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Short Stories by R Lewis Evans R. Lewis Evans was an English Teacher who loved to write. Although his books are quite well-known, his short stories and articles belong mostly to the more distant past. It was during the 1940s and 1950s that magazine short stories were popular and sought after and Dad wrote over 20 of them. Most were published, and many are of interest especially to those of us who know and love the Lower St. Lawrence and Saguenay areas of Quebec, so I decided to get them out of the file and onto the web-site where they can be read once again. I've divided the stories into categories. While he wrote mostly river stories about the Tadoussac area, including some historical fiction, he also wrote 6 stories about World War II (4 of which overlap with our beloved river), and a number of odd inspirations, one biblical, several inspired by newspaper items, and even one (gasp!) Science Fiction. There are also some non-fiction articles which will be coming along later in the year. I love them all partly because he wrote about what he loved and I love it too, but partly because his characters are thoughtful, compassionate and real. I've included a few notes that he kept in the file. Some are news articles he drew his ideas from; others are comments he received from editors either printed in the magazine or sent along to him separately. I've also tried to reproduce the illustrations, duly credited, as all the stories that published were supported by visual art. Only one, Casual Enemy, has no illustrator mentioned. My guess is he drew that one himself. I've read all these stories several times in my efforts to get them up onto the web-site correctly and I've never tired of them. I hope you enjoy them. A fair warning: some readers might recognize a few people! Alan Evans NEXT PAGE R Lewis Evans More Stories "Zeb," he cried. "Zeb, come on up top. Bring your bucket. make it quick." In Case of Fire A Short Story by Lewis Evans (Published in The Standard, October 5th, 1946 - $60.00!) ILLUSTRATED BY MENENDEZ The old hand and the novice found hostility turned to friendship in a battle with death THE windward edge of the fire was below them now, a line that straggled across twenty miles of forest and ate its way in little salients doggedly westwards against the draught. Downwind, ahead of the aircraft, all was confusion for countless square miles—white smoke, and gray and brown, air-borne ashes, and occasionally the peach-glow of flame dimly reflected on the driving smoke. Don Ross, late of the RCAF, held the F-24 on its course, passing over the centre of the vast burning area where thousands of cords of Northern Quebec pulpwood were going up in smoke instead of fulfilling their destiny of providing Canadian and American papers with newsprint. With him in the cabin bronzed, graying Zeb Stearn sat with map on knee, pencilling in the present area of the fire for his report back to the Canadian Forestry Service and the Long Lake, Wolf Lake and River Beyond Pulp and Paper Company, which owned these limits. Old Zeb Stearn concentrated on the job and said nothing. He had been saying just that ever since they had taken off from the North Shore that morning. The northward border of the forest fire seemed to follow the curves of River Beyond, and Don Ross swung the aircraft in that direction. As they approached the river they could see that the fire had already jumped it in several places. Zeb Stearn noted them on his map. Suddenly Don peered at the river beyond the eastern edge of the fire, set the plane on a glide towards it, and then banked on a curve. He pointed, and Stearn followed his finger. A herd of caribou was fording the river to gain the safer north bank. Don turned to smile at Stearn, but the old fellow did not evince interest by even so much as a grunt. He was again working on the map. Don felt rather foolish, as though he had excitedly pointed out the Rhine to a man who had already made many operational tours. THE F-24 was now over the advancing eastern edge, of the fire, and the air was rough. Now and then the thermals rising from the hot earth bounced the plane uncomfortably upwards, and the cabin filled with the raw smell of smoke, making its occupants cough—the first sound Stearn had made so far, Don thought wryly. He started a slow climb to get above the smoke, and suddenly the engine sputtered, livened up again, and quit cold. Don worked at his controls, but nothing happened, and a great appreciation of the multiple engined aircraft he had known overseas was born in him in a flash. He shot a glance at Stearn. The older man’s face betrayed no emotion, but he was peering out at the landscape below — already looking for a spot for a forced landing, Don knew; and Don followed suit. Behind him was River Beyond, but like most northern rivers it was shallow, sown with rocks and seamed with sand and gravel bars—a landing there meant two shattered floats at the very least. To the south, beyond the path of the fire, was Wolf Lake, a perfect landing place, but with a cross wind and his present altitude he didn’t think he could make it. Downwind from the fire was the nearest water—he picked it out between waves of smoke—a tiny lake, almost round, possible for a landing, too small for a take-off. Don tried desperately to make up his mind—take a long chance on Wolf Lake, and maybe not make it and come down in the fire area, or land on this little pond and probably stay there, right in the path of the fire. Stearn grabbed his arm. "Wolf Lake,” he shouted. Don swung the gliding plane towards it, and as soon as he had done so he knew— knew for certain—they couldn’t make it. He shook his head and swung again, losing altitude rapidly. The little round lake appeared and disappeared through the smoke as though it were winking at him. "Okay, honey; here I come,” he murmured, and circled to come at it upwind. The tall spruce round it forced him to glide flatter than he wished, but he almost brushed their tops as he crossed them. The other side of the lake seemed to rush at him, a solid phalanx of dark spruces, but the pontoons took the water with a clumsy splash, the F-24 rocked forward as if she were going to stick her nose down, rocked back, and bucked gently into the matted bushes fringing the shore. “Well,” said Don, “here we are.” “And here we stay till we fry,” commented Stearn. “Why didn’t you try for Wolf Lake, where we could have fixed the engine and had room to take off?” “I knew I couldn’t make it,” said Ross. “It wouldn’t have been any fun putting down in the bush—and the fire.” “It was a chance,” said Stearn. “This is certainty. The fire will be here by tonight.” “We have plenty of water,” said Ross. “We can keep ourselves and the aircraft wet.” ZEB STEARN snorted. “Ever been close to a fire of this size?” he demanded. “Yes,” snapped Ross. “Mannheim.” “You weren’t as close to that as you will be to this, my boy. You try keeping the plane wet, and yourself wet, and breathing at the same time. Take my advice and drown quietly. It’s the more comfortable death.” “Oh, go jump in the lake,” said Don curtly as he opened the door. “I’m going to. I want to find what's wrong with this motor.” He dropped onto a pontoon. “Why?” demanded Stearn. “Even if you fix it you can't get out of here. “I'd feel a lot better if the engine could go, though.” “What're you going to do? Move it on top and take off straight up like a helicopter? We'll get to heaven soon enough without all that trouble.” “Aw, pipe down, and come and help me get this cowling off.” Stearn's reply was to settle back and light his pipe. For ten minutes Ross worked at the engine. The acrid smoke filtering through the bush and bellying out across the lake kept him coughing. Several times he turned the motor over without getting even a kick. At last he opened the cabin door. “Come on and have a crack at this thing,” he pleaded. “The smoke out here tastes much better than that ‘tabac canadien’ you’re inhaling, anyway.” “Fix the thing yourself. You're the pilot,” grunted Stearn. “Oh, come on. You know this engine much better than I do.” “How should I know anything about it?” Stearn's voice was heavy with sarcasm. "I'm too old to know about things like that.” The older man spoke with force, as though he were getting a weight off his chest. Ross stood looking at him for a moment. “Look, Zeb,” he said at length. “Let's have it. What's your gripe?” Stearn's eyes drilled him. “I'm too old – that's what they tell me. For years I fly this bush and never have any trouble—not like this, anyway—” he gestured at the tiny lake. “Then the war's over and they tell me that I’m too old, that young fellows like you must have my job, that I'm on the shelf. On the skids, more like,” he added bitterly. “Who says so?” demanded Ross. “When I got the orders to cover this fire,” said Stearn, “they gave me to understand very plainly that you were the pilot, and I was to leave the flying to you. I was to go just because I knew the country, because I have experience.” THERE was a silence. Don had only come to the base a week ago, but already he had heard the story that Zeb Stearn had learned his flying in World War I, had come to the bush in 1919, and long ago had been forced to reckon his air time in months instead of hours. He felt sorry for the old fellow, and admired his pride and his record. He felt that what he said next—and how he said it—was desperately important. “Well, you may be too old, and you may not—I haven’t seen you fly. But I’ll tell you two things: first, I’ve seen plenty of pilots who were too old at twenty-one; second, I’m darn glad that you’re along.” “Thanks,” said Zeb Stearn dryly. "It’s nice to be wanted on what looks like a fatal journey.” Ross grinned at him. “Come on and play with the engine.” Zeb Stearn climbed out of the cabin, a little stiffly. “Why do you want to fix it?” he demanded. “It’s just work for nothing.” “Feel a lot better when it’s in working order,” said Don, and Stearn snorted. “We can move it to the far side of the lake, keep it wet with buckets, and maybe save it.” Stearn turned on him almost savagely. “You talk a lot of hot air,” he shouted. “Save it for what? A curiosity for the caribou?” He ended up coughing. Ross gestured towards the yellow and black fuselage and the big CF and three more letters on the wing. “That’s the best mark there is for anyone looking for us,” he said shortly. That shot went home, for Zeb Stearn nodded and turned towards the engine. “Air intakes clogged up, I’ll bet,” he said. “Those ashes, maybe.” Inside ten minutes he proved himself right, and the engine exploded into life. Don Ross plunged waist deep into the water and weeds and brush of the lake edge and heaved on a pontoon. Slowly he worked the aircraft round and shoved out from shore. Live sparks were falling round them as they taxied to the down-wind edge of the pond, and when the motor was cut they heard for the first time the actual sound of the fire to the west, a faint menacing roaring that rode on the wind. Zeb Stearn listened to it for a few minutes and shook his head. “There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight” he quoted. “Put on all the clothes you have, get well soaked in the lake, and have a wet rag to tie over your face.” Don nodded. There were a canvas bucket and a galvanized iron one in the plane, and he was tying a length of rope to the handle of each. He got a blanket from a packsack in the cabin, wet it, and draped it over the nose of the aircraft. He climbed onto the wing top and sent a few preliminary buckets full splashing over wing, fuselage and tail, killing several hot sparks. The exertion made him pant a little, and his coughing became steady from then on. IN THE last of the afternoon light he saw a couple of porcupines and a skunk pass along the shore near by, all very intent on their business, which was travel. The faster moving animals and the larger ones must have cleared out long ago, he thought. Smoke snuffed out the last of the daylight, and the fire became visible, like a nearer after-glow of the sunset, silhouetting the tall timber on the west bank of the pond. Right opposite him, across the water, the trees seemed more widely spaced, and Don could see an inferno of flame roaring towards him. Now and then an evergreen ahead of the fire would flare with the roar of a rocket as its branches caught, and then the blackened trunk would be surrounded and hidden by flames. Don had a sudden qualm—the gas in the tank. Perhaps they should have tried to drain it off somewhere, but it was too late for that now. He went on lowering the bucket, dragging it up, sloshing the water on the aircraft. Below him he could hear old Zeb wheezing and coughing as he stumbled waist-deep from side to side underneath the plane, dashing water up at the fuselage and tail assembly. Now and then Don's clothing steamed out and began to feel hot, and he had to climb down and dunk himself in the water. He fought against the temptation to stay in its delightful coolness — each time the climb back seemed tougher, dragging his sodden clothes, and each time the plane was drier and hotter as the first bucketful dashed over it. The hot blast of the wind seared his throat and was painful in the lungs, and coughing was agony that never ceased. His thoughts became disjointed and he knew it and could do nothing to marshal them. In case of fire break glass . . . for use in case of fire . . . those funny axes like tomahawks — if he had one he could chop up the plane and save it from being burnt. Nuts — that was all wrong. Ice — that would be swell, a great big block of it on top the plane, melting and running down all round. Heat, hot as hell, hot air . . . “You talk a lot of hot air." Zeb had shouted . . . hot air bouncing the aircraft upwards — up — hey! wait a minute! Don slithered down into the water and ducked his head under. Hot air — thermals — there must be a lift from all this heat — quite some lift. In the red glare he measured the distance across the water — not enough, of course, but that place where the trees were more widely spaced — even as he looked the branches of the spruces flanking that gap went up with a roar and a fountain of sparks. “With those branches gone and the heat,” he thought, “there’s a chance.” “Zeb,” he croaked. “Zeb, come on up on top. Bring your bucket. Make it quick. He clambered up again, wincing as the heat blasted through the cloth muffling his face. Zeb dragged himself up, and Don told him. “We could hold her while we rev. her up,” he added, “and get a fast start.” Zeb Stearn manipulated his bucket in silence, and squinted at the far bank of the pond. “I don’t like the frying pan,” he said at last. “I'll take a crack at the fire with you." Don left him to sluice her down, and dragged a mooring rope from the cabin. He wrestled it into a sort of bridle on the rear struts of the undercarriage, stumbled ashore with the end, and took a turn round a tree. Already sparks had started fires on this side of the water, he noted. HE GOT up on top again at last, his mind snatching at the problems to be solved. “Go on down, Zeb. Get yourself cooled off, and then start her up. When she’s ripe race her a couple of times and I’ll come down.” Stearn literally fell into the water and Don could hear his coughs bubbling through the wetted mask. Get the blanket off the nose, chuck it in the lake . . . up with a bucket, slosh it on, up with a bucket — the branches seem burned out of that gap . . . the trunks are burning now . . . up with another . . . which pocket's my knife in? . . . got to get it . . . He felt the aircraft heave as Zeb got aboard again, and then the engine started. The slipstream blasted the heat at him and dashed the water away in spray. He couldn’t wait for Zeb to signal. He plunged down, got his head into the cabin door, groped for and found a packsack to wedge it open a bit against the slipstream. “You take her up,” he yelled at Stearn. “No,” shouted Zeb, “You take her — better chance . .” “You gotta take her,” Don yelled. “I’ve got to cut the rope. You couldn’t climb back in — Zeb Stearn nodded. He knew he was too old for that. “Give her the gun,” yelled Don. He had knife in hand now, and crouched on the pontoon, one hand gripping the door jamb, the other holding the blade on the quivering rod-like rope. The engine roared, the aircraft strained, and water squeezed from the taut rope. Don slashed and the plane leapt forward. Water and spray snatched, at his feet, hot air punched and tore at him. Inch by inch, straining and groaning, he fought his way into the doorway. Head and shoulders in, he felt the aircraft lift steeply. He panted and prayed. Zeb Stearn sat like a statue. There were flashes of fire and blackouts of smoke and then, suddenly, he gasped air that was fresh. With a last struggle he got his legs in, kicked the pack out, and the door slammed shut. He lay half on the floor, half on the seat for a minute. Zeb was coughing again, he noted, coughing continually, and he was heavy on the controls. You could feel it. “Take over,” the old man wheezed. “Can’t take it, I guess . . .” They changed places with the supreme care and slow effort of drunken men, and Zeb slumped in his seat. Don Ross settled his course by the stars and shivered. The cold was seeping through his wet clothes, blessed cold. Not good for the old man, though, he thought. “Get out of your clothes, Zeb,” he said. “Get a blanket or something.” Stearn moved slowly and said nothing. He seemed to be trying to stifle his coughing. Don suddenly realized that he was broken by the knowledge that he was too old — too old to climb into a moving plane, yes, but far worse than that — too old to fly it after that tough afternoon. Don eased the plane gently off course, steering a wide arc under the stars. “You sure lifted us out of that frying pan, Zeb,” he said. “Nice piece of judgment. I was glad to be out of that job.” ZEB STEARN said nothing, but went on fumbling with the blanket and coughing sporadically. Don tried again. “Check my course, will you, Zeb?” he asked. “I'm not sure of myself.” Zeb glanced at the sky, and gestured Ross back onto his former bearing. “Thanks,” said Don. “I'm a bit shaky on direction in these parts. You navigate, huh?” Zeb Stearn slowly straightened in his seat and cocked an eye at the sky. “Okay, I'll navigate,” he said. “Steady as you are.” There was a pause, and then Zeb added, “Don't you worry, Don. I'll get us home.” The End Note: 22 years after he wrote this story Dad was interested to find this short article in the Montreal Star, (Sept. 28, 1968) which tells of a similar, if less successful, situation. Team seek to salvage vintage plane from lake Kapuskasing Ontario, Sept. 28 — A federal team will go into a remote lake in this area next week to salvage an ancient seaplane that may be the last of its type in the world. The Curtiss HS-2L has been sitting in the silt in about five feet of water since 1925 or 1927, when the vintage “flying boat” made a crash landing on the lake. Air museums all over North America have sought one of the twin-engined H-boats, used as submarine hunters during the First World War, then as bush planes, but the one on the lake bottom is the world’s only confirmed find. R. W. Bradford, curator of the aviation and space division of the National Museum of Science and Technology, described it in Ottawa today as “a real find.” A team from his division will salvage the plane for the museum. The work may take a year. The HS-2L’s last flight was a colorful combination of ingenuity and farce but not tragedy. Bush Pilot Duke Schiller was forced down by engine failure on the tiny lake or so the story goes. The engine was repaired but to take off from the short lake, Schiller had the seaplane tied to a tree while he revved it up to full throttle. A woodsman was supposed to chop the rope at the appropriate time. The woodsman chopped but the rope was only partially severed. The fearless lumberjack then gave the rope a shake and it broke, hauling him into the lake as the seaplane burst away. Maybe it was the drag of the lumberjack but the plane didn’t gain quite enough altitude to get over the trees. It brushed them, then gently twisted back into the lake. No one was hurt but the plane was written off as a loss. The Fishermen Published in the Quebec Diocesan Gazette, (November, 1968) By Lewis Evans CARRYING the fishing rod, Joe left home at dawn for two reasons: he wanted to be a hero, and he couldn't stand another day of listening to his little brother Johnny whining. He really couldn't blame Johnny for whining, because Johnny was desperately hungry, and not old enough to understand why, or tough enough to be brave about it. Joe was both, because he was seven years old. But he was desperately hungry too, and had been ever since his father had had the accident at the mill, and was still too sick to work. Joe wasn't sure just how he could be a hero, but he figured if he could be the breadwinner even for one day his father would be