The Desperate Journey (9 page)

“Are
you
all right, man?” the captain asked sharply.

“It is nothing. Perhaps I am rather tired. There have been so many sick people to look after. If – if I should be taken ill,” the doctor stammered, “there is a young man among the Highlanders, one of their leaders, Archibald McDonald, who has been apprenticed to a doctor though he is not yet one. He has been helping me – helping me –” the doctor faltered, then he spun round and crashed in a heap.

That night Dr LaSerre was in a high fever, muttering and delirious. As the ship passed into Hudson’s Bay, he died. Five other emigrants died too. Archibald McDonald found he had thirty typhus patients on his hands! Fear spread among the emigrants: every man eyed his neighbour for the suspicious signs of the dreaded disease. Kate Murray watched her children anxiously.

“Pray God we have not brought our bairns on this terrible journey, to die of a fever before we have reached our promised land,” she said to her husband.

“Keep a good heart, Kate. Davie and Kirsty have lived on deck more than any other children in the ship. Mr Finlay says the fever cannot live in the open air. We will keep ourselves to ourselves as much as we
can.” Kate Murray looked thoughtful as her husband said this.

Archibald McDonald turned one cabin into a sick bay and there he sent everyone who showed any sign of the fever. He called for volunteers among the women to help to nurse the sick. Kate was torn between care for her own children and a feeling that she
must
help with the sick and dying. At last she told her husband, “James, I know we said we would keep ourselves apart, but if I do not do my duty and help with the sick, it will be on my conscience for the rest of my days.”

“What if you bring the disease to our children?” James asked.

“I have thought about that. Those who are helping with the sick are keeping apart from the rest. I shall not come near you till we land at York Factory. It will be hard, but better so. No, do not look at me so doubtfully. There are children that need nursing, James. Suppose they were our own?”

“But you, Kate? What about you?” James looked troubled.

“With God’s grace I shall hope to be spared. Mr McDonald must have helpers.”

“Could he no’ find helpers among the families with sick people?” Davie asked, when he heard what his mother meant to do.

“Davie, this colony that we are going to make in this new land –” his mother looked at him very earnestly. “– It can only live and grow if we all help each other. If we fail each other now we shall never stand shoulder to shoulder when we are threatened by even greater dangers. That is why I must do what I can.”

Davie nodded. “Yes, I understand that, Mother.”

“Because I do not wish to risk giving you the fever, I shall keep apart from you all and live in the nurses’ quarters.”

“Oh, Mother!” Kirsty looked dismayed.

“Keep a good heart, Kirsty, and look after your father and brother for me. It may not be for long.”

“Your wife is a brave woman, James Murray,” Finlay said when he heard what Kate had done. “It takes courage above the ordinary to tackle a thing like that. You and your family are the right stuff to make
good settlers. If I can help you to look after your children, man, I will.”

A day later they reached the floating ice field. There was only one channel through it, and as the ship took it, the ice closed round her, hemming her in. Kirsty looked fearfully at the dazzling whiteness round them.

“Will the ship be held tight for ever, Davie?”

“No, I do not think so. There is already a warmer wind blowing from the south,” Mr Finlay answered for Davie. “It will open up the cracks in the ice yet, and the captain says with his spyglass he can see a stretch of wide water beyond. As soon as the channel opens the sailors will warp the ship along with ropes to the end of it.”

“That’ll be a grand sight!” Davie exclaimed.

“Aye, lad, but before then, if I’m not mistaken, we’ll have some other kind of sport.” Mr Finlay had been looking through his spyglass. He handed it to Davie. “What do you make those out to be?”

Davie was very proud to have the loan of the spyglass. “Bears!” he cried. “Are they bears?”

“Aye, they’re bears, three of them. How would you like to go hunting, Davie?”

Davie’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, do you mean it, Mr Finlay?”

“I’m going to ask Captain Turner if he can spare me a boat and a couple of men to row and I’ll take my musket. Would you like to come too?”

“Oh, yes!” Davie replied eagerly.

James Murray was no less keen. “If – if you needed someone to row, Mr Finlay, I know how to handle a boat,” then he said in a disappointed voice, “Oh, but there’s Kirsty! I’d better stay with her now her mother –”

“Oh, but I overheard Kirsty telling Davie she wanted to learn how to handle a gun too,” Robert Finlay’s blue eyes twinkled. “Maybe we should let Kirsty come along in the boat with us?”

