The hoisting of the sail was a mere matter of form.
“It’s of no use at present, but will be ready to catch the first puff that may favour us,” observed the old gentleman, as he sat down and took the tiller. “Give way, lads.”
The oars were dipped, and the Willow Creek mansion was soon but a speck on the horizon of the watery waste.
And now the old fur-trader learned the full extent of the desolation with which it had pleased God to visit the settlement at that time. While taken up with the cares and anxieties connected with Willow Creek, he was of course aware that terrible destruction, if not death, must have been going on around him; but now, when he rowed over the plains, saw the state of things with his own eyes, and heard the accounts of many settlers, some of whom he rescued from positions of danger, the full extent of the damage done by the great flood of 1826 was borne powerfully in upon his mind.
The varied stories which some had to tell of their escapes, others of their losses, and all, of their sufferings, were sad as well as interesting. Some of the people had taken shelter in garrets or on stages, where they had to wait anxiously till some boat or canoe should turn up to rescue them. Some had been surprised by the sudden rise of the flood at night while asleep, and had wakened to find themselves and their beds afloat. Two men who had gone to sleep on a rick of hay found themselves next morning drifting with the current some three miles below the spot where they had lain down. Others, like old Liz, had been carried off bodily in their huts. Not a few had been obliged to betake themselves to the housetops until help came. Some there were who took to swimming, and saved themselves by clinging to the branches of trees; yet, strange to say, during the whole course of that flood only one man lost his life. (See Note 1.)
It was very different, however, with regard to the lower animals. When at its height the water spread out on each side of the river to a distance of six miles, and about fourteen miles of its length, so that not only were many horses, cattle, pigs, and poultry drowned in the general stampede, but the pretty little ground squirrels were driven out of their holes, and along with rats, mice, snakes, and insects, perished in thousands. Even the frogs discovered that too much of a good thing is bad, for they found no rest for the soles of their feet, except floating logs, planks, and stray pieces of furniture, on which many of them were seen by our voyagers gazing contemplatively at the situation.
Everywhere houses and barns were seen floating about, their owners gone, but with dogs and cats in the doorways and windows, and poultry on the roofs; and the barking, mewing, and cackling of these, with the squealing of sundry pigs, tended to increase the general desolation. Such of the contents of these houses as had been left behind in the flight were washed out of them, and the waters were sprinkled here and there with bedsteads, chairs, tables, feather-beds, and other property, besides the carcasses of dead animals.
At certain points of the river, where there were shallows towards which the currents set, carts, carioles, boxes, carriages, gigs, fencing, and property of every description were stranded in large quantities and in dire confusion, but much of the wreck was swept onward and engulfed in Lake Winnipeg.
The unfortunate settlers found refuge ultimately, after being driven from knoll to knoll, on the higher ground of the Assinaboine, on the Little Mountain, and on a low hill twelve miles from the settlement.
On his way to the Little Mountain Mr Ravenshaw touched at the mission station. Here the various groups in the garret of the parsonage, the gallery of the church, and on the stage, were greatly reduced in numbers, many of the refugees having availed themselves of the visits of several settlers and gone off to the mountain in their boats or canoes, with what of their property they had managed to save.
Among those who remained there was a marked spirit of cheerful submission.
“You see,” said the pastor, in reply to an observation of Mr Ravenshaw on this point, “I have endeavoured to impress upon my poor people that mere quiet submission to the inevitable is not a Christian characteristic, that men of all creeds and nations may and do thus submit, and that it is the special privilege of the follower of Jesus to submit cheerfully to whatever befalls—pleasant or otherwise—because he has the promise that all things shall work together for his good.”
“Humph!” said the trader with a shrug of his shoulders; “it seems to me that some of us don’t avail ourselves much of our privilege.”
The pastor could scarcely repress a laugh at the grumpy tone in which his visitor spoke.
“You are right, Mr Ravenshaw, none of us come nearly up to the mark in our Christian course. The effort to do so constitutes much of the battle that we have to fight, but our comfort is, that we shall be more than conquerors in the long-run. There sits a widow now,” he continued, pointing to an Indian woman seated on the stage who was busy making a pair of moccasins for a little child that played by her side, “who is fighting her battle bravely at present. Not a murmur has yet escaped her lips, although she has lost all her possessions—except her boy.”
