The Crew of the Water Wagtail, R. M. Ballantyne [books to improve english .TXT] 📗
- Author: R. M. Ballantyne
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“It seems to me,” said Captain Trench, as they sat down to rest one afternoon on a sunny bank by the river side—out of which Olly had just pulled a magnificent trout—“that the climate of this island has been grossly misrepresented. The report was brought to us that it was a wild barren land, always enveloped in thick fogs; whereas, although I am bound to say we found fogs enough on the coast we have found nothing but beauty, sunshine, and fertility in the interior.”
“Does not this arise from the tendency of mankind to found and form opinions on insufficient knowledge?” said Hendrick. “Even the Indians among whom I dwell are prone to this error. If your discoverer Cabot had dwelt as many years as I have in this great island, he would have told you that it has a splendid climate, and is admirably adapted for the abode of man. Just look around you—the region which extends from your feet to the horizon in all directions is watered as you see by lakes and rivers, which swarm with fish and are alive with wildfowl; the woods, which are largely composed of magnificent and useful trees, give shelter to myriads of animals suitable for food to man; the soil is excellent, and the grazing lands would maintain thousands of cattle—what more could man desire?”
“Nothing more,” answered Paul, “save the opportunity to utilise it all, and the blessing of God upon his efforts.”
“The opportunity to utilise it won’t be long of coming, now that the facts about it are known, or soon to be made known, by us,” remarked Trench.
“I’m not so sure about that” said Paul. “It is wonderful how slow men are to believe, and still more wonderful how slow they are to act.”
That the captain’s hopes were not well founded, and that Paul’s doubts were justified, is amply proved by the history of Newfoundland. At first its character was misunderstood; then, when its unparalleled cod-fishing banks were discovered, attention was entirely confined to its rugged shores. After that the trade fell into the hands of selfish and unprincipled monopolists, who wilfully misrepresented the nature of this island, and prevailed on the British Government to enact repressive laws, which effectually prevented colonisation. Then prejudice, privileges, and error perpetuated the evil state of things, so that the true character of the land was not known until the present century; its grand interior was not systematically explored till only a few years ago, and thus it comes to pass that even at the present day one of the finest islands belonging to the British Crown—as regards vast portions of its interior—still remains a beautiful wilderness unused by man.
But with this we have nothing at present to do. Our business is, in spirit, to follow Hendrick and his friends through that wilderness, as it was at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
Deer-tracks, as we have said, were innumerable, and along one of those tracks a herd of deer were seen trotting one day about two bow-shots from the party. With characteristic eagerness Oliver Trench hastily let fly an arrow at them. He might as well have let it fly at the pole-star. The only effect it had was to startle the deer and send them galloping into the shelter of the woods.
“What a pity!” exclaimed Oliver.
“Not so, my boy,” remarked his father. “Experience, they say, teaches fools; and if experience has now taught you that it is foolish to shoot at game out of range, you are no fool, which is not a pity, but matter for congratulation.”
“But what about practice, daddy? Did you not say only last night that there is nothing like practice to make perfect?”
“True, lad, but I did not recommend practising at deer beyond range. Besides, you can practise at stumps and stones.”
“But stumps and stones don’t afford running shots,” objected Olly.
“Yes they do, boy. You can run past the stumps while you shoot, and as to stones, you can roll them down hill and let fly at them as they roll. Now clap the hatches on your mouth; you’re too fond of argument.”
“I’m only a chip of the ancient tree, father,” retorted the boy, with a quiet laugh.
How much further this little skirmish might have proceeded we cannot tell, for it was brought to an abrupt close by the sudden appearance of a black bear. It was on turning a cliff which bordered the edge of a stream that they came upon the monster—so close to it that they had barely time to get ready their weapons when it rose on its hind legs to attack them.
“Look out!” yelled Oliver, who, being in advance, was the first to see the bear.
A stone from his sling was well though hastily aimed, for it hit the animal fairly on the nose, thereby rendering it particularly angry. Almost at the same moment a bolt and an arrow flew from the weapons of Paul and Trench; but they flew wide of the mark, and there is no saying what the result might have been had not Hendrick bent his short but powerful bow, and sent an arrow to the feather into the creature’s breast.
The modern bullet is no doubt more deadly than the ancient arrow, nevertheless the latter had some advantages over the former. One of these was that, as it transfixed several muscles, it tended to hamper the movements of the victim shot. It also drew attention in some degree from the assailant. Thus, on the present occasion the bear, with a savage growl, seized the head of the arrow which projected from the wound and wrenched it off. This, although little more than a momentary act, gave the hunter time to fit and discharge a second arrow, which entered the animal’s throat, causing it to fall writhing on the ground, while Oliver, who had gone almost mad with excitement, grasped his axe, bounded forward, and brought it down on bruin’s skull.
