“I’ll catch one of these rascals,” said Harry, as he saw them jump unceremoniously into and out of the pemmican-bag.
Going down to the boat, Harry hid himself under the tarpaulin, leaving a hole open near to the mouth of the bag. He had not remained more than a few minutes in this concealment when one of the birds flew down, and alighted on the edge of the boat. After a glance round to see that all was right, it jumped into the bag. A moment after, Harry, darting his hand through the aperture, grasped him round the neck and secured him. Poor whisky-john screamed and pecked ferociously, while Harry brought him in triumph to his friend; but so unremittingly did the bird scream that its captor was fain at last to let him off, the more especially as the cook came up at the moment and announced that breakfast was ready.
Two days after the events of the last chapter, the brigade was making one of the traverses which have already been noticed as of frequent occurrence in the great lakes. The morning was calm and sultry. A deep stillness pervaded Nature, which tended to produce a corresponding quiescence in the mind, and to fill it with those indescribably solemn feelings that frequently arise before a thunderstorm. Dark, lurid clouds hung overhead in gigantic masses, piled above each other like the battlements of a dark fortress, from whose ragged embrasures the artillery of heaven was about to play.
“Shall we get over in time, Louis?” asked Mr. Park, as he turned to the guide, who sat holding the tiller with a firm grasp; while the men, aware of the necessity of reaching shelter ere the storm burst upon them, were bending to the oars with steady and sustained energy.
“Perhaps,” replied Louis, laconically.—“Pull, lads, pull! else you’ll have to sleep in wet skins to-night.”
A low growl of distant thunder followed the guide’s words, and the men pulled with additional energy; while the slow measured hiss of the water, and clank of oars, as they cut swiftly through the lake’s clear surface, alone interrupted the dead silence that ensued.
Charley and his friend conversed in low whispers; for there is a strange power in a thunder-storm, whether raging or about to break, that overawes the heart of man,—as if Nature’s God were nearer then than at other times; as if He—whose voice, indeed, if listened to, speaks even in the slightest evolution of natural phenomena—were about to tread the visible earth with more than usual majesty, in the vivid glare of the lightning flash, and in the awful crash of thunder.