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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Labrador Days, by Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Labrador Days
+       Tales of the Sea Toilers
+
+Author: Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
+
+Release Date: March 15, 2008 [EBook #24832]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LABRADOR DAYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank, Jeannie Howse and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | This e-text is full of Newfoundland and Labrador dialect, |
+    | unusual spelling has been preserved.                      |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+    [Illustration: NORTHWARD HO!]
+
+
+
+
+Labrador Days
+
+TALES OF THE SEA TOILERS
+
+By
+
+Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
+M.D. (OXON.), C.M.G.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
+The Riverside Press Cambridge
+1919
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY WILFRED THOMASON GRENFELL
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+THERE'S TROUBLE ON THE SEA                                 1
+
+NANCY                                                     19
+
+SALLY'S "TURNS"                                           38
+
+THE DOCTOR'S BIG FEE                                      61
+
+TWO CAT'S-PAWS                                            73
+
+THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE                                       92
+
+PORTLAND BILL                                            113
+
+KAIACHOUOUK                                              130
+
+TWO CHRISTMASES                                          148
+
+THE LEADING LIGHT                                        181
+
+THE RED ISLAND SHOALS                                    203
+
+
+
+
+Labrador Days
+
+
+
+
+THERE'S TROUBLE ON THE SEA
+
+
+The ice in the big bay had broken up suddenly that year in the latter
+part of March before a tremendous ocean swell heaving in beneath it.
+The piles of firewood and the loads of timber for the summer
+fishing-rooms on all the outer islands were left standing on the
+landwash. The dog-teams usually haul all this out at a stretch gallop
+over the glare ice which overlies in April the snow-covered surface of
+winter. For weeks, heavy pack ice, driven to and fro with the tides,
+but ever held in the bay with the onshore winds, had prevented the
+small boats' freighting more than their families and the merest
+necessities to the summer stations.
+
+So it came to pass that long after the usual time, indeed after the
+incoming shoals of fish were surely expected, John Mitchell's firewood
+still lay on the bank, some twenty miles up the bay. When at last a
+spell of warm and offshore winds had driven the ice mostly clear, John
+announced to his eager lads that "come Monday, if the wind held
+westerly," he would go up the bay for a load. What a clamour ensued,
+for every one wanted to be one of the crew to go to the winter home.
+The lads, like ducklings, "fair loved the water"; and though John
+needed Jim, and was quite glad to have Tom, now of the important age
+of fourteen years, he did his best, well seconded by the wise old
+grandmother, to persuade Neddie, aged twelve, and Willie, aged ten, to
+stay behind.
+
+"You be too small, Ned, yet awhile. Next year perhaps father will take
+you," was the old lady's first argument. '"Twill be cold in t' boat,
+boy, and you'll perish altogether."
+
+"Father'll look after me, Grannie, and I'll wrap up ever so warm. Do
+let me go. There's a dear grannie."
+
+The curly-haired, rosy-cheeked lads were so insistent and so winsome
+that the old lady confessed to me afterwards, "They somehow got round
+my heart as they mostly does, and I let 'em go, though sore against my
+mind, Doctor."
+
+Of course, Willie had to go if Neddie went, for "they'd be company
+while t' men worked, and he could carry small things as well as t'
+rest. He did so want to go."
+
+When at length Monday came, and a bright sun shone over a placid sea,
+the grandmother's last excuse to keep them at home was lost. Her
+consent was finally secured, and, before a light, fair wind the women
+watched, not without anxiety, so many of those whom they held dearer
+than life itself sail "out into the deep."
+
+Progress was slow, for the wind fell away almost altogether as the
+morning passed, but the glorious warmth and exuberance of life made
+the time seem as nothing. The picnic in the big trap boat was as good
+as a prince's banquet. For the fun of "boiling t' kettle yourself,"
+and an appetite bred of a day on the water, made the art of French
+cooks and the stimulus of patent relishes pale into insignificance.
+During the afternoon they "had a spurt singing," and as the words of
+hymns were the only ones they knew, the old favourites were sung and
+resung. The little lads especially led the programme; and the others
+remembered Willie singing for them, as a solo, a childish favourite
+called "Bring Them In."
+
+It was just about seven o'clock in the evening. The boat was well out
+in the bay, between three and four miles from land, when John noticed
+a fresh "cat's-paw" of wind, just touching the water here and there.
+There was scarcely a cloud in the sky, and nothing whatever to suggest
+a squall. But as he looked again, a suspicious wisp of white water
+lifted suddenly from the surface a few yards to windward. Like a flash
+he remembered that the boat had no ballast in her, and was running
+with her sheets made fast. Instinctively he leaned forward to let go
+the foresail, but at the same moment the squall struck the boat like
+the hammer of Thor. Relieved of the fore canvas, the trap should have
+come to the wind in an instant. Instead, leaning over heavily with the
+immense pressure, she staggered and reeled as if some unseen enemy
+had gripped her. Scarcely perceptibly she gave ground, and a lifetime
+seemed to elapse to John's horror-stricken mind as she fell slowly
+over, as if fighting for every inch, and conscious of her terrible
+responsibilities for the issues at stake.
+
+At last, in spite of her stout resistance, and before John could climb
+aft and get at the main sheet, or do anything to relieve the boat, her
+stern was driven right under water by the sheer pressure of the storm.
+Slowly she turned over, leaving all of her occupants struggling in the
+icy water, for there were many pieces of ice still "knocking around."
+
+The slow rate at which the boat had gone over was one point in their
+favour, however, for it enabled even the little lads to get clear of
+the gunwale; and by the help of John and Jim all five were soon
+huddled on the upturned keel of the boat. The boys being all safe for
+the moment, John rubbed his eyes, and, raising himself as high as he
+could, viewed the situation. Alas! the squall had come to stay.
+Everywhere now the placid surface of the sea was ruffled and angry.
+The rising, flaky clouds convinced him even in that instantaneous
+glance that the brewing storm offered them little chance for their
+lives.
+
+Far away to leeward, not less than four miles distant, the loom of the
+land was only just visible. Well he realized that it would be many
+long hours before the boat, with her masts and sails still fast in,
+could drive near enough to enable them to make a landing. For, like
+most fishermen in these icy waters, none of them knew how to swim.
+Moreover, he soon found that the anchor, fast to the warp, had fallen
+out, and would certainly sooner or later touch bottom--thus robbing
+them of their one and only chance of escape by preventing the boat
+from drifting into shallow water.
+
+So cold was it already that it appeared as if a few moments at most
+must chill the life out of at least the younger children.
+
+"Hold Willie on, Ned, and ask God to bring us all safe home," said
+John. He told me that he felt somehow as if their prayers were more
+likely to be heard than his own. He then crawled forward, having made
+up his mind to try and cut the anchor free, and to get the rope to tie
+round the boat and hold on the children. His determination was
+fortified by his anxiety; but it was a forlorn hope, for it meant
+lowering himself right into the water, and he knew well enough that he
+could not swim a yard. Then it was done, and he was once more clinging
+to the keel with the rope in his hand. It was not difficult to get a
+bight round the boat, and soon he had the children firmly lashed on
+and the boat was again making fair progress before the wind to the
+opposite shore.
+
+Hours seemed to go by. The children were sleepy. Apparently they no
+longer felt the cold, and the average man might have thought that it
+was a miracle on their behalf, for God knows they had prayed hard
+enough for one. But John recognized only too well that it was that
+merciful harbinger of the last long sleep, which had overtaken more
+than one of his best friends, when adrift in the storms of winter. And
+still the age-long journey dragged hopelessly on.
+
+At last the awful suspense, a thousand times more cruel for their
+being unable to do anything, was broken by even the welcome incident
+of a new danger. Breakers were visible in the direct course of their
+drift. "Maybe she'll turn over, Jim," whispered the skipper. "I reckon
+we must loose t' children for fear she does." This being effected as
+promptly as their condition allowed, Tom was told off to do nothing
+but watch them and keep them safe. For already the men had planned, if
+the slightest chance offered, to try and get the masts out while she
+lay on her beam-ends.
+
+The breakers? Well, they knew they were only of small extent. There
+was a pinnacle of rock and a single sea might possibly carry them over
+it; but the peril of being washed off was none the less. Now they
+could see the huge rise of the combing sea with its frowning black top
+rushing at the shoal, and smashing into an avalanche of snowy foam.
+They could hear the dull roar of the sea, and its mighty thunder, as
+it curled over and fell furiously upon itself, for want of other
+prey.
+
+"Good-bye, Jim," whispered the skipper. "The children is all right
+either way, but one of us may come through. Tell 'em home it was all
+right if I goes."
+
+Almost as he stopped speaking, the rising swell caught the craft, and
+threw her once more on her beam-ends. As for a moment she lay on her
+side, the men attempted to free the masts, but could do nothing, for
+the boat almost immediately again fell over, bottom up. But a second
+comber, lifting her with redoubled violence, threw them all clear of
+the boat, turned her momentarily right way up, and then breaking into
+the masts and sails, tipped her for the third time upside down,
+flinging her at the same instant in mad fury clear of the angry water.
+So violent had been the blow which had thrown them clear, that they
+must inevitably all have perished, had not the last effort of the
+breakers actually hurled the boat again almost on the top of them.
+Clutching as at a straw, the two men caught the loops of the rope
+which they had wound round their craft, but they could see nothing of
+the other three. Suddenly, from almost directly under the boat, Tom's
+head appeared within reach. Grabbing him, they tried to drag him up on
+to the keel. Rolling in the wake of the breakers which still followed
+them with vicious pertinacity, they twice lost their hold of the boy,
+their now numbed limbs scarcely giving them strength to grasp
+anything. It seemed of little account at the time either way. But
+their third attempt was successful, and they got the lad once more on
+to the bottom of the boat.
+
+Of the children they saw no more. Only when Tom had revived somewhat
+could he explain that the capsizing boat had caught them all three
+under it as in a trap, that he had succeeded, still clinging to
+Willie, to get him from under it, and that he was still holding his
+brother when he first came to the surface. After that he did not
+remember anything till they were calling to him on the boat's bottom.
+The men were sure that it was so--that because he had been true to the
+last to his trust, he had been such a deadweight the first two times
+he came to the surface.
+
+And now began again the cruel, wearisome, endless drift of the
+water-logged boat toward the still distant shore, lightened but little
+by the loss of the loved children. There was no longer any doubt left
+in their minds; unless something could be done, none of them would
+possibly live to tell the tale. It was the still active mind and
+indomitable courage of the skipper which found the solution. Crawling
+close to Jim, he said: "There's only one chance. We must turn her
+over, and get in her, or perish. I'm going to try and loose t' masts."
+
+Swinging himself once more into the bitter-cold water, he succeeded in
+finding the slight ropes which formed the stays, and though it is
+almost incredible, he actually managed to cut and free them all,
+before Jim hauled him back, more dead than alive, on to the boat's
+bottom. At all hazards they must right the boat and climb into her.
+Their plans were soon made. Tom, placed between the two men, was to do
+exactly as they did. Stretching themselves out, and holding the keel
+rope in their hands, they all threw themselves over on one side,
+lying as nearly as possible at full length. The boat responded
+instantly, and their only fear was that, as she had done before, she
+might again go right over on them. But there were no masts now to hold
+the wind, so she stood up on her beam-ends. As the water took the
+weights of the men, it was all they could do to get her over.
+Moreover, the task was rendered doubly difficult and perilous by their
+exhaustion and inability to swim when the keel to which they were
+holding went under water. But their agility and self-reliance, evolved
+from a life next to Nature, stood them in good stead, and soon all
+three were actually standing inside the water-logged boat. The oars,
+lashed under the seats, were still in her, and, though almost up to
+their waists in water, they began sculling and rowing as hard as their
+strength and the dangerous roll of the sunken boat would permit.
+
+Slowly the surf on the sandy beach drew near, and now, keeping her
+head before the breeze, they rolled along shorewards. Again, however,
+it became apparent that a new departure must be made. For a heavy surf
+was breaking on the shore which they were approaching, that ran off
+shallow for half a mile. There was not water enough to let the boat
+approach the land, and they realized that they had not sufficient
+strength left to walk through the breakers. Yet struggle as they
+would, the best they could do was to keep the boat very slightly
+across the wind.
+
+John maintains now that it was the direct intervention of Providence
+which spared them just when once more all hope seemed over. They
+suddenly noticed that while still forging shorewards they were also
+drifting rapidly into the bay. It was the first uprush of the strong
+rising tide, and they might yet be carried to a deep-water landing.
+The play of hope and fear made the remaining hours an agony of
+suspense. What would be the end of it all seemed a mere gamble. Every
+mark on the approaching shore was now familiar to them. It had become,
+they knew well enough, a question of life or death where the drifting
+boat would touch the strand. Now it seemed impossible that she should
+clear the shallow surf, whose hungry roar sounded a death-knell to any
+one handed to its tender mercies. Now it seemed certain that she would
+be carried up the bay without touching land at all. Hope rose as a
+little later it became obvious that she would clear the sands.
+
+Now the rocky headland, round which their winter house stood, was
+coming rapidly into view. As the mouth of the bay narrowed, the pace
+of the current increased, and for a time they seemed to be hopelessly
+rushing past their one hope of landing. The excitement and the
+exertion of putting might and main into the oars had made them almost
+forget the wet and cold and darkness, now only relieved by the last
+afterglow of the setting sun. But it all appeared of no avail; they
+were still some hundred yards off as they passed the point. It might
+as well have been some hundred miles, for they drifted helplessly into
+the bay, which was widening out again.
+
+Despair, however, still failed to grip them, and apparently
+hopelessly they kept toiling on at the sweeps. Once more a miracle
+happened, and they were really apparently approaching the point a
+second time. The very violence of the tide had actually saved them,
+creating as it did a strong eddy, which with the little aid from the
+oars, bore them now steadily toward the land. Nearer and nearer they
+came. They were half a mile inside the head. Only a few boat-lengths
+now separated them from the beach. Would they be able to get ashore!