Well was it for the reckless boy that Hendrick’s arrows had done their work, for, although his young arm was stout and the axe sharp, little impression was made on the hard-headed creature by the blow. Hendrick’s knife, however, completed the work and despatched the bear. Then they all sat down to rest while the hunter set to work to skin the animal.
From this time forward the opportunities for hunting and fishing became so numerous that poor Oliver was kept in a constantly bubbling-over condition of excitement, and his father had to restrain him a good deal in order to prevent the larder from being greatly overstocked.
One afternoon they came to a river which their guide told them was one of the largest in the country.
“It flows out of the lake, on one of the islands of which I have built my home.”
“May I ask,” said Paul, with some hesitation, “if your wife came with you from the Shetland Isles?”
A profoundly sad expression flitted across the hunter’s countenance.
“No,” he replied. “Trueheart, as she is named in the Micmac tongue, is a native of this island—at least her mother was; but her father, I have been told, was a white man—a wanderer like myself—who came in an open boat from no one knows where, and cast his lot among the Indians, one of whom he married. Both parents are dead. I never saw them; but my wife, I think, must resemble her white father in many respects. My children are like her. Look now, Oliver,” he said, as if desirous of changing the subject, “yonder is a pool in which it will be worth while to cast your hook. You will find something larger there than you have yet caught in the smaller streams. Get ready. I will find bait for you.”
Olly needed no urging. His cod-hook and line, being always handy, were arranged in a few minutes, and his friend, turning up the sod with a piece of wood, soon procured several large worms, which were duly impaled, until they formed a bunch on the hook. With this the lad hurried eagerly to the edge of a magnificent pool, where the oily ripples and curling eddies, as well as the great depth, effectually concealed the bottom from view. He was about to whirl the bunch of worms round his head, preparatory to a grand heave, when he was arrested by the guide.
“Stay, Oliver; you will need a rod for this river. Without one you will be apt to lose your fish. I will cut one.”
So saying, he went into the woods that bordered the pool, and soon returned with what seemed to the boy to be a small tree about fourteen feet long.
“Why, Hendrick, do you take me for Goliath, who as Paul Burns tells us, was brought down by a stone from the sling of David? I’ll never be able to fish with that.”
“Oliver,” returned the hunter gravely, as he continued the peeling of the bark from the rod, “a lad with strong limbs and a stout heart should never use the words ‘not able’ till he has tried. I have seen many promising and goodly young men come to wreck because ‘I can’t’ was too often on their lips. You never know what you can do till you try.”
The boy listened to this reproof with a slight feeling of displeasure, for he felt in his heart that he was not one of those lazy fellows to whom his friend referred. However, he wisely said nothing, but Hendrick observed, with some amusement, that his brow flushed and his lips were firmly compressed.
“There now,” he said in a cheery tone, being anxious to remove the impression he had made, “you will find the rod is lighter than it looks, and supple, as you see. We will tie your line half-way down and run it through a loop at the end—so!—to prevent its being lost if the point should break. Now, try to cast your hook into the spot yonder where a curl in the water meets and battles with an eddy. Do you see it?”
“Yes, I see it,” replied Olly, advancing to the pool, with the rod grasped in both hands.
“It would be better,” continued Hendrick, “if you could cast out into the stream beyond, but the line is too short for that, unless you could jump on to that big rock in the rapid, which is impossible with the river so high.”
Oliver looked at the rock referred to. It stood up in the midst of foaming water, full twenty feet from the bank. He knew that he might as well try to jump over the moon as attempt to leap upon that rock; nevertheless, without a moment’s hesitation, he rushed down the bank, sprang furiously off, cleared considerably more than half the distance, and disappeared in the foaming flood!
Hendrick was suddenly changed from a slow and sedate elephant into an agile panther. He sprang along the bank to a point lower down the stream, and was up to the waist in the water before Olly reached the point—struggling to keep his head above the surface, and at the same time to hold on to his rod. Hendrick caught him by the collar, and dragged him, panting, to land.
Paul and his father had each, with a shout of surprise or alarm, rushed for the same point, but they would have been too late.
“Olly, my son,” said Trench, in a remonstrative tone, “have you gone mad?”
“No, father; I knew that I could not jump it, but I’ve been advised never to say so till I have tried!”
“Nay, Oliver, be just,” said the guide, with a laugh. “I did truly advise you never to say ‘I can’t’ till you had tried, but I never told you to try the impossible. However, I am not sorry you did this, for
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