"He must have gone t" Th" Jug," Andy said hopefully. ""Tis hard t"
think he didn"t. And, Davy, we said we"d just keep thinkin" he did."
"Aye, we"ll just keep thinkin" he did, and we won"t trouble about un,"
a.s.serted David. "And we"ll pray th" Lard "tis th" way we hopes."
Their thoughts were full of the hopes and aspirations of the first evening when they came to the Namaycush Lake tilt. How dear to us are old aspirations and old hopes, dead, perhaps, with the dead weeks or years that have gone, but still living in our memory like the features of departed friends. Our aspirations may never be attained, our fondest hopes never be fulfilled, but once they encouraged and buoyed us, and made life appear a glorious field of attainment, as indeed it is. If life were never flavored by day dreams, how dull and dreary it would sometimes be.
Great deeds are born in imagination. Imagination prompts us to attainment. It lifts us to higher levels. In the proportion in which we possess it, imagination urges us to apply our ambitions and our efforts to gain the things we dream of. Because of it we climb higher and travel farther, and become so much bigger and n.o.bler men than ever we could have been had we never dreamed.
But, O, the bitter disappointment of shattered hopes! "Tis a brave man that rises above failure, and tries again. This is the test of a man"s mettle. This is G.o.d"s way, I sometimes think, of sifting the grain from the chaff. The men who are worth while never give up. They stick and stick, and try again and again, until they win out in the end. The others surrender hope at the first reverse, and like chaff are blown away by the wind of oblivion.
David and Andy were silent for a long while. They were living over those early days of the winter when they came upon the trail dreaming of success and determined to attain it. Now the winter was past and the hunting was at an end. Was all their effort lost? Was Jamie, after all, to go blind because one day they neglected the simple precaution of wearing their snow gla.s.ses?
"We were expectin" to do so much when we came in th" fall," remarked Andy, sorrowfully, when they had finally filled the stove with wood, and settled in their sleeping bags. "We made a grand hunt, even if Indian Jake stole th" fur. But if he stole un "twon"t do Jamie any good and it"s too late now t" catch any more."
"I were thinkin", Andy," said David, clinging to a forlorn hope, "that maybe Doctor Joe were makin" a mistake about Jamie"s eyes. Maybe Jamie won"t go blind so soon, and next year"ll be in time for he t" go t" th" great doctor--if Indian Jake stole th" fur."
"Do you think so, now, Davy?" Andy asked expectantly.
"I"m just sayin" _maybe_," said David, cautiously. "If "tis so, when Pop"ll come next year t" hunt th" Seal Lake trail maybe he"ll let me hunt this trail, and we"ll be sure _then_ t" get fur enough t" pay for th" cure."
"I"d have t" stay home with Margaret, and I"d like t" be here and help hunt th" trail--and--get th" fur t" cure Jamie," said Andy regretfully.
"You"ll be helpin", Andy, by stayin" home th" way Pop had t" do this year," comforted David.
And so, in the face of supposed defeat, they planned for the future, and, planning, fell asleep.
It was an hour later when David awoke half suffocated with smoke. His ears at the same time caught the crackling of burning wood. He sprang from his bed, and seizing Andy, shouted:
"Andy! The tilt"s afire! Andy, get up!"
In an instant Andy, too, was out of bed.
"Grab your clothes and sleepin" bag," cried David excitedly.
"I"m chokin"!" coughed Andy.
"Hurry!" shouted David. "Hurry, or we"ll be caught here!"
There was scarce a moment to spare. The tilt had taken fire from the overheated stove, and one side was already in flames. Fortunately the doorway was clear, and the lads, gaining it, had barely time to pitch their clothing and sleeping bags out into the snow, and themselves escape into the cold night.
XXIII
HUNGRY DAYS
Flames were already breaking out between the logs on the side nearest to which stood the stove. Smoke was pouring out of the tilt door in a cloud. The boys were dazed and bewildered with their sudden awakening, but the fire was already beyond control, and was so far advanced that any attempt to salvage their belongings would have proved fruitless and foolhardy.