+
+Strange as it sounds, any and all speculations they might have with
+regard to where the boat would strike bottom were to be disappointed.
+Her keel never touched bottom at all. It was her gunwale which first
+bumped into the steep rocks--and that at a point only a few yards from
+their winter house.
+
+Even now their troubles were not over. Only the skipper could stand
+erect. Tom, dragged out by the others, lay an inert mass on the soft
+bed of crisp creeping plants which cover the bank. Jim was able to
+totter a few yards, fell, and finally crawled part of the way to the
+house door. But the skipper, in spite of swollen and blackened legs,
+held out not only to get a fire lit, but to bring in the other two,
+and finally wean back their frozen limbs to life.
+
+It took two days to regain strength enough to haul up the boat and
+refit her; and then the sorrowful little company proceeded on their
+homeward journey. It was a sad home-coming after the brave start they
+had made. It was a terrible message which they had to carry to the
+anxious hearts awaiting them. For nothing in heaven or earth can
+replace the loss of loved ones suddenly taken from us.
+
+"I've been cruising in boats five and forty years," said John. "I were
+out two days and a night with t' Bonnie Lass when she were lost on t'
+Bristle Rocks, and us brought in only two of her crew alive. And I was
+out on t' ice in t' blizzard when Jim Warren drove off, and us brought
+he back dead to his wife next day. But this was the worst of all. As
+us passed t' rocky shoal, it seemed only a few minutes since us
+capsized on it; and I knowed Ned and Willie must be right alongside.
+As us passed Snarly Bight, out of which t' puff came, us thought of t'
+boys singing their little songs, and know'd that they should be with
+us now; and when t' Lone Point loomed up, round which youse turn to
+make our harbour, us all sort of wished one more puff would come along
+and finish t' job properly. For it wouldn't have been hard to join t'
+children again, but to face t' women without 'em seemed more'n us
+could do.
+
+"How to break the news us had talked a dozen times, but never got no
+nearer what to say. As us ran in at last for t' stage, us could see
+that Mother had hoisted t' flag t' Company gived we t' year us bought
+furs for they, and that Grannie was out waiting for us on t' landwash.
+
+"All I remembers was that scarce a word was spoke. They know'd it. I
+believe they know'd it before they seed t' boat. If only them had
+cried I'd have been able to say something. But ne'er a word was spoke.
+So I says, 'Jim, go up and pull t' flag down quick. Us has no right to
+having t' flags flying for we.'
+
+"Then Grannie, she gets her voice, and she says, 'No, Jimmie, don't
+you do it. It be just right as it is. For 't is for Neddie's and
+Willie's home-coming it be flying.'"
+
+
+
+
+NANCY
+
+
+We had just reached hospital from a long trip "on dogs." My driver was
+slipping the harnesses off the animals and giving them the customary
+friendly cuff and words of praise. Among the crowd which always
+gathered to greet us, one friend, after giving us the usual welcome of
+"What cheer, Doctor?" noticed apparently that I had a new winter
+_compagnon de voyage_.
+
+"Joe's not with you, Doctor? Gone sawing t' winter, I hear. T' boys
+say he's got a fine bulk of timber cut already."
+
+"Working for the lumber camp, I suppose, Uncle Abe," I replied.
+
+"Not a bit of it," he chuckled. "'T is sawing for hisself he's gone."
+
+"Eh? Wants lumber, does he? Going to build a larger fishing boat?"
+
+"Youse can call it that if you likes, Doctor, for 't will be a fine
+fish he lands into it. But I reckon 't is more of a dock he'll need."
+And the rest joined in hearty laughter at the sally.
+
+"'T is a full-rigged schooner he be going to moor there, with bunting
+enough to burn, and as saucy as a cyclone," chimed in another, while a
+third 'lowed, "'T is a great girl he's after, if he gets her, anyhow."
+
+"Nancy's the pluckiest little girl for many a mile along this coast or
+she wouldn't be what she is, and her family so poor."
+
+A week or so later I fell in with half a dozen boisterous lads driving
+their sledges home laden with new wood. It proclaimed to the harbour
+that the rumour of Joe's big bulk of timber being ready so early had
+not been exaggerated. It was only then that I learned that he had in
+addition quickly got his floors down before the ground froze, so that
+he might finish building before the winter set in.
+
+Many hands make light work and every one was Joe's friend, so by the
+end of December the new house had not only been sheathed in, but
+roofed and floored, ready for occupation.
+
+In our scattered communities, isolated not only from one another, but
+also largely from the world outside, the simple incidents of everyday
+life afford just as much interest as the more artificial attractions
+of civilization. Every one on our coast in winter has to have a dog
+team, no matter how poor he is, in order to haul home his firewood. In
+summer there is no time and there are no roads, while in winter the
+snow makes the whole land one broad highway. There is no better fun
+than a "randy" over the snow on a light komatik. At this time even our
+older people go on "joy rides," visiting along the coast. Many a
+moonlight night, after the day's work is over, when the reflection
+from the snow makes it almost as light as day, an unexpected but
+welcome visitor comes knocking at one's door, asking for a shake-down
+just for the night.
+
+Thus Joe's secret was soon common property. His own enthusiasm,
+however, engendered a reflection of itself in other people, and almost
+before he had the cottage sheathed inside, and really "ready for
+launching," from here and there every one had come in, bringing at
+any rate the necessities to make it possible to put out to sea on the
+new voyage. Accordingly I was not surprised one evening a little later
+when a low knock at my door, followed by a summons to come in,
+revealed Joe standing somewhat sheepishly, cap in hand, in the
+entrance. Once the subject was broached, however, the matter was soon
+arranged, Joe having a direct way about him which ignored
+difficulties, and I, being a Justice of the Peace, was soon pledged to
+act as parson at the function.
+
+Everything went well. We struck glorious weather for the day of the
+wedding. Little deputations streamed in from other villages; gay flags
+and banners, though some of fearsome home-devised patterns, made a
+brave contrast to the white mantle of snow; while we supplemented the
+usual salvo of guns from portentous and historic fowling-pieces with a
+halo of distress rockets, which we burned from our hospital boat,
+which was lying frozen in our harbour.
+
+The excitement of the affair, like all other things human, soon passed
+away, and the ordinary routine of the wood-path, the fur-path, and
+seal-hunting, the saw-pit, the net-loft, and boat-building, turned our
+attention to our own affairs once more. The new venture was soon an
+old one, only we were glad to see, as we passed along the road, a
+fresh column of blue smoke rising, and speaking of another centre of
+life and activity in our village.
+
+Once more, as the sun crept north of the line, the ice bonds of our
+harbour began to melt. Once more the mighty ocean outside, freed from
+the restraint of the Arctic floe, generously sent surging into the
+landwash the very power we needed, and on which we depend, to break up
+and carry out the heavy ice accumulation of the winter, which must
+otherwise bar us altogether from the prosecution of our calling.
+
+My own vessel had been scraped and repainted. Her spars bright with
+new varnish, her funnel gay with our blue bunting flag contrasting
+with the yellow, she had come to the wharf for the last time before
+leaving for the long summer cruise among the Labrador fishing fleet.
+Indeed, I was just working over the ship's course in my chart-room,
+when once more Joe, cap in hand, stood in the doorway--evidently with
+something very much on his mind.
+
+"What is it, Joe? Come in and shut the door and sit down. You are only
+just in time, for I was going to ring for steam as you came along."
+
+"Well, Doctor," he said, "'tis this way. I's only got hook and line to
+fish with as you knows; and that don't give a fellow a chance of
+putting anything by, no matter how well he does. There's no knowing
+now but what I may need more still. It isn't like when a man was alone
+in the world. I was aboard Captain Jackson of the Water Lily, what
+come in last night, and he says that he'd take me to the Labrador
+fishing, and give me a share in his cod trap, being as he is short of
+a hand. Well, 'tis a fine chance, Doctor. But Nancy won't hear of my
+going without her going too. She says that she is well able to do it,
+and well acquainted with schooners--and that's true, as you knows; but
+I'm afraid to take her as she is. Still, 'tis a good chance, and I
+didn't like to let it go, so I just come to ask what your mind is
+about it."
+
+I had seen Nancy on my farewell round of the cottages, and although I
+should have preferred almost any other occupation for her, yet, taking
+into consideration the habits and customs of the people, and that to
+her the venture was in no way a new one, I advised him to accept the
+skipper's offer, and take Nancy along with him, if they could get
+decent accommodation. I received his assurance that he would keep a
+lookout for the hospital boat. With most sincere protestations of
+gratitude he bade me farewell, and when a few minutes later we steamed
+past his little house on our way out to sea, he was all ready with his
+long gun to fire us good-bye salutes, which we answered and
+re-answered with our steam whistle.
+
+All summer long we were cruising off the northern Labrador coast, now
+running into the fjords to visit the scattered settlers, now on the
+outside among the many fishing craft which were plying their calling
+on the banks that fringe the islands and outermost points of land.
+Fishermen from hundreds of vessels visited us for sickness, for books,
+for a thousand different reasons; but never a sight of the Water Lily
+did we see, and never a word did we hear of either Joe or Nancy the
+whole season through. True, in the number of other claims on our
+attention, it was not often that their fortunes came to one's mind.
+But now and again we asked about the schooner, and always got the same
+negative reply, "Reckon she 've got a load and gone south." This was a
+view which we were only too glad to adopt, as it meant the best
+possible luck for our friends.
+
+Now November had come round once more. The main fleet of vessels had
+long ago passed south. It was so long since we had seen even one of
+the belated craft which "bring up the heel of the Labrador" that we
+had closed up the summer stations, and were paying our last visits to
+our colleagues at the southern hospital, who were to remain through
+the winter.
+
+It was therefore no small surprise when Jake Low, from the village,
+who had been up spying from the lookout on the hill, came into the
+hospital and announced that a large schooner with a flag flying in her
+rigging was beating up to the harbour mouth from sea. "She's making
+good ground and is well fished," he added. "What's more, I guess from
+t' course she's shaping they know the way in all right. So it must be
+a doctor they wants, and not a pilot at this time of year."
+
+The news proved interesting enough to lure us up to the hilltop with
+the telescope, where in a short while we were enjoying the wonderful
+spectacle of watching a crew of the vikings of our day force their way
+through a winding narrow passage in a large vessel against a heavy
+winter head wind.
+
+The tide, too, was running out against her, and now and then a flaw of
+wind or a back eddy, caused by the cliffs on either side, would upset
+the helmsman's calculations. Yet with superb coolness he would drive
+her, till to us watchers, lying stretched out on the ground overhead,
+it seemed that her forefoot must surely be over the submerged
+cliff-side. Certainly the white surf from the rocks washed her
+cutwater before the skipper who was "scunning" or directing, perched
+on the fore cross-tree, would sing out the "Ready about. Lee, oh!" for
+which the men at the sheets and bowlines were keenly waiting.
+
+A single slip, and she would have cracked like a nutshell against
+those adamantine walls. But to get into the harbour it was the only
+way, and as the skipper said afterwards, when I remonstrated on his
+apparent foolhardiness, "Needs must, when the devil drives."
+
+"There's a big crowd of men on deck, Doctor," said my companion.
+"Reckon she's been delayed with her freighters, and that there's a
+load of women and children in t' hold on t' fish."
+
+I had been so absorbed in watching his seamanship, that I had not been
+thinking about the stranger. Jake's remark changed the current of my
+thoughts; and soon the vessel's lines seemed to assume a familiar
+shape, and I began to realize that I must have seen her before. Then
+suddenly it flashed upon me--the Water Lily, of course.
+
+Yes, it was the Water Lily. Then Joe was on board, and the flag was
+because Nancy was in trouble. The reasoning was intuitive rather than
+didactic; but the conviction was so forcible that I instinctively rose
+to return to the hospital for the black bag that is my _fidus Achates_
+on every emergency call.
+
+"You isn't going till she rounds t' point of t' Chain Rocks, is you,
+Doctor? It's all she'll do with the wind and tide against her--if she
+does it. I minds more than one good vessel that's left her bones on
+them reefs."
+
+"As well stay, I suppose, Jake, for I'll be in time if I do. My! look
+at that!" I could not help shouting, as a flaw of wind struck the
+schooner right ahead as she was actually in stays, and it seemed she
+must either fall in sideways or drive stern foremost on the cliffs.
+But almost as quick as the eddy, the staysail and jib were let run and
+off her, and her main boom was pushed by a whole gang of men away out
+over the rail, so that by altering the points of pressure the good
+ship went safely round on her heel, and before we had time to discuss
+it, her head sails were up again, and she was racing on her last tack
+to enable her to claw through the narrow channel between the Chain
+Rocks and the Cannons, which form the last breakwater for the harbour.
+
+"I think she'll do it, Jake!"
+
+"If she once gets in t' narrows and can't fetch t' point, it's all up
+with her. I 'lows 'tis time to get them women out of t' hold, anyhow,"
+he replied laconically, his eyes riveted all the while on the scene
+below. "There's a crowd standing by t' boat, I sees, and them's
+putting a line in her," he added a minute or two later, during which
+time excitement had prevented either of us from speaking. "Us'll know
+in a second one way or t'other."
+
+The crisis had soon arrived. The schooner had once more reached across
+the harbour channel, and was for the last time "in stays." A decision
+had to be arrived at instantly, and on it, and on the handling of the
+vessel, depended her fate.
+
+"He's game, sure enough, whoever he is. He's going for it hit or
+miss." And there was a touch of excitement evidenced even in Jake's
+undemonstrative exterior.
+
+We could now plainly see the master. He was standing on the
+cross-tree, whence he could tell, by looking into the water, almost to
+an inch how far it was possible to go before turning.
+
+"She'll do it, Jake, she'll do it. See, she's heading for the middle
+of the run."
+
+"She will if she does, and that's all, Doctor. She's falling off all
+t' while."
+
+It was only too true. The vessel could no longer head for the point.
