Drifting Home by Pierre Berton

Author:Pierre Berton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: D & M Publishers
Published: 2010-11-02T04:00:00+00:00

DAY SEVEN

This morning we are to face Five Finger Rapids. They lie just around the first bend in the river downstream from our camp and they have been the main subject of discussion during breakfast. My father scarcely mentioned them in his 1898 diary. “Shipped about three bucketsful of water in Five Fingers but none in Rink,” he wrote laconically. Like everybody else he kept to the right-hand channel.

In the old days the steamboats on the downstream run used to slip through this channel and over the ledge of rock in a few moments, but the struggle upriver, especially in low water, was a different matter. It took hours to winch the boat through, a tedious experience for the captain though a genuine adventure for the passengers. Sometimes, struggling against the ten-mile current, the boat scarcely seemed to be making any headway and we would spend the day out on the deck, with the boat caught in the racing waters and the rocks towering on either side.

For me, as a boy of five, the rapids were as wonderful an experience as the Chute the Chute. We catapulted through at locomotive speed, my father steering with the paddle and my mother clutching both her children grimly for fear we might topple into the foam. Then, as soon as we were into the calm, I asked my father if we could go back and do it again.

Now, as we drift past more seams of coal, the rapids come into view. Here the river is caught between two cliffs, its passage apparently barred by a wall of broken rock. Through this barrier, the water has torn five narrow channels or “fingers.” The rock itself is a conglomerate, composed of various small shales, forced together like bricks by the pressure of time. These four rocky pinnacles, jagged and misshapen, are rendered more grotesque by trees and shrubs that grow out in several directions. Between and around these flower pot islands, the water races savagely. We can see the foam and the spray and hear the river roaring as we approach. To the right, above the steamboat channel, is the remains of the old winching house, long in disuse.

“Whaddya say we take a chance on the fun channel on the left?” Skip suggests. “The water’s high enough and it’s not really all that dangerous.”

In the interests of adventure, we agree to ignore the safe channel and attempt the risky one.

“We’ll try it without motors,” Skip says. “Keep well closed up.”

Robert and Penny are with me in The Slush Box, both making pictures, Penny with the movie camera and Robert taking color stills for a magazine article. They take the stern seat, next to the motor, so they can photograph all of our boat and Skip’s boat ahead and then swivel around to show The Pig following behind.

We drift faster and faster towards the frothing channel that squeezes between the two pinnacles of rock on the left. A moment later we are into it, the boat bucking, the spray lashing our faces.

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