pleased, and perhaps Johnny would stop whining for a while. The last time his father had gone fishing, on a holiday a week before his accident, he had taken Joe with him, and they had caught nine fat perch. Well, his father had done the actual catching, but Joe had helped by finding some of the worms for bait. As Joe ran down the valley path he had visions of coming home as proudly as his father, with nine perch dangling from a hooked twig. When he came to the place where the stream had undercut the valley side in flood-time, and had caused a small landslide, he stopped and put down the rod and started digging into the soft earth with his fingers. There was a worm - but he was too slow, and got only half of it. Those things could really move. There was another, and this time he was quicker, it took him about half an hour to get a dozen, and he shivered when he felt them wriggling in his pocket. He picked up the rod, and ran on down the valley, which flattened and widened out into grasslands as he neared the shore of the lake. The sun was higher now, and it was going to be hot. Where the stream flowed into the lake and the fishermen’s boats were drawn up it was too shallow for fishing from the shore, but a couple of hundred yards to his right there was a steep bank, and the water there was deeper closer to shore, and shaded at this hour by the height of the bank. Joe scrambled to the very edge of the bank and peered down. The lake water was very calm, and he could see the stones and pebbles dim and wavering on the bottom. He unwound the line from the rod, and impaled a wriggling worm on the hook. There was no barb on the hook, and Joe was afraid the worm would wriggle off, but that was a chance he had to take. He dropped the hook into the lake, and watched it waver down till it was on the bottom. He twisted the rod over and over so that it wound up the line a little and the hook hung about a foot above the pebbles. Then Joe began to learn how hard it was to be a hero. Nothing happened. The sun climbed higher, and it was getting hot. He tried to concentrate on the line where it passed through the surface, watching for any tremor that might be the sign of a bite. He felt a little dizzy, lying there staring down, and his eyes didn't focus very well. He pulled up now and again to check the worm, and twice found it had wriggled off and he had to put on a new one. He began to feel that nothing would ever happen, and he again raised the rod to check the worm. This time something did happen - the line went taut, and there was weight and a wriggle on the end. He scrambled to his feet and raised the tip. The rod bent a little, and there was a flash and then a splash on the surface. Joe heaved back and the perch soared over his head onto the grass behind him. He dropped the rod and fell on the perch, which had come off the hook, finally got hold of it, and banged its head on a stone, bruising his fingers. Triumphant, he laid the perch - it was a very small one - in a shady spot, and baited up. Where there had been one surely there were more. Sure enough, hardly had his hook broken the surface when he felt a tug. He jerked up and thrilled to the pull of the line. He swung the rod up violently, and it cracked and the tip sagged. He dropped it and snatched at the line, pulling hand over hand, and another perch came flipping to him over the edge of the bank. Two! But the rod - it was finished, it wasn't much of a rod really, and his father could make another when he was better, but how could he, Joe, catch more perch? Two little ones wouldn't mean much at home, and without a rod he couldn't get the line far enough out from the bank. He unwound the line from the broken rod, wondering how else he could be a hero. Putting it in his pocket he felt the remaining worms, and thought of throwing them into the water. That would be nice for other perch, but not for the worms. Instead, he dropped them to fend for themselves in the shady spot, and picked up the two perch. They were so small he didn't bother with a twig to carry them, but stuck them in his pocket where the worms had been. He was aching with hunger and discouraged. How could he get something more than two little perch to take home? Suddenly he put his head back and sniffed. A gentle breeze was blowing down the hillside now, and the odour it carried was like an answer to his question. Someone at the little farm had been baking. Perhaps . . . Joe started up the hill, not knowing what he would do, but drawn irresistibly by the smell. There was the squat little farmhouse, and there, off to one side, was the hump of a clay bake-oven. Joe paused in the last cluster of bushes before the open ground around the farmhouse. There was the farmer's wife, laying her baking in a row to cool on a wooden bench in the shade thrown by the house. Joe stared, and his hand crept to find the size of the perch in his pocket. He could hear Johnny's whining, and see his father lying hopelessly on his mattress. The farmer's wife wiped her hand on her apron, took a look at the sky, and went into the house. A moment later she reappeared with a basket of linen, and went round to the back, out of sight. Joe moved forward, and then broke into a tip-toe run. he reached the bench, and snatched up as much bread as he could carry, ramming it under his arm, and darted back to the bushes, he looked back, panting. There was no movement. Crouching, he started away to his right, back towards the valley that led homewards. Keeping among bushes and trees wherever he could, he stumbled along, sweating. He felt the heat of the bread through his shirt, and the smell of it was almost unbearable. Ahead of him was the crest, and beyond was the valley, wide and grassy near its mouth. He reached the crest and stopped dead. The valley was full of people. Joe sank behind a bush and stared, he had never seen so many people in one place in all his life. He had never imagined that there were that many people in the world. What could they be doing there? For a moment the awful thought flashed in his head that they were all waiting for him, to catch him and punish him for stealing the bread. But they weren’t looking at him. They were all in groups of different sizes, some standing, some sitting, some moving about from one group to another, and all, it seemed, talking at once. What in the world could they be talking about? Joe straightened up and moved closer. He had never been more curious. Closer and closer till he was almost up to the nearest group. Why were they there? Suddenly a big strong man, just an ordinary fellow, a fisherman perhaps, turned and looked straight at Joe, and his eyes fell on the bread. He started towards Joe. Joe dropped the bread and turned to run, but in a couple of long strides the man had him by the arm, and swung him to a stop. “Here, my lad,” said the man, “not so fast. You have nothing to fear.” Joe looked up at him trembling. The man did not look angry. He was smiling down at Joe. “Where are you off to with all that bread?” he asked. "I . . . I don't know,” said Joe, and in his confusion he really didn't. “Well,” said the man. “I'll tell you what. How about letting me have the bread? I'll find some way of paying you back for it.” “But I need it,” cried Joe. “That's all right,” said the man. “I'll see you get some more. But right now you just let me have it, will you?” And with that the man stooped, and swept up the bread, took Joe by the arm again, and led him into the midst of the nearest group of people, and up to a tall gentleman in the centre. “What have you there, Andrew?” asked the tall gentleman. “There's a lad with five barley loaves,” answered the man called Andrew, “he is willing to help us.” Some strange impulse sent Joe's hand to his pocket. “I have a couple of fish too,” he said almost proudly, pulling them out. The tall gentleman smiled, and all the people around laughed when they saw the two small fishes. * * * “I think, Joe,” said his father after the men had gone, and Joe had told his story, “you'd better take some of those twelve baskets to the farmer's wife, it may be only fragments of bread and fish, but there is more than you and I and Johnny can use, and, as the gentleman said, it should not be wasted.” The End NOTE: I remember when Dad wrote this story, back in 1968. At chapel that morning at Bishop's College School where he taught, the lesson for the day had been from the Gospel of John, Chapter 6, Verses 1 - 14, The Feeding of the Five Thousand. For some reason Dad took an interest in the actor in the story with the smallest role, and of the smallest size. Dad went back to the staff room and spent every spare minute he had that day writing feverishly and telling his colleagues to go away! I have included the text of the gospel reading below: John 6:1-14 Revised Standard Version (RSV) Feeding the Five Thousand 6 After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tibe′ri-as. 2 And a multitude followed him, because they saw the signs which he did on those who were diseased. 3 Jesus went up on the mountain, and there sat down with his disciples. 4 Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. 5 Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a multitude was coming to him, Jesus said to Philip, “How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” 6 This he said to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. 7 Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii[a] would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” 8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9 “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?” 10 Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place; so the men sat down, in number about five thousand. 11 Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. 12 And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, that nothing may be lost.” 13 So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten.14 When the people saw the sign which he had done, they said, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world!” Winged Victory PUBLISHED IN THE MONTREAL STANDARD November 1, 1947 ($50.00!) He'd been waiting since last Hallowe'en to show them he wasn't afraid anymore By Lewis Evans ILLUSTRATED BY JEFF CHAPLEAU Pete cowered, and a sob of fear shook him “WELL, I made them for you,” said the old lady, and watched the light of excitement and anticipation flare up in Gordie’s seven-year-old eyes. He bounced off the chair by the kitchen table. “Oh Granny, did you? Can I see them? Can I see them right now?” “They’re upstairs. You’d better come up and try them on, in case they don’t fit.” Gordie shot out of the kitchen into the hall and up the long flight of stairs. The little old lady could hear his restless feet drumming their impatience on the floor above, but, spry as she was, she did hot hurry. “Wings, indeed!” she murmured as she started up the stairs. “What an imagination they have at that age!” When Granny Tompkins reached the top of the stairs she opened a large linen closet, and from the bottom shelf drew out a complicated black object. As she unfolded it it resolved itself into a pair of wings, and, between them, a sort of hood with pointed ears and nose, and slits for eyeholes. Gordie’s round eyes could not take it all in at once. They darted here and there, and his feet danced under him. He recognized parts of two huge old-fashioned black umbrellas — or was it one of them cut in half ? -— that made the framework of the wings and gave them their bat-like trailing edges. He remembered those umbrellas among countless other treasures he had seen in Granny’s marvellous attic. But over the umbrellas was some shiny black stuff, sewn on as though it were feathers, stuff that shook and rustled as the wings were moved, and the same material covered the head and shoulders. “Oh Granny!” cried Gordie. “They’re wonderful! Pete won’t have anything as good as this for his costume. Why — why he may even be scared of me in this!” Gordie became so enthralled at the prospect that his Granny had to shake the wings to recall his attention. “Here,” she said. “You’d better try them on. Why are you so worried about Peter Martin?” "OH,” said Gordie, as he struggled to get his arms into the tight sleeves that ran across the forward edge of the wings, “he thinks he’s pretty good. At the Hallowe’en Party last year he was dressed like a skeleton, and he kept jumping out and scaring people, and—” Gordie paused. “And?” “And he jumped out and scared me when I was passing the cemetery on the way home. I was dressed as a ghost and I tried to run and I fell down and I cried.” “And he’s never let you forget it all year, I suppose?” said Granny. She knew Peter Martin and had some idea of the constant battle Gordie had with him at school. Peter was a year older, but in the same class, and at everything but school-work he was just a little bit better and stronger and quicker than Gordie. “There,” said Granny. “They fit pretty well. How do you like them?” Gordie contorted himself trying to take in the general effect. “Can I go down to the hall and look in the big mirror?” he asked. “Of course,” said Granny. Gordie bounced to the head of the stairs. He was already savouring a triumph over Pete. “Whee! I’m a bat!” he cried, and he spread his wings and jumped down two steps at once. Then he emitted a shrill squeak of surprise and fear, which sounded quite bat-like, for his feet barely grazed the second step down, and he found himself floating swiftly and silently down into the gloom of the big hall below. Granny Tompkins gave a gasp of amazement and started down the stairs at a speed that did not look much like that of a seventy-year-old, but before she was half way down Gordie caught a wing-tip in the hatstand and crashed to the floor. “Gosh, Granny, they work!” he gasped, struggling to his feet. “Are you hurt, boy?” demanded the old lady. “Gee, Granny, you sure are smart. Betcha Pete’s granny can’t make a pair that really work.” Granny Tompkins took Gordie by the shoulders and shook him. “Listen to me,” she said. “They’re not supposed to work. It’s — it’s an accident. You must promise me never to try to fly with them again. You might break your neck, and then what would your mother say? Will you promise?” “Aw, Granny—” began the boy. “Promise!” demanded the old lady. “Or I’ll take them back and break them up.” “I promise,” said Gordie reluctantly, starting at his macabre reflection in the hall mirror. “Very well. Now get along with you to school. I’ll put these away so no one will know, and you can pick them up here on your way to the party.” She watched Gordie go down the path and turn left along the road past the cemetery and the church towards the school. He had not even thanked her, but Granny Tompkins was wise enough to realize that that was a compliment to the magnitude of the thing she had done for him. He would have thanked her for a doughnut, all right. The joyance in his gait was enough thanks for her. Note: This article is the one Dad had pulled from the paper to inspire his reluctant students: The Montreal Gazette. ADVENTUROUS WOMAN MAKES PAIR Of WINGS Virginiatown, Ont., Oct. 2/46. CP. An adventurous Virginiatown housewife has invented a pair of wings which she uses to jump from buildings 20 to 25 feet high. Mrs. Phil Golden, the mother of two children, began working on her wings two years ago after disecting birds in an attempt to learn how they fly. She made the wings of parachute silk and bits of plastic. They look like a mass of gigantic feather-like pockets built onto even larger feathers. These feathers or air pockets flush the air back through the larger feathers on to a plastic back. In so doing, a vacuum is formed underneath the outer feathers. The vacuum together with a movable outer attachment at the wing tips allows for the possibility of propulsion by means of earnest wrist action. Mrs. Golden said a weak heart so far has prevented her from more stringently testing her wings. Up until now she has been jumping from platforms at least 20 to 25 feet in height. Most of her "flying" has been done at night because she is shy of publicity. She started folding up the costume, but then she paused, and stood in the hall staring thoughtfully at the wings. “YAH! Gordie Allen — think you’re smart, eh? We all know you’re Gordie Allen.” The words ripped through Gordie’s disguise, and inside the black hood his face turned scarlet with disappointment and rage. Peter Martin was supposed to be a black cat, and he had a long black tail made of stuffed cotton stockings. Picking it up in one hand he swung it at the bat, and Gordie felt the umbrella ribs buckle under the blow. Powerless to retaliate, he turned to walk away, and another blow curled itself round his ankles and he fell to his knees. “Weren’t you scared to come?” went on the hateful voice. “Bet you went all the way round by Main Street so you wouldn’t pass the graveyard. “Bet you’re scared to pass it going home. Remember last year?” “I am not scared,” exploded Gordie, forgetting his incognito. “I’ll go past it any old time,” and he moved away, followed by Pete’s unbelieving laughter. There were witches on broomsticks and owls and ghosts and all sorts of spooky creatures in the big assembly hall, and the decorations were all orange and black, and there was even orange coloured stuff to drink and black candies that tasted much as they looked, and were probably designed to induce dreams of “things that go bump in the night.” GORDIE forgot all about Pete Martin for a while and began to enjoy himself again, but all of a sudden his stomach felt empty and his heart dropped into the void. Pete was nowhere to be seen! Gordie knew what that meant. The party was nearly over. Pete had gone to hide in the cemetery. When Gordie went past he would jump out and scare him. If Gordie detoured it he would broadcast the fact that he was afraid to pass it. Miserable, Gordie lingered in the coatroom as the children left. Finally, last of them all, he started homeward, his battered costume clutched under his arm. As he passed the church his steps slowed, and his ears and eyes strained to catch some forewarning of Pete’s onslaught. The tombstones loomed grey in the darkness to his right, and his footsteps grated loudly on the road. Suddenly, far ahead of him, there was a piercing shriek. He stopped, frozen stiff. Then there came the sound of running footsteps, pounding down the road towards him. He couldn’t move. “Gordie! Gordie!” It was Pete Martin, white-faced and panting. He grabbed Gordie by the arm and cowered behind him. “You should’ve seen it. It flew down out of the sky and landed right beside me . . . it was like a great big black bat with big black wings . . .” GORDIE tried to steady his voice. “Where were you?” he asked. “In the cemetery.” “Yeah — down at the end near the old Tompkins place, where there aren’t so many gravestones. I—I was waiting for you. . . . Come on, Gordie— go round by Main Street with me.” In all his confusion Gordie’s mind was able to realize that this was his great opportunity, if he only had the nerve to use it. “There’s nothing to be scared of in a cemetery,” he said stoutly. “Come on, Peter. I’ll take you past.” He gripped Pete’s arm, which made him feel a little braver himself, and set out. “We’re nearly past,” he whispered to the dragging Pete as the black shape of the Tompkins place loomed against the night sky ahead, and the tombstones on their right thinned out. Pete’s fingers sank into his arm. “Look,” he breathed, and pointed. Silhouetted over the roofline appeared a winged creature, and suddenly it launched itself into space, floating down towards the cemetery. Pete cowered, and a sob of fear shook him. Gordie braced himself. If it was Granny Tompkins practising flying with the wonderful wings she had hit upon, he wasn’t scared of her. If it wasn’t—well, they were nearly past, and the street lamps began in another hundred yards. “Come on,” he said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” And he led Pete on. NEXT morning Gordie fell in beside Granny Tompkins as they came out of church. “Enjoy your party?” she demanded. “Sure did,” said Gordie, and told her all, ending in triumph with the victory over Pete. “You sure are a wonderful grandmother,” he added. “I bet not many guys have grannies that can fly.” Granny Tompkins made no rejoinder, and after a short pause he clutched her arm. “It was you, Granny, wasn’t it? It was you who flew?” The old lady hesitated, and then glanced round to make sure no one else could hear them. “Yes,” she said. “It was your Granny, all right. Thought I’d scare that Pete for good and all. But don’t you breathe a word of it, Gordie.” She shot a frightened glance at the long line of respectable neighbours filing out of church. “Just think how folk would talk!” “He’d never go by it again, day or night,” she added to herself, “if I told him the truth.” She had gone to bed with a headache last night — right after supper. THE END Short Story 3300 words DEAD MAN STEERING