IV
THE ISLE ROYALE

Shortly after dawn work on the Otter was begun. The water was pumped out, most of the cargo piled on the beach, and the sloop hauled farther up by means of a rudely constructed windlass. Then the strained seams were calked and a few new boards put in. A tall, straight spruce was felled and trimmed to replace the broken mast, and a small mainsail devised from extra canvas. The repairs took two long days of steady labor. During that time the weather was bright, and, except in the deeply shaded places, the snow and ice disappeared rapidly.

From the very slight current in the water, Captain Bennett concluded that the place where he had taken refuge was a real bay, not a river mouth. He had not yet discovered whether he was on the mainland or an island. The repairs to his ship were of the first importance, and he postponed determining his whereabouts until the Otter was made seaworthy once more. Not a trace of human beings had been found. The boldness of the wolves and lynxes, that came close to the camp every night, indicated that 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 shore and 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 small boat 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 skirting rose more steeply, edged with sheer rocks, cliffs and great boulders. From time to time Captain Bennett glanced up at the abrupt rocks and forested ridges on his right, or across to the lower land on the other side of the bay. Directly ahead, some miles across the open lake, he could see a distant, detached bit of land, an island undoubtedly. Most of the time, however, his eyes were on the water. He was endeavoring to locate the treacherous reefs and shallows he must avoid when he took his ship out of her safe harbor.

An exclamation from Baptiste, who had turned his head to look to the west and north, recalled the Captain from his study of the unfamiliar waters. Beyond the tip of the opposite or northwestern shore of the bay, far across the blue lake to the north, two dim, misty shapes had come into view.

“Islands!” Captain Bennett exclaimed. “High, towering islands.”

Baptiste and Hugh pulled on with vigorous strokes. Presently the Captain spoke again. “Islands or headlands. Go farther out.”

The two bent to their oars. As they passed beyond the end of the low northwestern shore, more high land came into view across the water.

“What is it, Baptiste? Where are we?” asked Hugh, forgetting in his eagerness that it was not his place to speak.

“It is Thunder Cape,” the Captain replied, overlooking the breach of discipline, “the eastern boundary of Thunder Bay, where the Kaministikwia empties and the New Fort is situated.”

“Truly it must be the Cap au Tonnerre, the Giant that Sleeps,” Baptiste agreed, resting on his oars to study the long shape, like a gigantic figure stretched out at rest upon the water. “The others to the north are the Cape at the Nipigon and the Island of St. Ignace.”

“We are not as far off our course as I feared,” remarked the Captain with satisfaction.

Hugh ventured another question. “What then, sir, is this land where we are?”

Captain Bennett scanned the horizon as far as he could see. “Thunder Cape lies a little to the north of west,” he said thoughtfully. “We are on an island of course, a large one. There is only one island it can be, the Isle Royale. I have seen one end or the other of Royale many times from a distance, when crossing to the Kaministikwia or to the Grand Portage, but I never set foot on the island before.” Again he glanced up at the steep rocks and thick woods on his right, then his eyes sought the heaving blue of 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 I think we shall have a change of wind.”

Their purpose accomplished, the oarsmen turned the boat and started back towards camp. Hugh, handling the bow oars, watched the shore close at hand. They were skirting a rock cliff, sheer from the lake, its brown-gray surface stained almost black at the water line, blotched farther up with lichens, black, orange and green-gray, and worn and seamed and rent with vertical cracks from top to bottom. The cracks ran in diagonally, opening up the bay. As Hugh came into clear view of one of the widest of the fissures, he noticed something projecting from it.

“See, Baptiste,” he cried, pointing to the thing, “someone has been here before 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 gripped the rim of the old boat, and he balanced for an instant before jumping down. Hugh, in his heavier boots, followed more clumsily. Captain Bennett remained in the rowboat.

The wrecked craft in which the two found themselves was tightly wedged in the crack. The bow was smashed and splintered and held fast by the ice that had not yet melted in the dark, cold cleft. Indeed the boat was half full of ice. It was a crude looking craft, and its sides, which had never known paint, were weathered and water stained to almost the same color as the blackened base of the rocks. The wreck was quite empty, not an oar or a fragment of mast or canvas remaining.

