Steam Laundry

Tom Makes a Narrow Escape

84 Tom Makes a Narrow Escape —Just upriver from Dawson, May 29, 1903 Two miles upriver this morning the canoe turned turtle and I found myself caught under the boat because Jesse and I fired from the same side. Our blast turned us both over and into the Yukon. I had called and the flock passed over our heads as we blazed away. Jesse lost his gun, but I clung to mine, and as I came up, my head shattered the surface. Jesse, always the swimmer, had climbed on top of the canoe. I grabbed on and it sank again. And like a comedy, for minutes as one of us got hold the other pulled away. There went the canoe sinking and tipping, over and over with each of us struggling for breath. It rolled and I went under, and before I could come up again, I let the gun go. My hip boot, filled with water, fought to pull me under. We grabbed and rolled that damn canoe a third time before we got the sense to grab at different ends and balance each other out. 85 In the current, soaked and cold, clutching the upended gunwales, we drifted past McDonald Island where Hatch, the old farmer, heard us calling out. He paddled out and pulled us ashore. It was fifteen minutes before either of us had breath enough to tell him what happened. When finally our words poured out onto the pebbled bank, they shattered and glistened. Jesse babbled and I interrupted, tangled in the threads of our own panic. But Hatch, thin-lipped, said nothing, but shook his head slow and looked at his shoes. It was a hard row back, empty-handed, in a canoe with borrowed paddles, a hard row, to bring ourselves back into Dawson that night. ...