by Lewis Evans UNPUBLISHED (Dad always said there was no accounting for publishers who couldn't recognize sheer genius when they saw it!) AHEAD in the darkness, a pair of red and green running lights, canted at a sharp angle, told Pete that a sailing vessel was beating up the Sound towards him. He stuck his head down the cabin companionway and called to his wife. “Ann, there's a yacht about a quarter of a mile ahead. Want to have another try at a night photo?” “Sure.” Ann left the supper she was fixing in the galley, grabbed up the necessary equipment, and came out into the cockpit. “Careful going forward,” warned Pete. “There's a fair sea running.” They took most of their photos from the forward deck of the cabin cruiser in order to keep their own wake out of the pictures. Pete had built a sort of sword-fisherman's pulpit just aft of the anchor bitts. “Don't worry about me,” said Ann, climbing round the edge of the bridge deck. “Concentrate on getting me a good angle and distance.” Pete altered course to pass close to the yacht on her leeward side, so that her angle of heel would present her deck to the camera. Experience had taught him that most yachtsmen liked to see all their favourite gadgets in a photo, and most of these were on deck. Pete cut down the speed, and the little cabin cruiser's exhaust made bobbling noises as her stern squatted and lifted in the quartering seas. He hoped that the motion of the boat wasn't too difficult for Ann's aim, and that their speed in passing the yacht wouldn't be too much for Anne's camera. It would have been better to turn and run with the yacht, but it was too late for that. The green starboard light was abeam, and the flashbulb went off. Pete got a momentary impression of a yawl under plain sail smashing along close-hauled, and then the blackness of the night contrasting with the white flesh left him blind. He closed his eyes tight for a moment, and then opened them, and could pick out once more the flashing lights of buoys and the shore lights a mile away. Ann clambered back into the cockpit. “Not bad,” she commented. “I got it at the end of a roll, so I don’t think the camera was moving too much.” She went below and back to her job as cook, and Pete advanced the throttle and steered for their anchorage at Porthaven, twenty minutes away. The worst of this racket, he thought, was that it looked to the outsider as if his wife did all the work. And so she did, as far as the photography went, but he was learning the job fast and had some outstanding pictures to his credit already. And the boat was his responsibility - its maintenance and navigation, and the selling end of the business too. He had become engaged to Ann during the war, when he was in the Navy and she was a photographer for a small town newspaper. He remembered the first date they'd had after he'd been demobilized. He remembered the canned music in the little restaurant, and the cuba libra on the table, and that he had had to drink it with his left hand because his right was gripping Ann's under the tablecloth. He remembered too how desperately they wanted to get married, and how they had got the idea that had made it possible. “Got a break last week,” Ann had told him. “Had to cover a sailing race for my paper - it was for a trophy the paper puts up every year. I was lucky and got a really perfect picture of the winner crossing the line, and now one of those boating magazines wants to buy it for a cover, and the owner of the yacht wants a dozen big prints.” “Yachtsmen love to have pictures of their boats,” Pete had said. “Guess it's because it gives them something to dream over through the winter.” “Yes, and they never can take them themselves, because they’re always aboard the boat at the most photogenic moments,” added Ann, and Pete had got the idea. “Look,” he cried. “We want to get married and have somewhere to live - the only thing I know is boats, the only thing you know is photography - “ “Not the only thing, Pete,” murmured Ann. “Well,” continued Pete after a pause while his eyes answered that one, “we get a boat out of what I saved in the Navy, and live on it, and follow the regattas and races and sell photos of their craft to owners. Why, we could go South in the winter and keep right on with the job.” And so it had worked out. “Sea-Photos, Inc.” was well established, and the thirty foot cabin cruiser Photofoam was beginning to be recognized and welcomed at regattas and yacht clubs. Pete eased the cruiser into the anchorage, put her into the wind and cut her way, and went forward to drop the anchor. After supper the cabin became a darkroom, and the day’s take was developed and printed. Later, when Pete had worked over Lloyd's Yacht Register and other lists, small prints were mailed to owners, with a price list of enlargements. “That flashlight job we took on the way home looks good on the negative,” said Ann. “I'm going to enlarge it right away.” Night photos were an experiment they were trying out - the novelty might be good advertisement. So far their attempts had been disappointing. He bent over the developer tray with Ann. He still got a kick out of watching a picture emerge on the white paper like a ship breaking out of a fog bank. Slowly the photograph materialized - much the same as the split second impression he had got at the moment of the flash. He made out the yacht's name, Mistress Mine , on a ring lifebuoy on the shrouds. Suddenly Ann drew in her breath sharply, plucked the enlargement out of the developer, slid it into the hypo, and pointed. Her finger indicated the only figure visible on the yacht - the helmsman in the cockpit. “Look, Pete, look!” she breathed. Pete bent closer. The man sat with the long tiller tucked under his arm, and his bare head was slumped forward and to one side, presenting his right profile to the camera. Down his cheek ran a dark smear. “That man's dead,” whispered Ann, and her voice shook. “Get a magnifying glass and turn up the light.” Pete took the lens and peered through it. He couldn't be sure, but it certainly looked as if that dark smear started from a round dark spot on the helmsman's temple - a spot that could be a bullet hole. “But Pete, it's impossible - the yacht sailing straight on like that....” “No, it's not. With a yawl close-hauled and well balanced, and the hold he has on the tiller, even if he is dead - that's what would happen. She'll plough straight on till the wind shifts or she piles into something.” Ann sat down suddenly. “But who – what....?” she began. “Look up Mistress Mine in the register,” ordered Pete. “I'm getting the hook up.” “But Pete,” cried Ann, “you can't handle this. Go ashore and phone the police.” “Meanwhile the yawl piles up and the evidence is lost.” He scrambled forward and hove on the ground tackle. In three minutes the Photofoam was at full speed, bucking the chop in the Sound. Ann came to his side at the wheel, the register in her hands and a flashlight to read it by. “'Mistress Mine , yawl, built 1938 by....'” “Skip that,” cut in Pete. “Who's the present owner?” “'Joseph D. Bartram,'” read Ann. “Oh, Pete, I know who he is - he's 'Little Joe' - he's a sort of successful racketeer. The paper I worked for used to have a lot to say about him. He's always mixed up in something shady like gambling and the black market, but he always keeps just out of trouble.” “Just the sort of guy who'd get himself bumped off,” commented Pete. “But who - ?” began Ann and her voice suddenly lowered. “Pete, the murderer might still be aboard.” “Uh-huh,” said her husband. “But why should we stick our necks out? If it's 'Little Joe' he probably got what was coming to him, and I'm not crazy to meet his murderer.” “Listen, Ducky,” said Pete; “our picture is very dramatic, but it might be a picture of a suicide, not a murder. If we find the Mistress Mine as she was in the picture, and no gun in Joe’s hand or on the cockpit floor, we know it was murder. Personally, I think we may find the yawl, but I don’t think we’ll find Joe.” “Why?” “Seems to me the murderer would plan to tip Joe overboard with a weight to keep him down, and leave the yacht drifting, as though he’d been knocked overboard by the boom in the dark. That has been known to happen to men sailing single-handed. No body, no crime - and no Joe. A perfect set-up.” “How does the murderer get away from the yacht himself, though?” asked Ann. “Maybe we'll be in time to find out,” said her husband. “The yawl carries a dinghy, but that would be missed. To make it a perfect crime he would have to be taken off by a pal in another boat, or better still sail the yawl in close to shore and swim. Then no one need know he was there.” There was a pause while Ann thought it over. “Pete,” she said, “if you're right the murderer must have been aboard when we took the photo.” “He must have been somewhere below,” said Pete. “My guess is he hid aboard, waited till Joe sailed her well offshore, and shot him from the darkness of the cabin.” “Well, what about our flash?” demanded Ann. “What would he think of that?” “I don't know. He wouldn’t see much from inside, especially when the portholes on the side near us were heeled 'way down almost to the water. I don't think he could help seeing a bit of a flash wherever he was. He might have thought we'd raked him with a spotlight for a second. I don't think anyone would think of a photoflash.” There was another pause, and again the girl broke it. “You'll be careful. Darling? If we find the yawl, I mean?” “Of course. You're the only wife I've got.” “I don't know why I married such a madman,” sighed Ann. “If there was any truth in what you said when you proposed,” said Peter quickly, “you couldn't resist my good looks and you were dying to get your hands on my money.” Ann let him have a left jab to the ribs and Pete slid an arm round her and sought safety in a clinch. The Photofoam ran down the Sound on long zig-zags. The breeze was moderating and the water calmer. It was after midnight now, and most pleasure craft were snug in anchorages, so Pete was not surprised when the first running lights he picked up turned out to be those of the Mistress Mine . As the cabin cruiser closed the distance between them Pete switched on his spotlight and caught the yawl in its beam. She was hove to, fore reaching a few yards and then luffing and falling off. “There's a man moving about in the cockpit,” he said. “Get your photoflash and give it to me. We'll be friendly and pretend we think it's 'Little Joe' - what's his other name?” “Bartram,” breathed Ann. Pete leaned beyond the side wing of the bridge and hailed. “Mistress Mine , ahoy! Do you need any help?” “Sounds just too romantic,” he heard Ann murmur behind him, and his brain took a split second off to think what a swell girl she was. “What boat's that?” demanded the man on the yawl sharply. “Take us alongside,” Pete told Ann, “and give me that camera.” He slung it round his neck and clambered forward. “Photofoam , of Sea-Photos, Inc.,” he shouted. “We saw you hove to, and thought you might be in trouble. Mr. Bartram, isn't it?" The direct beam of the spotlight was off him now, but Pete could make out the man steadying himself with his left hand on the cockpit coaming. His right was below its edge; Pete could guess what that hand held. “No trouble, thank you,” the man replied, and Pete felt he could almost hear the fellow's brain racing to explain his position. At length the explanation came out. “I am cruising single-handed,” he said, “and I was cold, so I hove to to go and get myself some warmer clothes and a drink.” He paused, and then asked as if he couldn't resist it, “How do you know my name?” “It's our business to know yachts and who owns them,” said Pete. “We take photos of them, you know. Mind if I take one now?” “Portrait of a murderer,” Pete's brain quoted at him. The flash was over and he was blinded again before the man's reply started. In the blackness Pete moved quickly to one side. He was afraid of a shot. “No - I don't mind a bit.” The words came smoothly and slowly, and Pete's impression was that the man on the yawl had everything figured out now. “How many have you aboard?” the voice went on. “Can't see a thing after that flash.” “Two,” replied Pete. “Myself and my wife.” Only a yard or two separated the craft now. “Come aboard and join me in a drink,” the smooth tones continued. “The boats will be okay alongside each other - there’s little wind now. Come along.” The last two words were edged with insistence. “Hell,” thought Pete. “I'm behind the eight ball now. He’s got to have the camera....” His stomach contracted as his mind added, “and he’s got to have us, too. We're too close - he can get us both if we try to scram.” The boats bumped gently. “Play along, play along with him,” Pete’s mind kept telling him. “Maybe you'll get a chance to slug him or something.” He moored the cruiser fore and aft and helped Ann out of the cockpit. She slipped and he caught her to him. “It’s 'Little Joe',” she breathed. Pete's brain reeled. 'Little Joe' was the murderer, not the victim. Who, then, was the corpse? Bartram was awaiting them in the cockpit, his right hand in the huge side pocket of the heavy canvas hunting jacket he wore. He motioned them down the companionway ahead of him. “Whisky, rum, gin?” he asked. “Glad to have someone to drink with. Sit down, won't you?” Pete sat on a transom on one side of the central table, and Ann beside him. Joe moved past the table on its other side towards the door in the bulkhead at the forward end of the cabin. Beyond it was the galley, Pete guessed. “Whisky for me,” said Pete. “Ann?” “The same, thanks,” said Ann. She looked at her husband, and for a second her eyes crossed. Pete felt that his senses were leaving him, and then he got her warning - 'Little Joe' would probably fix those drinks, the two of them would go out like lights, and he would dispose of them and their films as he wished. Bartram was standing in the doorway, his left shoulder towards the cabin. Pete could bet that the gun was out of that right side pocket now and handy to grab. Bartram smoothly small-talked about the delights of night sailing and his sentences were punctuated by the clink of bottles on glasses. They couldn't refuse the drinks - that would just bring the gun out. They must drink, and go out like lights - out like lights - like a flash.... Pete remembered the way the photoflash had blinded him twice already that evening. He unslung the camera from his neck, and leaned over Ann as he put the sling over her head. “Here, Honey,” he said, “why don't you try a snap of this cabin? It's a swell job.” And he added under his breath, “You flash, I switch 'em.” Bartram placed the drinks on th e table, Ann's, Pete's, his own at the end nearer the galley. Ann stood up. “How about a picture, Mr. Bartram?” she smiled. “'The skipper at home' - that sort of thing.” She raised the camera. There was a pause and Pete imagined Bartram thinking, “One more doesn't matter - camera and all will be at the bottom of the Sound in a few minutes.” “Okay,” said 'Little Joe', leaning back against the side of the doorway, glass in left hand and his right in that side pocket again. Pete's heart sank, but Ann came through. “Put the drink down, if you don't mind. They spoil a photoflash - er - reflections, you know.” 'Little Joe' placed the glass on the table. “Ready?” asked Ann. “One, two, three....” Pete knew she was counting for his benefit and on three he shut his eyes. The flash was still perceptible through his eyelids, and he opened them quickly, reached out both hands, and switched his drink and Joe's. Then he looked up to find Joe passing a hand over his eyes and blinking. Pete copied him. “Some flash, eh, Mr. B?” he laughed. “Well, here's cheers.” He picked up his glass and knocked back about half of it. Thank Heaven it was whisky too - had 'Little Joe' decided on something different that gun would be out with his first sip. He was glad to see Ann fussing with the camera, not drinking. “Mud in your eye,” said Bartram, and to Pete it sounded as though, he meant it. The Sound had a muddy bottom. 'Little Joe' drained half his glass, and noticed Ann's preoccupation with her camera. “Drink up, lady,” he invited. He raised his glass to her. “Here's luck.” With that his knees folded and he crashed down across the table. Pete leapt on him to pinion his arms and yelled the one word “Rope” at Ann. Their haste was from fright rather than from necessity, for 'Little Joe' was out cold. In two minutes they had him trussed up, and Pete broke open the gun he had taken from his pocket. “One shell fired,” he commented. “But who at?” “At whom,” corrected Ann automatically. She was crumpled on a transom, white and shaking. Pete raised her head and kissed her. “Stick with me a little longer. Darling,” he said. “Pull yourself together.” He pointed forward. “There's a big sail-locker in the forepeak - that's probably where Joe hid when the other guy sailed the boat out into the Sound. But who was that other guy?" His eyes fell on a club bag on the port side berth. He started pulling out shirts, a toilet case, an opened envelope. “Ann,” he said, “ever heard of anyone called Victor Marsh?” “Sure,” said Ann. “He's an associate of 'Little Joe's'. He was up on a gambling rap last year. Got off with a fine or something, though.” “Listen.” Pete had the letter out of the envelope. “'Dear Vic: In reference to our conversation yesterday, about your borrowing the Mistress Mine next week end, you can pick her up at her moorings in Flounder River any time Saturday afternoon or evening. Have a good cruise, and don't worry about being single-handed - she handles very easily. Drop into the office Monday and tell me all about it. Joe.'" “Exit Vic,” commented Ann. “Don't let me hurry you, but don't you think we'd better scram? We're not close enough to land for Joe to swim ashore, so he must have been waiting for a pal to come and take him off.” Pete sprang into action. He lowered the yawl's sails, left them lying unfurled, and took her in tow. When they were some three miles on their course to Porthaven he caught a glimpse of a speedboat's white bow and red sidelight as she whipped by a mile away. Perhaps she was going to pick up 'Little Joe'.” By five in the chill dawn a sleepy Porthaven policeman was in charge of the yawl Mistress Mine and her passenger, police headquarters had been notified, and detectives were on their way. Once more the Photofoam dropped her hook. Pete yawned and stretched. “Bed, bed, beautiful bed!” he exulted. “Pete I'm going to develop those last two pictures first. If they're good we're famous.” “Aw Ann,” expostulated her husband, “for Pete's sake-” Ann smiled at him. “Okay; I'll come – for Pete's sake.” The End (Short Short Story) 1000 words (Date unknown. Sometime in the late 1970s or 1980s.) (Unpublished) FLASH POINT by Lewis Evans We on the planet Nereus, who have through these many aeons communicated with each other by thought-transmission, find it limiting to try to express ideas in the antiquated medium of language. However, as my report concerns the planet which calls itself ’Earth' (but which we know as The Flasher) it would seem appropriate, and an interesting exercise, to express the report, this time, in an 'Earth' language. I have chosen the language they called English, for it was, perhaps, used by most of the people responsible for the recent incident on their planet, though had the incident been delayed for a few of their years the Russian and Asiatic tongues might well have been by then the sole surviving languages. It is with this incident that my report is mainly concerned. We have, of course, been expecting it for some time, for these things generally run true to pattern, but the thing happened while the attention of most Nereans was centred on the Millenium Peace Celebrations on The Blusher (which in 'Earth' parlance, ironically enough, is called Mars after, of all things, a war god), and I was, by chance, the only close observer on this planet. My attention was first attracted to 'Earth' by my happening to notice the detonation on that planet of two nuclear explosions in short succession, evidence that the inhabitants had developed their intelligence and ability to the point where they had discovered and begun to make use of that type of energy. These first two explosions, which occurred at almost the same spot on the 'Earth's' surface, were shortly followed by others, of different intensity and at varying intervals and widely separated points. Assuming that the inhabitants of various parts of 'Earth's' surface were, as usual, at war with each other, I thought it might be interesting, and useful for our records, to have detailed information about the steps leading up to the inevitable climax of a nuclear competition, and so, through our normal channels, I arranged to obtain this information. I dispatched, therefore, a thought-conveyor of moderate size to 'Earth' from an orbit where it had been cruising until needed. It landed successfully in a good central position, and