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Updated: June 3, 2025
I constantly buoyed myself up with the hope that Yamba was only ailing temporarily, and that her enfeebled condition had been brought on mainly by the misfortunes that had befallen us of late. But she grew more and more feeble, and both she and I knew that the end was not far off.
I went forth one morning, accompanied by my ever-faithful Yamba and the usual admiring crowd of blacks. In a few minutes we two were speeding over the sunlit waters, my only weapon being the steel harpoon I had brought with me from the island, and about forty or fifty feet of manilla rope.
Among these we actually came across some I had fought against many months previously. As we neared my home, some of our escort sent up smoke-signals to announce our approach the old and wonderful "Morse code" of long puffs, short puffs, spiral puffs, and the rest; the variations being produced by damping down the fire or fires with green boughs. Yamba also sent up signals.
He was not a young dog when I had him first; and I had now made up my mind that he could not live much longer. He paid but little attention in these days to either Yamba or myself, and in this condition he lingered on for a year or more. I do not think I knew how much I loved him until he was gone.
As I was sitting near a big fire, joining in the chanting and festivities, Yamba noiselessly stole to my side, and whispered in my ear that she had found the two white women. I remember I trembled with excitement at the prospect of meeting them.
He got me out of many a scrape, and his curious little eccentricities, likes, and dislikes afforded me never-ending delight. But now he was gone the way of all flesh; and although I had expected this blow for many months, I do not think this mitigated my poignant grief. Yamba, too, was terribly grieved at his death, for she had become most devotedly attached to him and he to her.
The moment they caught sight of Yamba and myself they halted, whereupon I advanced and called out to them that I was a friend, at the same time holding out my passport stick. By the way, the efficacy of this talisman varied according to the tribes. Yamba could make neither head nor tail of these people; they jabbered in a language quite unintelligible to either of us.
The months passed slowly away, and I was still living the same monotonous life among my blacks accompanying them upon their hunting expeditions, joining in their sports, and making periodical trips inland with Yamba, in preparation for the great journey I proposed to make overland to Cape York.
And then, in his gay, half-mocking, yet musical voice he touched lightly on vast and distant things. He talked of the great Saskatchewan, of Peace River, and the delta of the Mackenzie, of the winter journeys beyond Great Bear Lake into the Land of the Little Sticks, and the half-mythical lake of Yamba Tooh. He spoke of life with the Dog Ribs and Yellow Knives, where the snow falls in midsummer.
It was not advisable, however, to withdraw suddenly from the festivities, for fear my absence might arouse suspicion. The only alternative that presented itself was to send a note or message of some kind to them, and so I asked Yamba to bring me a large fleshy leaf of a water-lily, and then, with one of her bone needles, I pricked, in printed English characters, "A friend is near; fear not."
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