The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 25 May 1911, Page 939

The Storyteller

. THE COWARD OF BRILLON He is a coward,' the people of Brillon used to say, pointing to Adolphe Canelle, as he passed down the one street of the French-Canadian village, trailing a string of freshly caught dore. He has been so coddled by his mother, the Widow Canelle, that a young calf has more pluck. He is afraid to go to the lumber shanty in the wintercan do nothing but catch fish. He has no courage he is a poor cur!' And Adolphe stood as the village butt. . During the open season most of his time was spent in his canoe on the river, fishing or gathering driftwood. He and his mother were sometimes given odd jobs by summer visitors, and occasionally he got a day's employment from the contractors building a canal below the enormous dam which stretched across the Ottawa at Brillon. In the autumn most of the .village men and boys of Adolphe's age went to the lumber shanties, whence they returned in spring as capitalists with their winter's wages. Adolphe would not go. 'I cannot leave my mother; I must stay with her,' he told the foreman when he asked him to join. Jeers greeted this, for it was a set idea in Brillon that boys should go to the woods at seventeen. ' You must not leave me, Adolphe,' his mother used to say. 'You are my only child. You must stay with me. Do not mind what the people say.' 'Nono, mother! I love you too much!' And he never gave her a sign of the hunger for adventure that was sometimes sore in his heart. It was not all a girl's heart, though simple and loving and afraid to give pain. Often as he paddled up the river toward the dam he would wonder why the villagers ridiculed him, for he knew that few ran such risks in getting a living as he. In the eddies of the rapids below the dam were the best fishing grounds of the whole sweep of river near Brillon, and Adolphe would spend clays among them, anchored in his canoe, or fishing from some bare rock. He was well grown and so expert with the paddle that often he would work his canoe across currents and up eddy after eddy to the very foot of the mighty dam, over which the whole volume of the Ottawa plunged its half-mile of width with a roar which could be heard far down the calm expanse of the lower river. The dam greatly fascinated him. When in the uppermost rapid he eagerly studied the rush of the flood from the crest and noted how it broke below, while countless were the .logs, slabs, trees, and stumps which he had watched whirl over. Suppose some day a boat should take a plunge —could it live? Not there, nor there, nor there Adolphe's eyes roamed the torrent — there, toward Brillon shore, if the imaginary boat could jump clear of the black curling water at the very foot, there surely it might escape. But Adolphe shuddered at the fancy ; he thought he would not be in the boat for all the world. The season had not been a good one for the Canelles. Fish had been scarce, summer visitors had been few. To crown all, Mme. Canelle had been seized with illness which, grew worse as autumn advanced. She was without medicine, without suitable food, and Adolphe became frantic with grief and terror as he saw his mother failing day by day. If only he could have Monsieur the Doctor from Ste. Therese ! But that would cost three dollars. And food—• his mother constantly turned away uncomplainingly from pork and —if only he could get some food from the store. But curses met him when he asked for credit. 'Get out, you worthless good-for-nothing!' snarled Storekeeper Cherlebois to his plea. ' If you had the pluck of a water-rat you'd go to the shanty, and so have money.' Adolphe turned to the Ottawa, his friend, and paddled out on its brown current. His mother was worse; she must die unless he could get money. ' 0 Jesu, do not let her die!' he murmured in his numbhearted agony. With each stroke his paddle gleamed in the mellow of gold of the northern autumn sun. The boy saw only the gray of death. He paddled on, as a machine. 'Canelle! Canelle!' suddenly broke a shout. Adolphe was near the canal now. There stood the foreman waving to him. ' Work here for you this afternoon,' ran the voice. ' Come ashore.' 'Ashore? Adolphe could not paddle fast enough. A half-day's pay! Fifty cents! With that he could buy white bread. Ah! the good Virgin! The Blessed Virgin! He stumbled up the rocky bank to the foreman. ' Join the construction gang just below the dam,' said the foreman. And Adolphe had shot away to find the gang before his interlocutor had fairly finished the order. It was fifty yards from the dam that he passed a group of civil engineers. In their centre stood John Cameron, the contractor, who held this rich government contract. To village eyes Cameron was the biggest man between Brit