immediately went into action, receiving significant thought emanations from various parts of 'Earth', and relaying them to our receiving recorders here. The accuracy and delicacy of this thought-conveyor were well attested, by the way, almost as soon as it got there, by the fact that it immediately absorbed and passed on to Nereus the news of its own arrival. I record the actual item here as a quaint insight into 'Earth' lore, though, of course, it is scientifically ridiculous: “Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (an English language place name): Scientists here announced today that a meteorite ('Earth' name for our thought-conveyors) is believed to have fallen in barren lands near the northern borders of the province. An expedition under the leadership of Professor Hegstein is being organized to ascertain the exact locality of its crater and other scientific data.” (Though hardly credible to us, there is a widely accepted belief on 'Earth' that certain large circular declivities on the planet's surface mark the landing places of what they call meteorites. We, of course, know what really created these ancient craters, and the latest ones as well.) As soon as I began to correlate the information which came in from our thought-conveyor, I realized that my first conjecture had been wrong. The widely spread and sporadic detonations of a nuclear nature were merely the proving of scientific products by various inhabitants of 'Earth' who were, apparently, working independently of each other, and against 'Earth' time. It seems that each group felt that the more powerful and more numerous the items of nuclear energy it had, the less likely would any other group be to use its own stock against them. This state of affairs, with each group afraid of provoking the other, and yet equally afraid of falling behind in stock and power of nuclear energy, continued for some 'Earth' years, until I was almost convinced that the moments I devoted to its observation and record were being wasted, since the outcome was a foregone conclusion. However, curiosity as to the exact manner of the actual impulse which would promote the final incident prompted me to persevere in my observation. The primary impulse was one that appears to be second nature to the inhabitants of 'Earth', and one without which they do not seem able to survive for any extended period of their time – war. A trifling dispute between two small groups over the control of a small area of solid surface surrounded by liquid - or it may have been over a small area of liquid surrounded by solid, for the thought-conveyor did not seem to be able to gather the details, or perhaps did not consider them worth gathering - and all inhabitants of the planet ranged themselves in one or other of the two camps. Some desultory campaigning with antiquated weapons ensued, but each side existed in fear of the other initiating the use of nuclear energy. This situation might have continued until I was sure that the subject was not worth my momentary attention, had not the secondary impulse suddenly occurred. A single individual of one of the opposing groups, while controlling an air-borne vehicle on patrol over a large liquid area, feeling, no doubt, weary of the situation in general and of his own activity in particular, yawned uncontrollably. His primitive pressurized garment became disarranged, he made a sudden movement to adjust it, and triggered a nuclear item which his vehicle carried as a precaution against the surprise use of such by the other group. This item was detonated in the water area without damage to any inhabitants of the planet, but the detonation was recorded by both sides. At once each side assumed that the other had initiated a nuclear competition, and threw all its most potent weapons into the action. The result was an interesting - even spectacular - sight, and I was glad that I had not desisted from my observation a few moments earlier. First one and then another area of The Flasher, or 'Earth', was momentarily illuminated by the comparatively brilliant flashes that inspired our name for it. Beautifully patterned cloud formations occasionally obscured the play of light, and the emanations from our thought-conveyor became weak, confused, and distorted. Undoubtedly some of the larger detonations meant that the surface of the planet was again being pitted by large craters, and it amused me to conjecture that perhaps they in their turn would be explained by 'Earth' inhabitants of the future as the landing places of 'meteorites'. Hardly had it begun when all such activity ceased completely. The surface of the Flasher reappeared, unobscured by cloud or vapour, its well known features hardly altered, but with no illumination of any sort in any place. Needless to add, there was no communication whatever from our thought-conveyor, for a thought-conveyor cannot convey thoughts when there are none to convey. Such is my report of the most recent of such incidents on 'Earth'. Since we Nereans have been equipped to observe that planet, our records show that this is the fifth time that life on 'Earth' has destroyed itself, and, if the established pattern is repeated, in several Nerean years (or 'Earth' aeons) infinitesimal and primitive forms of life will gradually develop, and finally attain to the intellectual standard which is the prerequisite to the 'invention' of nuclear energy. Almost immediately, control of this medium will be lost, and it will once more destroy all life on the planet. If I thought that there was any hope that the pattern might be changed when next the inhabitants of The Flasher approached the flash point, I would be willing to take the time to observe the course of events. It would be an interesting study if they learned to live with and by what they have evolved, and it might even result in our having to discontinue the name The Flasher as inappropriate. (Short Short Story) (1000 words, Unpublished. Date unknown.) THE PLOTTER by Lewis Evans A great B-47 of a June-bug droned in through the open window of the class-room and started making bombing runs at the chandelier. Flak in the shape of Johnny Calder's Geometry book whizzed up and the dazed insect crashed on my desk. He was still alive, so I swept him into my pocket for future reference and was hard at work, like everyone else, when the master on duty stuck his head in at the door to see what the disturbance was. I wondered whether this particular bug was fast on his feet. The night before I had won thirty-five cents in the dormitory when my June-bug had been the first to crawl from the centre to the circumference of a circle chalked on the floor. Then I had sat on him by mistake at Prayers that morning, and so had to build up a new racing stable. The blank pages of the exercise book on my desk caught my eye. Old Hawk-eye, the English master, a guy with the most extraordinary ideas, had been teaching us the short short story in class, and we were supposed to have one written for him by next day. A thousand words to write, and I had not even the first glimmerings of a plot. I could remember most of his lesson, though. “Short first paragraph,” he had told us; “jump right into the middle of action at the beginning. Get some dialogue on your first page if you can. And don’t forget that somewhere in the first third of your story there must be a clue to your surprise ending - your 'kick in the tale'.” That was one of Hawk-eye’s little jokes - the same every year, they tell me. He had droned on about development of tension up to a crisis where everything was right for the crooks or the communists, or wrong for the cops or the Yanks or the British, and then the sudden twist. Oh, I could remember all that, but my mind was still as blank as the pages. The only thing I could think of was how I hated evening preparation in springtime, with the windows wide open and the smell of fresh leaves and grass coming in from the playing fields. “Hey, Johnny,” I whispered. “Lend me a cigarette? I’m going out for a smoke.” Johnny looked impressed - smoking is against the law at our school for some ridiculous reason. He found a battered butt in his pocket and chucked it across. I waited till the master - it was Davies, the Science man, and he's a bit vague or I wouldn't have thought of skipping out - went past again in the classroom corridor, and then I whipped over the window-sill. There was an eight foot drop to the ground, but I knew there was an old plank near by that I could lean against the wall to help me back. I had found it near the carpentry shop and brought it over for just such an occasion. I ran across the quadrangle, keeping out of the splashes of light from the windows, and ducked round behind the dark mass of the gym. There I sat down and lighted Johnny's weed and tried to enjoy life, but that blasted story was still on my mind. Perhaps if I started with the crisis I might get somewhere, I thought. Let's see - the good guy has to be in a jam. His plane's on fire and he has left his parachute at home - no, that's too tough; I'd never get him out of that. Well, he's a paratrooper, and on his way down. He realizes that he is going to land in the shark-infested sea, so what does he do? I don't know. Let's make him drift down over a volcano, and just when he thinks he's done for the hot air from the cone sends him up again; kind of hard to persuade old Hawk-eye there wasn't too much accident in that, though.... Oh, the heck with it. The cigarette was down to the last half inch so I stamped it out and started back. Half way across the quadrangle a familiar voice from the school steps said, “Johnson, come here." It was Hawk-eye in person, having a pipe in the fresh air - a good idea too, if I know his pipes. I started thinking fast and getting nowhere, except closer to him. “What are you doing outside the building during preparation?” he demanded. “Well, sir,” I began, and then I had an idea, a poor thing, but mine own, as someone said before I did. “Well, sir, Mr. Davies told us all to bring a specimen of insect life to his biology class in the morning.” “Yes?” “Well, sir, that's why I'm out here. I suddenly remembered I didn't have one.” “And have you succeeded in getting your - er - specimen, Johnson?” “Yes, sir,” I said, and produced the June-bug from my pocket. “Get back to your class-room,” ordered Hawk- eye. It was too dark to see the expression on his face, but his voice sounded amused. I don't think he liked Davies much. That meant I had to go back by the corridor instead of through the window, but Davies was quelling a noise in another class-room, and I made it without being seen. “Okay?” asked Johnny Galder. “Hawk-eye pinched me in the quad,” I whispered, “but I talked my way past him. I'm all right if he doesn't check with Davies.” As I turned to the blank pages of my English exercise book the bell went for the end of preparation. The next morning in English period old Hawk- eye made us read out our stories. The first two were passable, in a comic-book sort of way; lots of screaming jets and chattering guns spitting death, and stuff like that. Johnny was the third boy he asked, and he had summarized a de Maupassant story in the hopes that Hawk-eye didn't know any French. He did, though, and an afternoon dropped out of Johnny's life forever. Then it was my turn. “I'm sorry, sir,” I apologized, “but I couldn't think of a plot.” Hawk-eye chose to be sarcastic. “You couldn't have written a story with a June-bug as the hidden clue, I suppose?” he suggested in honeyed tones. And as he measured out my doom I thought, “My gosh! I could have, at that!” The End Dad did submit this story for publication but it was soundly rejected with the following note. I include it because Dad thought the note was very funny and he always kept it clipped to the top of his manuscript. NEXT PAGE

In 1860 William Rhodes built a summer cottage on the bay in Tadoussac. En 1860, William Rhodes construit un chalet d'été sur la baie de Tadoussac. PREVIOUS Rhodes Cottage "Brynhyfryd" 1860-1931 NEXT PAGE Col. William Rhodes (1821-1892) was the second son of a landowner in England, and came to Quebec City in the 1840's. He married Anne Catherine Dunn (1823-1911) from Trois Rivieres. They met the Price family who had a lumber mill and other houses in Tadoussac, and they built a summer residence "Brynhyfryd" in Tadoussac in 1860. The Russell family built a similar house next door shortly thereafter (Spruce Cliff), and Col Rhodes was part of the group that built the original hotel in 1864. The Rhodes family had 9 children, the cottage was expanded by adding on at both ends, and remodelled several times. The house burned down in 1931 and was rebuilt in 1932. Both old and new houses are called Brynhyfryd and the owners are descendants of the Colonel and his wife. There are currently 15 houses in Tadoussac owned by direct descendants of the Rhodeses. Colonel William Rhodes (1821-1892) était le fils d'un propriétaire terrien en Angleterre, et est venu à la ville de Québec dans les années 1840. Il a épousé Anne Catherine Dunn (1823-1911) de Trois-Rivières. Ils ont rencontré la famille Price qui avait une scierie et d'autres maisons à Tadoussac, et ils ont construit une résidence d'été "Brynhyfryd" à Tadoussac en 1860. La famille Russell a construit une maison semblable à côté peu de temps après (Spruce Cliff), et le Col Rhodes faisait partie du groupe qui a construit le premier hôtel en 1864. La famille Rhodes avait 9 enfants, la maison a été élargi en ajoutant sur les deux extrémités, et remodelé à plusieurs reprises. La maison a brûlé (1931) et a été reconstruite en 1932. Les deux maisons anciennes et nouvelles sont appelés Brynhyfryd et les propriétaires sont des descendants de Colonel et sa femme. Il ya actuellement 15 maisons à Tadoussac détenues par les descendants directs du Rhodeses. About 1864, the Hotel in the foreground, the 5 Price houses in the main street (note they were all the same originally) and Spruce Cliff and the Rhodes Cottage. Vers 1864, l'Hôtel au premier plan, les 5 maisons Price sur la rue principale (à noter qu'ils étaient tous la même origine) et Spruce Cliff et le Rhodes Cottage. Late 1800's, before the house was expanded. That's Colonel and Mrs Rhodes on the right. Does she look pregnant? She has a baby pram - 3 children were born after 1861. Lots of "help". Fin des années 1800, avant que la maison a été agrandi. C'est le Colonel et Mme Rhodes sur la droite. Est-elle enceinte? Elle a un landau de bébé - 3 enfants sont nés après 1861. Just after it was built in 1861, from a painting by Washington Friend (American watercolorist) owned by W Lewis Evans (note bathing huts on the beach). Peu de temps après il a été construit en 1861, d'une peinture par Washington Friend (aquarelliste américain) de la collection de Lewis & Cathy Evans (notez les cabines de bains sur la plage) about 1890 Inside the cottage, Col Rhodes reading, John Morewood looking at the camera, his brother Frank Morewood asleep. That's Carrie Rhodes on the far right, they were first cousins who later married, my grandparents! L'intérieur du chalet, Col Rhodes lecture, John Morewood en regardant la caméra, son frère Frank Morewood endormi. C'est Carrie Rhodes à l'extrême droite, ils étaient cousins germains qui épousa plus tard, mes grands-parents! 1890's Lennox Williams is the man with the BCS hat in both these photos. The house has been expanded at both ends. Lennox Williams est l'homme avec le chapeau de BCS dans ces deux photographies. La maison a été élargie aux deux extrémités. "Granny" Anne Dunn Rhodes in the middle. Looks a lot like Susie's house! At right the fireplace, similar to the one that's there now, probably in the same location. Mary Wallace reading. Looks like a tree, maybe holding up the roof, with small pegs or branches to hang stuff from. "Granny" Anne Dunn Rhodes dans le milieu. Ressemble beaucoup à la maison de Susie! À droite la cheminée, semblable à celui qui est là maintenant, probablement au même endroit. Mary Wallace lecture. Resemble un arbre, peut-être tenir le toit, avec des branches pour accrocher des choses. Nan Rhodes Williams and her son Jimmie Williams about 1895 Ping-Pong Team Play About 1905 Gertrude Williams (Alexander) on the right, Granny and Sidney Williams on the porch Going Fishing about 1902 Lennox Williams, Poitras, John Morewood, Frank Morewood (kneeling), Charlie Rhodes Aller à la pêche There's a Basketball net! It was invented in 1891 by a Canadian. Il ya un filet de basket-ball! Il a été inventé en 1891 par un Canadien. Probably heading to the CSL boat for the trip home, maybe Frank and John Morewood. Probablement aller au bateau CSL pour le voyage de retour, peut-être Frank et John Morewood. Late 1800's. The town hasn't made it up the hill, but there were houses at the top of the golf course (upper left) Fin des années 1800. La ville n'a pas fait jusqu'à la colline, mais il y avait des maisons en haut du terrain de golf (en haut à gauche) Zooming in From the bay - Note a BOARDWALK at the top of the bank between the two houses, and a clear path down to the seawall and hut on the beach. And a landslide or 2! De la baie - Note Une promenade au sommet de la banque entre les deux maisons, et une voie claire vers la digue et cabane sur la plage. Et un glissement de terrain ou deux! People on the boardwalk! with a canopy! This is likely the Russell family from Spruce Cliff, if you can identify them please help! Les gens sur le trottoir! avec un auvent! Il est probable que la famille Russell de Spruce Cliff, si vous pouvez les identifier s'il vous plaît aider! Frank Morewood's drawing shows new enclosed rooms where there used to be verandah, for the expanding family. The work was done, but with plain white finish, maybe stucco? (below) and the end porch was left open. Frank was in his 20's and later designed the new Brynhyfryd (1932). It's about 1910, Col. Rhodes is gone (1821-1892) but Granny is still alive in her 80's and she has 5 living children (of 9) and over 20 grandchildren under the age of 20!! The house keeps expanding. Le dessin de Frank Morewood montre chambres nouvelles clos où il y avait autrefois une véranda, pour la famille en pleine expansion. Le travail a été fait, mais avec une finition de couleur blanche, peut-être stuc? (ci-dessous) et le porche de la fin a été laissée ouverte. Frank était dans ses années 20 et plus tard a conçu le nouveau Brynhyfryd (1932). C'est vers 1910, le Colonel Rhodes est parti (1821-1892), mais Granny est toujours vivante dans ses années 80 et elle a cinq enfants vivants (de 9) et plus de 20 petits-enfants de moins de 20! La maison ne cesse de s'élargir. Mary Williams, Sydney Williams, Jim Williams, Evelyn Meredith, Lennox Williams, Nan Rhodes Williams, Gertrude Williams, Bobby Morewood about 1912-14, Granny Anne Catherine Dunn Rhodes (1823-1911) has died and Lenny got the house. Sports every day! Golf, Tennis and of course PingPong! Sport tous les jours! Golf, tennis et bien sûr PingPong! More changes to the house D'autres changements à la maison Lenny in the garden with grandchildren Jean Alexander (Aylan-Parker) and her brother Jim, circa 1922. At left with Nan. They are in their early 60's, Lenny lived to 99 (1958). Lenny's Study Lenny dans le jardin avec petits-enfants Jean Alexander (Aylan-Parker) et son frère Jim, circa 1922. À gauche avec Nan. Ils sont dans leur début des années 60, Lenny a vécu à 99 (1958). Major changes on the road side, seems like a different house. This is just before it burned in 1932 Des changements importants sur le bord de la route, semble être une autre maison. C'est juste avant l'incendie de 1932 The "new" Brynhyfryd looks like this, built in 1932. La «nouvelle» Brynhyfryd ressemble à ceci, construit en 1932. 37 NEXT PAGE

