A VOYAGE IN THE DARK

A few days ago, a friend who is kind and patient enough to encumber himself with the care of a blind man and a boy took me and my twelve-year-old a-fishing. It was with a fresh realization of my deprivation that I passed along the watery way once as familiar as the dooryard path, but now shrouded for me in a gloom more impenetrable than the blackness of the darkest night. I could only guess at the bends and reaches as the south wind blew on one cheek or the other, or on my back, only knowing where the channel draws near the shore upon which the Indians encamped in the old days by the flutter of leaves overbearing the rustle of rushes. By the chuckle of ripples under the bow, I guessed when we were in mid-channel; by the entangled splash of an oar, when we approached the reedy border where the water-lilies rode at anchor, and discharged their subtle freight of perfume as they tossed in our wake. I knew by his clatter, drawing nearer only with our progress, that a kingfisher was perched on a channel-side fishing-stake, used in turn by him and bigger but not more skillful fishers. I heard his headlong plunge, but whether successful or not the ensuing clatter did not tell me, for he has but one voice for all expressions. Yet as his rattling cry was kept up till the rough edge of its harshness was worn away in receding flight, I fancied he was proclaiming an unusually successful achievement. For the sake of his reputation, he would never make such a fuss over a failure, unless he was telling, as we do, of the big fish he just missed catching. At any rate, I wished him good luck, for who would begrudge a poor kingfisher such little fish as he must catch! They would need years of growth to make them worth our catching or bragging over the loss of, and by that time we may be done with fishing.

Suddenly there was a roar of multitudinous wings as a host of redwings upburst from springing and swaying wild rice stalks, all of which I saw through the blackness illumined for an instant by memory,—the dusky cloud uprising like the smoke of an explosion, the bent rice springing up beneath its lifted burden, the dull-witted or greedy laggards dribbling upward to join the majority. My companions exclaimed in one voice at the rare sight of a white bird in the flock, and by the same light of memory I also saw it as I saw one in an autumn forty years ago, when, with my comrade of those days, I came "daown the crik" duck-shooting, or trolling as to-day. Again and again we saw this phenomenal bird like a white star twinkling through a murky cloud. The fitful gleam was seen day after day, till the north wind blew him and his cloud away southward.

The pother of the blackbirds overhead disturbed the meditations of a bittern, who, with an alarmed croak, jerked his ungainly form aloft in a flurry of awkward wing-beats, and went sagging across the marshes in search of safer seclusion. I wished that he might find it, and escape the ruthless gunners that will presently come to desolate these marshes. Very different from his uprising was that of a pair of wood ducks, revealing their unsuspected presence with startling suddenness, as they sprang from water to air with a splash and whistle of rapid wings and their squeaking alarm cry, and then flew swiftly away, the sibilant wing-beats pulsing out in the distance. These, too, I wished might safely run the gauntlet of all the guns that will be arrayed against them when the summer truce is broken. If I had not been mustered out, or if my boy were mustered in, no doubt I should feel differently toward the inhabitants of these marshes. Compulsory abstinence makes one exceedingly virtuous, and because I am virtuous there shall be no cakes and ale for any one.

The absence of the rail's cackle was noticeable, a clamor that used to be provoked at this season by every sudden noise. We never got sight of the "ma'sh chickens" as they skulked among the sedges; and when the birds were pressed to flight, rarely caught more than a fleeting glimpse as they topped the rushes for an instant, and dropped again into the mazes of the marsh. But they were always announcing a numerous if invisible presence where now not one answered to our voices or the noise of our oars.

All this while our trolling gear was in tow: the boy's a "phantom minnow" bristling with barbs, a veritable porcupine fish; mine a fluted spoon. The larger fish seemed attracted by the better imitation, or perhaps age and experience had given them discernment to shun the other more glaring sham, and the best of them went to the boy's score; but the unwise majority of smaller fish were evidently anxious to secure souvenir spoons of Little Otter, and in consequence of that desire I was "high hook" as to numbers. They were only pickerel at best, though some of them, bearing their spots on a green ground, are honored with the name of "maskalonge" by our fishermen. A scratch of the finger-nail across the scaly gill-cover gives proof enough to convince even a blind man of the worthlessness of this claim to distinction.

