With Gun ^ Rod in Canada 



on the final spurt for a big set of horns. The Missus 

 was unfortunately enrhumee, and as this seemed to 

 stimulate her mind towards making fine mince-meat 

 and other delicacies that do not ordinarily go with a 

 moose-hunting cruise, we were very solicitous about her 

 keeping indoors and curing the cold while increasing the 

 larder. It was our intention to start from now on early 

 each morning, and after navigating as far as we could 

 up some one of the streams in the motor-boat, to 

 take the canoe and go to other connecting lakes, hunt, 

 and return to the main camp each night. Therefore, 

 we had no compunction about leaving the Missus 

 alone. 



So this seventh morning we left with a hearty lunch for 

 three men and no blankets. The wind was blowing from 

 the north-east. At the peep o' day we nosed our way 

 out of Lowe's Lake into the big lop of Rossignol. We 

 had a fair wind, and were not aware that it was getting 

 really rough until we approached the mouth of the Shel- 

 burne River, six miles from home. To make the entrance, 

 one has to pass between two boulders hardly twenty-five 

 feet apart, and fifty feet beyond this, right in the centre 

 of the channel, is another chunk of granite barely awash, 

 that even in calm weather has to be circumnavigated 

 with a quick twist of the tiller. The heavy current 

 coming out of the Shelburne River, meeting a dirty sea 

 kicked up by a rising north-east gale, made a smother of 

 foam and a cross, choppy sea. The swells were breaking 

 clear over the port and starboard rocks that mark the 

 channel. I did not realize what was ahead of us until 

 within two hundred yards of the place. I abandoned 

 the wheel for the quickly shipped tiller, stood up, and 

 prepared to " put her over the jumps." Any navigator 

 of a small boat knows how unmanageable a craft feels 

 when caught just right on the crest of a following wave 



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