Photos Historique Tadoussac 1860-1900 Tadoussac The oldest Photographs Les plus anciennes Photographies Photography was invented about 1839, and Tadoussac was a popular subject for well-know professional photographers such as William Notman (father and son) and Livernois from the 1860's. This page is a collection of the early photos, before personal cameras were invented (the first Kodak camera was 1888). The 1860's was a busy time in Tadoussac. The first summer residences were built in the early 1860's. The Tadoussac Hotel, the future Cid store, and the row of 5 houses on the main street were built in 1864. The Protestant Chapel was built in 1867. The old Hudson's Bay Post was on the lawn in front of the Hotel until 1870, which helps with figuring out the dates of the photos! Notice most of the trees have been cut all around Tadoussac! DATES may not be exact, a list of key dates may be found at the bottom of the CONTENTS page (please send dates!) https://www.tidesoftadoussac.com Thanks to McCord Museum, Hotel Tadoussac, BAnQ, and everyone who collects and loves old photographs! La photographie a été inventée vers 1839 et Tadoussac était un sujet prisé par des photographes professionnels reconnus tels que William Notman (père et fils) et Livernois dès les années 1860. Cette page est une collection des premières photos, avant l'invention des appareils photo personnels (le premier appareil photo Kodak date de 1888). Les années 1860 furent une période occupée à Tadoussac. Les premières résidences d'été ont été construites au début des années 1860. L'Hôtel Tadoussac, le futur magasin Cid, et la rangée de 5 maisons sur la rue principale ont été construits en 1864. La Chapelle protestante a été construite en 1867. L'ancien Poste de la Baie d'Hudson était sur la pelouse devant l'Hôtel jusqu'en 1870, ce qui aide à déterminer les dates des photos ! Remarquez que la plupart des arbres ont été coupés tout autour de Tadoussac! Les DATES peuvent ne pas être exactes, une liste des dates clés peut être trouvée au bas de la page CONTENU (veuillez envoyer les dates!) https://www.tidesoftadoussac.com Merci au Musée McCord, à l'Hôtel Tadoussac, à BAnQ et à tous ceux qui collectionnent et aiment les photographies anciennes ! 1860-1900 Maybe before the Hotel was built? Peut-être avant la construction de l'hôtel ? Powel/Bailey House <<<Hanging Beach Cote Ida Hovington Stairs Rectory Evans/Beattie Houses on the beach and a boat being built House on Main Street (right side, now Auberge Galouine) Still 1860's Maisons sur la plage et un bateau en construction Maison sur la rue Main (côté droit, maintenant Auberge Galouine) Toujours des années 1860 One more house on the beach! Une maison de plus sur la plage ! Chapelle de Tadoussac - rectangular windows were replaced with nicer windows, there doesn't seem to be a graveyard yet, still 1860's Chapelle de Tadoussac - les fenêtres rectangulaires ont été remplacées par de plus belles fenêtres, il ne semble pas encore y avoir de cimetière, toujours des années 1860 In the 1860's the Price Sawmill at Anse à L'Eau had been closed for more than 10 years. Below is a 'colourized' photo. Many other photos of Anse à L'Eau at https://www.tidesoftadoussac.com/anse-a-l-eau Dans les années 1860, la scierie Price à l'Anse à l'Eau était fermée depuis plus de 10 ans. Ci-dessous une photo "colorisée". Beaucoup d'autres photos de l'Anse à L'Eau à https://www.tidesoftadoussac.com/anse-a-l-eau CIrca 1860's, the future George Hotel, some new houses, and the Radford House. The lake is much smaller than today, many years before a dam was built. Vers les années 1860, le futur George Hotel, quelques nouvelles maisons et la Radford House. Le lac est beaucoup plus petit qu'aujourd'hui, bien des années avant la construction d'un barrage. The BRIDGE over the ravine is very interesting. Le PONT sur le ravin est très intéressant. A peine étions-nous montés dans la voiture de l'hôtel que nous nous trouvions en train de traverser au grand galop un pont de planches branlant. Les vieilles dames hurlaient de frayeur, tandis que notre Jean, d'une voix tonitruante, nous criait : « Il fait très noir ce soir, si vous voyez où vous êtes, vous faites peur ! Évidemment, ce cocher distingué qui arborait avec tant de désinvolture son vieux manteau miteux devait être natif de l'endroit. Dufferin House (left) was built in 1873 La maison Dufferin (à gauche) a été construite en 1873 circa 1880's some houses have been built on Pointe d'Islet Below a close-up of one of the houses vers 1880 quelques maisons ont été construites sur la Pointe d'Islet Ci-dessous un gros plan d'une des maisons Circa 1880's, my ancestors on the lawn of the Rhodes cottage, many more photos on another page https://www.tidesoftadoussac.com/rhodes-cottage-1 This photo is on a glass plate, there are some cracks and some pieces missing! My G-G-Grandmother Anne Dunn Rhodes in black, and William Rhodes is in the third photo, the only man! Also a baby carriage! Circa 1880's, mes ancêtres sur la pelouse du cottage Rhodes, beaucoup plus de photos sur une autre page https://www.tidesoftadoussac.com/rhodes-cottage-1 Cette photo est sur une plaque de verre, il y a quelques craquelures et quelques morceaux manquants ! Ma G-G-Grand-mère Anne Dunn Rhodes en noir. William Rhodes est sur la troisième photo, le seul homme ! Aussi un landau! Late 1800' s, the Mill has become a Fish Hatchery, and the dock is used for the Steamers, which was the primary method of transportation to Tadoussac. À la fin des années 1800, le moulin est devenu une écloserie et le quai est utilisé pour les bateaux à vapeur, qui étaient le principal moyen de transport vers Tadoussac. Église de la Sainte-Croix built 1885-9, and the hotel was expanded circa 1900, so this is 1890's. Above the main street is an empty sand dune! L'église de la Sainte-Croix a été construite de 1885 à 1889, et l'hôtel a été agrandi vers 1900, nous sommes donc dans les années 1890. Au-dessus de la rue principale se trouve une dune de sable vide ! Anse à L'Eau is still the only dock in Tadoussac, with a new pavilion. L'Anse à L'Eau est toujours le seul quai à Tadoussac, avec un nouveau pavillon. 76

Été à Tadoussac Summer 1920-1940 Page 5 of 7 PREVIOUS NEXT PAGE Saguenay Trips Des excursions sur le Saguenay 1927 Picnic at Petites Isles Lennox Williams and friends Jack Wallace Sr 1934 Trip to the Capes ?, Jean Alexander (Aylan-Parker), ?, Ainslie Evans (Stephen) & Trevor Evans, Back Jack Wallace and Frank Morewood Bill & Betty Morewood (Evans) Phoebe Evans (Skutezky) at right Trevor, Jack, Betty, Ainslie, Frank My mother Age 12 in 1934>> At the wharf in Tadoussac Au Quai de Tadoussac Bill and Betty Morewood, Jack Wallace 1935 Trip to... Islet Rouge!? Susie Russell Ainslie Evans (Stephen) Betty Morewood (Evans) Frances Holland Phoebe Evans (Skutezky) and others My parents in 1935 Lewis Evans age 24 Betty Morewood age 13 They married in 1944! 1935 Above Lennox Williams Below Frank Morewood and Captain Donat Therrien 1935 Uncle Art taking the girls for a trip Left Peg, Mac? Gertrude (Williams) Alexander Ron Alexander Sr Jean Alexander (Aylan-Parker) Below WOW The Mountain above Petits Isles Sur la Montagne à Petits Isles 1936 Lewis Evans with all the girls, and below, sculling 1938 Ainslie Evans (Stephen) Betty Morewood (Evans) ?? LilyBell Rhodes Phoebe Evans (Skutezky) Jean Alexander (Aylan-Parker) 1939 Lewis Evans and the "Noroua" 1940 The "White Boat" with no life jackets! pas de gilets de sauvetage! Harry Morewood Jimmy Williams Simon Wallace (no relation) Joan Williams (Ballantyne) Frank Morewood Susan Williams (Webster) Jennifer and Delia Tudor-Hart Bobby Morewood PREVIOUS NEXT PAGE

Family Tree of William Rhodes and Anne Dunn Col. William Rhodes 1821-1892 Anne Catherine Dunn 1823-1911 Children and Grandchildren The Rhodes had 9 children, and 26 grandchildren. 17 of the grandchildren are connected to Tadoussac, and 8 of them had descendants. In total there are over 190 descendants of Col & Mrs Rhodes, most of whom visit Tadoussac regularly, where they own 12 houses! (Not counting the Boston family). Look for your name! If I've missed it let me know!

Tadoussac Wharf 1916-1950, Steamers, Goelettes, People! The Old Wooden Wharf Le vieux quai en bois 1916-1950 The Wharf in the bay was built in about 1916, this photo from the McCord Museum (Montreal) shows they lacked the equipment used today! Le quai dans la baie a été construit environ 1916, cette photo du Musée McCord (Montréal) montre qu'ils ne avaient pas l'équipement utilisé aujourd'hui! The "Pixie B" about 1925. The goelette at the wharf in Tadoussac (above and below) is the Pixie B and it towed the barge which could carry two cars. La "Pixie B" circa 1925. La goélette au quai de Tadoussac est le Pixie B et remorquer le chaland qui pourrait transporter deux voitures Paintings on this page by Frank Morewood and Lilybell Rhodes Uncle Arthur C-Smith R Lewis Evans ? Nan Wallace (Leggat) Susan Williams (Webster) Joan Williams (Ballantyne) Nan Wallace (Leggat) Jim Williams 1947 painting by Albert Cloutier Thanks to Peter Mc The yellow truck shows up several times, probably a Hotel Tadoussac vehicle Le camion jaune apparaît à plusieurs reprises, probablement un véhicule de l'Hôtel Tadoussac The wharf was badly damaged when the CSL Quebec burned in August 1950, and rebuilt with the steel wharf we see today. Le quai a été gravement endommagé lorsque le CSL Québec brûlé en Août 1950, et reconstruite avec le quai d'acier que nous voyons aujourd'hui. Wharf construction with a crane in the background, and a boat being rebuilt at the same time early 1950's Construction de quai avec une grue en arrière-plan, Et un bateau étant reconstruit en même temps Début des années 50 72

Saguenay River Anchorages by Lewis Evans Saguenay Anchorages By R Lewis Evans 15

On wet years there and many different mushrooms and toadstools to be found.

Anse à l'Eau, where ferries arrive today, was a dock for the big Steamers. Où le traversier arrive aujourd'hui, était un quai pour les grands Bateaux à Vapeur. Anse à l'Eau Les Bateaux à Vapeur and L'écloserie de Poissons The Steamers and the Fish Hatchery A drawing of the buildings at Anse à L'Eau, dated 1858 Un dessin des bâtiments de l'Anse à L'Eau, daté de 1858 Anse à L'Eau in 1870 was a lumber mill that had been operating for 40 years, and was now quiet. The era of the sawmill was over, and the era of the STEAMSHIP was beginning! This page may have errors with dates and other information, please help! The pictures tell the story, and I was not alive at the time! Anse à l'Eau en 1870 était un moulin à bois qui fonctionnait depuis 40 ans, et était maintenant calme. L'ère de la scierie était terminée, et l'ère de la STEAMSHIP commençait! Cette page peut avoir des erreurs avec les dates et autres informations, s'il vous plaît aider! Les images racontent l'histoire, et je n'étais pas vivant à l'époque! "Champion" circa 1870 "St Lawrence" circa 1875 Circa 1880 It looks like the sawmill has been renovated to become the new Fish Hatchery, the building seems to be in the same location, with the same roof pitch, but the windows are different. Circa 1880 Peut-être la scierie a été rénovée pour devenir la nouvelle écloserie de poissons, le bâtiment semble être au même endroit, avec la même hauteur de toit, mais les fenêtres sont différentes. The "Thor" was a working boat for the Price company, and became a ferry between Rivière du Loup and Tadoussac between 1890 and 1916 Le «Thor» était un bateau de travail pour la compagnie Price et est devenu un ferry entre la Rivière du Loup et Tadoussac entre 1890 et 1916 The Wharf at Anse à L'Eau was reduced in size over the years, eventually the part where the sawmill/hatchery was removed as well. Le quai de l'Anse à L'Eau a été réduit en taille au fil des ans, finalement la partie avec la scierie / écloserie a été enlevée aussi. "Canada" circa 1900? "Canada" circa 1900? Tourists admiring a large salmon from the pond at the Fish Hatchery Les touristes admirant un gros saumon de l'étang à l'écloserie de poissons Horses and Buggies ready for the Tourists on the Wharf Chevaux et Chariots prêts pour les Touristes sur le Quai This new Fish Hatchery is NOT the same building as the old sawmill in the earlier photos, the roof is steeper and there are six dormers. However it does look the same as the building below, which still exists. The roof has been lowered, the window near the corner looks exactly the same. Cette nouvelle écloserie de poissons n'est PAS le même bâtiment que l'ancienne scierie dans les photos précédentes, le toit est plus raide et il ya six lucarnes. Cependant, il ressemble le même que le bâtiment ci-dessous, qui existe encore. Le toit a été abaissé, la fenêtre près du coin semble exactement la même. These two Steamers look very similar, but the top one is a paddle wheeler, the bottom one has more lifeboats! Possibly the same ship. Also note the new Gazebo structure on the wharf. Circa 1900 Ces deux Steamers sont très similaires, mais le haut est un bateau à aubes, celle du bas a plus de canots de sauvetage! Peut-être le même navire. Notez la nouvelle structure Gazebo sur le quai. Circa 1900 Names: Back Row Frank Morewood Bob Thompson Minnie Rhodes ? ? Dorothy Rhodes (Evans) Armitage Rhodes Front Row ? Charlie Rhodes ? Nancy Morewood John Morewood ? Circa 1900 Circa 1900 a big change, the old Sawmill Building is GONE, and that part of the wharf as well. Some rocks have been exposed. The boat at the wharf is the "Mahone" more pictures on the "Ferries" page Circa 1900 Un grand changement, l'ancien bâtiment Sawmill est ALLÉ, et que la partie du quai ainsi. Certaines roches ont été exposées. Le bateau au quai est le "Mahone" plus de photos sur la page "Ferries" 1908 Left Amy Burstall Mary Williams (Wallace) (18) Right Billy Morewood (17) Carrie Rhodes (Morewood) (27) Carrie and Billy are first cousins, Carrie later marries Frank Morewood, Billy's brother, and they become my grandparents! Carrie et Billy sont les cousins, Carrie épouse Frank Morewood, le frère de Billy, et ils deviennent mes grands-parents! 1908 Below Catherine Rhodes? (20) Dorothy Rhodes (Evans) (18) Right The "Tadoussac" "Cape Diamond" Below is the SS Saguenay, very similar to the CSL Boats that were in service up to the 1960's, but it only had one funnel. Voici le SS Saguenay, très semblable au CSL Boats qui étaient en service jusqu'aux années 1960, mais il avait seulement un entonnoir. Painting by Frank Morewood, circa 1930 More photos of the Ferries at Anse à L'Eau on the "Ferries" page! Circa 1965 Trevor Skutezky and Tom Evans (me) went fishing at the LAKE, and catching nothing, we decided to try our luck at the ferry wharf - he was allowed, I was NOT. Why was I not allowed, it looks perfectly safe! If you ignore the lack of railings, the rickety construction, and the 30 foot drop to cold water with no way to get out...Anyway we caught some Crapeaus (as shown) and 4 lovely TommyCod, which we took up to the Sku's to clean for their supper. Word got out that we had caught some COD in the LAKE and I was caught. To make matters worse somebody took our picture and sent it to my parents in a Christmas card, so I got heck again 6 months later! Circa 1965 Trevor Skutezky et Tom Evans (moi) sont allés à la pêche au lac, et la capture rien, nous avons décidé d'essayer notre chance au quai de ferry - il a été autorisé, je n'étais PAS. Pourquoi je n'ai pas été autorisé, il semble parfaitement sûr! Si vous ignorez le manque de garde-corps, la construction branlante et la chute de 30 pieds à l'eau froide sans moyen de sortir ... De toute façon nous avons attrapé quelques Crapeaus (comme indiqué) et 4 TommyCod belle, que nous avons pris chez Sku à nettoyer pour leur souper. Les gens ont entendu dire que nous avions attrapé du COD dans le LAC et que j'étais coupable. Pour aggraver les choses, quelqu'un a pris notre photo et l'a envoyé à mes parents dans une carte de Noël, donc j'ai eu heck encore 6 mois plus tard! (Désolé pour la traduction) Then and Now 53

Saguenay Geology The Saguenay River Geology[edit ] The geological origins of Saguenay Fjord National Park can be traced to the Grenville orogeny during the Precambrian era. This event is considered to be the beginnings to the Laurentian mountains . Around 200 million years ago, a rock basal complex between a north fault and a south fault collapsed, creating the Saguenay Graben . The graben was 250 kilometres (160 mi) long and 50 kilometres (31 mi) wide. During the last glacial period , the region was covered by ice sheets two to three kilometers deep. The ice sheets cut deep into the Saguenay graben, gouging the fjord in the process. The weight of the ice sheets also caused the region to sink. When the claciers melted around 10,000 years ago, the graben was flooded by seawater. The subsequent post-glacial rebound lifted the terrain, shaping the fjord valleys in the process. Saguenay Graben From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia I've always wondered about the Geology of the Saguenay. There's lots on the internet, this is from Wikipedia! Géologie Les origines géologiques du parc national du Fjord-du-Saguenay remontent à l'orogenèse de Grenville au cours de l'ère précambrienne. Cet événement est considéré comme le début des montagnes laurentiennes. Il y a environ 200 millions d'années, un complexe basal rocheux situé entre une faille nord et une faille sud s'est effondré, créant le graben du Saguenay. Le graben mesurait 250 kilomètres (160 mi) de long et 50 kilomètres (31 mi) de large. Au cours de la dernière période glaciaire, la région était recouverte de calottes glaciaires de deux à trois kilomètres de profondeur. Les calottes glaciaires ont entaillé profondément le graben du Saguenay, creusant ainsi le fjord. Le poids des calottes glaciaires a aussi causé l'affaissement de la région. Lors de la fonte des glaciers, il y a environ 10 000 ans, le graben a été inondé par l'eau de mer. Le rebond postglaciaire qui a suivi a soulevé le terrain, façonnant ainsi les vallées des fjords. The Saguenay Graben is a rift valley or graben in the geological Grenville Province of southern Quebec , Canada . It is an elongated flat-bottomed basin 250 km (155 mi) long and 50 km (31 mi) wide, bounded by normal faults running parallel to its length. Formation of the Saguenay Graben The time of formation of the faults related to the Saugenay Graben is still under debate because it is difficult to accurately measure the age of faulting. Evidence suggests it was either the opening of the Iapetus Ocean (600-400 Ma), or the opening of the Atlantic Ocean (195-170 Ma) that caused the faulting. During the opening of one of these oceans, fragmentation of the landmass occurred creating two fault planes, one to the North and one to the South. The resulting bedrock between dropped down along the normal faults, creating the Saguenay Graben. The extent of these faults are only known at the surface and therefore their extension and shape at depth is unknown. The faults associated with the Saguenay Graben have been the source for earthquakes , including the 1988 Saguenay earthquake . Glaciations The area was covered by ice sheets several times throughout the Pleistocene . The graben was located relatively parallel to the ice sheet movement and therefore caused it to become a preferred travel pathway for ice. The glaciers cut into the graben and widened it in some places as well as making it considerable deeper in others. After the retreat of the final ice sheet, there was considerable isostatic rebound . The total amount of rebound varied from 140 m on the north side and 120 m on the south side. Present day geography The lowlands within the graben have an altitude of between 100 and 200 m. To the east there is the Kenogami threshold which is characterized by having an altitude of 200 to 260 m. This threshold splits the graben into two physiographic regions; the Lac Saint-Jean region to the west and the Saguenay region to the east. The plateau around the Graben is between 200 and 800 m in altitude. The Saguenay River as well as the Lac Saint-Jean are both contained within the Saguenay Graben. Le Graben du Saguenay est une vallée du Rift ou graben située dans la province géologique de Grenville, dans le sud du Québec, au Canada. Il s'agit d'un bassin allongé à fond plat de 250 km (155 mi) de long et 50 km (31 mi) de large, délimité par des failles normales parallèles à sa longueur. Formation du Graben du Saguenay L'époque de formation des failles liées au graben de Saugenay fait encore l'objet de débats, car il est difficile de mesurer avec précision l'âge des failles. Les preuves suggèrent que c'est soit l'ouverture de l'océan Iapetus (600-400 Ma), soit l'ouverture de l'océan Atlantique (195-170 Ma) qui a causé la faille. Lors de l'ouverture de l'un de ces océans, la fragmentation de la masse continentale s'est produite, créant deux plans de failles, un au nord et un au sud. Le substrat rocheux résultant s'est effondré le long des failles normales, créant le Graben du Saguenay. L'étendue de ces failles n'est connue qu'en surface et donc leur extension et leur forme en profondeur sont inconnues. Les failles associées au graben du Saguenay ont causé des tremblements de terre, dont le tremblement de terre du Saguenay en 1988. Glaciations La région a été recouverte de calottes glaciaires à plusieurs reprises tout au long du Pléistocène. Le graben était situé relativement parallèlement au mouvement de la calotte glaciaire et en faisait donc une voie de déplacement privilégiée pour la glace. Les glaciers ont creusé le fossé et l'ont élargi à certains endroits et l'ont rendu considérablement plus profond à d'autres. Après le retrait de la dernière calotte glaciaire, un rebond isostatique considérable s'est produit. La quantité totale de rebond variait entre 140 m du côté nord et 120 m du côté sud. Géographie actuelle Les basses terres du graben ont une altitude comprise entre 100 et 200 m. À l'est se trouve le seuil de Kenogami qui se caractérise par une altitude de 200 à 260 m. Ce seuil divise le graben en deux régions physiographiques ; la région du Lac Saint-Jean à l'ouest et la région du Saguenay à l'est. Le plateau autour du Graben est situé entre 200 et 800 m d'altitude. La rivière Saguenay ainsi que le lac Saint-Jean sont tous deux contenus dans le graben du Saguenay.