+Her sails were aback, shaking in the wind, and she now heading
+straight for the rock itself. Surely she must at once try to come up
+in the wind, stop her way, drop her sails, if possible throw out the
+boat, and head for the open before she should strike on one side or
+the other of the run.
+
+But no, we could hear the stentorian tones of the skipper on the
+cross-trees shouting that which to any but an experienced sailor must
+have seemed certain suicide. "Keep her away! Keep her--full! Don't
+starve her! Give her way! Up topsail!"--the latter having been let
+down to allow the vessel to lie closer hauled to the wind. "Stand by
+to douse the head sails! Stand by the topsail!" we heard him shout.
+"Stand by to shoot her into the wind!"--and then at last, just as the
+crash seemed inevitable, "Hard down! Shoot her up! Down sails!"
+
+We up above, with our hearts in our mouths, saw the plucky little
+vessel shoot true as a die up for the point. It was her only chance. I
+am sure that I could have heard my own heart beating as I saw her rise
+on the swell that ran up on the point, and it seemed to me she stopped
+and hung there. But before I could be certain whether she was ashore
+or not, another flood of the swell had rushed over the point, and she
+was fairly swirled around and dropped down into the safety of the
+harbour.
+
+"It's time to be going, Doctor," Jake remarked as he rose from the
+ground. "But I 'low t' point won't want painting t' winter," he added,
+with a twinkle in his eye. "Howsomever, he's a good one, he is,
+wherever he be from, and I don't care who says 'tain't so"--high
+praise from the laconic Jake.
+
+The Water Lily was at anchor when we reached the wharf, and a boat
+already rowing in to the landing. A minute later, just as I had
+expected, Joe was wringing me by the hand, as if he had a design on
+the continuity of my bones.
+
+"Nancy's bad," he blurted out. "Won't you come and see her to oncet?"
+
+I smiled in spite of my anxiety as I looked down at my trusty bag.
+"I'm all ready," I replied.
+
+The deck of the schooner was crowded with people as we came alongside.
+The main hatch had been taken off, and the women and children had come
+up for an airing. They, like our friends, were taking their passages
+home from their fishing stations. They are known as "freighters."
+
+"The skipper's been awful good, Doctor. When he heard Nancy were sick,
+he brought her out of t' hold, and give her his own bunk. But for that
+she'd have been dead long ago. She had t' fits that bad; and no one
+knowed what to do. She were ill when t' vessel comed into t' harbour,
+and t' skipper waited nigh three days till she seemed able to come
+along. Then her got worse again. Not a thing have passed her lips this
+two days now."
+
+In the little, dark after-cabin I found the sick girl, scarcely
+recognizable as the bonny lass whose wedding we had celebrated the
+previous winter with such rejoicings. There were two young women in
+the cabin, told off to "see to her," the kindly skipper and his
+officers having vacated their quarters and gone forward for poor
+Nancy's benefit.
+
+The case was a plain one. It was a matter of life and death. Before
+morning a baby boy had been brought into the world in that strange
+environment only to live a few hours. The following day we ventured to
+move the mother, still hanging between life and death, to the
+hospital.
+
+And now came the dilemma of our lives. It was impossible to delay the
+schooner, as already the crowd on board had lost several days; and it
+was not safe or right so late in the year to be keeping these other
+families from their homes. The Water Lily, so the kindly captain
+informed us, must absolutely sail south the following morning. My own
+vessel was in the same plight. We had more work outlined that we must
+do than the already forming ice promised to give us time to
+accomplish. To send poor Nancy untended to sea in a schooner was
+simply to sign her death-warrant. Indeed, I had small hope for her
+life anyhow.
+
+Our hospital was on the coast of Labrador, and the remorseless Straits
+of Belle Isle yawned forty miles wide between it and the nearest point
+of the island home of most of our friends. One belated vessel, still
+waiting to finish loading, lay in the harbour. She expected to be a
+week yet, and possibly ten days if the weather held bad. An interview
+with the skipper resulted in a promise to carry the sick woman to her
+harbour if she were still alive on the day of sailing, or news of her
+death if she passed away.
+
+Joe had no alternative. He certainly must go on, for he had nothing
+for the winter with him, no gear, and no way of procuring any. So it
+was agreed that Nancy should be left in our care, and, if alive,
+should follow by the schooner. Only poor Nancy was undisturbed next
+morning by the creaking of the mast hoops and the squealing of the
+blocks--the familiar warning to our ears that a vessel is leaving for
+sea. For she lay utterly unconscious of the happenings of the outside
+world, hovering between life and death in the ward upstairs.
+
+To whatever cause we ought to ascribe it does not much matter. But for
+the time, anyhow, our arrangements "panned out right." The weather
+delayed the fish vessel till our patient was well enough to be moved.
+Ten days later, sewed up in a blanket sleeping-bag, Nancy was
+painfully carried aboard and deposited in a captain's berth--again
+most generously put at her disposal.
+
+And so once more she put out to sea.
+
+It was not until the next spring that I heard the final outcome of all
+the troubles. Nancy had arrived home in safety, with only one
+hitch--her kit-bag and clothing had been forgotten in sailing, and
+when at length she reached her harbour, she had had to be carried up
+to her home swathed only in a bag of blankets.
+
+Such are but incidents like head winds in the lives of the Labrador
+fisher-folk; but those who, like our people, are taught to meet
+troubles halfway look at the silver lining instead of the dark cloud.
+As for Joe himself, he is still unable to get into his head why these
+events should be of even passing interest to any one else.
+
+
+
+
+SALLY'S "TURNS"
+
+
+"Spin me a yarn, Uncle Eph. I'm fairly played out. We've been on the
+go from daylight and I'm too tired to write up the day's work."
+
+"A yarn, Doctor. I'm no hand at yarns," said the master of the
+spick-and-span little cottage at which I and my dogs had brought up
+for the night. But the generously served supper, with the tin of milk
+and the pot of berry jam, kept in case some one might come along, and
+the genial features of my hospitable host, slowly puffing at his pipe
+on the other side of the fireplace, made me boldly insistent.
+
+"Oh, not anything special, Uncle Eph, just some yarn of an adventure
+with your dogs in the old days."
+
+Uncle Eph ruminated for quite a while, but I saw by the solid puffs he
+was taking at his pipe that his mind was working. Then a big smile,
+broader than ever, lit up his face, and he said slowly:
+
+"Well, if you're so minded, I'll tell you a yarn about a fellow
+called 'Sally' who lived down our way in my early days."
+
+At this I just settled down comfortably to listen.
+
+Of course Sally was only a nickname, but on our coast nicknames last a
+man all his life. Thus my last patient, a woman of forty-odd years,
+trying to-day to identify herself, explained, "Why, you must know my
+father, Doctor. He be called 'Powder'--'Mr. Powder,' because of his
+red hair and whiskers."
+
+Sally's proper nickname was apparently "Chief," which the boys had
+given him because he had been a regular "Huck Finn" among the others.
+But in young manhood--some said it was because "Marjorie Sweetapple
+went and took Johnnie Barton instead o' he"--somehow or other "Chief"
+took a sudden "turn." This expression on our coast usually means a
+religious "turn," or a turn such as people take when "they sees
+something and be going to die"; it may be a ghost or sign. But this
+turn was neither. It was just a plain common "turn."
+
+It had manifested itself in "Chief" by his no longer going about with
+the other boys, by his habits becoming solitary, and by his neglecting
+his personal appearance, especially in letting his very abundant hair
+grow longer than fashion dictates for the young manhood of the coast.
+That was the reason some wag one day dubbed him "Absalom," which the
+rest caught up and soon shortened to "Sally." In the proper order of
+things it should have been "Abe." Wasn't Absalom Sims always called
+"Abe"? There was obviously an intentional tinge of satire in this
+unusual abbreviation.
+
+Whether it was due to the "turn" or not, the fact remained that at the
+advanced age of four and twenty Sally was still unmarried. He lived
+and fished and hunted mostly alone. No one, therefore, had much to say
+of him, good or bad. In its kindly way the coast just left him alone,
+seeing that was what he wished.
+
+As the years went by it happened that hard tunes with a scarcity of
+food struck "Frying-Pan Tickle," the hospitable name of the cove where
+Sally was reared. Fish were scarce, capelin never struck in, fur
+could not be got. This particular season every kind of fur had been
+scarce. A forest fire had driven the deer into the country out of
+reach. The young bachelor seals, called "bedlamers," that precede the
+breeding herd on their annual southern whelping excursion, and
+normally afford us a much-needed proteid supply, had evidently skipped
+their visit to the bay; while continuous onshore winds made it
+impossible in small boats to intercept the mighty rafts, or flocks, of
+ducks which pass south every fall. As a rule the ducks "take a spell"
+feeding off the shoals and islands as they go on their way, but the
+northeaster had robbed our larders of this other supply of meat, which
+we are in the habit of freezing up for spring use.
+
+In spite of the ice jam, packed by the unfriendly winds, the men had
+ventured to set their big seal nets as usual, not expecting the long
+persistence of "weather" that now seriously endangered their recovery.
+
+The time to move to the winter houses up the bay had already passed,
+and so the men at last thought best to go on and get them ready and
+then come out once more to haul and stow the nets and carry the women
+back with them. The long-delayed break came suddenly at last, with a
+blue sky and a bright, calm morning, but alas! no wind to move the
+packed-in slob ice. So there was no help for it but to get away early
+on shanks' pony, if they decided to go on; and that would mean they
+would not "reach down" before dark. There were only three of them, but
+they were all family men: Hezekiah Black, called "Ky"; Joseph Stedman,
+known as "Patsy," and old Uncle John Sanborne. They got under way
+bright and early, but the weather clouded up soon after they left, and
+a puff or two of wind should have warned them all under ordinary
+circumstances to abandon the attempt, or at least to branch off and
+take shelter in the "Featherbed Tilt" before trying to cross the White
+Hills.
+
+As it was, Uncle John decided to adopt that plan, leaving the younger
+men, whom nothing would dissuade from pushing ahead. After all, they
+knew every turn of the trail, every rock and landmark on the hillside;
+and one need not wonder if the modern spirit of "hustle" finds an echo
+even in these far-off wilds. Throwing precaution to the winds, the two
+young men pushed on regardless of signs and omens.
+
+Sally just knew it. Nothing would ever convince him that they did not
+deserve to get into trouble for not respecting "signs." Even Uncle
+John had often talked about "t' foolishness o' signs," and many a time
+Ky, once a humble member of Chief's followers, had laughed at what he
+called "old women's stuff." But what Sally thought of signs would not
+have been of any interest in itself. The interesting thing was that
+though he was in the country hunting, having moved long ago to his
+winter trapping-grounds, he saw signs enough to make him anxious about
+the three fathers of families tramping over the bleak hills that day.
+When snow began to fall with a westerly wind, that was sign number
+one. Something uncanny was about to happen. Then there was sign
+number two of bad weather coming, namely, the tingling in his fingers
+and sometimes "a scattered pain in t' joints." So Sally left his
+fur-path for the day, hurried back to his tiny home among the trees,
+and, calling his dogs together, harnessed them quickly and started at
+once for the winter houses at the bottom of Grey Wolf Bay.
+
+A tenderfoot could have told now that they were "in for weather." The
+snow by midday was not falling, it was being shovelled down in loads.
+The temperature had dropped so rapidly that the flakes, as large as
+goose feathers, were dry and light, a fact that with the increasing
+wind made the going like travelling through a seething cauldron.
+Unfortunately the men were already over the crest of the White Hills
+when they realized that the storm which had swept down on them had
+come to stay. There was no stemming the gale on the wind-swept ice of
+those hillsides, even could they have faced the fiercely driving snow.
+All they could do was to hurry along before it, knowing there would be
+no shelter for them till they reached Frying-Pan Tickle. For the
+forest had retired there beyond the hills before the onslaught of man
+and the carelessness that had caused forest fires.
+
+No one who has not been through it has any conception of the
+innumerable little accidents which in circumstances like these eat up
+the stock of chances for coming through. It did seem foolish that
+Patsy got his mittens wet in salt water coming through the broken
+ballicater ice as they tried to make the short cut across the Maiden's
+Arm; and that they froze while he was trying to warm his hands, so
+that he could not get them on again. It sounds like madness on Ky's
+part to have let his nor'wester cap get blown away, but it really only
+fell from his numbed hands while he was knocking the snow off, and was
+instantly swept away in a flurry of snow in the darkness. When the
+beam broke in his snow racquet, one of a pair he had absolutely
+counted on as beyond accident, he could scarcely get ahead at all.
+
+To stop and try to "boil the kettle" would not only have occupied too
+much time, but under the circumstances making a fire was practically
+impossible. Neither of the men carried a watch, and the unusual
+darkness caused by the thick snow made it impossible for them to tell
+what progress they were making. They supposed that surely between the
+worst snow "dweys" they would catch sight of some familiar leading
+mark, but that proved only another of their small but fatal
+miscalculations. The storm never did let up. More than once they
+discovered they were out of the track, and, knowing well their danger,
+had grudgingly to sacrifice time and strength in groping their way
+back to a spot where they could recognize the trail again.
+
+December days are short, anyhow, "down north" and every moment warned
+them that the chances of getting out before dark were rapidly
+diminishing. All the strength and endurance of which they were capable
+were unstintingly utilized to get ahead; but when night finally
+overtook them, they knew well that there were several miles to go,
+while to move ahead meant almost certainly losing the trail, which
+inevitably spelt death. It was only the winter before that Jake
+Newman, of Rogers Cove, left his own home after dinner, "just to fetch
+in a load of wood," and he wasn't found till three days later, buried
+in snow not two hundred yards from his front door, frozen to death.
+But if to advance meant death, to stop moving was equally dangerous.
+So there was nothing to do but keep moving round and round a big rock
+in hopes of living out the long, terrible night.
