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Page 14
How Simpson found his way alone by the lake and forest might well make a
story in itself, for to hear him tell it is to _know_ the passionate
loneliness of soul that a man can feel when the Wilderness holds him in
the hollow of its illimitable hand--and laughs. It is also to admire his
indomitable pluck.
He claims no skill, declaring that he followed the almost invisible
trail mechanically, and without thinking. And this, doubtless, is the
truth. He relied upon the guiding of the unconscious mind, which is
instinct. Perhaps, too, some sense of orientation, known to animals and
primitive men, may have helped as well, for through all that tangled
region he succeeded in reaching the exact spot where D�fago had hidden
the canoe nearly three days before with the remark, "Strike doo west
across the lake into the sun to find the camp."
There was not much sun left to guide him, but he used his compass to the
best of his ability, embarking in the frail craft for the last twelve
miles of his journey with a sensation of immense relief that the forest
was at last behind him. And, fortunately, the water was calm; he took
his line across the center of the lake instead of coasting round the
shores for another twenty miles. Fortunately, too, the other hunters
were back. The light of their fires furnished a steering point without
which he might have searched all night long for the actual position of
the camp.
It was close upon midnight all the same when his canoe grated on the
sandy cove, and Hank, Punk and his uncle, disturbed in their sleep by
his cries, ran quickly down and helped a very exhausted and broken
specimen of Scotch humanity over the rocks toward a dying fire.
VI
The sudden entrance of his prosaic uncle into this world of wizardry
and horror that had haunted him without interruption now for two days
and two nights, had the immediate effect of giving to the affair an
entirely new aspect. The sound of that crisp "Hulloa, my boy! And what's
up _now_?" and the grasp of that dry and vigorous hand introduced
another standard of judgment. A revulsion of feeling washed through him.
He realized that he had let himself "go" rather badly. He even felt
vaguely ashamed of himself. The native hard-headedness of his race
reclaimed him.
And this doubtless explains why he found it so hard to tell that group
round the fire--everything. He told enough, however, for the immediate
decision to be arrived at that a relief party must start at the earliest
possible moment, and that Simpson, in order to guide it capably, must
first have food and, above all, sleep. Dr. Cathcart observing the lad's
condition more shrewdly than his patient knew, gave him a very slight
injection of morphine. For six hours he slept like the dead.
From the description carefully written out afterwards by this student of
divinity, it appears that the account he gave to the astonished group
omitted sundry vital and important details. He declares that, with his
uncle's wholesome, matter-of-fact countenance staring him in the face,
he simply had not the courage to mention them. Thus, all the search
party gathered, it would seem, was that D�fago had suffered in the night
an acute and inexplicable attack of mania, had imagined himself "called"
by someone or something, and had plunged into the bush after it without
food or rifle, where he must die a horrible and lingering death by cold
and starvation unless he could be found and rescued in time. "In time,"
moreover, meant _at once_.
In the course of the following day, however--they were off by seven,
leaving Punk in charge with instructions to have food and fire always
ready--Simpson found it possible to tell his uncle a good deal more of
the story's true inwardness, without divining that it was drawn out of
him as a matter of fact by a very subtle form of cross examination. By
the time they reached the beginning of the trail, where the canoe was
laid up against the return journey, he had mentioned how D�fago spoke
vaguely of "something he called a 'Wendigo'"; how he cried in his sleep;
how he imagined an unusual scent about the camp; and had betrayed other
symptoms of mental excitement. He also admitted the bewildering effect
of "that extraordinary odor" upon himself, "pungent and acrid like the
odor of lions." And by the time they were within an easy hour of Fifty
Island Water he had let slip the further fact--a foolish avowal of his
own hysterical condition, as he felt afterwards--that he had heard the
vanished guide call "for help." He omitted the singular phrases used,
for he simply could not bring himself to repeat the preposterous
language. Also, while describing how the man's footsteps in the snow had
gradually assumed an exact miniature likeness of the animal's plunging
tracks, he left out the fact that they measured a _wholly_ incredible
distance. It seemed a question, nicely balanced between individual pride
and honesty, what he should reveal and what suppress. He mentioned the
fiery tinge in the snow, for instance, yet shrank from telling that body
and bed had been partly dragged out of the tent....
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