Views of Tadoussac from the Cross over 100 years View from High Up Vue d'en haut Circa 1880 Circa 1880 Circa 1895 Circa 1895 Circa 1900 Circa 1930 Circa 1935 Circa 1940 Circa 1945 The Church is gone L'église a disparu Circa 1947 Circa 1950 Circa 1965 Two interesting close-ups Both late 1800's Road behind Cid's going down into the gully And a house overlooking the lake Deux gros plans intéressants À la fin des années 1800 Route derrière Cid va descendre dans le ravin Et une maison surplombant le lac

Short Stories by R Lewis Evans R. Lewis Evans was an English Teacher who loved to write. Although his books are quite well-known, his short stories and articles belong mostly to the more distant past. It was during the 1940s and 1950s that magazine short stories were popular and sought after and Dad wrote over 20 of them. Most were published, and many are of interest especially to those of us who know and love the Lower St. Lawrence and Saguenay areas of Quebec, so I decided to get them out of the file and onto the web-site where they can be read once again. I've divided the stories into categories. While he wrote mostly river stories about the Tadoussac area, including some historical fiction, he also wrote 6 stories about World War II (4 of which overlap with our beloved river), and a number of odd inspirations, one biblical, several inspired by newspaper items, and even one (gasp!) Science Fiction. There are also some non-fiction articles which will be coming along later in the year. I love them all partly because he wrote about what he loved and I love it too, but partly because his characters are thoughtful, compassionate and real. I've included a few notes that he kept in the file. Some are news articles he drew his ideas from; others are comments he received from editors either printed in the magazine or sent along to him separately. I've also tried to reproduce the illustrations, duly credited, as all the stories that published were supported by visual art. Only one, Casual Enemy, has no illustrator mentioned. My guess is he drew that one himself. I've read all these stories several times in my efforts to get them up onto the web-site correctly and I've never tired of them. I hope you enjoy them. A fair warning: some readers might recognize a few people! Alan Evans NEXT PAGE R Lewis Evans War Stories Casual Enemy (As Published in “Boating Magazine”, Vol. 18, no. 3, April, 1942) by Lewis Evans PIERRE TREMBLAY put down his pipe and listened. The hollow chug of a diesel engine had suddenly broken the silence of the bay as some craft rounded the steep headland at its outer end. “No running lights,” the old French-Canadian murmured to himself, and then he smiled at his own comment, for his own little work boat, anchored close under the rugged hillside near the head of the bay, carried no riding light. The bays off the Saguenay River are deep—thirty to a hundred fathoms; small craft have to anchor close to shore in order to find bottom, and lights of any kind attract mosquitoes from the woods. The jarring clang of a bell slowed the engines of the incoming craft, and Pierre sat back and drew on his pipe again. She was the “Phantome”. He knew that engine bell—it had been cracked for years. The “Phantome” was a diesel-engined coaster with a shady history. Five years ago, meeting her under the same conditions, Pierre would have known that she was bootlegging cheap French liquor from St. Pierre and Miquelon in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the dry counties up river. Not much money in that game now, though, and the “Phantome” had been out of it since her crew had had to jettison a cargo worth well over a thousand dollars, and the pursuing government patrol boat had just enough evidence to get Xavier Bouchard, the “Phantome’s” captain and Pierre’s sister’s son, two years in the Quebec jail. Well, he hoped that Xavier was up to nothing that might get him into trouble again. That jail sentence had nearly broken his mother’s heart, for she was a gentle and pious woman. Perhaps he was netting salmon—that would get him a fat fine if he were caught, but the government boats were too busy trying to keep the St. Lawrence free from German submarines these days to worry about coasting vessels breaking the Fish and Game Laws. Only a week ago a freighter had been torpedoed out in the Gulf, not so very many miles from the Saguenay. Two patrol boats had already claimed the destruction of the submarine. Why couldn’t Xavier get some honest work, and save Marie, his mother, the anxiety which was making her old before her time? Honest work was to be had easily enough these days, though Pierre himself was not too sure what kind of a job he could pick up now that this work on the fish-hatchery dam was over. His had been the supply boat for that—a government project to build a salmon hatchery on the stream that emptied into the bay. Today the dam had been finished, the gang had been taken out by launch, and Pierre’s boat was loaded with shovels and picks, unused food stores, cement and dynamite. Ah well—he’d get something to do. There was work going on aboard the “Phantome” — sounded like heavy oil drums being rolled along the deck. Surely they would not be shifting their cargo at this time of night. Still no lights, and only occasionally came a subdued order. Pierre could see nothing — bateme, but the night was a black one. Then came the louder rumble of oil drums — empty ones. Pierre suddenly stood up and peered into the darkness. Surely Xavier could not be such a fool . . . but still, the St. Lawrence was a long way from Germany, and diesel engines needed fuel oil, and Xavier had always liked easy money . . . Quietly Pierre hauled in the painter of the ten-foot flat-bottomed boat that served him as tender. As he eased himself aboard he remembered to leave his pipe behind — the dynamite was stowed in the tender for safety’s sake. Two stealthy strokes with a paddle moved him away from his boat. The tide had begun to rise and a slight current set round the bay, drifting him towards the “Phantome”. At last he could make out the shape of the coaster, her stump mast, and the wheelhouse at her stern dimly silhouetted against the mouth of the bay. Pierre peered at her waterline . . . was there? . . . yes — a long, low, shelving shape protruded astern of the coaster. The submarine lay on the far side of the “Phantome”. Pierre worked his boat back against the tide, which was running more strongly now, and almost bumped his work boat before he saw it. He got aboard and sat down, holding the tender’s painter. Poor Marie — what would she do if Xavier got into trouble for this piece of work? And this might be only the first of many refueling episodes. Straightening up with decision, Pierre hauled his tender to that side of his boat farther from the “Phantome”. Leaning over, he worked fast. Once he paused to peer at the position of the coaster, once to dip his hand into the current slipping past the side of his boat, testing its strength. He rummaged in the cockpit and came up with a large reel of cod line, one end of which he secured to the tender. Leaning over the smaller boat and opening his coat wide as a shield, he struck a match. An end of fuse lay in the bottom; he lighted it and doused the match quickly. Manoeuvring the tender round the stern of his boat, he felt to make sure that the cod-line was not snarled, and then gave the tender a long, gentle push towards the “Phantome”. Sitting down, he carefully paid out the line as the little craft, in the grip of the tide, asked for it. The rumble of oil drums on the “Phantome” had ceased, and now came a clanking. She was weighing anchor. Pierre gave his tender more slack and felt her take it up. Slowly the coaster’s anchor chain clanked inboard, and her engine was started up. So much of the cod-line was now in the water that Pierre could not feel a definite pull from the tender, but he went on giving slack. The cracked engine bell jangled aboard the “Phantome”, and her propeller kicked ahead slowly. The clanking of the chain had ceased. Pierre found that the end of the cod-line was in his hand. Knowing the length of the line, and praying that his judgement of distance was right, he pulled in a fathom or two, and crouched in the cockpit. Suddenly there was a hoarse shout in the darkness — the tender had been seen. Pierre tensed, gripping the cockpit coaming. Then a flash lit the bay — lit up for a second the silver streak of the submarine stretching forward from the flash, three figures on the deck frozen in their movement, and the “Phantome” clear of the submarine and heading out of the bay. Pitch darkness blinded Pierre; a scrap of wood clattered into the cockpit beside him — of the tender’s gunwale, by the feel of it; his ears, deafened by the blast, heard dimly confused shouts and the hurried thump of the “Phantome’s” motor as she fled out of the bay. The old man, trembling a little, hauled up his anchor and started his motor. Expecting a fusillade of rifle shots at the very least, he zig-zagged along close to shore, heading for the open. No shots followed him, and he rounded the headland and dropped his hook in the next bay down the river. On such a night that explosion should have been heard in Tadoussac, two miles away at the mouth of the Saguenay. If so surely the patrol boat based there would investigate. Not long afterwards he heard the drone of the patrol boat. It swept up the Saguenay towards him, its searchlight probing. Pierre hastily lighted his running lights and got under way back towards the bay. The patrol boat caught up to him just off the headland. Pierre pointed towards the bay and was left rocking in the wake of the grey launch. By the time he had rounded the head the patrol boat was almost alongside the submarine, her searchlight and gun trained on it. There was no resistance, however, for the submarine was submerged and aground at the stern, her bow protruding from the surface at a sharp angle, her crew clinging to the deck. Apparently the blast had occurred near the stern, which had gone down, while the forward part of the hull remained buoyant. Pierre drifted up to the patrol boat. “What do you know about this?” demanded the Naval Reserve Lieutenant in command. Pierre explained, partly in French and partly in broken English, with expressive gestures, but not mentioning the “Phantome”, which by now should be far up the Saguenay, frightened to death but above suspicion. The Lieutenant expressed his amazement profanely, and added: “Meet us in Tadoussac. The government will be very grateful . . .” Marie would be grateful too, if she knew, thought Pierre. “And we'll get you a new tender and some more dynamite,” went on the officer. “Oh, the dynamite — it belonged to the government anyway,” said Pierre. The End He heard a yell and the sound of quick movement from the pit as he swooped towards it and tossed the grenade Monte Cassino Downhill (Published in The Montreal Standard, Spring of 1944) Lieutenant Johnny Martin takes a long chance on a tricky slope by Lewis Evans ILLUSTRATED BY GEOFFREY TRAUNTER TO USE his own expression, Lieutenant Johnny Martin was skunked. He crouched and shivered in the hole he had scooped in the snowdrift under a stunted bush and mentally compared it with what the Americans called foxholes in the Pacific battle zones. The only fox that might condescend to call this "home,” thought Johnny, would be an Arctic fox. The miserable shelter in which he crouched was on the southwest shoulder of Monte Cassino, and below him was the valley in which lay one of the main roads to Rome, the valley up which units of the Fifth Army were advancing towards the town of Cassino. Johnny could see the road down there, about a thousand feet below him, and the gaps in it where the retreating Germans had blown up the culverts. He could see the railway line, too, with the twisted girders of a steel bridge sagging into a small river; the Fortresses had fixed that, in a precision daylight attack weeks ago. The slopes on which he lay, and all the other mountains in that jumble of southern spurs of the Appenines, were deep in snow on their summits but on the lower contours the snow became patchy, and down in the valleys mud reigned supreme. The regiment would be wallowing in it as usual, Johnny thought. The Italian weather had been horribly wet for weeks, and turning cold in December had resulted in the unusual amount of snow on the mountains. Well, he thought, at least his snowdrift, if cold, was cleaner than the mud down in the valley. Opposite him to his left were the slopes of a smaller valley running into the main one, and that was where his regiment was. His problem was to rejoin them. The considerable obstacle directly in his way was a small sector of the German defenses, consisting of a machine-gun nest in the lee of a knoll about halfway down the shoulder of the floor of this minor valley. In front of the nest and below the knoll stretched a mare’s nest of barbed wire, protecting the gunners from a frontal charge. Their field of fire covered the lower slopes of the mountain, where the snow gave way to grass and mud. Monte Cassino had been causing the Allies plenty of worry as they hammered their way through ancient Campania. It was crowned by the huge monastery which had been founded by St. Benedict in the year 529, but that historical fact held little interest for the men whose job it was to rid the mountain of Germans. They hoped that the monks had had the sense to clear out before their mountain became a military objective, and wanted desperately to know if the Germans had established any form of artillery in or near the monastery or the ruined castle just below the two valleys and could break up any advance in force towards Cassino. Air reconnaissance had failed to reveal any gun sites, but the two buildings afforded such opportunities for concealment that the risk of advancing without further information was too great—hence Lieutenant Martin’s uncomfortable presence on the mountain and on the wrong side of the remnants of the German rearguard. JOHNNY had been amongst the Canadians who had qualified as paratroopers at an American training camp early in the war, and last night he had been dropped onto the slopes of Monte Cassino from an ugly Lysander Army Reconnaissance aircraft. In the gray December dawn he had scrambled up and onto the monastery courtyard to find the snow lying clean and untracked, and the great stone well standing in the middle as it had stood through the centuries of war and peace. Then he had slithered down to the ruined castle and satisfied himself that the Germans had established no artillery in either place. Possibly, Johnny thought, they considered the buildings to obvious, too likely to be bombed flat by Allied planes. Into the first rays of the morning sun as it rose behind the Allied armies Lieutenant Martin had flashed the pre-arranged signal which told the watchers that the buildings hid nothing of military importance, and then he had started for home. Worming his way down the shoulder he had seen the machine-gun post. He had expected something of the sort somewhere, and after reconnoitering enough to find that there were other similar nests on other parts of the lower slopes which the advancing troops would probably have to silence by mortar fire, he decided that his only chance was to wait until dark or until the Allied advance had cleared the enemy from their positions. So he lay and shivered, and considered the terrain below him. As the hours crawled by the sun warmed him a little, and the surface of the snow melted. Like spring snow in the Laurentians, thought Johnny, and his memory conjured up visions of Hill 70 at St. Sauveur, and beer and singing in the pub at night, and ski races against Dartmouth, and the Quebec Kandahar on Mont Tremblant, in the days when he was a Red Bird and used to ski for McGill. He thought of standing on the brow of Hill 70 in the cold brightness of a Sunday morning and watching the Montreal train, looking ridiculously small from where he stood, pulling into the station, and the unbelievable number of skiers who poured out of it and fanned out towards their favorite hills. From the stationary locomotive a great white plume of steam would go up like a huge mushroom, and yet he would be looking down on its top, just as he was looking down on this valley and the occasional mushroom of smoke from a bursting shell as some German gunners far up the main road searched for the Allied advance units. SUDDENLY Johnny’s gaze centred on a movement halfway down the slope and well to the right of the machine-gun post. Working round the shoulder of the hill was a man in the white parka of a ski-trooper, and to Johnny’s incredulous eyes he appeared to be on skis. He had apparently come from the steep zigzag road which connected the monastery with the valley below, and where another of the enemy outposts was. From his actions as he traversed the hillside he appeared to be carrying a load, and Johnny figured it must be ammunition or food for the post directly below. His surprise diminished as he realized that the man would hardly dare approach the post in daylight without that white protection, for a field uniform would be seen against the snowy slope from the other side of the valley. Perhaps the Germans had some mountain-trained and equipped regiments here. Their organization was supposed to be efficient and controlled by such inflexible rules that they might easily have sent skis with troops who were to fight in mountainous country even if the mountains were in Southern Italy. The skier moved on and eventually came to the post, stooped to undo his harness, and then dropped out of sight over the lip of the emplacement. Johnny’s thoughts ran on the subject of skis and skiing. Looking down over the machine-gun nest by the knoll and its protecting wire, he idly wondered whether a good skier taking off from the knoll could clear that wire below it. It might be possible, he figured, as the lower face of the knoll was cutaway steeply and the wire ran close under the face. The landing would be too flat for comfort, he thought, but one could hardly expect a natural jump to have everything. If he had some skis he could wait for night and the moon, which was strong, and then run straight for the knoll, lob a grenade into the nest as he passed, and hope that his speed would take him clear of the wire before he landed. If the grenade did its job and if no other machine- gun covered that field of fire — and he had seen no other post close enough to do so — he might ski on down to the snow-line and find cover and perhaps his own advancing units beyond that. Oh, well — what was the use of wishing? — but it seemed silly that after volunteering for a special ski course and being bored to death learning to “bear-walk” and do the “crawl” all over the snowy flats of Petawawa he should need a pair of skis in Southern Italy, of all places. The sun was sloping westwards toward the Mediterranean, and the air was getting colder. Johnny Martin thought of the long night on the mountain – he did not dare seek shelter in the monastery or the old castle