The old boat had one marked peculiarity which could be seen even in the dim light of the crack. The thwart that bore the hole where the mast had stood was painted bright red, the paint being evidently a mixture of vermilion and grease. It was but little faded by water and weather, and on the red background had been drawn, in some black pigment, figures such as the Indians used in their picture writing. Hugh had seen birch canoes fancifully decorated about prow and stern, and he asked Baptiste if such paintings were customary on the heavier wooden boats as well.

“On the outside sometimes they have figures in color, yes,” was the reply, “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 on these rocks.”

Baptiste shook his head. “It may be that no one was in her. What would he do 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 on the north or west shore. There is nothing in her, though she was right side up when she was driven in here by the waves. And here, in this lonely 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 the mainland, 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 the Bay of Manitos. It is said that in the old days the Ojibwa came here sometimes for copper. They picked up bits of the metal on the beaches and in the hills. Nowadays they have a tale that spirits guard the copper stones.”

“If there is copper on the island perhaps this boat belonged to some white prospector,” suggested Hugh.

Baptiste shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps, but then the Indian manitos must 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 are not away from the place yet.”

The inspection of the wreck did not take many minutes. When Baptiste made his report, the Captain agreed with him that the boat had probably drifted away from some camp or trading post on the mainland, and had been driven into the cleft in a storm. As nothing of interest had been found in the wreck, he ordered Baptiste and Hugh to make speed back to camp.

By night the reloading was finished and everything made ready for an early start. After sunset, the mate, adventuring up the bay, shot a yearling moose. The crew of the Otter feasted and, to celebrate the completion of the work on the sloop, danced to Baptiste’s fiddle. From the ridges beyond and above the camp, the brush wolves yelped in response to the music.

Baptiste’s half superstitious, half humorous forebodings of what the island spirits might do to the crew of the Otter came to nothing, but Captain Bennett’s prophecy of a change of wind proved correct. The next day dawned fair with a light south breeze that made it possible for the sloop to sail out of harbor. She passed safely through the narrower part of the bay. Then, to avoid running close to the towering rocks which had first appeared to her Captain through the falling snow, he steered across towards the less formidable appearing northwest shore. That shore proved to be a low, narrow, wooded, rock ridge running out into the lake. When he reached the tip of the point, he found it necessary to go on some distance to the northeast to round a long reef. The dangerous reef passed, he set his course northwest towards the dim and distant Sleeping Giant, the eastern headland of Thunder Bay.

To the relief of Hugh Beaupré, the last part of the voyage was made in good time and without disaster. The boy looked with interest and some awe at the towering, forest-clad form of Thunder Cape, a mountain top rising from the water. On the other hand, as the Otter entered the great bay, were the scarcely less impressive heights of the Isle du Paté, called to-day, in translation of the French name, Pie Island. Hugh asked Baptiste how the island got its name and learned that it was due to some fancied resemblance of the round, steep-sided western peak to a French paté or pastry.

By the time the sloop was well into Thunder Bay, the wind, as if to speed her on her way, had shifted to southeast. Clouds were gathering and rain threatened as she crossed to the western shore, to the mouth of the Kaministikwia. The river, flowing from the west, discharges through three channels, forming a low, triangular delta. The north channel is the principal mouth, and there the sloop entered, making her way about a mile up-stream to the New Fort of the Northwest Company.

From the organization of the Northwest Fur Company down to a short time before the opening of this story, the trading post at the Grand Portage, south of the Pigeon River, and about forty miles by water to the southwest of the Kaministikwia, had been the chief station and headquarters of the company. The ground where the Grand Portage post stood became a part of the United States when the treaty of peace after the Revolution established the Pigeon River as the boundary line between the United States and the British possessions. Though the Northwest Company was a Canadian organization, it retained its headquarters south of the Pigeon River through the last decade of the eighteenth century. In the early years of the nineteenth, however, when the United States government proposed to levy a tax on all English furs passing through United States territory, the company headquarters was removed to Canadian soil. Near the mouth of the Kaministikwia River on Thunder Bay was built the New Fort, later to be known as Fort William after William McGillivray, head of the company.