“Ah! except her boy!” The old trader did not speak. He only thought of Tony and quickly changed the drift of the conversation.
Soon after leaving the mission station a breeze sprang up; the sail filled; the oars were pulled in, and they went more swiftly on. Ere long they sighted the stage on which the women had been previously discovered singing hymns. They did not sing now. Their provisions were failing, their hopes of an abatement in the flood were dying out, and they no longer refused to accept deliverance from their somewhat perilous position.
“Have you seen anything of Herr Winklemann lately?” asked Lambert of one of the women.
“Nothing; but John Flett and David Mowat passed our stage yesterday in a canoe, and they told us that the hut of old Liz Rollin has been carried away with her and her father and Winklemann’s mother, and they say that her son has been seen in a small canoe rangin’ about by himself like a madman searchin’ for her.”
“The moment we reach the Mountain I’ll get hold of a canoe and go in search of him,” said Lambert.
“Right, boy! right!” said Ravenshaw; “I fear that something may have happened to the poor lad. These small canoes are all very well when you can run ashore and mend ’em if they should get damaged, but out here, among sunk posts and fences, and no land to run to, it is dangerous navigation.—Hist! Did ye hear a cry, lads?”
The men ceased to talk, and listened intently, while they gazed round the watery waste in all directions.
Besides a stranded house here and there, and a few submerged trees, nothing was to be seen on the water save the carcasses of a few cattle, above which a couple of ravens were wheeling slowly.
The cry was not repeated.
“Imagination,” muttered old Ravenshaw to himself, after Lambert had given a lusty shout, which, however, elicited no reply.
“It must have been; I hear nothing,” said Lambert, looking round uneasily.
“Come, out oars again, lads,” said the old gentleman, as the sail flapped in the failing breeze. “Night will catch us before we reach—. Hallo! back your oars—hard! Catch hold of ’im.”
A living creature of some sort came out from behind a floating log at that moment, and was almost run down. The man at the bow oar leaned over and caught it. The yell which followed left no shadow of doubt as to the nature of the creature. It was a pig. During the next two minutes, while it was being hauled into the boat, it made the air ring with shrieks of concentrated fury. Before dismissing this pig, we may state that it was afterwards identified by its owner, who said it had been swept way from his house two days before, and must therefore have been swimming without relief for eight-and-forty hours.
“That accounts for the cry you heard,” said Louis Lambert, when the screams subsided.
“No, Louis; a pig’s voice is too familiar to deceive me. If it was not imagination, it was the voice of a man.”
The old trader was right. One of the objects which, in the distance, resembled so closely the floating carcass of an ox was in reality an overturned canoe, and to the stern of that canoe Herr Winklemann was clinging. He had been long in the water, and was almost too much exhausted to see or cry. When the boat passed he thought he heard voices. Hope revived for a moment, and he uttered a feeble shout, but he failed to hear the reply. The canoe happened to float between him and the boat, so that he could not see it as it passed slowly on its course.
Poor Winklemann! In searching wildly about the wide expanse of water for his lost mother, he had run his canoe violently against the top rail of a fence. The delicate birch bark was ripped off. In another minute it sank and turned bottom up. It was a canoe of the smallest size, Winklemann having preferred to continue his search alone rather than with an unwilling companion. The German was a good swimmer; a mere upset might not have been serious. He could have righted the canoe, and perhaps clambered into it over the stern, and baled it out. But with a large hole in its bottom there was no hope of deliverance except in a passing boat or canoe. Clinging to the frail craft, the poor youth gazed long and anxiously round the horizon, endeavouring the while to push the wreck towards the nearest tree-top, which, however, was a long way off.
By degrees the cold told on his huge frame, and his great strength began to fail. Once, a canoe appeared in the distance. He shouted with all his might, but it was too far off. As it passed on out of sight he raised his eyes as if in prayer, but no sound escaped his compressed lips. It was noon when the accident occurred. Towards evening he felt as though his consciousness were going to forsake him, but the love of life was strong; he tightened his grasp on the canoe. It was just then that he heard the voices of Ravenshaw’s party and shouted, but the cry, as we have said, was very feeble, and the poor fellow’s sense of hearing was dulled with cold and exhaustion, else he would have heard Lambert’s reply.