The bitter cold of the April night quickly roused them to activity.
David rescued their axes, which were sticking into a stump near the tilt door, and their toboggan which fortunately had not been laid against the tilt, as was customary, was drawn to a safe distance.
Then, using the toboggan for a seat, they drew on their clothing, and stood impotently and silently watching the burning tilt.
"I"m glad we didn"t have any o" th" traps stowed in there," remarked David presently.
"Our--our rifles are burned!" choked Andy.
"The rifles! I went and forgot un!" exclaimed David, in consternation.
"I went and forgot un! I might"ve pitched un out with th" sleepin"
bags!"
"What ever will we do without un?" asked Andy. "We can"t do any huntin" now!"
"Our snowshoes!" broke in David. "We clean forgot our snowshoes! We could have saved un, too, if we"d only thought!"
The snowshoes had been hanging on a peg just outside the tilt door, for trappers do not take snowshoes into warm tilts, where the heat would injure the babish, or netting. Smoke issuing from the door had hidden them, and in the bewilderment following their escape the boys had quite forgotten them. Now, like the rifles, the snowshoes were in the ruins of the burning tilt, and destroyed.
This was indeed a sad loss. In the woods snow lay a dozen feet deep, and to move about without the a.s.sistance of snowshoes was quite impossible. The game which Andy had acc.u.mulated was in the ruins, save two partridges which had been left at the Halfway tilt, and there was no other food nearer than the Narrows. Deprived of their snowshoes they could neither visit their rabbit traps nor set new ones.
"How"ll we make out now?" asked Andy hopelessly. "We can"t travel without snowshoes."
"Maybe the snow on the river ice is packed hard enough t" bear us,"
suggested David. "Leastways we"ll have t" try un. We"ve got t" get t"
th" Narrows tilt, _what_ever."
Silently they lashed their sleeping bags upon the toboggan and made preparations for a night journey to the Halfway tilt. They could not reconnoiter for a suitable place to build a temporary shelter in the soft snow of the woods, as Andy had done when he was alone. A step beyond the packed snow around the tilt, or the more or less packed path leading down to the lake, where they had a water hole in the ice, would plunge them to their armpits.
"I"ll haul th" flatsled," suggested David, tightening the lashings of the toboggan. "You go ahead, Andy, and pick out th" path t" th" water hole. We can make un all right t" th" lake, and we keeps t" th" hard path."
Fortunately it was starlight, and though one or the other now and again stepped off the path, and each time had a brief battle with the deep snow, they at length emerged upon the white expanse of Lake Namaycush. Here the wind had packed the snow so hard that, though they sank nearly to their knees at every step, walking was not unduly difficult until they reached the river bed.
""Twon"t be so good travelin" here as on th" Lake," said David. "But I"m thinkin" we"ll make un."
David"s prediction was correct. In every turn of the river were deep drifts through which they floundered. Sometimes it became necessary to push the toboggan over these difficult places, using it as a support, working their way foot by foot. Slow and exhausting as it was, they stuck to it with a will, but when day broke they had traveled less than a third of the distance to the Halfway tilt.
"I"m fair scrammed!" Andy at length declared. "I"ve got t" rest.
Can"t we put on a fire and "bide here and rest a little while?"
"Aye," agreed David. ""Tis wearisome work. We"ll put on a fire and rest, but we mustn"t "bide here too long. We"ll have t" reach th" tilt before night."
An hour"s rest, sitting on the toboggan before a cheerful fire in the lee of the river bank, revived them.
"If we only had our snowshoes, and a bit t" eat!" said Andy, when David suggested that it was time to go. "I"m fair starved!"
"And so be I!" David declared. ""Tis a long time since supper last evenin". We"ll have th" partridges, _what_ever, when we gets t" th"
Halfway tilt."