Careers of Danger and Daring Part 12

WOULD you see the most skilful pilots in the world, men who know all the tricks with ocean liners and the Indian tricks as well, who fight the rush of seventy-foot tides in the Bay of Fundy, or drive their frail canoes through furious gorges, or coolly turn the nose of a thousand-ton steamboat into the white jaws of rock-split rapids where a yard either way or a second's doubt would mean destruction, or hitch long hawsers to a log raft big as a city block (the lumber in a single raft may be worth a hundred thousand dollars), and swing her down a tumbling waterway hundreds of miles, with a peril in every one, and land her safe? If you would see all this, go to the wonderful St. Lawrence, which sweeps in wide and troubled reaches from the Great Lakes to the sea.

Of course I do not mean that any one man can do all these things,--that would be asking too much,--but each in his own line, half-breed or Indian or fur-bundled voyageur, has such quickness of eye, such surety of hand, that you will be glad to watch the rafters on their rafts, and ask no more of them, or the canoeists at their paddles, or the big-craft pilots at their wheels.

Let us stand on the long iron bridge that spans the St. Lawrence just above Montreal, the very place to study the river as it narrows and runs swifter for its smas.h.i.+ng plunge through yonder rapids to the east, the dreaded Lachine Rapids, whose snarling teeth flash white in the sun.

Look down into the greenish rush, and see how the waters hurl past these good stone piers, sharp-pointed up-stream against the tearing of winter ice! Here goes the torrent of Niagara and the inland ocean of Superior and Erie and Ontario, all crushed into a funnel of land by this big island at the left that blocks the flow, and gorged by the in-pour of the Ottawa a few miles back that brings down the floods of southern Canada. As fast as a horse can gallop runs the river here, and faster and faster it goes as the long slant takes it, ten, twelve, fourteen miles an hour (which is something for a river), until a dozen islands strewn across the funnel's lower end goad the rapids to their greatest rage. Here is where they kill. Then suddenly all is quiet, and the river, spreading to a triple width, rests, after its madness, in Montreal's placid harbor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "BIG JOHN" STEERING A BOAT THROUGH THE LACHINE RAPIDS.]

Standing here, I think of my first experience in shooting these rapids (it was on one of the large river boats), and I must confess that it gave me no very thrilling sense of danger. There were two or three plunges, to be sure, at the steepest part, and a little swaying or lurching, but, so far as movement goes, nothing to disturb one accustomed to the vicissitudes of, say, ordinary trolley-car navigation.

However, when I came to the reason of this fairly smooth descent, and saw what it means to stand at the wheel through that treacherous channel, I found my wonder growing. I thought of the lion-tamer, whose skill is shown not so much by what happens while he is in the cage as by what does not happen. A hundred ways there are of doing the wrong thing with one of these boats, and only a single way of doing the right thing. For four miles the pilot must race along a squirming, twisting, plunging thread of water, that leaps ahead like a greyhound, and changes its crookedness somewhat from day to day with wind and tide. In that thread alone is safety; elsewhere is ruin and wreck. Instantly he must read the message of a boiling eddy or the menace of a beckoning reef, and take it this way or that instantly, for there are the hungry rocks on either hand. He must know things without seeing them; must feel the pulse of the rapids, as it were, so that when a mist clouds his view, or the s.h.i.+ne of a low-hung rainbow dazzles him, he may still go right. It is a fact that with all the pilots in this pilot-land, and all the hardy watermen born and brought up on the St. Lawrence, there are not ten--perhaps not six--men in Canada to-day, French or English or Indian, who would dare this peril. For all other rapids of the route, the Gallop Rapids, the Split-rock Rapids, the Cascades, and the rest, there are pilots in plenty; but not for those of Lachine. And, to use the same simile again, I saw that the shooting of these Lachine Rapids is like the taming of a particularly fierce lion; it is a business by itself that few men care to undertake.

