How cheering. The skilly pilot and the lusty paddler
slacked not - 40 miles we had come that day - and when at last some
49, nearly 50, paddled miles brought us stiff and weary to the
landing it was only to learn that the steamer, notwithstanding
bargain set and agreed on, had gone south two days before.
CHAPTER XLI
GOING UP THE LOWER SLAVE
What we thought about the steamboat official who was responsible
for our dilemma we did not need to put into words; for every one
knew of the bargain and its breach: nearly every one present had
protested at the time, and the hardest things I felt like saying
were mild compared with the things already said by that official's
own colleagues. But these things were forgotten in the hearty greetings
of friends and bundles of letters from home. It was eight o'clock,
and of course black night when we landed; yet it was midnight when
we thought of sleep.
Fort Resolution is always dog-town; and now it seemed at its
worst. When the time came to roll up in our blankets, we were fully
possessed of the camper's horror of sleeping indoors; but it was
too dark to put up a tent and there was not a square foot of ground
anywhere near that was not polluted and stinking of "dog-sign,"
so very unwillingly I broke my long spell of sleeping out, on this
131st day, and passed the night on the floor of the Hudson's Bay
Company house.
