Our band of hardy adventurers arose with the sun on the morning
following our first night in bivouac, and by noon of that day, thanks,
perhaps, in some measure to my own work at the oars, and a sail which
we rigged from a corner of the tent, we had passed into and through
the lake which our map had showed us. Now we were below the edge of
the pine woods, and our stream ran more sluggishly, between banks of
cattails or of waving marsh grasses. We put out a trolling line, and
took a bass or so; and once Lafitte, firing chance-medley into a
passing flock of plover, knocked down a half-dozen, so that we bade
fair to have enough for dinner that night. It was all a new world for
us. No one might tell what lay around the next bend of our widening
waterway. We were explorers. A virgin world lay before us. The nature
of the country along the stream kept the settlements back a distance;
so that to us, now, in reality, retracing one of the ancient
fur-trading routes, we might almost have been the first to break these
silences.
Toward nightfall we came into a more rolling and more park-like
region; our prow was now heading to the westward, for the general
course of the great river beyond. I had no notion to visit the city of
Chicago, and our route lay far above that which must be taken by any
large craft bound for the Mississippi route to the Gulf.
Farms now came down to the water's edge in places, villages offered
mill-pond dams--around which, in scowling reticence, we portaged the
Sea Rover, unmindful alike of queries and of jeers. I found time to
post additional letters now. Indeed, I was preparing for a long and
determined enterprise. It was the Sea Rover against the Belle
Helène; and, did the skipper of the latter loll along in flanneled
ease and luxury, not so with the hardy band of cutthroats who manned
our smaller and more mobile craft, men used to hardships, content to
drink spring water instead of sparkling wines, and to eat the product
of their own weapons.
We were I do not know how far from our first encampment, perhaps
thirty miles or more, when toward five o'clock of the evening we
concluded to land at a wooded grassy bank which offered a good camping
place. We made all fast, and in a few moments had our tent up and a
little fire going, Lafitte and L'Olonnois, at this, happy as any two
pirates I ever have seen; and were on the point of spreading our
canvas table cover upon the grass, when we heard a gruff voice hail
us.
"Heh! What're you doin' there?"
We turned, expecting to meet some irate farmer on whose land perhaps
we innocently were trespassing; but the figure which now emerged from
the screening bushes was rougher, bolder, and in some indescribable
way wilder, than that of a farmer. I could not, at first, assign the
fellow a place, for I knew this was an old and well settled country,
and not supposed to be overrun with tramps or campers. He was a stout
man nearly of middle age, dirty and ill clad, his coarse shirt open at
the neck, his legs clad in old overalls, his hat and shoes very much
the worse for wear. His face was covered with a rough beard, and so
brown and so begrimed that, at once, I guessed this must be some
dweller in the open. Yet he seemed no tramp; and even if he were, he
had no right to hail us in this fashion.