as some of the Germans might have the same idea. Another twelve hours before he could reasonably expect his friends to attack – Johnny shuddered. “If I stay here all night,” he said to himself with a smile that was a bit grim, “I shall probably wake up in the morning with a very bad cold in the head – if I wake up. And if the attack doesn't drive those Germans away, or if we don't attack at dawn, I may have to stay on and on.” Anything was better than that, he thought. If that fellow in the parka would start back, and if he could get his skis. . . Johnny got out his large scale map. There was Monte Cassino, there was the winding road from the monastery to the valley, and there was the contour line followed by the skier from the road to the macine-gun emplacement. Johnny's finger followed along the contour line and stopped where it swung deeply in towards the mountain and out again. That must be a stream or stream-bed seaming the slope, he knew. If he could meet the skier in that gully they would be invisible from anywhere but directly above or below; they would be, as it were, in a fold in the ground. JOHNNY MARTIN got going. He wriggled out of his foxhole, and keeping the height of the drift between him and the post below he crawled up the shoulder towards the ruined castle, and then bore to the left towards the upper end of the gully. He reached it and slithered into it. It was just what he had expected – a rocky stream-bed with a trickle of water from the day's melting, a trickle that would be a torrent if the weather warmed up a little. Johnny scrambled down it till he came to the tracks made by the skier crossing the gully on the way to the post, and then he crouched by a rock a little uphill from the tracks and where he could see them disappear around the shoulder of the slope. The sun had gone, and visibility was being cut down to a few yards, until at around nine o'clock the rising moon should increase it considerably. Finally Johnny heard the indescribable sound of skis over snow, and a figure loomed against the sky-line. The Canadian gripped the icy butt of his automatic and tensed himself for a spring. The skier slid into the gully, lost his balance as his ski tips hit the opposite slope, and crashed with a grunt. He grunted once more – a grunt of surprise – as Johnny jumped on him and slugged at his head with the heavy gun. Johnny struggled to strip off the man's parka and heard it rip as at last it came away. Then he freed the skis and picked them up, together with the single ski-pole the German had been using, and started climbing up the gully with his spoil. Back in his shelter in the drift Johnny waited while the moon cleared the silvery summits of the distant hills. His plan was a chancy one, he knew, but he could not face any more hours in the damp cold and inactivity. WAITING for the moonrise he adjusted the leather harness to fit his boots, and his thoughts went back to cable bindings and long arguments before log-fires on the merits of super-diagonal and other down-hill devices. “'The time has come,' the Walrus said . . .” murmured Johnny and stretched himself flat on his skis. Using his hands and feet as a seal uses its flippers he slowly and cautiously tobogganed down the slope as far as he dared. There was a bush a hundred yards or so above the emplacement, and there he stopped. Beyond was the clear, steep ground, ground bathed in moonlight where he would be spotted if he tried to sneak across, then the knoll with the shadow of the weapon pit to one side of it, and dimly seen below the knoll was the tangle of wire. Crouching, Johnny got his feet into the harness and produced his two grenades from under his parka. One he left on the ground by the bush – he would only have time to use one, and he didn't like the idea of taking a mighty tumble with enough explosive on his person to blow him to bits, safe though grenades were supposed to be until the pin was out. Slowly he straightened up and launched himself forward. His skis gathered way, and for a moment his mind flipped back to a mad moonlight race on Mount Baldy one March long ago – then he was checking with a forced stem in the yielding snow and pulling the pin from the grenade. His skis came parallel again and he heard a yell and the sound of a quick movement from the pit as he swooped towards it and tossed the grenade in. Then he was on the knoll with his knees bent deep, snapping straight as he crossed the lip of the mound, and he had a blurred impression of white ground surging up at him and a roar from behind him. His skis hit the snow and he wavered, steadied, hit a bump and crashed with a cracking sound that he hoped was breaking skis, not rifle fire. He struggled up to find one ski intact and the other broken off short behind his foot. On he plunged towards the darkness of the valley, trying to keep most of his weight on the unbroken ski. A clump of bushes loomed up and he swung round it in a forward leaning turn that would have been appreciated on the Taschereau run, only to see a great patch of snowless ground beyond it. He tried to stop but his skis bit the earth, and he somersaulted madly. In the first roll his head hit a chunk of half-frozen turf and he was unconscious as he hurtled into a depression in the ground where a very large Canadian sergeant and two men with evil designs upon the German machine-gun nest were setting up a mortar. EVER since dark the sergeant had been heaving his bulk forward from cover to cover to get within range of that emplacement. To have his prospective target blow up for no good reason at all was one thing, he thought, but to have a one hundred and eighty pound unconscious lieutenant impinge on his stomach at that time of night was something else again. Johnny Martin came to dizzily to hear the sergeant emphatically muttering what seemed to be a prayer – except that the words were in quite the wrong order. The End NOTE: It was the following article in the February 7th, 1944 edition of the Globe and Mail newspaper which gave Dad the idea for this story. The (fuzzy and difficult to read despite my best efforts) original is included below. Germans Shell Abbey Housing Own Troops Montecassino Monastery (arrow) high above the town of Cassino, was founded by St. Benedict in 529, on the site of ancient Temple of Apollo. By C. L. SULZBERGER - New York Times Special to The Globe and Mail. Copyright With the 5th Army in Italy, Feb. 5 (Delayed).—German artillery, for some peculiar and perverse reason, today shelled the famous old monastery atop Monte Cassino where the Benedictine Order was born, although there is every reason to believe some of their own troops were within the vast abbey which the enemy is believed using as an observation post. Shortly after 3 p.m. this correspondent happened to be looking at the historic landmark above the lacerated town of the same name, where American troops are slowly battling their way forward in vicious street fighting, when geysers of smoke billowed from the abbey, standing out clearly in the crisp, bright atmosphere. As the smoke drifted southward in huge clouds, careful scrutinizing through binoculars revealed no visible damage. In order to ascertain the reasons for this extraordinary event, since Lt.-Gen. Mark W. Clark has issued strictest orders to his army not to fire on the abbey or any other papal property or a series of specified clerical buildings unless it is a question of the most vital military necessity, the writer made a careful inquiry among American artillery officers. Major A. J. Peterson, Minneapolis, Minn., who observed the same bursts and then inquired of various artillery observation outposts in the immediate vicinity of the monastery, said: “We could identify the shell bursts. There was one direct hit on top of the abbey. Our observers were able to plot the direction of the shells. They came from the north, in the Atinia region, and from the northwest which areas are in enemy hands.” Meanwhile, further evidence of Nazi violation of those few courtesies remaining in modern warfare was received when a French prisoner who escaped last night informed Allied authorities the Germans were forcing British, American and French captives to carry ammunition and dig positions in the Cassino vicinity. These prisoners are forced to labor under the shellfire of Allied guns, and there have been casualties among them. The Frenchman escaped during the night in the confusion following an especially heavy Allied barrage on Cassino positions still held by the Germans. He said that to the best of his knowledge, 12 Englishmen, six Americans, and two Frenchmen still remained with the enemy as prisoners in his group, doing forced labor under fire. Of Assistance to the Enemy (Published in the Montreal Standard, Date unknown) By Lewis Evans ILLUSTRATED BY BEN TURNER “AND SO,’’ concluded the announcer who was summarizing the news in French over Radio Rimouski that night, “of the ten German long-range bombers which made an attempt at five o’clock this morning to destroy the great dams at the head of the Saguenay River, seven were brought down by interceptor aircraft from Bagotville and Mont Joli before they reached their objective, one dropped its bomb load harmlessly into the waters of Lake St. John and was brought down by anti-aircraft fire, and the remaining two fled south from the fighters towards the St. Lawrence, jettisoning their bombs over uninhabited parts of the Laurentians. The crews of these two bombers are believed to have bailed out over the north shore of the St. Lawrence, as their aircraft were observed to crash in the river some miles off-shore. These men are being sought by military units and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. So ended the first enemy attempt to do to a Canadian industrial centre what the British succeeded in doing to the Mohne and Eder dams in Germany some time ago.” Old Captain Tremblay switched off the radio in the cabin of the coasting schooner St. Casimir, tied up at the wharf in Ste. Catherine’s Bay at the mouth of the Saguenay, and listened for a few moments to the comments of his companions as they continued their late meal. Outside, rain had come up on the rising east wind, and the three French-Canadians who formed his crew did not hurry over their food. They were in no haste to return to the rain-swept wharf and get on with the job of loading the St. Casimir with pulp logs. The Captain reached for his battered green-covered copy of “The St. Lawrence River Pilot” and turned to the chapter that dealt with the mouth of the Saguenay and the waters of the St. Lawrence in that vicinity, for he and his ship usually plied farther upstream, and his present route was not a familiar one. With his finger on the place he looked up. "Get going,” he ordered. “About twelve more cords to load. Tide’s full now. so the sooner we can sail the better — the ebb will be in our favor, and I don’t want to waste it.” “The three men, two deckhands and an engineer, put on their sodden caps and went out. Climbing the steep face of the dock they mounted the pile of four-foot pulp logs and bent to their work. With one hand they drove their short hooks into the logs and jerked them upwards, and then hook and free hand heaved them forward and downward into the semi-darkness to land with hollow thunder on the St. Casimir’s wooden deck, illumined by the half-hearted floodlight permitted by the dim-out regulations. When half an hour before midnight Captain Tremblay came out on the bridge to see how the work was going, the twelve cords on the wharf had become six and his men were on the schooner's deck converting the jumbled pile into a well-stowed deck load. The east wind had increased and even in Ste. Catherine’s Bay, sheltered by reefs from the open St. Lawrence, small waves were bunting the schooner against the wharf and her rubbing strake groaned from time to time on the massive piles. The Captain moved aft to slacken a taut mooring line, for the tide had dropped a foot or so. When he turned back there were four men on the deck amidships instead of three. As the newcomer’s shadow came between them and the light the workers straightened up from their task and stared. “Good evening,” said the stranger. “May I speak with your Captain?” He spoke in French, but each of the men listening knew at once that he was no French-Canadian. He was speaking careful school-book French, as most English-Canadians and Americans do. The engineer indicated Tremblay with a gesture and the stranger turned towards him. “Captain, you have a small boat—” he jerked his thumb aft, where the schooner’s lifeboat hung on davits across her stern— “and I want you or one of your men to take me out beyond the reefs to the St. Lawrence. I will pay you what you ask for your trouble.” “Impossible, monsieur,” exclaimed Tremblay. He motioned towards the pulp logs. “We have work to do and besides, the weather ...” He gestured vaguely towards the rainy darkness off-shore, and through his mind went the words he had heard less than two hours before—“The crews of these two bombers are believed to have bailed out over the north shore of the St. Lawrence. . .” “Nonsense!” said the stranger rather abruptly, and he took a step nearer the Captain. “There is no sea to speak of, and I saw from the wharf that your boat has an engine. I will pay you well. I must insist.” Tremblay was silent, staring at the man before him, a tall, fair fellow, bareheaded, who kept his hands in the pockets of a raincoat so soaked and dirty as to be colorless in that dim light. At length he spoke. “No sir,” he said firmly. “It can’t be done.” It was no surprise to him when his words seemed to lift the stranger’s right hand— and Luger—out of the pocket. “Listen, Captain,” said the German. “I am in a hurry. You or one of your men must take me where I want to go — out beyond the mouth of the Saguenay.” “Submarine!” murmured the Captain, stating a fact rather than asking a question. “Ha!” said the other. “You’ve heard of the bombing. There are U-boats at points off the north shore tonight and we were instructed to get to them if we could. You see my position — I will stand no foolishness. Make up your minds — will one of you take me, or . . .” THE CAPTAIN’S eyes travelled over the German. The man was tired — that was obvious. His clothing bore the marks of a day-long battle with the Laurentian bush. A tired man, but the tired man held the gun, and was impatient. The Captain turned to his men. “Lower the boat,” he ordered. The three men turned slowly and shuffled aft to uncleat the falls, conscious all the time of the gun behind them. Captain Tremblay followed. He was under no illusion — that Nazi might shoot one or all of them, whether they did as he told them or not. The blocks squealed and the eighteen-foot boat slid towards the black water. Tremblay glanced over his shoulder and saw the German peering at the illuminated dial of a military pocket compass—but the Luger in his other hand was still on the job. He turned to the German, who was putting the compass back in his pocket. “I’ll go with you,” said Tremblay decisively - and out of the corner of his eye he noted his men’s heads turn suddenly toward him. “That little compass you have - it's no good in a small boat because of deviation caused by the engine . . . and there are reefs outside, you know, and cross-currents. You must have a man with you who knows these waters.” “And you know them?” asked the German drily. “I was born near here,” stated Tremblay, conscious of the stares of his crew, who knew well that he was a Baie St. Paul man. The German was no fool. He saw the men stare and he saw the craftiness in the Captain's eyes, so naive that he almost laughed aloud at it. He could trust him as far as he could see him — and not even that far in a small boat. “Good,” he said. “Get into the boat, then, and start the engine.” Tremblay’s stomach felt cold. He had tried to make the man suspect a trap, and he did not know whether he had succeeded. He turned and swung over the schooner's rail and dropped into the boat under her counter. The German moved up and straddled the rail so that he could watch both Tremblay and the men on deck. The Captain set about priming the engine. After a preliminary cough or two it spluttered to life. The Nazi swung his other leg over the rail. “You make one move from where you are and I'll shoot your Captain,” he threatened the three men on deck, and then he, too, dropped into the boat. “Cast off those ropes and then get back aboard,” he ordered Tremblay. “Back aboard?” echoed the Captain. “Maybe you know these waters too well. Get back,” snapped the German reaching for the clutch lever, and as the other took a grip on the ropes hanging over the schooner's stern he eased it forward. The propeller bit the water and the boat shot forward and was swallowed up in the windy darkness. As Captain Tremblay climbed over the rail the three men on the St. Casimir's deck looked at one another and then all broke out talking at once. The Captain said nothing but made straight for the cabin, where he slumped onto a chair by the table on which still lay the battered green pilot book, open as he had left it. The others followed him in, jabbering. “Why did you offer to take him?” demanded one of the deck hands angrily. The Captain looked up wearily. “Because I wanted him to go alone. I remembered your Marie, Jacques, back in Baie St. Paul. She seemed too eager for the wedding, so you jilted her.” The deck hand’s puzzled look slowly gave way to one of understanding. Suddenly the engineer broke in. “Shouldn’t we go ashore and find a telephone?” he asked. “Perhaps a patrol boat could be warned to pick him up.” The Captain roused himself. “Telephone? Yes one of you had better report about the submarine.” “But the airman,” insisted the engineer. "Couldn’t they—” “They won’t get him,” stated the Captain. The finality of his tone fixed their questioning glances on him, and in explanation he pushed the open pilot book across the table towards them. “Read that,” he said, pointing to a paragraph. “It’s what I was studying after supper.” The engineer picked up the St. Lawrence River Pilot and read the paragraph aloud. “ 'The Mouth of the Saguenay River . . . The ebb tide from the Saguenay River on meeting the ebb from the St. Lawrence sets up very heavy tide rips, so strong as to interfere with the steerage of a vessel. When these ebbs are opposed to a heavy easterly gale, a particularly dangerous cross-sea is raised, which is considered dangerous to small craft, and in which no boat could live’.” The End The Sitting Duck (Published in The Montreal Standard, Date unknown) By Lewis Evans ILLUSTRATED BY GEOFFREY TRAUNTER THE LANDING BARGE lay as still as if she were floating on the fog rather than upon the waters of the North Sea. Somewhere, invisible, the sun was rising, and slowly the thick fog turned from black to grey. For the first time in hours the R.C.N.V.R. Lieutenant on the bridge could see the lines of his ship before him—that is if a medium sized landing barge can be said to have any lines at all. Lieutenant McNeil doubted it, and never could look at the scow-like bulk of his