Once I enjoyed an exaltation of spirit only to suffer humiliation. There was a tug at the hooks, so heavy that my first thought was of a snag, and I was on the point of calling out to my friend to stop rowing. Then there was a slight yielding, and the tremor that tells unmistakably of a fish. "Now," said I, with my heart but a little way back of my teeth, "I am fast to something like a fish, but I shall never be able to boat him. He is too big to lift out with the hooks, and I can't see to get him by the gills, and so I shall lose him." As he came in slowly, stubbornly fighting against every shortening inch of line, I almost wished he had not been hooked at all only to be lost at last. When, after a time, my fish was hauled near the boat and in sight of my companions, my catch proved to be no monster, but a pickerel of very ordinary size hooked by the belly, and so my hopes and fears vanished together.

I think distances are magnified to the blind, for it seemed twice as far as it did of old from the East Slang to the South Slang, as we passed these oddly named tributaries of Little Otter.

At last I sniffed the fragrance of cedars and heard the wash of waves on the southward-slanted shore of Garden Island, and these informed me we were at the lake. In confirmation thereof was the testimony of my companions, given out of their light to my darkness, of an eagle's royal progress through his ethereal realm, making inspection of his disputed earthly possession. I was glad to know that his majesty had escaped the republican regicides who haunt the summer shores.

We made a difficult landing on the mainland, on the oozy shore of mixed sawdust and mud, and followed the old trail to the old camping ground under the rocks, a place full of pleasant memories for the elder two of our trio, and offering to the boy the charms of freshness and discovery. For him the cliff towered skyward but little below the eagle's flight; its tiny caves were unexplored mysteries, their coral-beaded curtains of Canada yew and delicate netting of mountain-fringe strange foreign growths. Through his undimmed eyes I had glimpses of those happy shores whereon the sun always shines and no cloud arises beyond. What a little way behind they seem in the voyage that has grown wearisome, and yet we can never revisit them for a day nor for an hour, and it is like a dream that we ever dwelt there.

Bearing with us from this port something not marketable nor even visible, yet worth carrying home, we reËmbarked, and the wind, blowing in my face, informed me we were homeward bound. One after another, we passed five boats of fishing parties tied up at as many stakes, the crews pursuing their pastime with steadfast patience, as their intent silence proclaimed. To me they were as ships passed in the night. I had no other knowledge of them than this, except that my friend told me there was a fat woman in each boat, and that one of them boasted to us, with motherly pride, of a big pickerel caught by her little girl.

A blended hum of bumblebees droned in among us, and my companions remarked that one of the aerial voyagers had boarded our craft, while I maintained there were two, which proved to be the fact; whereupon I argued that my ears were better than their eyes, but failed to convince them or even myself. I welcomed the bees as old acquaintances, who, in the duck-shooting of past years, always used to come aboard and bear us company for awhile, rarely alighting, but tacking from stem to stern on a cruise of inspection, till at last, satisfied or disappointed, they went booming out of sight and hearing over marshfuls of blue spikes of pickerel weed and white trinities of arrowhead. I cannot imagine why bees should be attracted to the barrenness of a boat, unless by a curiosity to explore such strange floating islands, though their dry wood promises neither leaf nor bloom.

I hear of people every year who forsake leafage and bloom to search the frozen desolation of the polar north for the Lord knows what, and I cease to wonder at the bees, when men so waste the summers that are given them to enjoy if they will but bide in them.

We passed many new houses of the muskrats, who are building close to the channel this year in prophecy of continued low water. But muskrats are not infallible prophets, and sometimes suffer therefor in starvation or drowning. The labor of the night-workers was suspended in the glare of the August afternoon, and their houses were as silent as if deserted, though we doubted not there were happy households inside them, untroubled by dreams of famine or deluge, or possibly of the unmercifulness of man, though that seems an abiding terror with our lesser brethren. Winter before last the marshes were frozen to the bottom, blockading the muskrats in their houses, where entire families perished miserably after being starved to cannibalism. Some dug out through the house roofs, and wandered far across the desolate wintry fields in search of food. Yet nature, indifferent to all fates, has so fostered them since that direful season that the marshy shores are populous again with sedge-thatched houses.

As we neared our home port we met two trollers, one of whom lifted up for envious inspection a lusty pickerel. "He's as big as your leg," my friend replied to my inquiry concerning its dimensions, and in aid of my further inquisitiveness asked the lucky captor how much the fish would weigh. "Wal, I guess he ought to weigh abaout seven pounds," was answered, after careful consideration. We learned afterwards that its actual weight was nine pounds, and I set that man down as a very honest angler.

Presently our boat ran her nose into the familiar mire of well-named Mud Landing, and we exchanged oars for legs, which we plied with right good will, for a thunderstorm was beginning to bellow behind us.