“Oh! mine moder! mine moder!” he sighed, as his head drooped helplessly forward, though his fingers tightened on the canoe with the convulsive grasp of a drowning man.
Night descended on the water. The moon threw a fitful gleam now and then through a rift in the sailing clouds. All was still and dark and desolate above and around the perishing man. Nothing with life was visible save a huge raven which wheeled to and fro with a solemn croak and almost noiseless wing.
But the case of Winklemann was not yet hopeless. His chum, Louis Lambert, could not shake himself free from a suspicion that the cry, which had been put down to imagination, might after all have been that of some perishing human being—perhaps that of his friend. Arrived at the Little Mountain, Louis lost no time in obtaining a canoe, also an Indian to take the bow paddle.
The mountain, which was a mere undulation of the prairie, presented a strange scene at that time. Many settlers—half-breeds, Canadians, and Indians—were encamped there; some under tents of various sizes, others under upturned boats and canoes; not a few under the wider canopy of the heavens. Intermingled with the men, women, and children, were horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry, dogs, cats, and pets of the feathered tribe, besides goods, household furniture, carts, etcetera, so that no words can adequately describe the scene. It was confusion worse confounded!
Many were the hospitable proposals made here to Louis Lambert that he should remain all night, for he was a general favourite, but to all these he turned a deaf ear, and set out on a searching expedition, in the canoe, just after the sun had gone down.
At first he made as straight as he could for the place where Mr Ravenshaw had fancied he heard the cry, but on consideration came to the conclusion that, as the current must have carried all floating objects considerably farther down the settlement by that time, he ought to change his course. Soon it grew too dark to see objects distinctly, but an occasional gleam of moonshine came to his aid. He passed several floating barns and cow-houses, but found them empty. He also nearly ran against several dead animals, but the silent Indian in the bow was wary and vigilant. Hope was at last beginning to die within Louis’s breast, when he observed a raven circling round some floating object.
“Ho! there’s something yonder. Strike out, old copper-nose,” he exclaimed, as he directed the canoe towards it.
The light craft cut the water like a knife, and was quickly alongside.
“Why, it is a canoe, bottom up. Have a care. Ha! hold on!”
Lambert nearly overturned his own canoe as he made a sudden grasp at something, and caught a man by the hair.
“Hallo! I say, let go your canoe and hold on to me,” cried Lambert, in excitement, but the man spoken to made no reply, and would not let go the wrecked canoe.
Lambert therefore hauled him powerfully and slowly alongside until his visage was level with the gunwale. Just then a gleam of moonlight broke forth and revealed the face of Herr Winklemann! The difficulties that now beset the rescuers were great, for the poor German, besides being stupefied, had grasped his canoe with tremendous power, and could not be detached. To get an active and living man out of the water into a birch canoe is no easy matter; to embark a half-dead one is almost impossible; nevertheless Lambert and his red-skinned comrade managed to do it between them. Raising his unconscious friend as far out of the water as possible, Louis caught one of his hands and wrenched it from its hold. Meanwhile the Indian leaned out of the opposite side of the canoe so as to balance it. Another violent wrench freed the other hand. It also freed Winklemann’s spirit to some extent, and called it back to life, for he exclaimed, “Vat is dat?” in a tone of faint but decided surprise.
“Here, lay hold of my neck,” said Lambert, in a peremptory voice.
Winklemann obeyed. Lambert exerted all his strength and heaved. The Indian did not dare to lend a hand, as that would have upset the canoe, but he leaned still farther over its other side as a counterpoise. At last Lambert got his friend on the edge, and tumbled him inboard. At the same moment the Indian adroitly resumed his position, and Winklemann was saved!
“You’ll soon be all right,” said Lambert, resuming his paddle. “Haven’t swallowed much water, I hope?”
“No, no,” said Winklemann faintly; “mine lunks, I do tink, are free of vatter, but mine lecks are stranchly qveer. I hav no lecks at all! ’Pears as if I vas stop short at zee vaist!”
Herr Winklemann said no more, but was swiftly borne, in a state of semi-consciousness, to his friends on the Little Mountain.
Twenty-six years later, in 1852, Red River Settlement was visited by a flood very similar in its main features to that of 1826, above described; and it is a curious coincidence that only one man lost his life during the latter flood; also, that the waters of the floods of both years began to subside on exactly the same date.
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