+
+Meanwhile Sally was under way. Though he knew that the men were crazy
+to get back, it was only his surmise that they had started, so he had
+to call round at the winter cottages in the bay to make sure. He
+realized full well it was a man's job he was about to undertake, and
+had no wish to attempt it unnecessarily. As he expected, however, he
+found that the houses were all shut up, and such tracks as there were
+on the snow about the trail end showed quite clearly three men's
+footmarks. "Uncle John's gone with t' others," he muttered to himself.
+"I 'low 't is t' last journey some of 'em 'll make, unless they
+minded the signs before too late. 'Tis lucky that I hadn't left old
+Surefoot at t' tilt; more'n likely I shall be needing he before t'
+night's out." And he called his one earthly chum and constant
+companion to him, rubbed his head, and made him nose the men's tracks
+which he was about to follow.
+
+In spite of his nickname, Sally was no greenhorn on occasions like
+this. Every harness was carefully gone over, every trace tested; the
+runners and cross-bars of his komatik all came in for a critical
+overhauling. The contents of the nonny-bag were amply replenished; the
+matches in the water-tight bottle were tested for dampness; his small
+compass was securely lashed to the chain of his belt. His one bottle
+of spirits, "kept against sickness," was carefully stowed with the tea
+and hardtack. A bundle of warm wraps, with his axe, and even a few dry
+splits, completed his equipment. Then once more Surefoot was shown the
+tracks on the threshold, the trailing loops of the traces were hitched
+on their respective toggles, the stern line was slipped, and away
+went his sturdy team into the darkness.
+
+That animals have a sense of direction that man has lost is clearly
+proven by the seals, birds, polar bears, and our northern migratory
+animals generally, who every year follow in their season the right
+trails to their destinations, even though thousands of miles distant
+and over pathless seas or trackless snows and barrens. That instinct
+is nowhere more keenly developed than in our draught dogs; and amongst
+these there are always now and again, as in human relationships, those
+that are peerless among their fellows. Surefoot's name, like Sally's
+own, was not strictly his baptismal cognomen, the original name of
+"Whitefoot" having been relegated to oblivion early in life owing to
+some clever trail-following the pup had achieved.
+
+Many men would face an aeroplane flight with a sinking sensation. Many
+would have to acknowledge some qualms on a start with "mere dogs" in a
+blizzard like this one. But Sally, unemotional as a statue and serene
+as a judge, knew his pilot too well to worry, and, stretched out full
+length on the sledge, occupied himself with combating the snow in
+between "spells" of hauling the komatik out of hopeless snowbanks. "It
+won't do to pass the Featherbed without making sure them's not there,"
+thought Sally. "If Ky had any wits about him, he'd never try the
+Hanging Marshes a night like this." So when at last the team actually
+divided round the leading mark-pole, Surefoot having rubbed his side
+on it, so straight had he travelled even in that inferno, Sally leaped
+off immediately, and, following the line of poles, was cheered to see
+sparks issuing from the snug tilt among the trees. But alas, there was
+only one man, old Uncle John, resting there safely when Sally came
+tumbling in. The cheerful wood fire, the contrast of the warmth and
+quiet with the howling and darkness of the storm outside, called
+loudly to every physical faculty to stay for the night.
+
+"Where be them gone?" queried Sally as soon as the old man had roused
+himself enough to understand the sudden interruption. "Where's Ky and
+Patsy? I thought you was all together by t' tracks."
+
+"So we was, so we was, boy. But them's gone on, while I thought I'd
+bide till daylight."
+
+The loud wail of the dogs in chorus, as they chafed at being left out
+of sight or knowledge of their master's whereabouts, was plainly
+audible to both men, and suggested the cruel bleakness of the night
+outside.
+
+"Youse isn't going on to look for 'em, is you? There be no chance of
+doing nothing a night like this," added the old man.
+
+But Sally was in another world. He could see the two men adrift and
+trying to keep life in themselves on the White Hills just as plainly
+as the cry made him see his beloved dogs calling to him from the
+exposed trail outside.
+
+"There'll be nothing left anyhow to do by morning, Uncle John," he
+answered. "Look after yourself well and keep t' fire in; maybe I'll be
+back sooner than us expects. Goodnight to you." And Sally disappeared
+once more into the night.
+
+They were still alive when Surefoot found them, though far more
+played out than one would suppose strong men could be in so short a
+time. The extra wraps were at once requisitioned, a ration from the
+spirit flask was rapidly given to each, and then, forcing them to sit
+down on the sledge, Sally again encouraged Surefoot to take the trail.
+Downhill, they managed to move along, but the heavy thatch of snow
+made progress difficult on the level and almost impossible uphill,
+just when exhaustion made marching impracticable even with a line from
+the sledge lashed to their arms. Sally found his last device
+unavailable. The men must get off for the uphill work, and that is
+what it became increasingly impossible for them to do.
+
+Apparently Ky was the worse off. He didn't seem to know what was going
+on. Sally noticed that his hat had gone and thought his head was
+freezing, so without hesitation he covered it with his own warm
+nor'wester. Ky lay mostly on the komatik now, and it took all Sally's
+strength and such little aid as Patsy could give to enable the dogs to
+haul up the Frenchman's Leap, usually nearly perpendicular, but now
+fortunately sloped off by the heavy drift. Each man had to take a
+trace ahead and haul exactly like two big dogs, thus strengthening the
+team. At last the komatik topped the brow and was once more coming
+along after them. But Patsy was so played out that Sally drove him
+back to the sledge, hoping that the dogs could now haul the two men
+again. To his horror on reaching the komatik he found the real cause
+of its running so much more easily. Ky was gone. Probably he had only
+just slipped off. He would go back and look for him. But then he would
+lose the dogs. Patsy was too lost to the world to understand anything
+or to help. If he went back alone the dogs might follow and he would
+lose Patsy as well. Still he must try it. Halting the dogs he turned
+the komatik over, driving the upturned nose of the runners deep into
+the snow; then he laid Patsy on the top, and, lashing him on, finally
+began groping back down the steep rise for the missing man.
+
+Not a sign was to be found; any traces he had left were not only
+invisible, but impossible to feel, though he took off his mittens to
+try. The pitiless, driving snow instantly levelled off every mark. How
+long dare he delay? He remembered at last that even if he found him he
+could do no good. He could never carry him up the hill. But he had
+tried--had done his best and his conscience felt easier. And then
+there was Patsy. He might save Patsy yet. It was right he should go
+on. Fortunately the dogs were giving tongue when he crawled and
+stumbled once more up the Leap. They knew their master had left them
+and had come back to the komatik to wait. Some of them were huddled up
+against the motionless body of the man. Surefoot, bolt upright on the
+topmost bend, was leading the chorus. The komatik had to be extricated
+and righted. Patsy was still breathing. His body must be re-lashed on
+the right side; and then once more the weary march began--the march
+that was a battle for every inch.
+
+Of the remainder of the journey Sally never had much remembrance. It
+was like a moving dream--he knew it was crowded with adventures, but
+the details had vanished completely from his ken. It was his old
+father who told the remainder of the story. He had turned into bed as
+usual, never dreaming any man was astir on such a night as that. He
+was sleeping the sleep of the righteous when he suddenly became
+conscious of dogs howling. Even dogs would not be out unless they were
+in harness on such a night. His own dogs he knew were safely barred
+into their kennels after being fed at sundown. For a few minutes he
+lay awake and listened. The sounds came no nearer, but they were quite
+distinct. There was something astir in the darkness--something
+uncanny. Sally would have called it a "sign." Uneasily he arose and
+lit the lamp. He could not hear a soul stirring. Even the howling of
+the dogs had ceased. Nothing but the noise of the house creaking and
+groaning under the wind pressure was discernible. And then, just as
+the bitter cold, dark, and loneliness made him long to get into his
+warm bed again, the wail of a lone dog was distinctly audible. Uncle
+Eben, pulling the lamp safely out of the draught, opened a crack of
+the porch door only to be saluted by a rush of cold wind and snow
+which nearly swept him off his feet. But again clearer than before
+came the wail of the dog.
+
+"He must be hitched up by mistake or in harness," he thought. "I 'low
+I'll fire a powder gun."
+
+Going back into the bedroom, the old man warned his wife that he was
+going to shoot and not to be frightened. Then taking his old
+muzzle-loader, which was always kept ready, from among the lesser
+weapons which stood in the gun-rack, he poked the muzzle through the
+crack and fired it into the air. True he had thought there might be
+some one adrift. But even a prophet could not have imagined that what
+did happen could have done so. For the sound of the explosion had not
+done echoing through the empty rooms before the door was burst
+suddenly in by some heavy body falling against it. The thud of some
+weighty mass falling on the floor was all that Uncle Eben could make
+out, for the gust through the wide-open door at once extinguished the
+light. It seemed as if some huge bird must have been hovering overhead
+and have fallen to the charge of the big gun. The door must be shut at
+all costs, and shut at once; so Uncle Eben, stooping to feel his way
+over the fallen object, put his hands out to find where it lay in the
+darkness. Instantly he recognized the body of a man--a man alive too,
+but apparently unable to speak or move. Like lightning he had the door
+closed. The vigour of youth seemed to leap into his old veins. The
+light was soon burning again, to reveal to him the prostrate body of
+his own son, ice-covered from head to foot, his hatless head like a
+great snow cannon-ball, his face so iced up that it was scarcely
+recognizable. No--he was unwounded and there was life in him. "I had
+just to thaw his head out first," Uncle Eben said, "and then us rubbed
+him and got something down his throat. He roused himself, got up, and
+told us his dogs must be snarled up in t' woodpile on the hillside,
+only a few minutes away, and he kept signing that there were a man,
+possibly still alive, lashed on t' komatik." It was no night for the
+old man to go out. "He'd be dead, bless you," before he got anywhere;
+and it seemed impossible to let Sally go out again. The stranger must
+surely be dead long ago. But, weak as he was, Sally would go. He could
+stand now and was once more blundering toward the door. To live and
+think he had let a man perish alongside was as impossible to one man
+as to the other.
+
+It was Uncle Eben who solved the problem. There were a dozen balls of
+stout seal twine lying in the locker. The old man, unable longer to
+haul wood or drive dogs himself, spent much of his time knitting up
+gear for the boys. He put on Sally his own cap, coat, and mits, tied
+the twine round his wrist, and then let him out to find the komatik
+again if he could; while if he fell exhausted Uncle Eben could at
+least follow the line and perhaps get him back again.
+
+As events turned out they were justified in making the attempt. The
+cold wind served only as a lash to Sally's reserve strength and his
+grit. That night he certainly found himself again. He reached the
+sledge, cut the traces he could not disentangle, and, keeping Surefoot
+by him, he cleared the komatik of the woodpile. Once more he hitched
+in the dogs, which he knew would make straight for the house, while he
+piloted down that last hillside.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Patsy got well again, though his toes and fingers alike were badly
+burned. Ky was not found till a few days later. He had evidently
+wandered to the edge of the cliffs, which near the Jump fall
+perpendicularly a hundred feet on to the rocky beach below, and had
+slipped over in the darkness.
+
+Uncle Eben's shot had passed almost immediately over Sally's head. He
+remembers being unable to free the dogs, realizing he was close home,
+and stumbling on for only a minute or two before something exploded
+just above him; then he recalls nothing till Uncle Eben had thawed out
+the touselly head and rubbed back the circulation into the frozen
+limbs.
+
+The slur so obviously intentional in the old nickname made it
+impossible for any one to use it longer. It was unanimously agreed
+that he had established most surely his right to his old name of
+"Chief," and by this for many years he was known. With the lapse of
+years and the advent of grey hairs, even that was gradually recognized
+as too familiar, and he received the cognomen of "Uncle," the title of
+endearment of the coast, attached to his own name of Ephraim.
+Moreover, this proved to be the last of Sally's "turns," for the long
+hair and the lonely habits disappeared. The barrier that had grown up
+between him and his fellows vanished, as they always do before the
+warmth of unselfish deeds--and the next time "Chief" asked a girl the
+fateful question, there proved to be no Johnnie Barton in his way.
+
+"Is Sally living still?" I asked, my keenness of interpretation
+obscured by weariness or by interest in the details.
+
+"Oh, yes, he's alive all right," replied my host--and my mind at once
+apologized, as I realized he had been telling me the story of his own
+early life.
+
+
+
+
+THE DOCTOR'S BIG FEE
+
+
+A crowd of visitors had landed from the fortnightly mail boat, and had
+come up to see the sights of our little harbour while our mails and
+freight were being landed and the usual two hours were allowed to
+collect and put aboard any return packages or letters. The island on
+which the station stands is a very small one, attractions are
+naturally few, and custom has reconciled us to the experience, strange
+enough at first, of being included in the list of "sights."
+
+A nice, cheerful group had just "done the hospital" and its
+appendages, and were resting on the rocky hilltop, after seeing the
+winter dog-team and examining the hospital reservoir. The
+ever-recurrent questions had been asked, and patiently answered--yes,
+the ice was cold, but not always wet; the glare of the snow was hard
+on the eyes; dogs do delight to bite; and so on. Conversation flagged
+a little till some one enquired the names of the headlands and bays
+stretching away in succession beneath our view.
+
+"It all looks so grim and cold, and the people seem so scattered and
+so poor. Surely they can't pay a doctor's fees?" some one asked.
+
+"That depends on what you mean by a fee. We don't expect to get blood
+out of a stone."
+
+"Is all your work done for nothing, then?"
+
+"No, not exactly for nothing. There is no produce of the coast which
+has not been used to express gratitude, and 'to help the hospital
+along.' Codfish is a common fee. Sealskins, venison, wild ducks,
+beadwork, embroidered skinwork, feathers, firewood--nothing is too
+bizarre to offer."
+
+"Do they never pay money?"
+
+"Yes, sometimes. Of late years, a little more each year. But when we
+began work, they practically never got any with which to pay. The
+fur-trading companies settled in kind, values were often measured, not
+by so many dollars, but by so many pelts. The traders gave out
+supplies on credit, took the fish or fur from their planters in
+return, and made up the balance, when there was any, in goods. Even
+barter was quite unusual, though some traders had a 'cash price' for
+produce paid down at once, besides the credit price."
