“Listen!” bade Pat――and they paused on their oars. Peter thought that he also could hear a “boom-boom,” low and dull, but he wasn’t certain. They went on.
The captains’ boat was being piloted by a Wah-kia-cum Indian, now: a squat ugly man who wore a queer round jacket that, according to the men, had come from a ship. The river was growing wider, the fog was thinning and lifting――on a sudden the crew of the captains’ boat waved their hats, pointed before, cheered wildly. The cheer passed from boat to boat. For the fog ahead had swirled into fragments, and below it was an expanse of tumbling gray water on which the sun was trying to shine. Occasionally sounded a muffled “boom,” like the faint growl of summer thunder.
The Pacific Ocean! But they did not reach it this day; the fog closed in again, and the rain. They did not reach it the next day, although the waves were so high in this, the mouth of the Columbia, that half the party were seasick; and the water was salty. They did not reach it the next day, nor the next. Wind and rain kept beating them back. Sa-ca-ja-we-a was frightened.
“The spirits are angry. They do not want us here,” she whimpered, crouching over little Toussaint, under a grass mat raised on a pole.
“The only way we’ll reach the sea is to be washed into it,” groaned Pat. “Sure, don’t the very stones an’ logs come a-rollin’ down the hills? Now for the first time I wish I hadn’t started, an’ here I am at the ind!”
Yes, miserable were they all. There was no chance to dry clothing and food, and scarcely an opportunity to stir. The mouth of the river formed a wind-swept bay miles wide. The captains thought that if camp might only be moved around a point ahead, and to a high sand beach, it would be more comfortable. A deserted Indian village stood there, with no inhabitants “except fleas”; and, as Pat said: “We’ll be all the warmer for the exercise they give us.”
Not until the afternoon of November 15 did the opportunity to move come. The sky cleared, the wind suddenly dropped; the canoes were reloaded in a hurry, and the point was rounded.
Now the ocean was in full sight, outside the bay; from the boards of the Indian houses rude cabins were erected; hunters and explorers were sent out.