FOREST AND STREAM 
below just in time to grab his collar and pull 
him back on board. Sam and John, shivering 
with cold and excitement, were rapidly disrob¬ 
ing, the drizzle beating against their backs and 
numbing them so they would have sunk before 
swimrn.ng a dozen strokes. 
“Undress,” they shouted. “Undress. You 
can’t swim in those thick clothes.” 
“Can’t swim without them, either,” I told him, 
and I then went below and finished making a life 
preserver out of the two-gallon demijohn which 
had been full of drinking water. Earnest was as 
cool mentally as the two deck house nudities were 
bodily. 
“Can’t swim?” he said, when he found I didn’t 
know how. “Well, never mind. I can, and will 
help you. There will be some wreckage we will 
get hold of. There is a good chance we can make 
the island. It isn’t over a quarter of a mile away. 
Better remove your top clothes like I have mine, 
hadn’t you?” 
I told him not to bother with me. “You will 
have enough work having yourself. Besides, if 
that demijohn is tied under my arms, it will 
float me.” 
When going after a fishing line to double and 
cut into proper lengths to tie my novel life pre¬ 
server in place, a new idea suggested itself. Why 
hadn’t the iaunch filled? There had been plenty 
of time. Its stern was several feet lower than 
the bows. If her bottom had been stove in, the 
after-part of the cabin should be full of water. 
It wasn’t. It was perfectly dry. To see if the 
boat was leaking at all, some loose boards in the 
floor must be removed and access had to the 
shaft chamber. Piled over these boards was 
wreckage of ali kinds. Pickled sardines, shrimps, 
live worms, bait enough for a fishing smack off 
for a two weeks’ cruise; cake, pies, oranges, ap¬ 
ples, grapes, sandwiches, coats, collars, shoes, 
hats, lines, hooks, cushions with the red, white 
and blue poker chips mixed in like plums in a 
pudding, and several decks of cards scattered 
about to add variety to the jumble. 
Hurriedly throwing the litter forward, the floor 
was nearly cleared so examination could be made, 
when Sam peered over the edge of the deck 
house and looked down the companionway. As 
soon as he saw what was going on, with a shout 
he called, “Hey, leave those blue chips alone; 
some of them are mine.” Then, complaining to 
his companion in bareness, “John, John, the old 
man is swiping all the poker chips; ’tain’t fair.” 
And so it went on record and was published in 
the papers that “When the launch was sinking all 
Martin thought of was the poker chips.” 
At last things were moved so it was possible 
to raise the boards. There was not a gallon of 
water in the shaft chamber. 
The navigator sat humped up on a box for¬ 
ward, gnawing at the ends of his mustache, clasp¬ 
ing and unclasping his hands, nervous and fright¬ 
ened. 
“Give her a turn back and see if she will float 
free,” the writer called to him. 
“No, she will sink,” he replied. 
“She will sink,” echoed John. 
“She will sink,” chattered See. 
Then Earnest took a hand. “Say, you muskrat 
of a man,” he called to the humped-up pilot. 
“You reverse that engine and start it. Can’t you 
see the way the tide is coming in there will only 
be a few minutes before she is afloat? And if we 
sink, we'll all go together. Now start her, quickly, 
too.” 
A single turn of the propeller and the launch 
was afloat. The rock, sloping and covered with 
a mass of sea weed, had scraped a very little 
paint from the boat’s bottom and done no other 
damage. How it would have resulted had the 
card game been forward with eight hundred 
pounds of players weighing the bows down, in¬ 
stead of raising them almost clear of water, is an¬ 
other question. 
Slowly the men dressed, but a damper had been 
put on their ardor and by a vote of four to one 
the launch was headed on its homeward way. 
“Why wouldn’t you undress like the rest of 
us?” Sam asked the writer, just before the home 
dock was reached. 
“Well,” 'he was answered, “you see the angels 
—of the island of course—and I are strangers. 
If I had to go among them wouldn’t it be more 
respectable to have some clothes on, even if only 
an old fishing suit, rather than to appear as you, 
dressed in a bleeding skin and a money belt?” 
This ended our salt water fishing trip, for it 
was many a day before some of the party would 
go after anything but trout, and then only in 
a knee-deep stream. 