“Oh, please, Mr Finlay.” Kirsty went pink with eagerness.

“Right! Then go put on all the warm clothes you’ve got while I
make matters right with the captain, and see if he’ll loan me Mr Cotterell, the first mate, and Tom Peterson to go along with us.”

The captain was quite willing to allow a boat to be launched. Davie and Kirsty climbed down the rope ladder while Tom Peterson and Mr Cotterell held the boat steady. She and Davie huddled together in the stem of the boat while the four men each took an oar. A number of people watched them from the ship’s side.

The men pulled the boat well up the channel. “We must get up beyond the bears so that the wind does not carry our scent to them,” Robert Finlay explained.

As they drew nearer they saw the group of bears comprised a she-bear and two cubs. The cubs were frolicking about on the ice, pretending to fight each other, while the mother-bear gave each of them a gentle cuff with her paw when they got too rough.

The boat pulled in to the ice bank and Mr Finlay stepped on to it with his musket, followed by Mr Cotterell and James Murray. Mr Finlay gave Kirsty a helping hand on to the ice. Tom Peterson stayed behind in the boat so that it should not drift away and leave them marooned.

“Move very quietly and softly, a few steps at a time. Stop when you see me stop and freeze in your tracks at once,” Finlay warned the party.

“Just what we’re likely to do!” Davie could not help saying in a low turn to Kirsty, who giggled, then covered her mouth with her hand guiltily. Robert Finlay overheard what Davie had said and he glanced round with a frown. “Davie, you must
not
speak again if you are going with this hunting party, not even to make a joke. Silence and obedience are absolutely necessary to a hunter. I must get near enough to the bears to make a clean kill.”

Davie hung his head ashamed.

They approached the bear a few steps at a time until they got within easy gunshot of them, so engrossed with their play were the young cubs and their mother with watching them. Mr Finlay waved the party to draw nearer yet.

Suddenly the mother-bear looked about her uneasily. It was as though she scented danger. She turned and saw the group of men. At first she growled menacingly and took a step or two towards them, then, as if she knew they were too many for her, she retreated and growled to her cubs. They stopped their play and tumbled over the ice to their mother, frightened as children might be at the sudden surprise of danger. She clasped them both within her forepaws as if she would protect them with her own body and let out a doleful howl. She looked at one cub and then at the other, as if she could not make up her mind which to save. She looked behind her for a way of retreat, but there was nothing save the wide expanse of ice, for the men stood between her and the water where she might find safety. One cub scrambled on to her back. Robert Finlay took a careful sighting along his musket. The bear clasped the other cub to her, then once again she gave a pitiful cry as if she were begging for mercy.

“Oh!” Kirsty moaned. Robert Finlay lowered his musket. Mr Cotterell, the mate, did the same with his.

“I’m sorry for spoiling your shot, Mr Finlay,” Kirsty said.

Robert Finlay patted Kirsty’s head. “That’s all right, Kirsty. You didn’t really spoil my shot. I just felt that I could not bear to kill her. She is too like a human mother with her children. How do you feel, Mr Cotterell?”

“I couldn’t have shot either, sir.”

“Then you’re not – not cross with me, Mr Finlay?” Kirsty faltered.

“No, Kirsty, I’m not. There is a difference about hunting when one is in need of meat for food and furs for clothes. Then one has to hunt to kill. When it is just for sport – well, I think it is better to be merciful, and we are in no need of meat or furs just now.”

As though the tension had been broken, the bear and her cubs began to shamble away from them over the ice floe.

“Now we’d better go back to the ship,” Mr Finlay said.

When they reached the ship a warmer wind was already blowing more strongly from the south, and the ice cracked about
her and began to drift away from her sides as Robert Finlay had predicted. Soon the ship was floating freely again. The channel of water widened but it was still not enough to permit sailing. Captain Turner shouted commands from the bridge.

“We’ll warp the ship along, Mr Mate. Make two teams of men. Some of the settlers can lend the sailors a hand. Fix ropes to the forepeak of the ship, then lower two boats to take the men and the ends of the ropes to both banks of the ice. When you get there, put your teams on the ropes on each bank, then pull for all you’re worth. We must get the snip free of the ice and into the wider water before the freeze-up comes again with the night.”