So it came that I sought out one of these few, Fred Ouillette, pilot and son of a pilot, an idol in the company's eyes, a hero to the boys of Montreal, a figure to be stared at always by anxious pa.s.sengers as he peers through the window atop the forward deck, a man whom people point to as he pa.s.ses: "There's the fellow that took us through the rapids.

That's Ouillette." This unsought notoriety has made him shy. He does not like to talk about his work or tell you how it feels to do this thing. A dash of Indian blood is in him, with some of the silent, stoic, Indian nature. Yet certain facts he vouchsafed, when I went to his home, that help one to an understanding of the pilot's life.

He emphasized this, for instance, as essential in a man who would face that fury of waters, he must not be afraid. One would say that the rapids feel where the mastery is, whether with them or with the pilot, and woe to him if pounding heart or wavering hand betray him. The rapids will have no mercy. And there are pilots, it appears, who know the Lachine Rapids, every foot of them, and could do Ouillette's work perfectly if Ouillette were standing near, yet would fail utterly if left alone. Every danger they can overcome but the one that lies in themselves. They cannot brave their own fear. He cited the case of a pilot's son who had worked in the Lachine Rapids for years, helping his father, and learned the river as well as a man can know it. At the old man's death, this son announced that he would take his father's place, and shoot the rapids as they always had done; yet a season pa.s.sed, then a second season, and always he postponed beginning, and, with one excuse or another, took his boats through the Lachine Ca.n.a.l, a safe but tame short cut, not likely to draw tourists.

"Not start heem right, that fadder," said Ouillette. "Now too late. Now nevair he can learn heem right."

"Why, how should he have started him?" I asked.

"Same way like my fadder start me." And then, in his jerky Canadian speech, he explained how this was.

Ouillette went back to his own young manhood, to the years when he, too, stood by his father's side and watched him take the big boats down. What a picture he drew in his queer, rugged phrases! I could see the old pilot braced at the six-foot wheel, with three men in oilskins standing by to help him put her over, Fred one of the three. And it was "Hip!"

"Bas!" "Hip!" "Bas!" ("Up!" "Down!" "Up!" "Down!") until the increasing roar of the cataract drowned all words, and then it was a jerk of shoulders or head, this way or that, while the men strained at the spokes. Never once was the wheel at rest after they entered the rapids, but spinning, spinning always, while the boat shot like a snake through black rocks and churning chasms.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRED OUILLETTE, THE YOUNG PILOT.]

They used to take the boats--as Ouillette takes them still--at Cornwall, sixty miles up the river, and, before coming to Lachine, they would shoot the swift Coteau Rapids, where many a life has gone, then the terrifying Cedar Rapids, which seem the most dangerous of all, and finally, the Split-rock Rapids, which some say are the most dangerous.

And each year, as the season opened, Fred would ask his father to let him take the wheel some day when the river was high and the rocks well covered, and the boat lightly laden, wis.h.i.+ng thus to try the easiest rapids under easiest conditions. But his father would look at him and say: "Do you know the river, my son? Are you sure you know the river?"

And Fred would answer: "Father, I think I do." For how could he be sure until he had stood the test?

So it went on from year to year, and Ouillette was almost despairing of a chance to show himself worthy of his father's teaching, when, suddenly, the chance came in a way never to be forgotten. It was late in the summer, and the rapids, being low, were at their very worst, since the rocks were nearer the surface. Besides that, on this particular day they were carrying a heavy load, and the wind was southeast, blowing hard--the very wind to make trouble at the bad places. They had shot through all the rapids but the last, and were well below the Lachine bridge when the elder Ouillette asked the boy, "My son, do you know the river?"

And Fred answered as usual, without any thought of what was coming next, "Father, I think I do."

They were just at the danger-point now, and all the straining waters were sucking them down to the first plunge.

"Then take her through," said the old man, stepping back; "there is the wheel."

"My fadder he make terreeble thing for me--too much terreeble thing,"

said Ouillette, shaking his head at the memory.