lon and Montreal. Adolphe halted a minute to stare at the demi-god. » V ■;■,.- ■•■.-■■ 'You should have seen the old barge Elsie go over two years ago,' one engineer was saying, as he indicated a point of the dam. ' She missed the canal piers, and I tell you her plunge was a great sight. She hit the pike's head reef and was smashed to splinters. But what I'd like would be to. see the dam shot by canoe. It might possibly be done in one or two spots.'" ' Well, if any reckless riverman wants to make fifty dollars,' broke in Cameron, with a laugh, I'll give it to see him go over in a canoe.' Adolphe heard. Fifty dollars! His eyes darted to the dam, while his face flamed scarlet. Then he went pale. The thought bewildered him. He to run the dam? But—fifty dollars! It was his mother's life. She could have Monsieur the Doctor. She need not die. But to go over the dam! Yet how often he had thought that this might be done. But how, how angry was the foam ! What a horrible height it was ! Ugh ! He shivered and yet—fifty.dollarshis mother! He knew well that place where there were no rocks and a smooth swoop of water after the curl-back under the plunge. < He wheeled and hurried to where Cameron laughed with his friends. • .:...-•/ M'sieu Cameron,' he began, with shaking voice, 'you give feefty dollars for run de dam I run de dam—wit' my canoe. You give me feefty dollar?' 'Who is the fellow demanded Cameron. ' Oh, he's a chap from the Brillon side, the foreman has him working here sometimes. He run the dam? Bosh!' 'He's making a bluff,' laughed Cameron. 'Wants glory cheap. Wants to say he offered, eh? I knew these French fellows.' Then he looked at Adolphe. Nonsense! Go back to your work and don't be silly,' the great man said, not unkindly, for something in the boy's face had suddenly moved him. ' You say you give feefty dollar for run de dam ? You mean dat? Den I run de dam for feefty dollar, M'sieu Cameron,' repeated Adolphe. The engineers laughed. ' He's got you, Cameron,' said one. It nettled the contractor. De would be made to retract his offer by this quavering scarecrow of a boy. _ 'Oh, yes,' he said, coldly. ' Fiftv dollars— certainly. After you run it. When will you go ' Right off. I go cross on de other side. I go now.' Adolphe turned to the river. 'He seems to mean it,' said Cameron, somewhat aghast. 'Pooh! He's just keeping up the bluff,' insisted the engineer, and Cameron let him. go. Yet it became known almost at once along the works that Adolphe Canelle intended to run the dam. Men gathered in knots to discuss the thing. • But keener was the wonder on the Brillon side of the river. Adolphe Canelle— coward—to run the Brillon clam and rapids. Not Indian Minette himself, greatest of voyagers, whose name was known from Quebec City to Lake Temiscammgue would dare such a thing. It ' was death almost certain. Adolphe Canelle ! Incredible ! But no! There was no mistake. Soon Adolphe passed up Urillon s street, carrying his canoe over his head. The villagers turned out and went behind him. For once he was followed without jeers. At the dam most people halted. Adolphe went on half a , mile above for he needed a long course from the 'draw ' of the dam in order to go over at the place chosen. x He kicked off his boots and then, kneeling in his canoe a trifle aft paddled far out and pointed her down stream. His body felt cold. His head was dizzy. Everything seemed unreal. An uncanny numbness had possession of him. I here was a sickening tightness across his heart. ji. j P ac 4? led mechanically. Was he actually going over the dam? Yes, he was on the water. There were the booms to his left. He vaguely noticed Pierre Latour standing on the third— one where he caught the big catfish last spring. This was his own little canoe. Yet how strange things were! fo He paddled, slowly— might still return to shore. But hL^j ti ere . for the sake of his mother. He would win fifty dollars! How happy they would be when she got well! His darling mother! Is the water cold to-day? he wonders. No! No He will not be m the water. He must paddle well He must hold her straight for the big pine beyond Durocher's wharf. There, that is it! That is the place to take the jump. Ciel! How the current runs here! The lean will soon come now. Now! . Now he must paddle—hard, hard! Speed, speed— is what will save his life! It rings in his ears. Speed! Paddle, Adolphe! Force her! The water bubbles from the bows. Lift her now! lift—drive her through it! .'; His face is livid. He pants between clenched teeth giving a queer strained gasp with each of those wild strokes. All his skill and experience, all the frantic strength of desperation is in this battle for speed. The twelve feet of bark leaps with each stroke; She far outspeeds the whirling current, and vet is she held on even keel and rushed straight as a bullet for the picked spot

Never before was such a paddling seen, said old rivermen afterward. ; .-'-■■■"..-■■ : ,"• 'V '# ",'

Now it is but a few more strokes. _ How-,.deafening is the roar ! How the smooth / draw'. swirls here! But the canoe must not swerve. * The pine —that is it. A few strokes! Quick ones Fierce ones ! Drive her ! Put* her through Drive! Drive.. ,J .'"A In the instant that he was on the brink Adolphe was conscious of the whole scene —the water falling away; from him and boiling back immediately beneath; the people to his right on the Brillon side yelling with excitement; the groups of men on the canal in the distance to the left; in front the white seething of the rapids, and beyond that the quiet water of the lower river stretching far away, shimmering in the soft haze of the September afternoon. He v is on the very edge the bow is already past it Notre Dame, what a leap ! The good God help him — his mother! "' Then it happened as Adolphe hoped it would if he could get enough speed. Instead of pitching with the water down into that black-curling roll of death directly below the dam, the light canoe shot out clear beyond the fall. As he drove the last stroke home he grasped either gunwale with a hand and squatted lower to save the boat from turning over as she fell. The drop —lasted—how long? The canoe struck the clear surface just beyond the line of black tow, shipped water, was righted on the second, and tore on down the torrent of the river below. * : ' ; He has done it! Blessed Mary! Now only the rapids are ahead. His mother is saved! He will get the money. The air seems to be full of human sound, mingled with the roar of water. Most wonderfulit is cheering! It is for him! Adolphe's whole body thrills. He feels what it is to win. , Adolphe? This was not the old Adolphe. He had a new spirit in him. He was no longer a poltroon. It was a man who paddled, who guided the canoe with wonderful skill through the mad swirls of Rapids on to Brillon ! On to his mother! To money To a friendly village proud of her son! To the fame of the greatest feat of canoeing known to twenty countries! 'By thunder, you're a brave lad,' said Contractor Cameron, as he paid the money. ' But don't ever do that again.' The Bon Dieu, He must love that boy,' the people said. And Adolphe became the hero of the whole riverside. To this day the old voyagers of the Ottawa, when recounting deeds of daring, tell this very story of how Adolphe Canelle ran the great dam of Brillon and saved his dear mother's life. New World. ~.-•,