Fort Desolation by Robert Michael Ballantyne (the ebook reader .txt) 📖

I've a notion it may be an offer to buy your clearin', for I've heerd two or three fellows speakin' about it. Now, as I want to buy it myself, if yer disposed to sell it, I hereby make you the first offer."

Jack Robinson continued to smoke in silence, gazing abstractedly at the letter. Since his mother had died, a year before the date of which we write, he had not received a line from any one, insomuch that he had given up calling at the post-office on his occasional visits to the nearest settlement. This letter, therefore, took him by surprise, all the more that it was addressed in the handwriting of his former partner, Murray.

Breaking the seal, he read as follows:


"Fort Kamenistaquoia, April the somethingth:--

"Dear Jack,--You'll be surprised to see my fist, but not more
surprised than I was to hear from an old hunter just arrived, that you
had taken to farming. It's not your forte, Jack, my boy. Be advised.
Sell off the farm for what it will fetch, and come and join me. My
antecedents are not in my favour, I grant; but facts are stubborn
things, and it is a fact that I am making dollars here like stones.
I'm a fur-trader, my boy. Have joined a small company, and up to this
time have made a good thing of it. You know something of the fur
trade, if I mistake not. Do come and join us; we want such a man as
you at a new post we have established on the coast of Labrador.
Shooting, fishing, hunting, _ad libitum_. Eating, drinking, sleeping,
_ad infinitum_. What would you more? Come, like a good fellow, and
be happy!

"Ever thine, J. MURRAY."


"I'll sell the _farm_," said Jack Robinson, folding the letter.

"You will?" exclaimed Joe. "What's your price?"

"Come over it with me, and look at the fixings, before I tell you," said Jack.

They went over it together, and looked at every fence and stump and implement. They visited the live stock, and estimated the value of the sprouting crop. Then they returned to the house, where they struck a bargain off-hand.

That evening Jack bade adieu to the Mountain House, mounted his horse, with his worldly goods at the pommel of the saddle, and rode away, leaving Joe, the trapper, in possession.

In process of time our hero rode through the settlements to Montreal, where he sold his horse, purchased a few necessaries, and made his way down the Saint Lawrence to the frontier settlements of the bleak and almost uninhabited north shore of the gulf. Here he found some difficulty in engaging a man to go with him, in a canoe, towards the coast of Labrador.

An Irishman, in a fit of despondency, 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 by them in his infancy. "Try? you might as well try to lift a mountain! I've a mind to go straight back to Kamenistaquoia and tell Mr Murray that to his face!"

"Have you?" said Jack Robinson, in a quiet, peculiar tone, accompanied by a gaze that had the effect of causing Rollo to look a little confused. "Come along, lads, we'll begin at once," he continued, "it will be full tide in an hour or so. Get the tackle ready, Francois; the rest of you set to work, and clear away the stones and rubbish from under her sides."

Jack threw off his coat, and began to work like a hero--as he was. The others followed his example; and the result was that when the tide rose to its full height the sloop was freed of all the rubbish that had collected round the hull; the block tackle was affixed to the mast; the rope attached to a tree on the opposite side of the creek; and the party were ready to haul. But although they hauled until their sinews cracked, and the large veins of their necks and foreheads swelled almost to bursting, the sloop did not move an inch. The tide began to fall, and in a few minutes that opportunity was gone. There were not many such tides to count on, so Jack applied all his energies and ingenuity to the work. By the time the next tide rose they had felled two large pines, and applied them to the side of the vessel. Two of the party swung at the ends of these; the other two hauled on the block-tackle. This time the sloop moved a little at the full flood; but the moment of hope soon passed, and the end was not yet attained.

The next tide was the last high one. They worked like desperate men during the interval. The wedge was the mechanical power which prevailed at last. Several wedges were inserted under the vessel's side, and driven home. Thus the sloop was canted over a little towards the water. When the tide was at the full, one man hauled at the tackle, two men swung at the ends of the levers, and Jack hammered home the wedges at each heave and pull; thus securing every inch of movement. The result was that the sloop slid slowly down the bank into deep water.

It is wonderful how small a matter will arouse human enthusiasm! The cheer that was given on the successful floating of the _Fairy_ was certainly as full of fervour, if not of volume, as that which followed the launching of the _Great Eastern_.

Setting sail down the gulf they ran before a fair breeze which speedily increased to a favouring gale. Before night a small bay was descried, with three log-huts on the shore. This was the new fort. They ran into the bay, grazing a smooth rock in their passage, which caused the _Fairy_ to tremble from stem to stern, and cast anchor close to a wooden jetty. On the end of this a solitary individual, (apparently a maniac), was seen capering and yelling wildly.

"What fort is this?" shouted Jack.

"Sorrow wan o' me knows," cried the maniac; "it's niver been christened yet. Faix, if it's a fort at all, I'd call it Fort Disolation. Och! but it's lonesome I've been these three days--niver a wan here but meself an' the ghosts. Come ashore, darlints, and comfort me!"

"Fort