But he took her through somehow, half blinded by the swirl of water and the shock. At the wheel he stood, and with a touch of his father's hand now and then to help him, he brought the boat down safely. There was a kind of Spartan philosophy in the old man's action. His idea was that, could he once make his son face the worst of this business and come out unharmed, then never would the boy know fear again, for all the rest would be easier than what he had already done. And certainly his plan worked well, for Fred Ouillette has been fearless in the rapids ever since.

"Have you lost any lives?" I asked, reaching out for thrilling stories.

"Nevair," said he.

"Ever come near it?"

He looked at me a moment, and then said quietly: "Always, sair, we come near it."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE INDIAN PILOTS RESCUE Pa.s.sENGERS FROM THE STEAMER ON THE ROCKS.]

Then he told of cases where at the last moment he had seen some mad risk in going down, and had turned his steamer in the very throat of the torrent, and, with groaning wheels and straining timbers, fought his way back foot by foot to safety. Once a fog dropped about them suddenly, and once the starboard rudder-chain broke. This last was all but a disaster, for they were down so far that the river must surely have conquered the engines had they tried to head up-stream. Ouillette saw there was only one way to save his boat and the lives she carried, and, putting the wheel hard aport, for the port chain held, he ran her on the rocks. And there she lay, the good steamboat _Spartan_, all that night, with pa.s.sengers in an anguish of excitement, while Indian pilots from Caughnawaga made it quite clear what _they_ were good for--put off swiftly in their little barks straight into that reeling flood, straight out to the helpless boat, then back to sh.o.r.e, each bearing two or three of the fear-struck company. Then out again and back again until darkness came. Then out again and back again when darkness had fallen. Think of that! Hour after hour, with paddles alone, these dauntless sons of Iroquois braves fought the rapids, triumphed over the rapids, and brought to land through the night and the rage of waters every soul on that imperiled vessel!

Another instance he gave, showing the admirable alertness of these Indians, as well as their skill with the canoe. It was in the summer of 1900, late of an afternoon, and so heavy was the August heat that even on the river the pa.s.sengers were gasping for air. Shortly after they entered the cataract several persons saw a large man climb to the top of a water-tank on the hurricane-deck, and seat himself there in one of the folding deck-chairs. The man's purpose was, evidently, to seek a cooler spot than he had found below, and the boat was running so steadily that no one thought of danger. Indeed, there would have been no danger had not the gentleman fallen into a comfortable doze just as Ouillette steadied the boat for her first downward leap and then brought her over to starboard with a jerk, which jerk so effectually disturbed the large man's slumbers that the first thing he knew he was shot off his rickety chair, over the side of the water-tank, clean over the steamboat's decks, down, splas.h.!.+ into the St. Lawrence at a point where it is not good for any man to be. He was right in the main sweep of the river, where one may live for twenty minutes if he can keep afloat so long, but scarcely longer, since twenty minutes will bring him to the last rush of rapids, where swimmers do not live.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "MAN OVERBOARD!" AN INDIAN CANOE TO THE RESCUE.]

What happened after this I have from an eye-witness, who rushed back with others at the cry, "Man overboard!" and joined in a reckless throwing over of chairs, boxes, and life-preservers that profited little, for the man was left far behind by the steamboat, which could do nothing--and Ouillette could do nothing--but whistle a hoa.r.s.e danger-warning and go its way. A magnificent swimmer he must have been, this rudely awakened tourist, for the pa.s.sengers, crowded astern, could follow the black speck that was his head bobbing along steadily, undisturbed, one would say, by dangers, apparently going up-stream as the steamboat gained on him--really coming down-stream with the full force of the current, and yielding to it entirely, all strength saved for steering. Not a man on the boat believed that the swimmer would come out alive, and, helpless to save, they stood there in sickening fascination, watching him sweep down to his death.

Then suddenly rang out a cry: "Look! There! A canoe!" And out from the shadows and shallows off-sh.o.r.e shot a slender prow with a figure in bow and stern. The Indians were coming to the rescue! They must have started even as the man fell,--such a thing it is to be an Indian!--and, with a knowledge of the rapids that is theirs alone, they had aimed the swift craft in a long slant that would let them overtake the swimmer just here, at this very place where now they were about to overtake him, at this very place where presently they did overtake him and draw him up, all but exhausted, from as close to the brink of the Great Rapids as ever he will get until he pa.s.ses over them. Then they paddled back.

