Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy, 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JANUARY 27 , 1912 . 
VOL. LXXVIII.—No. 4. 
No. 127 Franklin St., New York. 
Mulligan 
M any woodsmen believe that waves, like 
misfortunes, travel in threes, and that, 
after the third big wave, a canoe can be 
turned with comparative safety. 
When Mulligan and his partner. Jack, saw that 
they could not buck the big curlers that rolled 
down upon them through the long stretch ahead, 
they decided to turn after the third wave. 
They had entered the heavy sea before realiz¬ 
ing how strong the wind was. 
On the other side of the point, 
200 yards behind them, it had 
been comparatively quiet. It was 
not until they were well out in 
the “big stretch” that they saw 
the difficult work and thorough 
wetting that confronted them. 
Both were good canoemen, 
having been born and raised in 
the woods of Northern Min¬ 
nesota, where men become skilled 
in the use of the paddle as a 
Western man becomes an adept 
in the saddle. They had no fear, 
although neither had ever bucked 
such rollers as those tossing 
them there at the beginning of 
the big lake. The wind was hard 
and gusty, and they were in the 
apex of a V-shaped body of 
water. This compressed the 
movement of the big waves and 
made them larger, closer together 
and more difficult to navigate in 
the fifteen-foot river-model canoe 
that the Government furnished 
its forest rangers. 
The wind was cold and the 
water icy. The day had begun 
with snow squalls. Two weeks 
before, big, long-armed Knife 
Lake had been covered with ice, 
and even then, on a clear night, 
edges of shallow bays were coated with a thin 
layer. The season had been unusual. Not for 
fifty years had the ice gone out so early. Ordi- 
• narily it is not possible to canoe before the first 
of May in that country. This year the season 
had been a month earlier. 
For 200 yards they bucked the rollers. A sud¬ 
den gust piled the water higher, and Mulligan, 
in the bow, was drenched as the canoe dived 
from the top of a roller and plunged into the 
next, burying its nose before it began to rise to 
the crest. Jack, in the stern, noticed that his 
knees, on the floor of the canoe, were far above 
By ROBERT E. PINKERTON 
Mulligan’s head as they made the plunge, and 
that, as they ascended the next wave. Mulli¬ 
gan’s feet were higher than his. Jack’s, head. 
But he thought of this only as a plunging half¬ 
back, in the last tense moments of a losing game, 
might think of a new patch on the jacket of an 
opponent as they swirl and grind and go down, 
for when they rose to the crest of the second 
wave there was another plunge, a little harder. 
a little steeper, and a little wetter for Mulligan, 
and a canoe, as it balances a wave crest, seems 
possessed of an untrained colt’s desire to wheel 
suddenly and bolt. 
As they crested the second giant roller the 
gust which had piled the water higher subsided 
as suddenly as it had come, and Jack shouted to 
Mulligan that they would turn after the third 
wave. Down plunged the canoe to meet and 
rise with the roller. As it started up with the 
quick, bouncing, see-saw motion a canoe has 
when heading into the wind. Jack pointed it 
off slightly to the left. Once on top the canoe. 
of its own accord, swung further, and they drop¬ 
ped into the next hollow at an angle of forty- 
five degrees to the trough. Just at the moment 
of topping the crest. Jack gave a mighty pull to 
his paddle, starting the stroke far out and end¬ 
ing it close in to the stern. Mulligan, when Jack 
began to swing the canoe, also had started his 
stroke far out and ahead and pulled toward the 
canoe, although, as the craft balanced before be¬ 
ginning the slide downward, he 
was forced to reach far down to 
get a foot of his paddle blade 
into the water. By the time the 
canoe had reached the bottom of 
the trough, each had taken two 
more similar strokes, and the 
canoe was riding broadside to 
the waves. 
Had the wind remained steady, 
the fourth wave would have 
rolled harmlessly under them. 
But the gust, which had in¬ 
creased the first three waves, was 
followed almost immediately by 
another which curled the top of 
the fourth roller. Both Mulligan 
and Jack saw it as they climbed 
the wave toward the tumbling 
crest. Their strokes were quick, 
sharp and powerful. Another 
swing and the stern would quar¬ 
ter into the wave, and nothing 
more serious would happen than 
a hissing, snapping curl of water 
along the windward gunwale 
that would deposit a pail of 
water in the canoe. 
But the second gust of wind 
was stronger than the first, the 
fourth wave larger than the pre¬ 
ceding three. The canoe was 
hardly quartered away from the 
roller, which struck the stern, 
piled up over the short decking, curled along the 
gunwale and left so much water in the heavily 
loaded little craft that, as the canoe slid down 
on the other side, the gunwales were a bare 
inch above water. 
Both men paddled desperately, but water, men 
and outfit, there was 1,500 pounds in the canoe. 
It lay like a log, dropped broadside into the 
trough, and despite the efforts of the paddlers, 
rose in that position to the crest of the fifth 
wave. Jack, from his vantage point in the stern, 
saw the hopelessness of the situation. 
“The next one’ll put us over. Mull,” he 
BY WAY OF DIVERSION. 
Photograph by C. E. Noxon. 
