Fort Desolation | Page 4

at length agreed; but on reaching a saw-mill that had been established by a couple of adventurous Yankees, in a region that seemed to be the out-skirts of creation, Paddy repented, and vowed he'd go no farther for love or money.
Jack Robinson earnestly advised the faithless man to go home, and help his grandmother, thenceforth, to plant murphies; after which he embarked in his canoe alone, and paddled away into the dreary north.
Camping out in the woods at night, paddling all day, and living on biscuit and salt pork, with an occasional duck or gull, by way of variety; never seeing a human face from morn till night, nor hearing the sound of any voice except his own, Jack pursued his voyage for fourteen days. At the end of that time he descried Fort Kamenistaquoia. It consisted of four small log-houses, perched on a conspicuous promontory, with a flag-staff in the midst of them.
Here he was welcomed warmly by his friend John Murray and his colleagues, and was entertained for three days sumptuously on fresh salmon, salt pork, pancakes, and tea. Intellectually, he was regaled with glowing accounts of the fur trade and the salmon fisheries of that region.
"Now, Jack," said Murray, on the third day after his arrival, while they walked in front of the fort, smoking a morning pipe, "it is time that you were off to the new fort. One of our best men has built it, but he is not a suitable person to take charge, and as the salmon season has pretty well advanced we are anxious to have you there to look after the salting and sending of them to Quebec."
"What do you call the new fort?" inquired Jack.
"Well, it has not yet got a name. We've been so much in the habit of styling it the New Fort that the necessity of another name has not occurred to us. Perhaps, as you are to be its first master, we may leave the naming of it to you."
"Very good," said Jack; "I am ready at a moment's notice. Shall I set off this forenoon?"
"Not quite so sharp as that," replied Murray, laughing. "To-morrow morning, at day-break, will do. There is a small sloop lying in a creek about twenty miles below this. We beached her there last autumn. You'll go down in a boat with three men, and haul her into deep water. There will be spring tides in two days, so, with the help of tackle, you'll easily manage it. Thence you will sail to the new fort, forty miles farther along the coast, and take charge."
"The three men you mean to give me know their work, I presume?" said Jack.
"Of course they do. None of them have been at the fort, however."
"Oh! How then shall we find it?" inquired Jack.
"By observation," replied the other. "Keep a sharp look out as you coast along, and you can't miss it."
The idea of mists and darkness and storms occurred to Jack Robinson, but he only answered, "Very good."
"Can any of the three men navigate the sloop?" he inquired.
"Not that I'm aware of," said Murray; "but you know something of navigation, yourself, don't you?"
"No! nothing!"
"Pooh! nonsense. Have you never sailed a boat?"
"Yes, occasionally."
"Well, it's the same thing. If a squall comes, keep a steady hand on the helm and a sharp eye to wind'ard, and you're safe as the Bank. If it's too strong for you, loose the halyards, let the sheets fly, and down with the helm; the easiest thing in the world if you only look alive and don't get flurried."
"Very good," said Jack, and as he said so his pipe went out; so he knocked out the ashes and refilled it.
Next morning our hero rowed away with his three men, and soon discovered the creek of which his friend had spoken. Here he found the sloop, a clumsy "tub" of about twenty tons burden, and here Jack's troubles began.
The Fairy, as the sloop was named, happened to have been beached during a very high tide. It now lay high and dry in what once had been mud, on the shore of a land-locked bay or pond, under the shadow of some towering pines. The spot looked like an inland lakelet, on the margin of which one might have expected to find a bear or a moose-deer, but certainly not a sloop.
"Oh! ye shall nevair git him off," said Francois Xavier, one of the three men--a French-Canadian--on beholding the stranded vessel.
"We'll try," said Pierre, another of the three men, and a burly half-breed.
"Try!" exclaimed Rollo, the third of the three men--a tall, powerful, ill-favoured man, who was somewhat of a bully, who could not tell where he had been born, and did not know who his father and mother had been, having been forsaken