While I was staying at the missionary’s house, waiting to find someone to take me to Cha-atl, the missionary got a farm girl, with no ankles and no sense of humour, to stay there with me. She was to keep me company, and to avoid scandal, because the missionary’s wife and family were away. The girl had a good enough heart stowed away in an ox-like body. Her name was Maria.
Jimmie, a Haida Indian, had a good boat, and he agreed to take me to Cha-atl, so he and his wife Louisa, Maria and I all started off in the boat. I took my sheep dog and Louisa took her cat.
We made a short stop at a little island where there were a few totem poles and a great smell because of all the dogfish thrown up on the beach and putrefying in the sun. Then we went on till we got to the long narrow Skidegate Inlet.
The tips of the fresh young pines made circles of pale green from the wide base of each tree to the top. They looked like multitudes of little ladies in crinolines trooping down the bank.
The day was hot and still. Eagles circled in the sky and porpoises followed us up the Inlet till we came to the shallows; they leaped up and down in the water making a great commotion on both sides of our boat. Their blunt noses came right out of the water and their tails splashed furiously. It was exciting to watch them.
It took Jimmie all his time in the shallows to keep us in the channel. Louisa was at the wheel while he lay face down on the edge of the boat peering into the water and making signals to Louisa with his arms.
In the late afternoon, Jimmie shut off his engine and said, “Listen.”
Then we heard a terrific pounding and roaring. It was the surf-beat on the west coast of Queen Charlotte Islands. Every minute it got louder as we came nearer to the mouth of the Inlet. It was as if you were coming into the jaws of something too big and awful even to have a name. It never quite got us, because we turned into Cha-atl, just before we came to the corner, so we did not see the awfulness of the roaring ocean. Seamen say this is one of the worst waters in the world and one of the most wicked coasts.
Cha-atl had been abandoned a great many years. The one house standing was quite uninhabitable. Trees had pushed the roof off and burst the sides. Under the hot sun the lush growth smelt rank.
Jimmie lowered the canoe and put Billy, the dog, and me ashore. He left the gas boat anchored far out. When he had put me on the beach, he went back to get Louisa and Maria and the things. While I stood there that awful boom, boom, seemed to drown out every other thing. It made even the forest seem weak and shivery. Perhaps if you could have seen the breakers and had not had the whole weight of the noise left entirely to your ears it would not have seemed so stunning. When the others came ashore the noise seemed more bearable.
There were many fine totem poles in Cha-atl–Haida poles, tragic and fierce. The wood of them was bleached out, but looked green from the mosses which grew in the chinks, and the tufts of grass on the heads of the figures stuck up like coarse hair. The human faces carved on the totem poles were stern and grim, the animal faces fierce and strong; supernatural things were pictured on the poles too. Everything about Cha-atl was so vast and deep you shrivelled up.
When it was too dark to work I came back to the others. They were gathered round a fire on the beach. We did not talk while we ate; you had to shout to be heard above the surf. The smell of the ocean was very strong.
Jimmie had hung one end of my tent to a totem pole that leaned far over the sand. The great carved beaks of the eagle and the raven nearly touched the canvas.
“Jimmie, don’t you think that pole might fall on us in the night?”
“No, it has leaned over like that for many, many years.”
Louisa’s white cat looked like a ghost with the firelight on her eyes. We began to talk about ghosts and supernatural things–tomtoms that beat themselves, animals that spoke like men, bodies of great chiefs, who had lain in their coffins in the houses of their people till they stank and there were smallpox epidemics–stories that Louisa’s grandmother had told her.
When we held the face of the clock to the firelight we saw that it was late. Louisa went to the tent and laughed aloud; she called out, “Come and see.”
The walls of the tent and our beds and blankets were crawling with great yellow slugs. With sticks we poked them into a pan. They put in their horns and blunted their noses, puckering the thick lips which ran along their sides and curving their bodies crossly. We tossed them into the bush.
Louisa hung the lantern on to the tent pole and said–“Jimmie and I will go now.”
“Go?”
“Yes, to the gas boat.”
“Way out there and leave us all alone? Haven’t you got a tent?”
Jimmie said he forgot it.
“But. . .Jimmie won’t sleep in Cha-atl. . .too many ghosts. . .”
“What about us?”
“There are some bears around, but I don’t think they will bother you. . . . Goodnight.”
Their lantern bobbed over the water, then it went out, and there was not anything out there but roar. If only one could have seen it pounding!
We lay down upon the bed of rushes that the Indians had made for us and drew the blanket across us. Maria said, “It’s awful. I’m scared to death.” Then she rolled over and snored tremendously. Our lantern brought in mosquitoes, so I got up and put it out. Then I went from the tent.
Where the sea had been was mud now, a wide grey stretch of it with black rocks and their blacker shadows dotted over it here and there. The moon was rising behind the forest–a bright moon. It threw the shadows of the totems across the sand; an owl cried, and then a sea-bird. To be able to hear these close sounds showed that my ears must be getting used to the breakers. By and by the roar got fainter and fainter and the silence stronger. The shadows of the totem poles across the beach seemed as real as the poles themselves.
Dawn and the sea came in together. The moon and the shadows were gone. The air was crisp and salty. I caught water where it trickled down a rock and washed myself.
The totem poles stood tranquil in the dawn. The West Coast was almost quiet; the silence had swallowed up the roar.
And morning had come to Cha-atl.
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