Arundel by Kenneth Roberts

Author:Kenneth Roberts [ROBERTS, KENNETH]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781608932290
Publisher: Down East Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I have often marveled at our youthful ignorance on this journey; and I have snorted, as men will when they grow older, staring up at the ceiling in the gray of dawn, to think I could have been so callow as to think the things I thought. As we paddled over this third pond I felt it was high time to consider how I should comport myself with Mary when I popped into her house in Quebec: whether I should say nothing, but take her in my arms and kiss her; or whether I should write out a long speech, elegant beyond belief, such as my mother had read to me out of a book, and recite it to her.

It turned out there was no immediate need of preparing for this ordeal. The length of the carry from the third pond to the little brook that fell into Dead River was three miles. Three miles, we thought, with the memories of our other carries behind us, was nothing but three miles. We double-loaded our canoe, piling our stores at the ends so it might not break in the middle, and set off among the bateaumen of Greene’s division. For a mile we clambered upward on the ragged withers of a mountain, so the skin on our shoulders was rubbed backward cruelly. Then for another mile we traveled easily down the opposite slope, hailing each other jocosely at the ease with which we progressed, even though our legs ached as if they might snap under us, and the skin of our faces burned from our exertions until they felt fit to fry fish. We disregarded, even, the forward chafing of our burdens, which almost flayed our backs; for ahead of us we saw a long green meadow, level and beautiful, dotted here and there with thickets and edged with spruces and cedars.

When we jubilantly set out across the meadow, it softened beneath us. The surface became a green moss, spread smoothly over a thick black soup into which our legs sank to the knee at every step.

Under the mud were jagged stumps of trees, and barbs of decayed branches—the graveyard of a forest dead from floods and fallen before mountain storms, as all ancient forests fall in these Northern woods.

The stumps and barbs tore at our water-soaked shoes and at the skin beneath. There was no way to avoid them; so we adopted the plan of letting ourselves slip down at each step, nearly to a sitting position, until our feet reached a foundation; then lifting the canoe forward eight inches or even a foot, dragging our feet from the ooze and taking another step.

Why the bateaumen were diverted by their flounderings, I cannot say; but they howled profanely at their plight, swearing loudly that somebody had hold of their feet, or that they had stepped on a dead cat, or that the mud was full of broken chairs and old bottles. They wrenched themselves along, cackling and guffawing; and from

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