IV

WHAT CANADIAN PILOTS DID IN THE CATARACTS OF THE NILE

AND now suppose we follow these Indians to their reservation at Caughnawaga, where the government has given them land and civic rights and encouragement to peaceful ways. The surest time of year to find the pilots at home is the winter season; for then, with navigation frozen up, they have weeks to spend drifting along in the sleepy village life, waiting for the spring. There, in many a hearth-fire circle,--only, alas! the hearth is a commonplace s.h.i.+ny stove more often than not,--we may listen to tales without end of rapids and river, while the men smoke solemnly, and the women do beadwork and moccasins for the next year's peddling. We may hear "Big Baptiste" tell for what exploits of the paddle his head came to be on the ten-dollar bills of Canada, set in dignity and feathers; and hear "Big John," famous for years as a steamboat pilot, describe his annual shooting of the Lachine Rapids at the opening of navigation, when, first of all the pilots, he goes down in his canoe,--this is a time-honored custom,--so that the others may be sure that it is safe to follow.

He will give us the story, too, amid nods of approval, of shooting these same rapids for a wager on a certain New Year's Day, and coming down safely, ice and all. There, sir, is the paddle he used, if you doubt the tale, and the canoe lies out in the snow.

And be sure we shall not have been long in Caughnawaga without hearing of the proud part these Indians took in the British expedition up the Nile in 1884 to relieve Khartum. Treasured in more than one household are these words of Lord Wolseley, written to the governor-general of Canada: "I desire to place on record not only my own opinion, but that of every officer connected with the management of the boat columns, that the services of these voyageurs has been of the greatest possible value.... They have on many occasions shown not only great skill but also great courage in navigating their boats through difficult and dangerous waters."

"How many men did Caughnawaga send on this expedition?" I inquired.

"Fifty-five men besides Louis Jackson," said one of the Indians.

"Oh," said I; "and--and who is Louis Jackson?"

The Indian's face showed plain disgust that there should be any one who did not know all about Louis Jackson.

"Louis Jackson was the leader. He is our chief man. He lives over there."

It resulted in my calling on Mr. Jackson, a big, powerful man, fully meriting, I should say, the high opinion in which he is held. If there is any Indian strain in him it must be very slight; he would pa.s.s, rather, for an uncommonly energetic Englishman, with such a fund of adventure to his credit, and so entertaining a way of drawing upon it, that one would listen for hours while he talks.

Jackson made clear to me what important duty was given the Canadian voyageurs in this Nile campaign. By their success or failure in taking heavy-laden boats up the cataracts Lord Wolseley proposed to decide whether the troops for Gordon's relief should go straight up the Nile or around by the Red Sea and the desert. It was the river if they succeeded; it was the desert if they failed: and twenty thousand soldiers waited at Alexandria in a fever of impatience while Jackson and his band, with some hundreds of voyageurs from other provinces, let it be seen if their training on the St. Lawrence would serve against river perils in ancient Egypt. Lord Wolseley was confident it would, for during the Riel rebellion he had found out what stuff was in these men.

Still he dared not start his army until it was certain those formidable cataracts could be surmounted. And that meant a month, let the men strain as they might at paddles and hauling-lines--a month to wait, a month for Gordon to wait.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PILOT, "BIG JOHN."]

"Oh," said Jackson, gloomily, "if Lord Wolseley had only trusted us without any trial! Why, there was nothing, sir, in that Nile River we hadn't tackled a hundred times as boys right here in the St. Lawrence.

When you talk of cataracts it sounds big, but we've got rapids all around here, just plain every-day rapids, that will make their cataracts look sick. Of course we did it--did it easy; but when we got up to the top of the whole business, where was our army? Back in Alexandria, sir!

And it makes a man sad to know that those boys in Khartum were dying just then; it makes a man mighty sad to know that!"