The Lure of the Labrador Wild | Page 4

Here, b'y, is the issue of our plighted troth. Why I am the scribe and not
you, God knows: and you have his secret.
D.W.

"There's no sense in going further--it's the edge of cultivation," So they
said, and I believed it... Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang
interminable changes On one everlasting Whisper day and night
repeated--so: "Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind
the Ranges-- Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for
you. Go!" --Kipling's "The Explorer."

PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION
Three years have passed since Hubbard and I began that fateful journey
into Labrador of which this volume is a record. A little more than a
year has elapsed since the first edition of our record made its
appearance from the press. Meanwhile I have looked behind the ranges.
Grand Lake has again borne me upon the bosom of her broad, deep
waters into the great lonely wilderness that lured Hubbard to his death.
It was a day in June last year that found me again at the point where
some inexplicable fate had led Hubbard and me to pass unexplored the
bay that here extends northward to receive the Nascaupee River, along
which lay the trail for which we were searching, and induced us to take,
instead, that other course that carried us into the dreadful Susan Valley.
How vividly I saw it all again--Hubbard resting on his paddle, and then
rising up for a better view, as he said, "Oh, that's just a bay and it isn't
worth while to take time to explore it. The river comes in up here at the
end of the lake. They all said it was at the end of the lake." And we said,
"Yes, it is at the end of the lake; they all said so," and went on, for that
was before we knew--Hubbard never knew. A perceptible current, a
questioning word, the turn of a paddle would have set us right. No
current was noticed, no word was spoken, and the paddle sent us

straight toward those blue hills yonder, where Suffering and Starvation
and Death were hidden and waiting for us. How little we expected to
meet these grim strangers then. That July day came back to me as if it
had been but the day before. I believe I never missed Hubbard so much
as at that moment. I never felt his loss so keenly as then. An almost
irresistible impulse seized me to go on into our old trail and hurry to the
camp where we had left him that stormy October day and find if he
were not after all still there and waiting for me to come back to him.
Reluctantly I thrust the impulse aside. Armed with the experience
gained upon the former expedition, and information gleaned from the
Indians, I turned into the northern trail, through the valley of the
Nascaupee, and began a journey that carried me eight hundred miles to
the storm-swept shores of Ungava Bay, and two thousand miles with
dog sledge over endless reaches of ice and snow.
While I struggled northward with new companions, Hubbard was
always with me to inspire and urge me on. Often and often at night as I
sat, disheartened and alone, by the camp-fire while the rain beat down
and the wind soughed drearily through the firtops, he would come and
sit by me as of old, and as of old I would hear his gentle voice and his
words of encouragement. Then I would go to my blankets with new
courage, resolved to fight the battle to the end.
One day our camp was pitched upon the shores of Lake Michikamau,
and as I looked for the first time upon the waters of the lake which
Hubbard had so longed to reach, I lived over again that day when he
returned from his climb to the summit of the great grey mountain which
now bears his name, with the joyful news that there just behind the
ridge lay Michikamau; then the weary wind-bound days that followed
and the race down the trail with all its horrors; our kiss and embrace;
and my final glimpse of the little white tent in which he lay.
And so with the remembrance of his example as an inspiration the work
was finished by me, the survivor, but to Hubbard and to his memory
belong the credit and the honour, for it was only through my training
with him and this inspiration received from him that I was able to carry
to successful completion what he had so well planned.
My publishers inform me that five editions of our story have found
their way into the hearts and homes of those who cannot