“Lots of time. You collect firewood while I get the tent ready. Then it’ll need us both to set it up.”
We worked busily, happily. Ah! The joyous elation of the first night in camp! Is there anything like it? With days and days ahead, and not even one counted off the shining number! All the good things of childhood and maturity seem pressed into one mood of flawless, abounding happiness.
By dark the tent was up, the baggage stowed, the canoe secured, the fire glowing in a bed of embers, and we sat beside it, looking out past the glooms of the hemlocks across the moonlit river,—sat and ate city-cooked chicken and sandwiches and drank thermos-bottled tea.
“To-morrow we’ll cook,” I said. “To-night it’s rather nice not to have to. Look at the moonlight on that rock! How black it makes the eddy below!”
“Good bass under there,” said Jonathan. “We’ll get some to-morrow.”
“Well, of course, it’s always maybe, with bass. Well—I’m done—and it’s quarter to ten—late! Oh! Excuse me! Maybe you’d rather I hadn’t told you. By the way, do I wind my watch to-night or not?”
“Not it is, then. Sure you wouldn’t rather have it wound, though? We can leave it hanging in the tent. It won’t break loose and bite you.”
“Yes, it would. There would be a something—a taint—”
We slept with the murmur of the river running through our dreams,—a murmur of many voices: deep voices, high voices, grumbling voices as the stones go grinding and rolling along the ever-changing bottom,—and only half roused when the dawn chorus of the birds filled the air. That dawn chorus was something we should have been loath to miss. Through the first gray of the morning there comes a stir in the woods, an expectant tremor; a bird peeps softly and is still; then another, and another, “softly conferring together.” As the light grows warmer, comes a clearer note from some leader, then a full, complete song; another, and the woods are awake, flinging out their wonderful song-greeting to the morning. There is in it a prodigality of swift-changing beauty like ocean surf: a continuous and intricate interweaving of rhythms, pulses and ebbings of clear tone, beautiful phrases rising antiphonal, showerings of bright notes, moments of subsidence, almost of pause. As the light grows and sharpens, the music reaches a crescendo of exuberance, and at last dies down as real day comes, bringing with it the day’s work. On our island the leader of the chorus was almost always a song sparrow, though once or twice a wood thrush came over from the shore woods and filled the hemlock shadows with the limpid splendors of his song.