With Gun ft? Rod in Canada 



we had to go. In the dayHght we could see the breaking 

 rocks and reef, and were able to navigate out into the big 

 water. Then we had a peculiar accident. The heavy 

 pounding of the bow of the boat as she came down off 

 the waves actually drove the gas tank, which still con- 

 tained twelve gallons of gas, down through the frame- 

 work by which it was supported. This broke the connect- 

 ing pipe leading to the deck-plate short off at the tank, 

 and the gasolene began to spurt from the bow of the boat 

 like an intermittent fountain. We carried a hundred 

 feet of strong three-quarter-inch anchor rope and a 

 heavy mushroom anchor. In another minute we were 

 swinging jauntily over the big seas, firmly fast to the 

 bottom of the lake. It took us hardly ten minutes to 

 rebrace the tank, plug the hole, and make a resolution 

 about the proper way to install gasolene tanks. 



We made home safely, and found the Missus down to 

 her last stick of wood, with her bed moved into the kitchen 

 and the dog and the cat doing all the worrying. When 

 I asked her if she were frightened or lonesome, she said: 

 *' Why, no ! Did you get a moose ?" And seemed much 

 disappointed that we had met with only a wild-cat, a 

 pair of bleached moose horns, and wet hides ! After 

 our various versions of the experiences were related, she 

 told us that the wind squalls had been so fierce that they 

 had blown the ashes and coals out of the fireplace into 

 the room, and she had found it necessary to put out the 

 fire with buckets of water. She " holed in " out in 

 the kitchen with its conventional and better behaved 

 range. 



In sizing up her experiences and ours, I do not know 

 but what it was perhaps more of an adventure for a city- 

 bred woman to stay all alone in a log cabin, twelve miles 

 from a settlement, during a veritable tornado, with the 

 wood-pile getting low and the cold more intense, and not 



226 



