It was one of those uncertain gales what spring into existence round the corner of some island and come rollocking down the bays and channels with that surprising velocity known only to Muskoka's fitful winds that verily blow where they listeth.
At the first hint of a breeze, Sam picked himself up from the stupendous rock on which he had been lounging all the morning, stuck his fishing rod into a crevice, winked at the indolent line, and mounted to the highest point of the island.
“Yes,” he remarked laconically, after a three minutes survey of the sou'-west, “it's a bully breeze, and you bet your life I won't paddle back to camp when I can sail.”
“Can you sail?” I queried.
“Well, you needn't insult a fellow, do I look like a duck who couldn't sail?”
I apologized. If there is anything in life a man hates it is to have his knowledge of sailing questioned; rather than leave himself open to such doubt he will load his craft up with precious lives and risk his own by blundering out into the bay or lake, shilly-shallying about making a muff of himself, and scaring the wits out of the party on board.
Sam was quite pouty at my remark, and in most cutting silence, ran out the canoe, tossed our three lonely-looking bass into the stern and told me to “hurrah now.” I tucked myself and the lunch basket amidships, grovelled about among carpets, cushions, fishing tackle and Sam's boots for the mast, adjusted it in the little bow deck, and told Sam to “Now then.”
Sam slouched aft, his back bent like a rainbow and braced against the deck, his knees flopping in boneless indolence over the stern thwart, his feet wandering about somewhere in the locality of my head. Very few strokes of his broad and powerful paddle brought us out of the lee shore of the small fishing island, and a brisk wind caught us broadside. “Jolly lucky we hadn't the canvas up,” said Sam, “see now if you can run her up without getting into a muddle, and give me the sheet first.”
“You can't hold the sheet and steer, too,” I remonstrated, for I love to have the sheet in my own hands, but Sam was going to show me what he could do, so I hauled up the tiny lug-sail: the wind caught us free and our little Peterboro' shot forward with a violence that almost pulled Sam upright. Oh! the deliciousness of a sail on a hot August day, to lie back in utter sloth, and with half closed eyes watch the canvas fill overhead, while your taut little canoe clean cuts the water, its bow lined with bubbling foam, the cooling swish of water beneath the gunwales that parts to the aggressive little keel, then leaves a long line of braided ripples in the rear, to listen to the idle flap-flap of the sail when the breeze grows coquettish, and scurries off with sweet laughter to explore a neighboring channel—always a little trick of those northern winds. Then to feel the craft pull out beneath you when the errant gale returns to catch the canvas and toss your capless hair into your eyes, which perforce are shut tight for a moment, while the mast strains and the jibing boom cracks, and you blow and drift, and fly along in the chrysalis body of this snowy butterfly.
She pulled stronger and stronger every minute, with bodies hanging half out over the windward gunwale. Sam and I began to “hang on” with considerable interest. The gale blew steady now and a sea was getting up that threatened, if not actual danger, at least some plucky work to ride. Faster and faster we flew, our bow splitting every wave it caught square, and sending a pint or two of water over the deck.
“Rip snorter, eh?” said Sam.
I answered that it was pretty stiff, and didn't he think we ought to put in somewhere, to which he replied by asking if I was “scared.” Not I; I had been in worse things than a Muskoka gale in a canoe. The remembrance of a strange rapid I had run three years previously while on a holiday cruise, loomed up before me with graphic distinctness. I was steering my own canoe, the bow paddle being a young islander quite unaccustomed to lake or river. One canoe piloted the party, and I came second, followed by two more. We entered the rapid some thirty feet behind the pilot, after I had tossed off my tam, grasped my paddle more firmly, said my prayers, and told the bow to sit still and clutch the boat like grim death. The river was choked up with a narrow, boiling, boulder-fretted stream, squeezed into a granite gorge that frowned down on our fragile craft with beetling brows and hungry jaw-like shores. There was not a sign of a landing for a mile and a half, and to be split in such a place meant nothing short of a terrible flood-swept dash on rocks that no weak human fingers could grasp, and very little chance for life. The stream was scarcely deep enough to drown one, but no one could hope to stand upright in that seething, though shallow torrent.
For an instant our brave little canoe seemed to halt on the crest of the first whirl, then down it plunged, scattering spray on both sides of the bow paddle, and in fact giving him a liberal sprinkle as well. A few feet ahead of us a huge bulky rock stood sullenly amid stream, the main body of water heading straight as a die for it, then splitting against its invincible front and scampering away into shallow eddies of two minor forks. Before I could wink an eyelid the pilot had swirled round the giant obstruction, dodged into a fork, and was lost to sight. I bent every force in my body, every muscle in my frame to play on my paddle handle. The bow swung barely a foot off the boulder, and the gunwale amidships almost grazed it, no time even to get your breath. There before us lay dozens of little rocks about as large as a bushel basket, and in their midst the pilot winding and twisting about like a serpent in a rush of yellowish water that occasionally splintered into spray at some unusually sharp angle. Aft, we could hear the shouts of the coming canoeists, forward, the pilot's laughter and the mad chase of the little river between its granite shores above the blue of a northern sky, below a bed of unyielding rock, fretted with stones and ragged shelves, washed in about two feet of this swiftest water in all our inland rivers. Once when the gorge swung suddenly to the left, almost at a right angle, I thought we were dashed with full force on shore. In the nick of time I got the bow round and headed off down stream, but it was the narrowest escape I ever had of having a canoe crushed to slivers under me, and I am very certain my muscles never put into a stroke so much of what Sam calls “beef.” When we had reached the great still pool at the foot of that rapid I just laid my faithful old paddle across beam and heaved a sigh that was brim full of glory—or relief.
Yes, that was a good deal more exciting than the sail with Sam, although things were beginning to look serious, and Sam was one of them.
“Suppose you haul her in,” I suggested.
“Suppose you try and talk sense,” growled Sam. “How can you haul her in now? The only way is to keep straight ahead, if we have to run to Port Carling.”
I suspected from this remark that Sam was not such a Jack Tar as he tried to make out, but I held my peace and we flew on, until the white canvas of our camp poked their mushroomy heads up over the islands, and with some magical tacking, and the displayal of extremely pretty sail management, Sam headed for home. As we crept gradually under the bold lee shore of the bay our pace lessened, lessened, lessened, the sheet slackened, the sail loosened, the canoe slid like a spray showered, oily thing through the choppy little waves. The islands, fir crested, moss carpeted, rock girdled, slipped slowly, lazily by, and the merest ripple of waters laughed along the keel. The laughter grew to a murmur, then a whisper; the sail flapped, drooped, hung idly overhead, a slight grating of sand and gravel, a scarcely perceptible beaching of the bow, then the rocking of a stern afloat, and Sam's eyes sparkle into mine as he says: “Perhaps I can't sail!”