+
+"Do you think it a sound policy to be providing services, drugs, and
+nursing free?" chimed in a grey-bearded old fellow, evidently the
+philosopher of the party.
+
+"Sometimes, sir, policies must be adopted which are rendered necessary
+for the time by conditions. Besides, as I have said, the people pay
+what they can, and, after all, it is they who catch the fish and fur,
+reaping harvests for the world's benefit--for not much return."
+
+"Well, I'm glad that you don't do it for nothing, anyhow. That would
+be an imposition on the workers as well as on the subscribers."
+
+The old gentleman seemed a bit disgruntled, so I ventured to put my
+viewpoint in a different way.
+
+"Do you see that steep, rocky cape over there?" I asked. "It is the
+most northerly you can distinguish."
+
+"A great landmark, and worth the journey up here only to look at it,"
+he answered with an enthusiasm which showed that he had a tender spot
+for Nature's beauties, and that even if the shell was hard, the kernel
+was soft.
+
+"There is a little village just behind that head. It is hidden away in
+a rift in the mountain which forms a tiny cove for a safe anchorage. I
+had as big a fee there only two days ago as ever I received when I was
+practising in London."
+
+The company looked up in astonishment, but like Brer Rabbit, I lay low
+to see if they cared for an explanation. I thought I saw a twinkle in
+my critic's eye as it caught mine.
+
+"Go ahead," was all that he said, however.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Deep-Water "Crik," we call it. About half a dozen fishermen's families
+live there. Well, three days ago a boat came over at daylight to see
+if they could get a doctor, and I was debating as to the advisability
+of leaving the hospital, when an old skipper from a schooner in the
+harbour came ashore to tell me: "It's t' old Englishman; Uncle
+Solomon they calls him. He's had a bad place this twelvemonth."
+
+"How's the wind outside?"
+
+"Soldier's wind. Abeam both ways."
+
+"Think I could get back to-night?"
+
+"Yes, by after dark."
+
+"Let's get right away, then."
+
+But other calls delayed us, and it was nearly midday before we started
+for the cape. Unfortunately, the wind veered as the sun sank, and
+"headed" us continually. The northern current was running strong, and
+it was just "duckish" when at last we entered the creek.
+
+The former glories of Deep-Water Creek have passed away. Fortune has
+decreed that seals and mackerel and even salmon to a large extent
+should not "strike in" along that shore. Bad seasons and the wretched
+trading system have impoverished the fishermen, while the opening of
+the southern mines has taken away some of the most able-bodied. Here
+and there a braver cottage still boasts a coat of whitewash and a
+mixture of cod oil and red dust on the roof. But for the most part
+there is a sombre, dejected look about the human part of the harbour
+that suggests nothing but sordid poverty.
+
+It had commenced to rain, and we were wet, cold, and feeling generally
+blue as we landed at a small fish stage, whose very cleanliness helped
+further to depress us, telling as it did the tale of a bad "voyage."
+For now it ought to have reeked of fish and oil; and piles of cod
+heads, instead of the cleanest of cold water, should have covered the
+rocks beneath. So many of our troubles are due to deficient dietary,
+winter was already on our heels, and there seemed to be the shadow of
+hunger in the very air.
+
+As soon, however, as we landed, a black-bearded, bright-faced man of
+about fifty gave us a hearty greeting, and such evident happiness lit
+up his peculiarly piercing eyes that it made us feel a little more
+cheerful, even before he had taken us into his house. There we found a
+cup of steaming hot tea prepared. That tea did not seem a whit less
+sweet, because "there be ne'er a drop o' milk in t' harbour, Doctor,
+and molasses be scarce, too, till t' fish be dry."
+
+Everything was so clean that you could have eaten off the floor. The
+pots and pans and tin cooking-utensils shone so brightly from the
+walls that the flame of the tiny kerosene lamp, reflected from so many
+sides at once, suggested ten hundredfold the candle-power it
+possessed. A museumful of treasures could not have added to the charm
+of the simplicity of the room, which, though small, was ever so cosy
+compared with the surroundings outside. Three children were playing on
+the hearth with a younger man, evidently their father.
+
+"No, Doctor, they aren't ours exactly," replied our host, in answer to
+my question, "but us took Sam as our own when he was born, and his
+mother lay dead, and he've been with us ever since. Those be his
+little ones. You remember Kate, his wife, what died in the hospital?"
+
+Yes, I remembered her very well, and the struggle we had had in trying
+to save her.
+
+"Skipper John," I said as soon as tea was over, "let's get out and
+see the old Englishman. He'll be tired waiting."
+
+"Youse needn't go out, Doctor. He be upstairs in bed."
+
+So upstairs, or rather up the ladder, we went, to find the oddest
+arrangement, and yet far the most sensible under the peculiar
+circumstances. "Upstairs" was the triangular space between the roof
+and the ceiling of the ground floor. At each end was a tiny window,
+and the whole, windows included, had been divided longitudinally by a
+single thickness of hand-sawn lumber, up to the tiny cross-beams.
+There was no lofting, and both windows were open, so that a cool
+breeze was blowing right through. Cheerfulness was given by a bright
+white paper which had been pasted on over everything. Home-made rag
+mats covered the planed boards. At one end a screen of cheesecloth
+veiled off the corner. Sitting bolt upright on a low bench, and
+leaning against the partition, was a very aged-looking woman, staring
+fixedly in front of her, and swaying forwards and backwards like some
+whirling Dervish. She ceaselessly monotoned what was intended for a
+hymn.
+
+"The old gentleman sleeps over there," said the skipper with his head
+just above the floor level. He indicated the screened corner, and then
+bobbed down and disappeared, being far too courteous a man to intrude.
+
+The old lady took no notice whatever as I approached. No head was
+visible among the rude collection of bedclothes which, with a mattress
+on the boards, served for the bed.
+
+"Uncle Solomon, it's the Doctor," I called.
+
+The mass of clothes moved, and a trembling old hand came out to meet
+mine.
+
+"Not so well, Uncle Solomon? No pain, I hope?"
+
+"No pain, Doctor, thank t' good Lord--and Skipper John," he added. "He
+took us in, Doctor, when t' old lady and I were starving."
+
+The terrible cancer in spite of which his iron constitution still kept
+him alive had so extended its fearful ravages that the reason for the
+veiled corner was at once apparent, and also the effective measures
+for ventilation.
+
+The old lady had now caught the meaning of my presence. "He suffers a
+lot, Doctor, though he won't say it. If it wasn't for me singing to
+him, I don't know how he would bear up." And, strangely enough, even I
+had noticed the apparent descent from an odd, dreamy state to crude
+realities, as the old lady abandoned her droning, and talked of
+symptoms.
+
+"But, Aunt Anne," I said, "you can't keep it up all night as well as
+all day?"
+
+"No, not exactly, Doctor, but I mostly sleeps very little." And to my
+no small astonishment she now shut up like an umbrella, and at once
+recommenced her mesmeric monotone.
+
+When the interview was over, and all my notes made and lines of action
+decided, I still did not feel like moving. I was standing in a brown
+study when I heard the skipper's voice calling me.
+
+"Be you through, Doctor? There be two or three as wants to see you,"
+it said; but it meant, "Is there anything wrong?" The long silence
+might mean that the sight had been too much for me.
+
+"There's no hurry, Doctor," it hastened to add, for his quick ear had
+caught the noise of my start as I came to earth again.
+
+"What can be the meaning of it all?" I was pondering. Is there any
+more explanation to the riddle of life than to Alice in Wonderland?
+Are we not all a lot of "slithy toves, that gyre and gimble in the
+wabe"--or worse? Must we who love living only regard it as one long
+tragedy?
+
+The clinic of Skipper John's lower room included one or two pathetic
+tales, and evidently my face showed discouragement, but I confess I
+was surprised when the last poor creature had left, to find my host's
+hand on my shoulder.
+
+"You'll be wanting a good hot cup o' tea, I knows, Doctor. And t'
+wife's made you a bit o' toast, and a taste o' hot berry jam. We are
+so grateful you comed, Doctor. T' poor old creatures won't last long.
+But thanks aren't dollars."
+
+At that minute his happy, optimistic eyes chanced to meet mine. They
+seemed like good, deep water, and just for a second the thought
+crossed my mind that perhaps he knew more of the real troubles of life
+than his intellectual opportunities might suggest.
+
+"No, Skipper," was all I said. "We doctors, anyhow, find them quite as
+scarce."
+
+"Well, Doctor," he added, "please God if I gets a skin t' winter I'll
+try and pay you for your visit, anyhow. But I hasn't a cent in the
+world just now. The old couple has taken the little us had put by."
+
+"Skipper John, what relation are those people to you?"
+
+"Well, Doctor, no relation 'zactly."
+
+"Do they pay nothing at all?"
+
+"Them has nothing," he replied.
+
+"Why did you take them in?"
+
+"They was homeless, Doctor, and the old lady was already blind."
+
+"How long have they been with you?"
+
+"Just twelve months come Saturday."
+
+"Thanks, Skipper," was all I could say, but I found myself standing
+with my hat off in the presence of this man. I thought then, and still
+think, I had received one of my largest fees.
+
+
+
+
+TWO CAT'S-PAWS
+
+
+Jean Marquette had nothing French about him but his name. Indeed
+"ne'er a word of French" could the old man remember, for he had lived
+for many years on the bleak, northeast side of Labrador; and few folk
+knew why, for all his forbears from sunny France had studiously
+avoided the Atlantic seaboard.
+
+Over his evening pipe, when the sparkling forks of fire bursting from
+the crackling logs seemed to materialize before his eyes again the
+scenes of his venturous life in the wild, as if they had been
+imperishably imprinted in the old trunks which had witnessed them, the
+old _coureur de bois_ spirit, and even accent, flashed out as he
+carried his listeners back into the gallant days of the men who
+founded the great _seigneuries_ which still stretch along the thousand
+miles of coast from the barren Atlantic seaboard to the bold heights
+of Quebec.
+
+In this country, only separated from the land of Evangeline by a few
+miles of salt water, one might reasonably suppose that the good folk
+would look to the soil and the peaceful pursuits of Arcady for at
+least some part of their daily bread. But, with the exception of a few
+watery potatoes, Uncle Johnnie had never "growed e'er a thing in his
+life." His rifle and axe, his traps and his lines, had exacted
+sufficient tribute from wild nature around him, not only to keep the
+wolf from the door, but to lay up in the stocking in his ancient
+French trunk dollars enough to give his only child, Marie-Joseph,
+quite a little dowry for that coast.
+
+It had often been a puzzle to us why this lonely old man, with no one
+belonging to him but one unusually pretty daughter, should have
+migrated to the lonely North. He had been asked more than once what
+the reason was, but he had always put the curious off by saying,
+"Hunting must be a lonesome trade. You wants a lot of room to catch
+foxes."
+
+But one night, when he was in a more communicative mood than usual, we
+got the whole story out of him.
+
+Late one fall, when the southern fishing craft had gone south, and
+the ground was crisp with the first frost of winter, the lovely calm
+and sunny October morning had induced him to suggest to his wife that
+she should go over to the neighbouring island with their two elder
+children, a girl and a boy, and have a picnic, while they gathered
+some of the beautiful red cranberries to "stow away" for the winter.
+The baby girl, Marie, was left at home with the little servant maid.
+The children had jumped for joy at the idea, and early after breakfast
+he had rowed them across to the island, returning himself to finish
+loading his small schooner with the household goods and chattels which
+they must take up the bay to their winter home in the woods. So busy
+had he been with work that only as it came time to go off for the
+family did he notice how suddenly the weather had chopped around. A
+sinister northerly flaw was already rippling the surface of the
+hitherto placid sea; and Uncle Johnnie, accustomed to read the sky
+like a book, hurried as he seldom did to get the small boat under way.
+No one could have driven her faster than he drove her, and the pace
+satisfied even his uneasy mind. The "cat's-paw" had stiffened to a
+bitter blast behind him, and long before the boat reached the beach,
+it was difficult enough to look to windward. Hauling up the boat, he
+gave the familiar call which his wife knew so well; but no answer came
+to greet him. Following along the shore, and still finding no traces,
+he suddenly remembered that there was an old deserted house nearly a
+mile farther along, and incontinently he started to run as fast as he
+could in its direction. As he drew near, to his infinite joy he caught
+sight of smoke issuing from holes in the leaky roof. Calling as he
+went, he soon reached the cabin, to find the little party trying to
+dry themselves before a wood fire in the crazy stove, which had no
+funnelling, and was filling the hut with eye-torturing smoke.
+
+"Come along, Mother," he cried. "There's no time to be lost. If we
+hurry, we may get over before dark."
+
+A little delay was caused by the children, who were unwilling to leave
+even that pretence of a shelter; and more time was lost crossing the
+island, the children having to be carried most of the way. At last,
+having placed them all safely in the boat, Uncle Johnnie proceeded to
+launch her, and by wading into the water himself, succeeded in keeping
+them dry for the start. But the increasing sea soon made even that
+sacrifice of little avail, for broken water and driving spray, with
+the now heavily falling snow, soon soaked them through and through, at
+last half filling the boat itself with water.
+
+Uncle Johnnie knew by instinct that it was now neck or nothing. He
+must get across that strip of water if human endurance could do it. So
+he kept on and on, long after he might have gone back, and put the
+boat before it once more to run for the island only after it was well
+dark, and he was being blown astern anyhow in spite of his best
+efforts. Nearing the shore, he had every reason to expect disaster,
+for the boat was now half filled, and he could see no place to make a
+landing. So as soon as his oars struck bottom he once more jumped
+into the water, and, holding the boat in his iron grip, he dragged it
+and its precious freight once more out of the furious violence of the
+sea.
+
+The children by this time were quite unable to "travel"; so, sending
+his wife ahead, Uncle Johnnie struggled along with the little ones as
+best he could.