James Murray volunteered to join a team, and after him, like his shadow, went Davie. Kirsty stayed behind on deck to watch. Soon the two teams were assembled on each bank of the ice and the men took the strain of the ropes. On deck the ship’s fiddler began to tune his fiddle. He was joined by a Highland piper, Donald Gunn, one of the emigrants. Together they began to play one of the famous pulling and warping shanties that had been sung by British sailors for many a long year. Tom Peterson’s strong voice rang out, leading the singing.

“I sing you a song of the ships of the sea.”

He was answered by the chorus of the men on the ropes.

“‘Way down Rio!”

“I sing you a song of the ships of the sea.”

“And we’re bound for the Rio Grande!” boomed the chorus.

In time to each beat of the music they hauled on the rope, swayed, paused and hauled again, a beautiful rhythmic movement. The people on deck joined in the singing too, and the ship moved gracefully over the grey water of the narrow gulf, pulled by the men she had sheltered and brought so far in safety. When she reached the wide safe water going to the open sea of Hudson’s Bay, the music ended; the men came back on board, and the ship shook out her sails like a lovely bird poised for flight.

The typhus fever still claimed its victims, and though some sick people recovered, it was plain that others would never reach the new colony. Every day Kate Murray came at a fixed time to the door of the cabin given up to the fever patients and waved to her family to show them she was still well.

“Thank God your mother has not taken the sickness!” James told Kirsty, but neither of them dared say a word of the fear in their hearts.

Archibald McDonald, the leader of the Sutherlanders, wondered when the danger of infection would be over. So did Captain Turner. He sent for McDonald and, with Mr Cotterell, the mate, he talked to him about the sickness.

“I have never had this fever in my ship before. Already you have lost a number of settlers and I have lost two reliable lads from my crew,” he told McDonald. “If I lose any more men, how am I to sail my ship home again? I cannot easily pick up seafaring men in the Arctic.”

“Maybe there will be one or two men of the Hudson’s Bay Company willing to work their passage home,” Cotterell suggested.

Captain Turner frowned at him. “I cannot rely on that. I would like to get this load of settlers landed as soon as may be. The fever patients would be better where they can be kept apart from the others. I mean to make for Fort Churchill which is nearer than York Factory and set the passengers ashore there.”

Both McDonald and Cotterell looked at him in surprise. “But
the settlers are not expected at Fort Churchill, sir. Will there be provision for them?” McDonald asked.

Captain Turner shrugged his shoulders. “There must be some provisions there. In any case, your settlers will have to learn to get their meat by hunting it, will they not?”

“Aye, sir once they are quite fit,” McDonald agreed, “but at present many of them are so weak that I doubt if they could stand on their feet. Had you not better carry us on to York Factory?”

York Factory was the principal trading post and port of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

“There are plenty of fit people left to hunt meat for the rest,” the captain declared. “It is the season when many partridges fly over. Besides, there will be stores at Fort Churchill which the Company will allow you to buy.”

“Buy? My people have not much money, sir, and they will need to buy animals and seeds for their farms when we reach the colony.”

“They would have had to buy food at York Factory just the same,” the Captain argued.

“But it is at York Factory we are
expected
,” McDonald protested.

The Captain grew annoyed. “Young man, you must allow me to judge what is best for my ship. I shall put in at Fort Churchill.”

So the
Prince of Wales
headed to the west instead of to the south.

Robert Finlay was also concerned when he found they were not to be landed at York Factory, and he went to Captain Turner to remonstrate with him, but it was plain that Captain Turner was not to be stirred.

The ship sailed on towards Fort Churchill. As they passed Eskimo Point, the emigrants crowded at the rails to get a first glimpse of the shores of their new land. Their faces fell when they saw the icy bleakness and the barren rocks crowned by the forbidding buildings of the Fort.

“It looks like a prison!” Davie exclaimed.

“Will – will the place where we are to live look like this?” Kirsty faltered. Even James Murray looked at the land in dismay.

“Cheer up! Your new home lies nearly seven hundred miles to the south. It is much warmer there, and in spring lovely flowers bloom on the prairies,” Robert Finlay spoke encouragement.

“But how shall we get there?” Davie asked.

“Oh, by canoe part of the way.”

“Canoe!” Davie exclaimed in delight.

“But you’ll have some quite long stretches to cover on foot too,” Finlay warned them. “You may even have to go on snowshoes part way.”

The ship drew into the berth by the great fort and then began the work of taking the passengers ashore. The sick people had to be lowered on homemade stretchers made of a piece of sailcloth lashed to poles. Kirsty looked anxiously for her mother.

