126 THE BEGUILING OF THE MOOSE BULL 



The huge ears keep nervously vibrating while another challenge 

 rings across the open arena. The fateful moment has arrived. 

 The son of the forest throws up his hand as the signal to fire. Twice 

 the yellow flame flashes from the rifle's mouth. Twice echoing 

 reports jar the awful stillness of the wilderness. While the sickening 

 odours of the discharge are yet hanging in the currentless atmosphere, 

 the black figure wheels and once more is blotted out of the zone 

 of light and merged into the shadows which border the little marsh. 

 There ensues a terrific breaking of dead limbs, a crashing of brittle 

 timber : after a few seconds a ponderous fall ; then silence. 



Not noisily thus would a moose disappear unless mortally hit. 

 If slightly wounded, steering his great antlers marvellously among 

 the densest evergreen thickets so as not to crack the tiniest twig, 

 he would have vanished with quiet mysterious celerity, and have 

 left no trace behind save the imprint of big triangular hoofs in the 

 sponge-like mosses. A dying moose, however, stumbles against 

 every obstacle in his pathway. ' Skin him to-morrow morning- 

 other side of little brook ' is the laconic remark of the redskin, 

 affecting, if he does not feel, all absence of excitement, suo more. 



Groping their way along a straggling forest trail the two men 

 reach the margin of one of those beautiful sheets of water which 

 in many portions of Canada occur with such astonishing frequency. 

 Supplementing the light of the moon by an extemporized torch, 

 made up of that seeming necessity of forest life in North America, 

 the resinous bark of the yellow birch, they seek for their upturned 

 canoe hidden away amid the dense greenery which edges the lake 

 shore. 



Launching their fairy-like little craft, they bend their weight 

 to the paddles until the water fairly ripples beneath the keel with 

 merry musical cadence. A northern diver, or ' loon', as the bird 

 is locally called, utters a startling cry, which resounds across the 

 still lake like the baying of some wolfish beast rather than the 

 note of a bird. Without other incident the shelving beach of 

 one of the little islets with which the lake is thickly studded is 

 reached, where a white tent nestles in the lee of a huddled grove 

 of fir trees. The dying embers oi a still smouldering camp fire are 

 quickly knocked together and fresh fuel is added. From a pothook 

 stretched from a bar supported on a couple of notched stakes, a 

 little tin kettle gives out the grateful fragrance of steaming tea. 

 A cup or two is quaffed, a pipe follows : then blissful sleep such 

 as is not to be had elsewhere than on a bed of ' sapin ' or fragrant 

 fir boughs amid the pine-scented forests of Canada, sweetened by 

 the successful issue of a more than usually protracted and doubtful 

 passage with a more than ordinary vigilant moose bull. 