+
+Alas, all of them were thoroughly beaten out. As he passed a big
+boulder halfway across the island which served as a landmark for the
+pathway, Uncle Johnnie found his poor wife lying in the snow, and
+already beyond any help he could give. Hurrying on to the cottage as
+best he could, he deposited the children, and once more fled out into
+the darkness for his wife, only to be, as he feared, too late, and to
+be obliged to leave her where she had fallen. Distracted as he was, he
+could only once more hurry to the hut, where again nothing but
+disaster awaited him. The place was flooded, the fire was out, no dry
+matches were left, and the little boy was already following his mother
+into the great beyond. Tearing off his coat and shirt, and pressing
+the little girl to his naked skin, he covered himself up again as
+best he could, and was actually able by moving about the whole night
+long, not only to keep himself alive, but to preserve the vital spark
+in his little daughter. Help came in the morning from the nearest
+neighbour some miles away, who had been given the alarm by the servant
+maid from his home. But there was still one more loss for him to meet,
+his little daughter failing to react to all their tenderest efforts to
+bring her back to life.
+
+Before Marie was out of her teens, half the young bloods of the
+neighbourhood were courting around Uncle Johnnie's house. But none of
+them ever made any headway, for Uncle Johnnie clung to his one ewe
+lamb with almost childish dependence, and guarded her with all the
+wiles of his lifelong woodcraft.
+
+"'T is natural enough," thought young Ned Waring, "that t' old man
+don't want to part with she. For there be nothing else for he round
+here now. Every stone on t' beach reminds he of his terrible
+misfortune." He had said this often enough before, but one day it
+struck him-- "When you wants to outwit a beaver, youse got to bank on
+dem t'ings that are real part of his make-up, and which he can no more
+help than a bear can help licking molasses. Fishing isn't as good as
+it used to be round here, and swiles[1]--well, there be'ant one year
+in a dozen when they comes in any quantity. I reckon I'll rig t' Saucy
+Lass for a longer trip t' year, and see what luck'll bring lower down
+t' Labrador."
+
+So it came to pass that year that on a day in June, with his two
+brothers and a shipped "hand," Ned landed north of fifty-three in a
+lovely cove in some islands off the mouth of a long bay. Even as he
+passed in he had seen fish schooling so thick "you could catch 'em by
+the tails." His vessel safely anchored, he went ashore, much as did
+the old navigators in the brave days of the French explorers. No sign
+of human beings existed anywhere. Thick groves of evergreen trees
+covered all the slopes of the valleys which held the river in whose
+mouth they had anchored. But though signs of rabbits, foxes, and
+other game greeted their trained eyes, not a living animal was to be
+seen moving anywhere.
+
+It so happened, however, that as they stretched themselves out on the
+brow of the hill before returning to their schooner, Ned chanced to
+disturb a large bee, which resented painfully the intrusion of these
+idlers on his labours. It was an insect rare enough on Labrador; so,
+taking the overture as a touch of personal interest rather than
+hostility, they christened their cove "Bumble-Bee Bight," and the home
+which they partly built before the winter drove them south again, "the
+Hive"; while for purposes of his own Ned left the island unnamed.
+
+The trip proved a bumper one. They carried a full fare home; and big
+were the rumours which got around of the fisherman's paradise which
+Ned Waring had discovered. When the voyage was turned in, Ned was able
+to purchase every essential and many comforts for the new home in the
+North, and yet have a balance coming to him large enough to furnish
+him with the bravest winter outfit a young suitor could wish.
+
+Uncle Johnnie was, however, all the time "one too many" for him as
+well as all the rest; and never was he able to catch Marie alone.
+Things went on uneventfully through Christmas and the New Year. The
+old man no longer drove dogs. He spent almost all his time pottering
+around his own house, now and again cleaving a few billets of wood;
+but to all intents and purposes he was hibernating like one of our
+Labrador bears.
+
+When March month once more came around, the magic word "swiles" was
+whispered from mouth to mouth, and Uncle Johnnie woke up like a weasel
+when a rabbit is about. Every day he sallied up to his lookout on the
+hill, telescope in hand, at stated hours. But the hours were so timed
+that Marie could always go with him.
+
+"Swiles" are second nature to most Labrador men. As for Uncle Johnnie,
+he would leave his Christmas dinner any time if any one came and
+called, "Swiles!" He would rather haul a two-dollar pelt over "t'
+ballicaters" than make two hundred in any other way.
+
+"So I reckoned," said Ned cannily, "one chance to make t' old man
+friendly was to put him in t' way o' doing again what he was really
+scarcely able to do any longer; and that was, to have as many notches
+on his gaff-stick for dead seals as any other man.
+
+"It were, however, longer than I cares to remember now, before much of
+a chance come my way, but it come at last. T' spring had been that
+hard and that quiet that I 'lows us could have walked over to t' Gaspé
+shore if us had been so minded. T' standing ice never broke up from
+Christmas to April month; and there'd been ne'er a bit of whelping ice
+near enough to see with a spyglass, or a swatch big enough for an old
+harp to put his whiskers through. So when us woke one morning and
+found that t' sea had heaved in overnight unbeknownst to us, and that
+there was lakes of blue water everywhere, every man was out with his
+rope and gaff, as natural as a young duck takes to water.
+
+"That evening t' ice packed in again, and by nightfall it all seemed
+fast as ever. There was always a big tide made round Cape Blowmedown,
+and as t' land fell sharp away on each side of it, it were never too
+safe to go off very far on t' ice. But, that being a bad year, every
+man was on his mettle, and us all took more chances than was real
+right.
+
+"From t' bluff of t' head Uncle Johnnie had spied old and young seals
+on t' ice before most of t' boys was out o' bed; and us had a dozen or
+so on t' rocks before t'others was out t' ice at all. As those near t'
+land got cleaned up, us went a bit farther out each time; and more'n
+one seal I didn't exactly see so's to give Uncle Johnnie a better
+chance, and to let me keep all t' time outside o' he.
+
+"Just before it came dark and we was two or three miles out, t' wind
+shifted all of a sudden and came off t' land. Uncle Johnnie had a tow
+of three big pelts, and, believe me, heaven and earth wouldn't have
+made he leave them swiles behind. I'd left mine just as quick as I
+felt t' shift, and never let on I had any, so's I could rope up Uncle
+Johnnie's load and hustle him toward t' land. But t' ice was that
+hummicky it was an hour before us got near, and there we were, almost
+dark, t' ice broken off, driving along about twenty yards from t'
+standing ice almost as fast as a man could walk, and t' wind
+freshening every minute. There was about a mile to t' bill of t' Cape,
+and after that there'd be no hope whatever.
+
+"Four years before Jim Willis and his brother Joe had been caught just
+t' same way. Joe had perished in his brother's arms next day after
+he'd carried him for some hours, and Jim had drifted ashore on t'
+second day with only a spark of life left in him.
+
+"Every other man had been ashore and gone home for long ago, not
+knowing we was working outside, and only one chance were left for we.
+For t' gap of water was getting wider every minute, and there wasn't a
+loose pan to ferry over on big enough to float a dog. So I shouted to
+Uncle Johnnie to run along t' ice edge back up the bay just as hard as
+he could go, and I'd jump into t' water and swim for t' standing ice
+edge. I never expected to get out again, but t' good Lord arranged it,
+I suppose, that I should strike a low shelf running off level with t'
+water, and by kicking like a swile, I was able to climb up and on to
+the ballicaters.
+
+"There was always a boat hauled up on t' cape for men gunning to get
+birds or swiles, and t' only chance was to get there and launch her
+before t' ice passed out. T' rise and fall of t' tide had piled up t'
+ballicaters at t' foot of t' cliffs like young mountains, and it was
+already dark, too, while my wet clothes froze on me like a box. I
+reckon that saved my legs from being broken more'n once, for I fell
+into holes and slid down precipices, and, anyhow, next day I was black
+and blue from head to toe--though for that matter I'd have been green
+and pink glad enough to have t' chance it gave me.
+
+"Anyhow, I got t' boat in t' water at last, and pulled out toward t'
+floe, but ne'er a sign could I make out of Uncle Johnnie. There
+weren't a moment for waste, for spray was drifting over t' punt, and
+she was icing up that fast that if we lost much time I knew that it
+was good-bye to home for both of us. So I had to risk hauling her up
+on t' ice, while I ran along t' edge, shouting for all I knew. I
+hadn't gone many yards before I stumbled right over t' old man. In t'
+dark he had slipped into a lake of water that had gathered on t' ice,
+and was about half-dead already. For I had been moving and hadn't
+noticed t' time, and Uncle Johnnie had given out quickly, thinking I
+were lost, anyhow. Well, in t' dark it was not an easy job to
+half-carry t' old man back to where I'd left t' boat. But when you
+must 'tis wonderful what you can do; and even dragging him weren't as
+hard as rowing ashore against t' wind.
+
+"T' men thought us would never reach land, for t' ice made so fast on
+t' punt and oars, and us were carried well outside t' bill while I was
+getting Uncle Johnnie. When we did at last make t' standing ice edge,
+it would have been t' end again if Marie hadn't been clever enough to
+go and rouse out t' boys, and come with them right to t' very edge of
+t' ice looking for us. And she hadn't forgotten some hot stuff nor a
+blanket neither. She told us afterwards that she saw Uncle Johnnie
+perishing of cold away out off t' cape before she left t' cottage,
+just as clear as she did when t' boys hauled us out of t' punt.
+
+"Uncle Johnnie pulled round in a day or so, but I pulled round early
+next morning, and those two days gave me t' first chance I'd had to
+get to windward of t' old man, and have Marie for an hour or two by
+herself.
+
+"T' business soon blew over, as I knew it would, and what's more,
+Uncle Johnnie were no more for letting any one get Marie away from him
+than he'd been afore. Indeed, it seemed to me that it made him cling
+closer to she than ever; and I got real down-hearted when it come time
+to fit out t' Saucy Lass for North Labrador once more.
+
+"Lucky for me, I'd made t' most of my time when Uncle Johnnie were
+ill, and talked many times to Marie about how her father might get
+young again if he could go where he could forget the old scenes. So
+when we had had t' schooner painted up and launched, and t' sails bent
+and began getting firewood and things aboard, I got her to talk to he
+about coming along with we.
+
+"I've often noticed how t' very things you thought t' last on earth to
+happen come about just as easy as falling off a log. When I went over
+next morning to pretend to say good-bye, Marie whispered in my ear,
+'He really wants to go. He only wants asking'--and before night we had
+it all arranged. We was to fix up t' hold for him and Marie, and
+they'd come along and make a new home alongside us at Bumble-Bee
+Bight.
+
+"I won't trouble you with t' story of t' voyage down, only to say that
+we found that two could play better than one at hide-and-seek. When at
+last we anchored off t' river mouth, Uncle Johnnie was fair delighted.
+Nothing would satisfy him but he must choose a spot for his new house
+right away. But meanwhile t' cargo had to be stored in t' 'Hive' out
+o' t' weather. Uncle Johnnie was always extra careful about his
+things and wouldn't allow no one but he to handle 'em. So Marie went
+up to get a fire and tidy up, while t' old man handed t' things up to
+we. For my part I found that I had to stay up at t' 'Hive' and help
+arrange t' goods as they came along; and, 'lowing it might be t' last
+chance, for we'd be into t' fishery straight away, I up and asked
+Marie if it wouldn't be as well not to build another house after all.
+All I wanted was her to share t' house we'd built already; and Uncle
+Johnnie would be less lonesome than he'd ever been since his accident,
+because instead of losing one, he'd be getting two. I'm not telling
+you all what was said; as I'd told t' boys not to hurry with t'
+unloading, and Uncle Johnnie didn't get ashore till real late. By that
+time it was all fixed up, but nothing was to be said till the house
+was ready next night.
+
+"When us come in together hand in hand that evening, Uncle Johnnie had
+started his pipe after tea. He guessed right away something was up,
+but maybe he had guessed something before. All he said was, 'Well,
+Ned, all my bridges is burnt behind me, as you know, anyhow, and if
+it hadn't been for you, there'd be no need of asking any one for
+Marie, for I'd have been gone. So I can't well say no; and she might
+go farther and fare worse for sure. So I'll just leave it to Marie
+herself, and if she says so, so it shall be.'
+
+"And that's all there is to tell about it. Sure people often wonders
+how others came to live 'way down on these lonesome shores. But
+Marquette Islands have given me fish and fur and good life, with ne'er
+a cent owing to any man, and there's four fine youngsters to help out
+when we can no longer fend for ourselves."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Seals.
+
+
+
+
+THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE
+
+
+"They brought in a blind man last night," said the house surgeon. "It
+only seemed a case of starvation, so I didn't call you."
+
+"Where is he from?"
+
+"About thirty miles in the country down north somewhere. Apparently he
+has been living at the bottom of a bay 'way out of the line of the
+komatik trail. Formerly he could get firewood easily, and a few bay
+seals and game to live on. He seems too proud to let people know how
+badly off he was."
+
+"What's the history?"
+
+"He has a wife and two girls, who appear to be in almost as poor shape
+as he is himself. He has been gradually growing blind for some time,
+and was up here two years ago to see the eye specialist. His name is
+Emile Moreau."
+
+"A Frenchman! Why, I remember the man perfectly. A slow-growing
+cerebral tumor."
+
+He had been under observation for some weeks, and we had had to decide
+that he would not be benefited by an operation. So he went away,
+promising to return soon. But this is the way he had kept his promise.
+
+A few minutes later I stood by the bedside of the blind Frenchman. The
+poor fellow was a skeleton, with the characteristic sunken face and
+fallen skin with which we are familiar in those living on what we know
+as "dry diet." He had nothing to say for himself except, "Times has
+been none too good, Doctor. It is a bad country when a fellow can't
+see where he is going. 'T is many an odd tumble I've had, too,
+knocking around." Emile had been away from France for many a long day,
+and the only English he had ever heard was the vernacular of our
+Northern Coast.
+
+"How's your wife and the kiddies you told us about when you were here
+last time? It strikes me that they may have had a tumble too."