“There she is, helping that wee child.” Davie pointed.

Kate Murray came ashore carrying a small girl. As though by instinct she looked up to where her own children were standing by the rail.

“Mother! Mother!” Kirsty cried to her. Her father laid a hand on her shoulder to keep her from running down the gangplank. He called to his wife, “Are you all right, Kate? No signs of the fever?”

“No, James. I’m well, thank God! Mr McDonald says as soon as there are no fresh cases and a few days have gone by to make sure none of the nurses have taken the sickness, he will be able to spare some of us to return to our own families.”

“Oh, Mother, I pray it will be soon!” Kirsty faltered.

“Keep a good heart, my lassie! It may not be long before I can join you again. I am not so much with the sick women now as looking after their children.”

There was no shelter for the settlers at all! In compassion, the Hudson’s Bay Company helped the settlers to build a hut for the fever patients and to erect tents for the nurses.

“There is no place for my people to sleep,” Archibald McDonald told the captain.

“You’ve got axes and saws in plenty and there are strong men among you, and plenty of timber in the woods. How do you think the first Hudson’s Bay traders made their homes?” the captain said.

“The first traders did not have their women and children with them,” McDonald answered bitterly.

“Mr Finlay is making arrangements to help you.”

“I still think the best arrangement would have been to get these people to York Factory where they were expected,” Mr Finlay told the captain plainly. “I have sent word to the officials of the Hudson’s Bay Company there to tell them what has happened. Meantime we must try to fix up tents for the families, until they can erect more permanent shelters.”

Davie thought it was wonderful to be living in a real Indian tent made of buffalo hide, and to boil their kettles and cook their meals over a campfire in the open. “This is just grand. It makes me feel like a real hunter,” he declared.

“Maybe! But
I’d
like a house!” Kirsty declared. “And – and I wish Mother was back with us. It’s all very well for you, Davie! You can talk to men and other boys –” Her voice choked a little.

That very day, while Kirsty was making a stew of dried buffalo meat which James had bought from the fort’s stores, she looked up to see her mother at the door of the tent. Kirsty jumped to her feet, dropping the knife and stewpan.

“Mother! Mother!” she cried. “Have you come back to us for good?”

“Yes, my lassie. A number of patients have recovered and Mr McDonald says it will be better for those who have had the disease to nurse those who are still sick, for they are not likely to take the fever again. He thought it would be safe for me to come back to my own family.”

“Oh, I’m so glad, so glad!” Kirsty wept tears of thankfulness.

“Where are your father and Davie?”

“They have gone to shoot partridges for the pot.”

“Partridges! My! It’s only the landed folk eat partridges in Scotland!”

“It will be a change from this tough buffalo meat.”

Kate looked at the meat. “I think that meat needs soaking for a long time and pounding with a hammer to make it tender then it must be stewed slowly for a long time over the red embers of the fire.”

“Everything’s going to be better now you’re back, Mother!” Kirsty cried thankfully.

It was a joyful reunion round their campfire that evening. James and Davie had brought back a brace of partridges and a hare.

“I shot one partridge myself with Mr Finlay’s gun,” Davie said with pride. “He let me have a shot with it.”

“My! You’re a hunter already,” Kate laughed.

When Miles MacDonell, the Governor of the Red River Colony, heard that Captain Turner had put the settlers ashore at Fort Churchill without food or shelter, he was furious. “I hope he will be made to smart severely for his brutal stubbornness,” he told Mr Auld, one of the chief men at York Factory.

Mr Auld travelled to Fort Churchill to find out what was happening there and he said to Captain Turner, “You will take these wretched people on board again and carry them to York Factory.”

“I cannot do that. I have to take my ship back to England at once.”

“Captain Turner, I am giving you orders which must be obeyed. If you do not obey, you will answer for it to the Company.”

Grumbling, Captain Turner took the settlers aboard again.

“At last we’re on our journey once more!” Kate said as they left Sloop’s Cove. Hardly were the words out of her mouth than there
came a terrible jarring sound and the ship shuddered from stem to stern.

“Oh, what’s happening?” Kirsty cried.

White waves were curling round the bows of the ship. “I think we’ve run aground!” Davie exclaimed.

It was too true!
The Prince of Wales
was caught hard on a sandbar across the harbour.

“Perhaps the ship will refloat with the tide,” James Murray hoped, but high tide still saw the ship held fast.

