III
DRIVEN BEFORE THE GALE

On a clear, sunny morning of the first week in May, the Northwest Company’s sloop Otter, with a favoring wind, made her way up-stream towards the gateway of Lake Superior. At the Indian village on the curve of the shore opposite Point aux Pins, men, women, children and sharp-nosed dogs turned out to see the white-sailed ship go by. Through the wide entrance to the St. Mary’s River, where the waters of Lake Superior find their outlet, the sloop sailed under the most favorable conditions. Between Point Iroquois on the south and high Gros Cap, the Great Cape, on the north, its summit indigo against the bright blue of the sky, she passed into the broad expanse of the great lake. The little fur-trading vessels of the first years of the nineteenth century did not follow the course taken by the big passenger steamers and long freighters of today, northwest through the middle of the lake. Instead, the Captain of the Otter took her almost directly north.

The southerly breeze, light at first, freshened within a few hours, and the sloop sailed before it like a gull on the wing. Past Goulais Point and Coppermine Point and Cape Gargantua, clear to Michipicoton Bay, the first stop, the wind continued favorable, the weather fine. It was remarkably fine for early May, and Hugh Beaupré had hopes of a swift and pleasant voyage. So far his work as a member of the crew of six was not heavy. Quick-witted and eager to do his best, he learned his duties rapidly, striving to obey on the instant the sharply spoken commands of master and mate.

At the mouth of the Michipicoton River was a Northwest Company trading post, and there the Otter ran in to discharge part of her cargo of supplies and goods. She remained at Michipicoton over night, and, after the unloading, Hugh was permitted to go ashore. The station, a far more important one, in actual trade in furs, than the post at the Sault, he found an interesting place. Already some of the Indians were arriving from the interior, coming overland with their bales of pelts on dog sleds. When the Michipicoton River and the smaller streams should be free of ice, more trappers would follow in their birch canoes.

As if on purpose to speed the ship, the wind had shifted to the southeast by the following morning. The weather was not so pleasant, however, for the sky was overcast. In the air was a bitter chill that penetrated the thickest clothes. Captain Bennett, instead of appearing pleased with the direction of the breeze, shook his head doubtfully as he gazed at the gloomy sky and the choppy, gray water. A sailing vessel must take advantage of the wind, so, in spite of the Captain’s apprehensive glances, the Otter went on her way.

All day the wind held favorable, shifting to a more easterly quarter and gradually rising to a brisk blow. The sky remained cloudy, the distance thick, the water green-gray.

As darkness settled down, rain began to fall, fine, cold and driven from the east before a wind strong enough to be called a gale. In the wet and chill, the darkness and rough sea, Hugh’s work was far harder and more unpleasant. But he made no complaint, even to himself, striving to make up by eager willingness for his ignorance of a sailor’s foul weather duties. There was no good harbor near at hand, and, the gale being still from the right quarter, Captain Bennett drove on before it. After midnight the rain turned to sleet and snow. The wind began to veer and shift from east to northeast, to north and back again.

Before morning all sense of location had been lost. Under close-reefed sails, the sturdily built little Otter battled wind, waves, sleet and snow. She pitched and tossed and wallowed. All hands remained on deck. Hugh, sick and dizzy with the motion, chilled and shivering in the bitter cold, wished from the bottom of his heart he had never set foot upon the sloop. Struggling to keep his footing on the heaving, ice-coated deck, and to hold fast to slippery, frozen ropes, he was of little enough use, though he did his best.

The dawn brought no relief. In the driving snow, neither shore nor sky was to be seen, only a short stretch of heaving, lead-gray water. Foam-capped waves broke over the deck. Floating ice cakes careened against the sides of the ship. On the way to Michipicoton no ice had been encountered, but now the tossing masses added to the peril.

Midday might as well have been midnight. The falling snow, fine, icy, stinging, shut off all view more completely than blackest darkness. The weary crew were fighting ceaselessly to keep the Otter afloat. The Captain himself clung with the steersman to the wheel. Then, quite without warning, out of the northeast came a sudden violent squall. A shriek of rending canvas, and the close-reefed sail, crackling with ice, was torn away. Down crashed the shattered mast. As if bound for the bottom of the lake, the sloop wallowed deep in the waves.

Hugh sprang forward with the others. On the slanting, ice-sheathed deck, he slipped and went down. He was following the mast overboard, when Baptiste seized him by the leg. The dangerous task of cutting loose the wreckage was accomplished. The plucky Otter righted herself and drove on through the storm.