craft without seeing in his imagination the dashing motor-torpedo-boat he had hoped to command. At her very best speed his landing barge could hardly be called dashing, and for the greater part of an hour she had been anything but — she had been left powerless by a defective unit in her reduction gear. McNeil resisted the urge to go below again to see how repairs were progressing. He might as well stay where he was, and if he was sweating with impatience he knew well that the Petty Officer below was sweating too — sweating blood to get the repairs effected. Somewhere to the south and east was the attacking-force of which his craft was supposed to be a part — by now it should be fifteen miles away and almost grounding on the long, low sandy beaches of the Belgian coast, but there had been no sound of gunfire as yet. When his engines had failed he had had simply to drop out of the armada, the dense fog and strict radio silence preventing from letting even the commanding officer know of his plight. NO ONE but the commander of the force knew whether this attack was part of the real thing, the invasion itself, or merely one of the dress rehearsals or feints promised by the Prime Minister. Whatever it is, thought the Lieutenant as he gazed down into the waist of his ship, it will have to get along without those two tanks. He could just see them now, crouched one behind the other, facing the closed ramp at the bow, and their crews lounging round them and smoking. Suddenly McNeil raised his head and listened. Then he glanced at the Leading Seaman in the other wing of the bridge. He, too, had heard the faint throbbing and was peering into the blankness of the fog ahead. The Lieutenant crossed to him. “What do you make of it?” he asked quietly. “Sounds quite close, sir, but faint. Certainly not an aircraft — might be an M.T.B. or an E-boat throttled right down.” They listened again and the subdued hum continued, punctuated once by a faint clang. The killick swung toward McNeil. “Sub, sir!” he whispered urgently. “Surfaced and charging her batteries — that clang could have been a hatch-cover.” “Go forward,” ordered McNeil, “and tell ’em to keep completely quiet. Send someone below to tell the engine-room, too — and find out how much longer they’ll be.” “Aye, aye, sir.” The Leading Seaman slid down the ladder into the waist of the barge. The Lieutenant went from one to the other of the machine-gun crews at either end of the bridge and warned them. Their weapons were designed to ward off low-flying aircraft, and would be practically useless against the sub’s gun. The sun’s warmth could now be felt, and soon the fog would thin away. “That’ll be the pay-off,” thought McNeil, and resolved that while landing barges usually were known by numbers rather than by names, this one might well go down in history as “The Sitting Duck.” “Don’t know about history,” he added aloud, “but we might well go down.” THE IRONY of the situation struck him. For months as the junior officer in a Fairmile he had patrolled the Strait of Gibraltar hoping for a chance at a sub, and the nearest they had got was to let fly at a rock awash in the seas in the grey light of a dawn such as this. In consequence they had become the butt of their flotilla until a few weeks later when their flotilla leader made the same mistake himself with the same rock. Now, here he was with a sub within three hundred yards, and instead of commanding the M.T.B. or Fairmile that he had hoped for when he got his second stripe, instead of having a fighting ship to meet this opportunity, all he had under his feet was a glorified ferry-boat. The men were still lounging by their tanks, but their little motions and gestures of a moment ago had ceased. They were very still, very quiet. The Leading Seaman silently rejoined the Lieutenant on the bridge. He looked straight up into the sky above the ship, and then peered again towards the source of the steady humming. “Fog’s getting thinner, sir,” he said. “Whatever it is, it seems to be dead ahead.” McNeill resisted a light-headed temptation to say, “Wish it were dead, ahead,” and at that moment the Leading Seaman stiffened and pointed. Right over the ramp at the bows McNeil could make out a darker blur of fog. “Oh for a gun, a real gun,” he thought, and then swung towards the killick. “Lower the ramp,” he ordered, and threw himself down the ladder and made for the sergeant in charge of the forward tank, leaving the killick wondering if the Lieutenant had gone crazy. FOR MONTHS of the tank gunner's training he had been prepared to deal with various beach defences. Now as the ramp before him ponderously swayed outwards and sloped away to a level position he saw, framed in the gap, the silhouette of a submarine against the receding fog. “Gaw’ love me,” he muttered, spinning wheels efficiently, “join the Army and see the world." Figures rushed to the sub’s gun and it swung towards the landing barge. The tank gunner fired and as the barge shuddered at the shock there was a great splash close to the sub’s conning-tower. A shell from the sub screamed over the barge, carrying away the wireless mast. “Get his gun, blast you!” yelled McNeil in the general direction of the tank. He was back on the bridge and on either side of him the machine-guns were chattering ineffectually, for the sub’s gunners were protected by a gunshield. He afterwards thought that, though his words were inaudible in the surrounding bedlam, he had been rather rude to the tank gunner who, after all, was performing somewhat in the capacity of a guest artist. The tank’s second shell was over, but its third took the sub’s gun fair and square, and that was that. The figures on the sub's conning-tower disappeared and slowly her deck became awash — she was submerging. “Red, one-four-five, a ship, sir,” called the Leading Seaman. "Destroyer - one of the Hunt class, sir.” McNeil gave it a brief glance and then went on watching the disappearing conning tower. The sub had moved forward and was no longer ahead of the barge – the tank gunner could no longer see his target. IN A MATTER of seconds the destroyer plowed through the swirl left by the U-boat and let go a pattern of depth-charges. “That ought to fix 'em,” muttered the killick. Apparently the destroyer thought so too, for she paid no further attention to the sub but swung in a wide arc and steamed past fifty yards from the landing barge. MacNeil could see a figure in the wing of her bridge, and a megaphone pointed in his direction. “Quite a fighting ship you have there,” came the voice. “Good luck!” and the destroyer melted into the remnants of the fog, bent on her own urgent affairs. As an engine room artificer stepped up to MacNeil and said, “All set now, sir,” far to the southeast all hell broke loose. “The Sitting Duck” hauled up her ramp and set off towards it. The End Surprise Party Published in "The Standard" (date unknown, $20.00!) By Lewis Evans ILLUSTRATED BY ROY DYER HIS SUBMARINE idling at periscope depth in the cold waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Ober- leutnant Seidel watched the plume of smoke climb over the horizon. It was still too early to figure the ship’s course and manoeuvre into effective range, and far too early to identify the type of ship. “Well,” he thought to himself, “at least she is no Banks fishing schooner—not with that plume of smoke.” He still regretted the expenditure of his last but one torpedo on that fisherman two nights ago. She had been running under auxiliary power, and with her stump masts he had mistaken her size in the gathering darkness. An investigation of her wreckage with the sub's searchlight had revealed several broken-backed dories and a mess of cleaned and salted codfish, and his second in command had looked for a moment as though he wanted to laugh. Ah, well, the destroyed schooner didn’t look so badly in the sub's logbook as “motor-driven coastal cargo ship.” Oberleutnant took another long look at the approaching vessel. She was no destroyer, anyway—her slow speed and broad beam told him that. He made out derricks on her foremast—that ruled out a corvette. She was steaming almost at right angles to his bows, and would pass about two miles ahead of him. He decided to close in, and grated an order to his second. The order echoed from man to man in the steel hull, and the sub began to move. Five minutes passed, and then Seidel slipped off his stool. “What do you make of her?” he asked his second in command, motioning him towards the eyepiece. That officer peered for a minute. “Flushdecked,” he muttered, “A tanker, sir but . . .” He hesitated, still peering. “But what?” “Her engines are amidships, sir. Unusual for a tanker.” Seidel took up his position at the periscope again and had another look. Then he lowered the periscope below the surface, ordered half-speed, and turned a superior smile on his puzzled second. No wonder the fellow was puzzled, thought Seidel—the ship was unusual, all right, but he knew what she was. Just before the war he had been on a training cruise and had put in at Bergen, and there he had seen a vessel with a peculiar stern like that. “She’s a whale factory,” he said, and laughed at the expression on the other’s face. “The Norwegians had such ships before the war — South Atlantic, mostly. There is a great ramp in the stern, and they used to pull a whale’s carcass aboard whole and do all the work of a whaling station while keeping up with the trawlers that did the actual harpooning. Our friends must be very short of ships if they’re using that tub for cargo-carrying.” He took another sight at the ship. He could see her ensign flying from a gaff on her mainmast, but it was either too dirty or too distant for him to tell whether it was Norwegian or British. His thoughts went to the single torpedo in the forward tubes, and to the long trip home. Then he looked at the expressionless face of his second in command and made his decision. He didn't want it said that he had expended his last two torpedoes on a fishing schooner and a whale factory, of all things. “We’ll surface and attack by gunfire,” he said. Bells rang and the gun crew got ready for their dash to action stations. The sub lifted towards the surface. ABOARD the ex-Norwegian whale-factory Odda a lookout had reported a periscope off the starboard bow, distant the best part of a mile. Gongs had clanged for action stations, and the ship held her course. The R.C.N.V.R. lieutenant on her bridge was pleased. “Not forty miles from where the Coastal Patrol plane reported wreckage of that schooner yesterday,” he thought. He glanced astern over his strange command and saw the men who handled the smoke-pots at their stations right aft. He could not see the old whale-ramp because of the superstructure amidships, but he could imagine the scene there . . . the fifty foot motor-launch in her sliding crib, her bow towards the Odda’s stern, her high-powered, specially cooled engines warmed and idling, her crew tense and watching the great steel flap which cut off the after end of the ramp from the sea, the rows of depth charges on the launch’s after deck. “Sub on starboard beam!" Two lookouts dead-heated on the shout. There she was, white water pouring from her decks, about half a mile off. As her gun crew swarmed on deck a machine-gun from the Odda started an intermittent chattering, and a gun crew staged a well-rehearsed rush for their antiquated weapon mounted on a bridge-like structure over the ramp astern. When their first shot eventually got away it raised a spout of foam just where they wanted it—three hundred yards wide of the sub and a little short. The first shell from the sub screamed over the Odda’s bows. The second hulled her forward, at the waterline. The lieutenant on the bridge thought of the watertight bulkheads and the whale-oil tanks now crammed with buoyant lumber, and grinned. His quartermaster, according to plan, swung the ship towards the sub to close the distance, and the sub altered course to port to evade any ramming action by the Odda . Another shell from the sub crossed the Odda’s bows and a fourth burst on the superstructure abaft her funnel. The whale-factory’s machine-gun fell silent, but it had not been hit. The smoke-pots astern burst into acrid life and their contents billowed over and around the Odda’s stern. The lieutenant snapped an order and a clang from far astern told him that the great flap had been lifted, and he could imagine the released crib sliding smoothly aft with its load. "Surprise, surprise!” he murmured happily to nobody in particular. The motor-launch’s heavily guarded screws were already turning as she took the water, and then she was out of the smoke and roaring for the sub, a heavy machine-gun on her bow searching for the gun crew, and echoed by renewed fire from the Odda’s guns. OBERLEUTNANT SEIDEL knew all about the “Q-ships” of the last war. He was not to be fooled by them, but this was different. He took one more amazed look at the grey shape bouncing towards him, ordered a crash dive, and threw himself down the conning-tower hatch. His gun crew, less three men who had been hit, scuttled for safety. As the sea foamed over the submerging U-boat the launch roared past parallel to her, not twenty feet away, and two ash-cans set for eight fathoms plopped into her seething wake. The Oberleutnant’s thoughts at this moment, freely translated into English, would have been “Let’s get to hell out of here,” which is precisely where he got. The End Down To Heaven (Published in “The Standard” Montreal, September 27, 1941, $12.50!) By L. EVANS He dropped to Earth and thought he was in heaven HIS packed parachute bumped clumsily against the back of his thighs as he crossed the dark field towards the sound of the idling motors. He tried to make himself believe that this was just another practice, that he was still in training, but the horrible emptiness in his middle gave him the lie. He was scared, and he was thankful that the darkness hid his face. He and his companions groped their way into the big transport and sat down. A dim light forward showed them the pilot and navigator, their heads bent over a map. Helmut stared at them fixedly, hoping that concentration of his mind would prevent him from being sick — sick with fear. Their job was simple, he thought. They just had to fly high to certain points, dump their living cargo, and fly home. Compared with his job theirs seemed easy, safe, comfortable. IT was the unknown that frightened a man thought Helmut. The plane crew knew what to expect in the way of danger - attack by fighter planes, anti-aircraft fire, or forced landing on land or sea. But he - Helmut - how could he know what was in store for him? Death, probably; death or capture certainly. But how? Before or after he had done his job on the power plant? How? A sentry’s rifle? A night watchman’s baton? A farmer’s pitchfork? Helmut shuddered and closed his eyes. The plane took off, climbed gradually, and steadied on its course. There’s the difference, thought Helmut suddenly. The plane crew’s brightest hope is return, and my brightest hope is capture. The very best I can expect is capture and internment. A fine thing my life is, when prison seems like heaven! The plane droned on through the black night, flying very high and very steadily. The parachutists began fidgeting with their equipment. They’re scared too, thought Helmut, but the younger ones, anyway, are partly afraid of failing in their task. They know only this stern life, and they are efficient. So am I, or I wouldn’t be here, but I am older. I can remember another way of life. The navigator made a signal, and two men moved towards the door. Another signal, and they were gone. The plane altered course, and in a few moments the navigator’s gloved hand reappeared. Two more men dived into darkness. MY objective is the third we come to thought Helmut, and the waiting is over. I am not afraid of the jump - I know all about that part of the job. I fear only the unknown future. The glove moved and Helmut flung himself into the blackness and cold. The opening ’chute jerked him savagely, and gradually his dizzy swinging slowed down. As he drifted downwards he tried to figure the direction and force of the wind, if any. That was the first thing - to fix his own position, and then to find the power plant. The little fear he felt about landing was lost in the great fear of the unknown future, and he felt little relief when he dropped on open ground, though it might have been a wood or a power line. His, efficient training showed as he quickly got rid of his parachute. He did not have to think - his hands busied themselves and the complicated tangle of ropes and material was stowed under a stunted bush. Luminous compass in hand, Helmut crouched, listening. The silence terrified him. He felt the whole hostile countryside of England round him, deadly still, but ready at any moment to extinguish this lone enemy by some unknown unpredictable action. Helmut forced himself to read the compass, putting it on the ground and getting as far from it as sight permitted, so that the metal in his equipment would not affect the needle. He was supposed to have been dropped two miles south of his objective; so he started to move northwards. If he did not find it in the first half hour he would start circling east and west. He crept on across the field, surprised that it took him so long to reach its boundary. He expected a hedge - England was covered with hedges, they said. HE encountered no hedge - he came to wire. A fine seven foot barbed wire fence, and on each side a barbed wire apron, arranged with ingenuity. Helmut stared at it in amazement. According to his instructions the power plant was the only important point in the district, and therefore the only one likely to be so protected. Could he have hit upon it already? He could cut his way through the fence, but those aprons would take time. He decided to move along the fence to the west, and perhaps he would find a spot where the aprons were less formidable. A hundred and fifty yards to the west he stopped. The fence made a right-angle turn - to the south. Helmut was inside the angle. His training made him turn east, retrace his steps, and he moved faster than before, with less regard for stealth. Two hundred yards or so, and another angle - turning south. His stomach cold as ice, Helmut threw one look over his shoulder and started cutting the wire. Whether he was inside the defenses of the plant or not he would need some means of exit. He would make a passage through the wire, and then find out what lay to the south. He cut rapidly and the apron gradually yielded a passage. Suddenly he paused. Someone was coming - a sentry? A flashlight flicked on and off. Helmut’s training sent his hand towards his gun. A cut end of wire scraped on the shears in his left hand. The flashlight’s beam cut the darkness, wavered, and then fixed on him. Helmut froze. A safety catch clicked. So this was the unknown. “Don’t move,” commanded the advancing voice. Then - “Wot the ’ell! It’s a ruddy parashooter! Come out of that, Jerry, you’re home. You’ve landed inside an internment camp." The End NEXT PAGE