+
+"Well, I 'lows, Doctor, them has been clemmed up on times. But,
+Jeanie, she never says nothing; she's that busy with t' things I can't
+do. She 'lowed she'd stay and mind t' children till I get better a
+bit. No, that's right. She hasn't much grub. But us uses very little,
+and she never complains."
+
+Two days later our good dogs brought in the rest of the family--the
+babes to the warm welcome and plenty at the Children's Home, while one
+of the pluckiest little women I have ever known, even in a country of
+brave and self-reliant women, was carried into the hospital partially
+paralyzed with beri-beri. She was so close to the gate from which
+there is no returning that it took our nurses six months to wean her
+back to another spell of usefulness.
+
+It was no ordinary conundrum which vexed my mind when the house
+surgeon at last announced, "These Moreau patients are well enough to
+leave hospital," though I had realized that for good or evil the day
+was near.
+
+Neither had said a word about the future. The worst feature of sending
+them out was the personal affection which their lessons in contentment
+had kindled in us. How could this helpless family ever hope to keep
+the wolf from the door. A council of war was called the same evening,
+and some neighbours who well knew the dilemma in which we found
+ourselves asked to be allowed to attend. There was an old shack in the
+compound in which some workmen had once been housed, and which had
+subsequently been used as a small store-house. It was proposed, in the
+absence of funds, for all hands to assault this stronghold, and
+convert it as far as possible into a habitable home.
+
+Thus came into existence what developed later into the general
+headquarters of the "triple entente."
+
+To relieve the situation, one child was adopted by a childless,
+well-to-do neighbour, and the other was left for education and care
+with our little wards in the Home. Emile learned basket-work; Jeanie
+took in washing. The Moreau exchequer once more was in funds. But two
+difficulties soon presented themselves. There was a glut in our basket
+market, and Emile found life without being able to move out of the
+house almost more than a man born to the sea and the trail could
+bear. Small dogs in civilization are wont to fill this gap. But alas,
+"down North" small dogs are taboo--their imperious Eskimo congeners
+having decided against them.
+
+There happened to be at this time also under our care an Eskimo lad
+from the Far North, whom we had picked up suffering with a form of
+lung trouble which only the radical operation of collapsing one side
+of his chest wall could relieve. The ribs had been removed. The boy
+had recovered slowly; but, having only a very limited breathing
+capacity, he had been allowed to remain for the chores he could do.
+Without kith, kin, or even fellow countrymen, he was a veritable
+pelican in the wilderness without any home attachments--and a very
+serious problem to ourselves.
+
+Emile could cut wood, being strong as a horse and an excellent axeman;
+but he could not find it alone. He could carry heavy packages, but he
+could not find his way. He could haul water, but could not
+economically direct his energies. Karlek's eyes were the best part of
+him. So it came about that one morning on the way to the hospital I
+met Emile whistling like a newly arrived robin in spring, his hand on
+Karlek's shoulder, and on his back a heavy sack of potatoes which he
+was bringing up to the hospital kitchen from the frost-proof cellar in
+the cove.
+
+It brought a smile to one's lips to see the nonchalance and almost
+braggadocio of his gait as he stepped out boldly, covering the ground
+at a speed which was itself a luxury to one so long cut off from that
+_joie de vivre_ of a strong man. And more, it brought a smile to one's
+soul to see the joy of victory flashing in the features of the
+upturned face--the triumph of the man over the pitifulness of his
+sightless eyes. The international dual alliance was making its début
+on the field. The firm of Karlek and Moreau, Eskimo and Frenchman, had
+come to stay.
+
+So time went on, cheerfully and even rapidly for all concerned--the
+Mission developing its labour-saving devices as the work increased,
+and the help of its friends made it possible. A water-supply system
+soon partially obviated the need for hauling barrels in the summer
+from our spring and puncheons on the dog sledges in the winter. A
+roadway and narrow-gauge railway track relieved us of the necessity of
+so much portage on men's backs; and a circular saw, run by a small
+gasoline engine, cut up our firewood with less waste and with more
+satisfactory results.
+
+As with the basket market, so with the chore market, the ground was
+once more falling away from beneath our poor friends' feet. Only the
+indefatigable Jeanie held the household together, for in the heyday of
+the dual alliance's prosperity, the little daughter had been permitted
+to return to her parents from the Children's Home.
+
+With the lapse of years, however, even if Emile could see no better
+with his eyes, his other faculties had developed so largely as to
+surrender to him again the joy of independence of outside help, and
+with characteristic self-reliance and optimism he once more tackled
+his own difficulties.
+
+I was recently visiting a small cottage, built on a tiny ledge under
+the shadow of gloomy, high cliffs. It was far from any pathway and
+only approachable by stumbling over huge rocks--the débris of the
+crags behind. The hut had been built by a lonely old fellow who
+resorted to it in summer because it was right on the fishing-grounds,
+and he was getting unable any longer to face the long row to and from
+his house in the harbour. Nowhere in the world is the old adage
+concerning the birds of a feather truer than on this coast. The poorer
+and lonelier a man is, the greater is the certainty that some other
+poor and lonely person will seek the shelter of their poverty. Thus it
+had been with old man Martin.
+
+One day there had appeared at the cottage door from twenty miles
+farther down the coast one-legged Ike, an irregular, angular youth,
+who, stumbling over the hillside, and magnified into portentous
+proportions by one of our Promethean fogs, had nearly scared the wits
+out of even my trusty dog team. Quite without invitation from old man
+Martin, one-legged Ike had come to stay. The proximity to the
+fishing-grounds suited this seafarer, who shared in every particular
+the limpet-like characteristics of Sinbad's Old Man of the Sea.
+
+Anyhow, old Martin had never shaken him off, and had been heard to
+excuse himself by saying, "After all, he can sit in a boat as well as
+any of them with two legs." "Where there's room for one, there's room
+for two," is almost an axiom of life on these shores. In the lapse of
+time the old man had taken his last voyage, and Ike had come into full
+possession of the estate, living almost like Robinson Crusoe, cut off
+from his fellows by to him impassable barriers.
+
+It was a reported lapse in some other portion of Ike's anatomy that
+had led me to scramble along the landwash to the cottage. The ice
+having broken up and gone out of the harbour, I should have considered
+longer the advisability of the trip,--for the morning frosts left the
+jagged rock masses at the foot of the cliff harbingers of ill omen to
+the traveller,--had it not been that his isolation might possibly
+make even trivial trouble serious. For he had come safely through so
+many scrapes, not a few being of his own making, that I had nicknamed
+him in my mind "indestructible Ike."
+
+At last, congratulating myself that I had arrived without any untoward
+happenings, I rapped loudly on his door, expecting to hear his
+squeaky, perpetually broken voice bid me enter. Much to my surprise,
+therefore, the door opened itself, and smiling in the doorway stood
+our blind friend.
+
+"Good Heavens! Emile, how on earth did you get here? And why did you
+ever want to come, anyhow?"
+
+"Why, I thought it was a good plan for me to go fishing," he replied,
+addressing apparently a huge rock, so accurately poised over the hut
+that it suggested any moment an annihilating assault upon it. "Ike's
+going to be pilot and I'm to do t' rowing. We're to be partners for t'
+summer, and Karlek's going to look after t' family and help out when
+he can. It feels like being young again to be on t' water with a
+fishing-line. And, mind you, Ike knows a few tricks with a line that's
+worth more'n another leg to we, once we be on t' grounds. They all
+'lows he be as good as t' next man for hauling in fish, so be as
+there's any around."
+
+Ike's indisposition, as I had surmised, was not of a serious nature,
+and I learned subsequently that it was the proper ratification of the
+terms of the new triple alliance that had more to do with the sick
+call than any undue foreboding of impending dissolution on Ike's part.
+There had been some hitch in coming to terms, and Emile had put the
+only one point in them to his credit, when he saw through the trick,
+and "plumped for a magistrate," feeling also that he could trust me
+for more than mere legal technicalities.
+
+It was obviously an offensive campaign on which I found them bent. Ike
+had himself carefully repaired the boat's structure, having always a
+keen eye to comfort and safety; while from Emile's hands I could see
+that the task of tarring their warship, owing to Ike's temporary
+indisposition and the need for immediate preparedness, had fallen to
+him. His only method for finding out where he had applied that hot and
+adhesive liquid had left very apparent evidences of both his energy
+and his zeal. To Emile also had fallen the rearrangement of the big
+rocks, so as to form as level a surface as possible on which to dry
+the fish. It was a Sisyphean task, and poor Emile had spent much sweat
+and not a little blood in his efforts. But, as Ike told him, "lifting
+rocks weren't no work for a man with one leg." So he had offset
+against it getting the meals ready, and what he called "tidying things
+up." But as Karlek was, unrewarded, to bring the bread, Ike's
+household labours did not promise to be onerous.
+
+In one sense the entente campaign proved victorious, for they had a
+goodly catch; but in the division of the spoils it apparently turned
+out that it had been so arranged that Emile's share was to catch the
+fish, Karlek's to dry it, and Ike's to exchange it piecemeal for
+tobacco or "things for t' house," as he called them.
+
+Ever since Stevenson wrote of the one-legged rascal Silver, one
+associates with that handicap a tendency to try to outwit others;
+while the dependence of blind men presupposes simplicity and
+trustfulness.
+
+Emile worked like a tiger, with the single-mindedness of the Verdun
+spirit of France, blissfully supposing that Ike did the same in his
+end of the boat. Fishing in sixty fathoms of icy water, Emile would
+haul his lines up and down, re-bait and tend them, till his hands were
+blue with cold, and the skin "fair wore off t' bones." One day,
+however, a harbour trap boat happened to pass close by their rodney
+while they were anchored on the fishing-grounds, and the owner called
+out, "Wake up, Ike! Price of dream fish is down." Ike had somewhat
+loudly and not too politely responded to the salutation, but all the
+same it awoke a first suspicion in Emile's mind. While not slacking
+himself, he "kept an eye" on his partner as best he could.
+
+He knew that a one-legged man must sit down for work, while for his
+part he stood, but he had not realized that Ike considered any more
+restful posture essential. "A blind man sees more'n most folk" is a
+common claim of Emile's. It is tedious pegging away when fish are
+scarce, yet fishing is a trade where "'tis dogged as does it." He
+suspected that Ike took it easy in the stern while he worked in the
+bow; and his doubts were confirmed when one day, from a passing boat,
+some one called out: "'Tain't safe for you to be out alone, Emile.
+You'll be running some one down one of these days." It was obvious
+that Ike was not visible over the gunwale.
+
+From that day on, Emile began to count his catch and to put a
+cross-thwait in the middle of the boat to keep them separate--"Something
+to push my feet against when I rows, I called 'un," he told me. Still
+Ike was almost too much for him, for Karlek remembered seeing him
+sorting out the fish as he landed them, and the big ones, somehow or
+other, all found their way into Ike's yaffles. Ike also discovered that
+it was good economy constantly to change the location of such things as
+the tobacco box, butter tub, and molasses jar, for it often meant that
+the good-natured Emile went without.
+
+The cold weather set in early, and though the contract was not up,
+Ike's hereditary instinct that hardship was bad for his constitution
+made him decide to stop if he could. But Emile went steadily on,
+having learned from Karlek that there were occasional leakages from
+the fish pile. He ventured to remonstrate with his partner, but as
+fish were plentiful, he refused to cancel the contract before the
+proper date.
+
+It was Ike who finally forced the issue. Emile being bowman, it was
+their custom always to come in to the ladder leading to the stage
+platform head on, when Emile, grabbing the cross-bars with one hand
+and holding the painter in the other, climbed up and "made her fast."
+Projecting from the stage head is a long pole used for preventing
+boats that are made fast from bumping against the stage. Coming in a
+day or so later, Ike drove the punt in parallel with the stage head,
+and the pole coming into Emile's hands deceived him into thinking that
+the stage was above him as usual. He promptly stepped off the boat,
+and naturally fell into the water. Naturally also, it shook Emile up a
+good deal, for he was in the water quite a while. After the incident
+Ike's tender heart had made him absolutely refuse the responsibility
+of a blind man in a small boat in fall weather. As we walked up the
+wharf together Emile told me many more such details of the
+transactions of our only "triple alliance." All he wanted me to do was
+to add up his own tally of the fish he had caught, multiplying it by a
+reasonable average fish, and for the sake of the family help him to
+get from his ally a return for his labour which would enable him to
+buy food for the winter for Jeanie and the little girl.
+
+Fortunately it proved to be not too late. You cannot "get the breeks
+off a Highlander," and after a week or two not a cod tail or a cent
+would have been available from Ike. As it was, my coming to the
+assistance of my poor friend happened to save the "entente" from being
+a tragedy, and enabled us to relegate the whole incident to our comedy
+group.
+
+A peremptory order to Ike to wait for me at midday at the room we call
+the court-house would, I knew, impress him with the necessity of
+obedience, far more than a second visit to his cabin. The effort which
+the journey would cost him and the time allowed for reflection would,
+moreover, punctuate the importance of the occasion.
+
+Emile's calculation of the amount of fish caught, corrected by Karlek
+by the simple process of multiplying the sum by two, and with a bit
+more added by myself to be sure not to underestimate it, formed all
+the legal data I needed. The lean, scrawny figure of Ike, twisting and
+squirming with evident uneasiness, awaited my arrival at the appointed
+time. Ike's fear of "t' Law" was the superstition of a child. It was
+to him a great big man waiting to pounce upon you and "lug youse
+away." Indeed, I learned afterwards that he had stayed in bed for fear
+of being carried off surreptitiously. "'T is a lonesome spot I lives
+in," he had explained.
+
+"To steal from a blind man, Ike," I began, "is bad. Moreover, it
+doesn't bring any one any luck ever. Where have you put those sixty
+quintals of fish which belong to Emile?"