With the setting of the sun, invisible through the snow and mist, the wind lessened. But that night, if less violent than the preceding one, was no less miserable. Armored in ice and frozen snow, the sloop rode heavy and low, battered by floating cakes, great waves washing her decks. She had left the Sault on a spring day. Now she seemed to be back in midwinter. Yet, skillfully handled by her master, she managed to live through the night.

Before morning, the wind had fallen to a mere breeze. The waves no longer swept the deck freely, but the lake was still so rough that the ice-weighted ship made heavy going. Her battle with the storm had sprung her seams. Two men were kept constantly at the pumps. No canvas was left but the jib, now attached to the stump of the mast. With this makeshift sail, and carried along by the waves, she somehow kept afloat.

From the lookout there came a hoarse bellow of warning. Through the muffling veil of falling snow, his ears had caught the sound of surf. The steersman swung the wheel over. The ship sheered off just as the foaming crests of breaking waves and the dark mass of bare rocks appeared close at hand.

Along the abrupt shore the Otter beat her way, her captain striving to keep in sight of land, yet far enough out to avoid sunken or detached rocks. Anxiously his tired, bloodshot eyes sought for signs of a harbor. It had been so long since he had seen sun or stars that he had little notion of his position or of what that near-by land might be. Shadowy as the shore appeared in the falling snow, its forbidding character was plain enough, cliffs, forest crowned, rising abruptly from the water, and broken now and then by shallow bays lined with tumbled boulders. Those shallow depressions promised no shelter from wind and waves, even for so small a ship as the Otter.

No less anxiously than Captain Bennett did Hugh Beaupré watch that inhospitable shore. So worn was he from lack of sleep, exhausting and long continued labor and seasickness, so chilled and numbed and weak and miserable, that he could hardly stand. But the sight of solid land, forbidding though it was, had revived his hope.

A shout from the starboard side of the sloop told him that land had appeared in that direction also. In a few minutes the Otter, running before the wind, was passing between forest-covered shores. As the shores drew closer together, the water became calmer. On either hand and ahead was land. The snow had almost ceased to fall now. The thick woods of snow-laden evergreens and bare-limbed trees were plainly visible.

Staunch little craft though the Otter was, her strained seams were leaking freely, and her Captain had decided to beach her in the first favorable spot. A bit of low point, a shallow curve in the shore with a stretch of beach, served his purpose. There he ran his ship aground, and made a landing with the small boat.

His ship safe for the time being, Captain Bennett’s next care was for his crew. That they had come through the storm without the loss of a man was a matter for thankfulness. Everyone, however, from the Captain himself to Hugh, was worn out, soaked, chilled to the bone and more or less battered and bruised. One man had suffered a broken arm when the mast went over side, and the setting of the bone had been hasty and rough. The mate had strained his back painfully.

All but the mate and the man with the broken arm, the Captain set to gathering wood and to clearing a space for a camp on the sandy point. The point was almost level and sparsely wooded with birch, mountain ash and bushes. Every tree and shrub, its summer foliage still in the bud, was wet, snow covered or ice coated. Birch bark and the dry, crumbly center of a dead tree trunk made good tinder, however. Baptiste, skilled in the art of starting a blaze under the most adverse conditions, soon had a roaring fire. By that time the snow had entirely ceased, and the clouds were breaking.

Around the big fire the men gathered to dry their clothes and warm their bodies, while a thick porridge of hulled corn and salt pork boiled in an iron kettle over a smaller blaze. The hot meal put new life into the tired men. The broken arm was reset, the minor injuries cared for, and a pole and bark shelter, with one side open to the fire, was set up. Before the lean-to was completed the sun was shining. In spite of the sharp north wind, the snow and ice were beginning to melt. A flock of black-capped chickadees were flitting about the bare-branched birches, sounding their brave, deep-throated calls, and a black and white woodpecker was hammering busily at a dead limb.

No attempt was made to repair the ship that day. Only the most necessary work was done, and the worn-out crew permitted to rest. A lonely place seemed this unknown bay or river mouth, without white man’s cabin, Indian’s bark lodge or even a wisp of smoke from any other fire. But the sheltered harbor was a welcome haven to the sorely battered ship and the exhausted sailors. Wolves howled not far from the camp that night, and next morning their tracks were found in the snow on the beach close to where the sloop lay. It would have required far fiercer enemies than the slinking, cowardly, brush wolves to disturb the rest of the tired crew of the Otter. Hugh did not even hear the beasts.