101 Northern search 



and push hard against the stiff current toward shore. As usual, a 

 crowd of Indians was lined up on the pebbly beach, and after a 

 miss or two I reached them with an end of rope. Quite a pull 

 was required, but they stuck at it and soon we were heaved in 

 along the shore and safely tied up. Corporal Kirk, a stocky, quiet 

 chap, was on hand and, after greeting us, he remarked somewhat 

 casually that it was a lucky thing for us the river had been high. 

 "If it had been a foot or so lower, I guess you'd have hit those 

 stakes out there/' he said. Stakes? It seemed that there were 

 several rows of wooden stakes in the river where we had landed. 

 The Indians used them when setting their nets to catch fish. A 

 little less water and they'd have caught us! Bob grinned, wiping 

 the palm of his hand across his face in a characteristic gesture, 

 which seemed to say, "They might have caught us, but they 

 didn't!" 



With Kirk and the local shaman we walked into the village, 

 and, over a cup of tea with the constable, discussed the area we 

 had just flown over. As we were making ready to leave, a young 

 Loucheux girl shyly approached Kirk and, after some words we 

 didn't understand, handed him a small envelope. With a broad 

 smile he turned it over to us, a love letter destined for Aklavik 

 so far, far away for this dark-skinned maiden and her swain, but 

 a mere hop, skip, and a jump for us and our magic carpet. For 

 we would be back at Mrs. McNeice's table in time for supper! Or 

 so we hoped. 



We got off in something of a hurry, for it was obvious that the 

 mist in the mountains was turning to rain. And if we ran into 

 rain on our way back through those passes it might be a bit un- 

 comfortable. We were a good eight or ten minutes off the water 

 and deep in the narrow canyons of the Bell when the first rain 

 caught us. As it streaked suddenly across the Plexiglas of the wind- 

 shield we looked up and saw a black mass of wind-swept clouds 

 directly above us. Below us was the twisting course of the river, 

 roaring swiftly downgrade, and on each side, hemming us in, rose 

 the steep, inflexible walls of the canyon. In another moment the 

 full force of the gale struck us, bouncing us around like a ping- 

 pong ball and cutting visibility to zero. Immediately, Bob did the 