“We shall have to lighten the ship,” Captain Turner decided. “The settlers and their gear will have to be taken ashore in the ship’s boats.”

Mr Auld was very angry. “Captain Turner, I have my suspicions that this grounding was no accident. You were determined not to go to York Factory.”

“That is something you cannot prove, sir,” the Captain retorted.

“That may be, but once the ship is refloated, you will take them aboard again!”

But that night the wind began to blow strongly and severe gales set in. It was impossible for the
Prince of Wales
to sail. After several days Mr Auld called the settlers about him.

“I am sorry, but it will be impossible to get you to York Factory before the winter sets in. There is nothing for it but to winter here. Fifteen miles up the Churchill River there is a place with plenty of wood to build huts and make fires. You will have to fell trees, but you will have to do that anyway, when you reach the Red River.”

“Some of us will never reach the Red River if we have to spend the winter here,” a settler told him. “What shall we do for food?”

“Plenty of fish in the river!” Auld told him impatiently. “Most of you have guns too. If you are short of food, you are not far from Fort Churchill where you can buy pemmican meat if you fetch it on your sledges.”

Pemmican was dried and powdered buffalo meat that was
packed in skin sacks. It was supplied by the Indian tribes to the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Those of the settlers who were fit went ahead to the place shown them on the Churchill River. They felled trees, sawed off logs and built rough timber houses by laying the logs one on top of the other and plastering the cracks with wet clay taken from the river. Davie worked alongside his father. At last the huts were ready to inhabit and the women and children came from Fort Churchill. Davie proudly showed their hut to Kirsty and Kate.

“Once you’re inside, you cannot feel the wind at all. We’ve even made furniture, see!” He pointed to the sawn-off circular slabs of tree trunk that did duty for tables and chairs.

“But where are the beds?” Kirsty asked.

“We’ve got hammocks to sling from the beams. Father bought them at Fort Churchill. We were not able to make a floor: there was no time,” he told his mother a little ruefully. “We’ll just have to make do with the beaten earth.”

“We could gather moss and dry it,” Kirsty suggested. “If we spread that on the floor, it would be warm to our feet.” Already the children were beginning to think of ways of making their new life more comfortable in this strange bleak land.

At the end of September winter began to close in with bitter Arctic winds and flurries of snow. There were plenty of partridges and geese flying south and the settlers shot them for the pot. They caught fish and dried them. Sometimes the men took their sledges and went to Fort Churchill for supplies of dried buffalo meat. For Davie this was an exciting time. He came into the hut one day glowing with exercise. He had been to Fort Churchill with the men to fetch back pemmican.

“Fifteen miles there and fifteen miles back, and I easily kept up with all of them!” he told Kirsty proudly. “We went along the river ice on snowshoes.”

“It’s all very well for you, Davie, shooting and fishing and racing
off to Fort Churchill, but what is there for me to do here except
sew
? I am tired of making fur mittens out of the hares you catch! I wish –”

“Remember, Kirsty!” Davie warned her, putting his finger to his lips. “You promised.”

Kirsty snapped her lips shut, but the tears welled up. Davie looked at her with concern. “Listen, Kirsty! Why shouldn’t you learn to go on snowshoes?”

“Do you think I could?”

“You’d take a few tumbles at first, but you’d learn. Then you could go with me fishing and trapping.”

“It might be as weel if we all learned to go on snowshoes,” James Murray said thoughtfully. “I was speaking to Mr Finlay up at Fort Churchill today, and he said that when March came a party of us, the strong and fit ones, should set out over the snow for York Factory.”

“Why should we do that?” Kate asked. “Will they no’ send a ship to take us?”

“A ship cannot get through to us till the ice melts in the bay. We would get to the Red River too late to plant crops for a harvest this year. Mr Finlay says we ought to be at York Factory ready to make a start for the Red River as soon as the ice breaks on the rivers. We shall still have seven hundred miles to go on foot and by canoe. I would like us to start life together in the new colony. Will you learn to use snowshoes, so that you will be ready to go, Kate?”

“I will do my best,” she promised. “Little did I think it would be this way we’d travel to our promised land, though, James, when we set out on that first desperate journey from Culmailie.”

“Aye, desperate it has been, and desperate it still will be,” James said, “but keep a good heart, my lass!”

“If all I hear about going on snowshoes is true, then it’s a good balance I’ll need besides a good heart!” Kate laughed.