice as far astern. All hands were drenched from the moment we struck the first comber, of course, which was doubtless why a wail from Roos that the water was going down his neck seemed to strike Blackmore as a bit superfluous. ”Inside or outside your neck?” he roared back, adding that if it was the former the flow could be checked by the simple and natural expedient of keeping the mouth shut. Very properly, our ”skipper” had the feeling that, in a really tight place, all the talking necessary for navigation should be done from the ”bridge,” and that ”extraneous” comment should be held over to smooth water.

Before we had run a hundred yards the anxious look on Blackmore's face had given way to one of relief and exultation. ”There's more water over the rocks than I reckoned,” he shouted. ”Going to run right through.”

And run we did, all of the last mile or more of Surprise Rapids and right on through the still swift but comparatively quiet water below.

Here we drifted with the current for a ways, while all hands turned to and bailed. I took this, the first occasion that had offered, to a.s.sure Blackmore that he needn't go to the length of calling me ”Mister” in the future when he had urgent orders to give, and incidentally apologized for getting off on the wrong foot at the head of the first rapid. ”Since that worked out to save us half a mile of darn dirty lining and two or three hours of time,” he replied with a grin, ”I guess we won't worry about it this crack, Mister--I mean, Freeman. Mebbe I better get used to saying it that way 'gainst when I'll need to spit it out quick.”

It was a pleasant run from the foot of Surprise Rapids down to Kinbasket Lake, or at least it was pleasant until the rain set in again. There is a fall of sixty-four feet in the sixteen miles--most of it in the first ten. It was a fine swift current, with a number of riffles but no bad water at any point. It was good to be free for a while from the tension which is never absent when working in really rough water, and I have no doubt that Blackmore felt better about it than any of the rest of us.

Surprise was his especial _bete noir_, and he a.s.sured me that he had never come safely through it without swearing never to tackle it again.

Roos, drying out in the bow like a tabby licking her wet coat smooth after being rained on, sang ”Green River” all the way, and I tried to train Andy to pull in time to the rhythm and join in the chorus. As the chorus had much about drink in it, it seemed only fitting--considering what was waiting for us at Canoe River--that we _should_ sing it. And we did. ”Floating Down the Old Green River” became the ”official song” of that particular part of the voyage. Later ... but why antic.i.p.ate?

We landed for lunch about where the water began to slacken above the lake. The water of the little stream at the mouth of which we tied up the boat was of a bright transparent amber in colour. Andy, sapient of the woods, thought it must flow from a lake impounded behind a beaver-dam in the high mountains, and that the stain was that of rotting wood. Beaver signs were certainly much in evidence all over the little bench where we lunched. Several large cottonwood trunks--one of them all of two feet in diameter--had been felled by the tireless little engineers, and we found a pile of tooth-torn chips large enough to kindle our fire with. While tea was boiling Blackmore pulled a couple of three-pound Dolly Varden out of the mouth of the creek, only to lose his hooks and line when a still larger one connected up with them. Roos, who was under orders to get an effective fis.h.i.+ng picture, was unable to go into action with his camera on account of the poor light.

It had begun to rain hard by the time we had shoved back into the river after lunch. There were still five miles to go to reach the camping ground Blackmore had decided upon, half way down the east side of Kinbasket Lake, just below Middle River--slack water all the way. Andy and I pulled it in a slushy half-snow-half-rain that was a lot wetter and unpleasanter than the straight article of either variety. Of a lake which is one of the loveliest in all the world in the sunlight, nothing was to be seen save a stretch of grey-white, wind-whipped waters beating upon grey-brown rocky sh.o.r.es. That the wind and waves headed us did not make the pulling any lighter, for the boat's considerable freeboard gave both a lot of surface to play upon. The exertion of rowing kept Andy and me warm, however, which gave us at least that advantage over Roos and Blackmore. The latter had to face it out at his paddle, but Roos, a bedraggled lump of sodden despair, finally gave up and crawled under the tarpaulin with the bags of beans and bacon, remaining there until we reached port.

All in all, I think that was the most miserable camp I ever helped to pitch. The snow, refusing persistently either to harden or to soften, adhered clingingly to everything it touched. We were two hours clearing a s.p.a.ce for the tent, setting it up and collecting enough boughs to cus.h.i.+on the floor. By that time pretty nearly everything not hermetically sealed was wet, including the blankets and the ”dry”

clothes. No one but Andy could have started a camp-fire under such conditions, and no one but Blackmore could have cooked a piping hot dinner on it. I forget whether it was Roos or myself who contributed further to save the day. Anyhow, it was one of the two of us that suggested cooking a can of plum-pudding in about its own bulk of ”thirty per over-proof” rum. That lent the saving touch. In spite of a leaking tent and wet blankets, the whole four of us turned in singing ”End of a Perfect Day” and ”Old Green River.” The latter was prophetic. A miniature one--coming through the roof of the tent--had the range of the back of my neck for most of the night.

CHAPTER VII

II. RUNNING THE BEND

_Kinbasket Lake and Rapids_

It continued slus.h.i.+ng all night and most of the next day, keeping us pretty close to camp. Andy, like the good housewife he was, kept snugging up every time he got a chance, so that things a.s.sumed a homelier and cheerier aspect as the day wore on. I clambered for a couple of miles down the rocky eastern bank of the lake in the forenoon.

The low-hanging clouds still obscured the mountains, but underfoot I found unending interest in the astonis.h.i.+ng variety of drift corralled by this remarkable catch-all of the upper Columbia. The main acc.u.mulation of flotsam and jetsam was above our camp, but even among the rocks I chanced onto almost everything one can imagine, from a steel rail--with the ties that had served to float it down still spiked to it--to a fragment of a vacuum-cleaner. What Roos called ”the human touch” was furnished by an enormous uprooted spruce, on which some amorous lumber-jack had been pouring out his love through the blade of his axe.

This had taken the form of a two-feet-in-diameter ”bleeding heart”

pierced by an arrow. Inside the roughly hewn ”pericardium” were the initials ”K. N.” and ”P. R.,” with the date ”July 4, 1910.” One couldn't be quite sure whether the arrow stood for a heart quake or a heart break. Andy, who was sentimental and inclined to put woman in the abstract on a pedestal, thought it was merely a heart quake; but Blackmore, who had been something of a gallant in his day, and therefore inclined to cynicism as he neared the sear and yellow leaf, was sure it was heart break--that the honest lumber-jack had hacked in the arrow and the drops of blood after he had been jilted by some jade. Roos wanted to make a movie of this simple fragment of rustic art, with me standing by and registering ”pensive memories,” or something of the kind; but I managed to discourage him by the highly technical argument that it would impair the ”continuity” of the ”sportsmans.h.i.+p” which was the prime _motif_ of the present picture.