Canoeing with the Cree by Eric Sevareid

Author:Eric Sevareid
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-0-87351-798-0
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
Published: 2010-12-21T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER IX

HUMILIATION OF THE “SANS SOUCI”

Had Walt not agreed to take Betty’s dare of a freezing midnight plunge, the Minneapolis-to-Hudson Bay expedition would have been but a pile of wreckage, washed up on the rocks next morning. This was another indication of something we came to realize many times before we reached home, that the God who guides the footsteps of errant fools most certainly was riding on the weathered prow of the Sans Souci.

Very early in the morning, so we would not have to go through a long painful period of saying good-by to our new but close friends, we set out. We paddled to the outer fringe of the countless small rocky islands that cluster in Berens Bay and there stopped for a few hours of much needed sleep. Curling up in our ponchos on a smooth ledge of rock, we soon drifted away to slumber.

I awoke around noon, sitting up suddenly, as a sleeper startled from a nightmare. I felt unusually depressed. My mind seemed to be vainly groping for something which had stood out clearly in my sleep. All that remained now was a clutching feeling of fear—fear of something.

I did not awaken Walt, but pulled on my boots and stumbled up a rocky incline to the island’s summit, where I could look out on the lake. During our rest, the north wind had blown stronger, until now it whipped with chilling force through the shrubby trees. Foam-tipped billows curled with resounding crashes on the rocks at my feet. Snipes and sea gulls screamed as they circled and dipped over my head.

Something was speaking strongly in my brain, “You can’t do it, don’t try. You’ve licked Winnipeg so far. Don’t wreck everything on a gamble now, when you haven’t a chance.”

Some would call it a “hunch.” Whatever it was, it was too strong for me. I stared out over the pitching water for a long time. Another day of wind. It was impossible to get out of the bay, around the long Sandy Point, which stretched another mile to the northwest. Even if we did get out, we could not buck against the five-foot billows. We could ride with them as we had done all the way up the lake, but trying to paddle against them would have only one result and we knew it.

Now I remembered the warning of the grizzled tug commander in Manigotogan Bay, “The north winds are about due to start and then you won’t get a foot further up the lake in that shell.” We had had three days of north winds now, without let-up.

We could not afford to lay up on shore for days at a time. The seaplane pilot at Berens River had informed us with a sympathetic grin that it had snowed heavily on him once in York Factory the first week in September. Freeze-up was due very soon, and to be caught in the wilderness between Norway House and Hudson Bay would mean only one thing—with our summer clothes and outfit we would never get out.

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