MOOSE AND MUSCALONGE—A NEW 
COUNTRY. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
No matter what the odds against any single 
event may be, those against a double event com¬ 
ing off are, of course, considerably longer. Lots 
of men know where to find a moose, and many 
know where to fish for (I say fish for advisedly) 
muscalonge, but it is fairly certain that few in¬ 
deed know where the two may be found cheek 
by jowl, as the sailor says. For many years I 
have looked upon the muscalonge of the average 
guide book with the gravest suspicion as, ac¬ 
cording to my experience, at close quarters, he 
generally resolves himself into our old homely 
friend, the pike. And let me add, I am not cast¬ 
ing any asperations on Esox, for taken in cold 
northern waters he is good on the hook and ex¬ 
cellent on the platter-—only he is not muscalonge. 
A trustworthy map of New Ontario—they are 
somewhat hard to find—will show that the Eng¬ 
lish River heads in a wilderness which is half 
water; thousands of lakes and lakelets discharge 
their surplusage into the stream, which finally 
becomes the Winnipeg. and debouches into the 
lake of the same name at Fort Alexander, a 
Hudson’s Bay post renowned in song and story, 
especially fish stories. Hitherto the Winnipeg 
has been -hard to get at, and has been left se¬ 
verely alone by all except the Indian and the 
H. B. C. man or a very occasional prospector or 
trapper, but now the main line of the Grand 
Trunk Pacific taps it at Minaki, and the men 
of the rod have begun to take toll of its mus¬ 
calonge, for here this truly noble fish is found 
in the abundance our forefathers and foremoth¬ 
ers have left on record as existing in their time 
and in the old days before them, in the St. Law¬ 
rence. And, heaven help us, we thought they 
were lying. Now we know they spake but the 
truth, nay, even less than the truth, if we may 
believe our own experience in this primeval land. 
145 
There is on view here in Winnipeg, at the 
Hingston Smith store, (to wit, a muscalonge 
weighing, so the legend runneth, 39% pounds, 
taken at Minaki, by Dr. Glasgow, of this city. 
The size and depth of this great fish are amaz¬ 
ing, but much more amazing is the fact that 
there should be one of our craft, who could re¬ 
sist and has resisted the awful temptation to 
add those extra eight ounces which would have 
turned muscalongi into a forty-pounder. I trust 
strength would have been granted me to do 
likewise, yet I would not care to be so sorely 
tempted too often, for the flesh is weak and it 
would have been so easy to get away with the 
goods. 
All those who have been to the Winnipeg 
agree that muscalonge are abundant, that pike 
and pike-perch abound, that duck haunt all the 
wild-rice ponds, and that moose and caribou may 
be seen daily, especially at this season when they 
seek the waterways. 
This region is brand-new, for until a few 
weeks ago hardly anyone had been there; now all 
kinds of hunting lodges are planned, yet so vast 
is the wilderness that it must be many long 
years ere this virgin country ceases to sing its 
siren song into the ear of the fisherman and 
the hunter. 
Winnipeg, Manitoba. C- A. B. 
HUNTING KIOTES. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I have just read the article entitled “Hunting 
Kiotes,” by Arthur Tupper, in your paper of 
July 18th, and have been intensely interested. 
I would very much like to ask Mr. Tupper some 
questions about the marvelous dogs he hunts 
with and would like to buy some if he can tell 
me where they are to be got. 
I am struck with the fact, firstly, that they start 
after a jack rabbit with a sharp yelp and then 
instantly quit running at the word of command. 
How are these dogs broken? 
Then a coyote jumps up 300 yards from the 
nearest dog. They ride so fast for an unspeci¬ 
fied time that tears stream from the rider’s eyes 
and the cow ponies are so tired that they sub¬ 
side into a lope say three or four miles, finally 
the hounds having! lost a 100 yards on the 
“Kiote,” the cute little animal hides. Mind you, 
these dogs have kept the coyote in sight all this 
time between 300 and 400 yards behind, over a 
hilly country covered with sage brush, cactus 
and soap weed. I would certainly like to own 
some dogs with eyesight like this. 
Finally the dogs are trailed in one day about 
100 miles, besides running and killing three 
coyotes (last paragraph). 
Wonderful dogs; what breed are they? Not 
greyhounds or Russian wolfhounds or even 
Scotch deerhounds. I know they could not do it. 
The “kiote” killed is also remarkable, as he kills 
one dog with one slash, and this a Colorado 
coyote, too, a species that till I read this article 
I thought I was fairly well acquainted with. 
Well, we live and learn, but being a Canadian 
and thus next door to an Englishman, an un¬ 
holy suspicion has entered my mind that per¬ 
haps the whole article is humorous. Is it? 
ARTHUR DRUMMOND. 