+
+"It took more'n half t' voyage, believe me, Doctor, to meet t'
+summer's expenses. There wasn't more'n thirty quintals all told, and
+half of that was mine. Samuels only allowed we four dollars a quintal,
+and his flour was eight, and molasses seventy cents. He said he'd land
+Emile's share when he comes in on his home trip."
+
+"The Law will have to send down and search your house and all around
+it, and carry off things while you wait here, and you won't get any
+credit for it either. I told you there was no luck for those who rob a
+blind man, unless they confess in time. I'll come back in half an hour
+for your decision." And, having an unfair advantage of a one-legged
+man, I locked the door and was well down the road before Ike had made
+a move.
+
+Our little rickety court-house, in order to be in the centre of the
+village, stands on a rocky hill-crest away by itself. When the wind
+blows high, awesome noises with much creaking and groaning help to
+suggest to the guilty conscience that supernatural agencies are at
+work. The half-hour was purposely a long one, and had the desired
+effect. Ike made a full confession of his delinquencies and promised
+reparation. An immediate search while he was in this frame of mind
+revealed that Emile's winter food could only be obtained by leaving
+Ike to a diet of hope and charity. The lesson being necessary,
+however, the whole of his supplies were loaded into the boat, and Ike
+condemned to row it to Emile's house and land it at once. It was late
+and dark, but the fear of what might happen to him alone on his point,
+now that it was known that he had robbed a blind man, held more
+terrors even than hunger for Ike. So the judgment of the court was
+carried out that very night.
+
+Partly moved by curiosity, Christmas found me once again visiting the
+mansion under the cliff. A shortage in the commissariat was, I knew,
+no new experience to the poor fellow, and even the wiles of a
+"one-legger" cannot convert stones into bread. Ike, radiant with
+smiles and fat as a spring seal, was out to meet me on my
+arrival--which circumstance was a little difficult at first to
+understand. Then he explained:
+
+"You'm right, Doctor. It drives away t' bad luck when you pays up a
+blind man. I hasn't wanted ne'er a t'ing since."
+
+It had been a good voyage that year, and, as a matter of fact, every
+one had a warm spot somewhere in his heart for "that rascal Ike." For
+though he was admittedly a rogue, he was always such an amusing,
+hail-fellow-well-met rogue, and not the really mean type which every
+one dislikes. All the shore had heard of his dilemma, and, isolation
+not allowing one man to know what another is doing, indiscriminate
+charity had poured in upon poor Ike, without possibly doing him much
+harm, for he attributed it absolutely to that oftentimes useful mentor
+of the feeble-minded, the great god of good luck.
+
+To my surprise it was Emile who really suffered most, though he would
+not admit it, but by actual computation of the supplies in his very
+give-away storeroom, I learned that he had secretly carried back to
+Ike's beach in the dark just one half of those goods which "t' Law"
+had recovered for him; and which Ike to this day believes were
+deposited for his benefit by the good-luck fairy.
+
+
+
+
+PORTLAND BILL
+
+
+"It must be nigh sixty years ago, but I remembers it as if it was
+yesterday, when a new settler come to live in our harbour," said
+Skipper Life Flynn, at whose house I was spending the night with my
+driver and dogs.
+
+"Life" was short for Eliphoreth--the "given" names being mostly out of
+the Bible down North. "It were a wonderful thing them days, for Father
+were the only Liveyer then--that is, as stayed all the year round. He
+didn't mind being alone, and t' moving in t' schooner every spring and
+fall were bad for Mother. Fish were plenty every season one side or
+t'other of Deadman's Cape, and there was lots of fur and swiles t'
+winter. So he built a house in Sleepy Cove, and there us grew up!
+
+"No, Doctor, I'm not able now to read and write. None of us is, for us
+had no teachers. But we was all big, strong men, and handy at that,
+and there wasn't a thing to be done wi' axe or saw about boats and
+timber us couldn't do. We made a good deal at furring, too, and
+many's and many's t' night in winter I've laid down under t' trees and
+slept--with ne'er a greatcoat neither. An' if us wasn't brought up
+scholars, Father taught us to be honest, and to fear God and nothing
+and nobody else.
+
+"It were our way them days to greet every stranger as a friend, and so
+when Bill started his cabin,--for that was all it ever were,--us lads
+all went in and helped him chop and saw t' logs for studding.
+
+"In winter Father minded t' big French Room; but he were away hunting
+most of t' time, there being no need to watch much, being as there was
+no one besides ourselves anywhere near. But early spring and late fall
+when t' fleets were passing, it were day and night watch, and not
+without a gun neither.
+
+"But it would have paid us better to have watched that winter; for
+when t' Frenchmen come in t' spring there was a number of little
+things missing that Father had to stand to--and, somehow, us never
+suspected t' newcomer.
+
+"It was only long afterwards us learned how t' new settler come by his
+name--which was 'Skipper Bill Portland.' Seems that's where the big
+English convict prison is. So after Bill escaped, he not being good at
+letters, and not wanting exactly to use his own name, he just twisted
+her round, and to this day no one's ever found out really who he was
+before.
+
+"Hundreds of schooners anchored in the Bight in our harbour that
+spring, t' whitecoats having come right in on t' floe, just t' other
+side of t' Deadman's Cape. One day a schooner captain read we a piece
+in t' papers about a man what had been a pirate, what had escaped to
+Newfoundland; and a hundred dollars was being offered for his head.
+Reading about that man made us all think of Skipper Portland. It were
+his build and his kind, too. But us folk never mixed with that kind of
+work; and all us did was to keep a good lookout for t' future. But a
+poor neighbour he proved to be, for he were as cute as a fox, and he
+had no fear o' nothing.
+
+"He weren't no idle man, though, Skipper Bill weren't. That second
+winter he set to and built a ten-tonner all by hisself--that is, t'
+hull. He had galvanized fastenings for her, such as he never bought
+fair in Newfoundland. But o' course he had no gear to fit her out, and
+he couldn't get any more than he'd got already off our room. We lads
+saw to that, and he knew it, too--and that it weren't safe playing no
+games, neither.
+
+"He were away t' following winter, 'furring,' so he told we, but no
+fox could ever get fooled by a trap Skipper Bill set. It weren't in
+his line, getting round animals. Beyond which he had ne'er a trap. He
+'lowed he just set deadfalls--a good name for his work, I'm thinking
+now. Anyhow, he came back with enough gear, stolen off French Rooms to
+t' south, I reckon, to get his boat afloat by t' time t' owners got
+back.
+
+"She were an odd craft, built for a crew of one man only. For Skipper
+Bill hadn't much trust in any man 'cept hisself. Once when he were
+full o' French brandy he told me that when he were working on t'
+cliffs in England, he found out that his mate were going to 'squeal,'
+as he called it, about his leaving, so he'd given him such a kick
+behind when he weren't expecting it that no one had ever heard from
+him since. He meant, we reckoned, that t' poor fellow had fell off t'
+bill into t' sea.
+
+"When he built that boat he were thinking already that he might have
+to leave sudden, and perhaps a crew wouldn't be willing to, even if he
+got one. So he trimmed his teller lanyards to run forrard, so as he
+could steer before t' foremast, and handle t' headsheets hisself going
+to windward, and at t' same time keep a lookout for ice and slob.
+
+"Many's t' time I've seen him sailing along with ne'er a watch on deck
+at all, he being below aft steering by compass from t' locker, with t'
+tiller lines leading down the companion hatch.
+
+"I minds one fall that he brought in a big cask o' rum and a lot o'
+brandy, which he were going to sell to us folk. But Father wouldn't
+stand for that. He said that he'd seen too much of it when he were
+young to want any more lying round. We lads found it only fun to go
+over and knock t' heads in, and hear what old Portland had to say
+about we.
+
+"One day, however, a fellow all dressed in blue came down from St.
+John's to take he along, and before Bill knew it t' boat were
+alongside his craft and t' man calling he to come ashore. Bill knowed
+what he were at once. He'd had experience. 'All right, Officer,' he
+said, 'I'll just get my coat and come along,' But when he come up on
+deck he had a barrel of gunpowder all open and a box of matches in his
+hand. 'Come on, now,' he shouted with an oath, 'let's all go to hell
+together.' But just as soon as ever t' small boat backed off, he runs
+forrard and slips his cable, and was off before t' wind before youse
+could say 'Jack Robinson.'
+
+"He always left his mainsail up, Skipper Bill did. 'Better be sure
+than sorry' was a rule he always told us were his religion.
+
+"T' policeman seemed in two minds about following t' boat, but when
+she rounded Deadman's Cape, he rows back ashore. I minds running up t'
+hill to watch where Skipper Bill would go, but he stood right on
+across for t' Larbadore. T' policeman said that that weren't his beat;
+and he looked glad enough that it weren't neither. Old Portland never
+came back to Sleepy Cove to live. He just left everything
+standing--which were mostly only what he couldn't take away with him
+anyhow.
+
+"That fall one of t' Frenchmen stowed away in t' woods when their ship
+was getting ready for home. His name was Louis Marteau; and his vessel
+had no sooner gone than in he goes and lives in Bill's house across t'
+cove. Things got missing again that winter, and though Father had to
+feed him, seeing that he hadn't been able to steal a diet, we lads
+give him notice to quit in t' spring. As he didn't show no signs of
+moving, us just put a couple of big trees for shoes under t' house,
+and ran it and Louis, too, out onto t' ice as far as t' cape--a matter
+of two miles or more.
+
+"So us thought us had done with both of them, and a good riddance too;
+but when t' spring opened t' Frenchman wrote up to t' English
+man-o'-war captain to come in and find out about t' things what
+they'd lost. So one day in comes t' big ship and anchors right
+alongside in our bay. T' very first man to come rowing across and go
+aboard to see what he could get, I reckon, was Louis Marteau. When t'
+captain asked him what he wanted, he said that he had come over to ask
+him to send a boat to t' cape to search his rooms, as t' neighbours
+blamed he for having taken their things.
+
+"Well, it were a long way to go and there were no motor boats them
+days; and t' captain must have thought if Louis had taken anything he
+had it hid away where no one would find it. So they just didn't take
+t' trouble to send out a crew and look. At the same time Louis had
+stolen fish drying on his flakes, and stolen twine right in his open
+fish stage to go and catch more with.
+
+"Another steamer came in t' fall, and Louis, thinking that t' trouble
+had blown over, went aboard as usual. One of t' officers, thinking
+that the man was just a fisherman, and as simple as most o' we, asked
+him if he didn't know where a man called Louis Marteau was. 'Yes,"
+said Louis, 'I knows he well. He be here to-day, and gone
+to-morrow'--and with that he slips away, and was far enough in the
+woods for safety long before the searching party landed.
+
+"Louis, like old Bill, was as fond o' liquor as a cat is o' milk; and
+when he got French brandy in him, he didn't care what he did. There be
+only one law here which every one keeps, as you knows, Doctor, on this
+coast. Whatever else you does, you must never touch t' property of
+another settler, whether he be good or bad, or whether he be away
+fishing, or whether he be in America. Because any time he may need to
+come back, and that many are away summers fishing, if they can't leave
+their homes locked and feel 'em safe, they can't live at all. So
+everybody minds that law, whether it be written in St. John's or not.
+There are new stages, yes, and houses, too, and plenty of 'em, and
+boats hauled up, that men has left and gone to Canada years ago.
+They're tumbling down right alongside folk as needs 'em as bad as gold
+just for firewood, but ne'er a stick is touched come year, go
+year--not till they rots or t' sea comes and carries 'em away.
+
+"Well, Louis and a man called Tom Marling got some liquor aboard that
+day, and started scrapping, Marling saying that Louis must be a crook
+or he wouldn't steal another man's house. T' end of that was that
+Louis shot Marling through the shoulder and nearly blew his arm off.
+
+"Next spring a large bully sailed across t' Straits and four men
+landed in my cove. It chanced that old Skipper Sam Brewer caught sight
+of 'em, and he recognized Bill Portland from t' old days. T' other
+three was Tom Marling's brothers. All t' men had guns, and old Skipper
+Sam guessed they was after Louis. So he sent off his lad Mose to run
+out to t' cape and give he warning. Though why he should I can't say.
+Louis just said, 'All right, I'll be ready for 'em, boy,' and started
+right in loading his two big guns and his rifle. Then he fixed up t'
+windows and barred t' door, and when Mose come away he could see Louis
+moving round inside and swearing enough to frighten t' fish off t'
+coast for t' whole summer. Mose waited round out of sight all day to
+see what would happen. But nothing did, only before dark he saw the
+four men making their campfire on the edge of the woods near Louis's
+house. I reckon they knew he'd be ready and wanted to keep him
+waiting. Anyway, they was there all next day.
+
+"T' third morning I caught sight of some men loading a boat at Louis's
+stage, so, being only a hobbledehoy then, I guessed they'd not take
+much notice of me, and no more they did. They told me Louis had tried
+to break away t' second night in t' dark, but they caught him and
+carried his pack back for him, and what else they did to he I don't
+rightly know. Anyhow, they loaded up their own boat and then Louis's
+two boats with fish and twine, and everything else that were worth
+taking and they could stow, not forgetting t' barrel of flour and t'
+keg of molasses.
+
+"Skipper Bill told me that t' Governor offered to make him t' captain
+of a man-o'-war, just to stop t' law-breaking on the coast. But he
+were a policeman instead because he felt ashamed to see t' laws broken
+and villains like Louis go free. 'It's to teach you people on t' coast
+to be good boys what brings us away from our homes so far in t'
+fishing season.'
+
+"They never stopped loading a minute all t' time, and as soon as ever
+they were ready, and that wasn't long after it were light, away they
+goes towing t' two boats behind, and giving it to her straight for t'
+Labrador. 'Skipper Life,' Bill shouted, just after the anchor was up,
+'if you sees Louis be sure and tell him to be good and say his
+prayers, and when he is ready, not to forget his uncles in Labrador
+and come over and settle down peaceful like.'
+
+"No, Doctor, Louis never got so much as a match back, though he wrote
+and wrote about it--and Louis were a good scholar, being well learnt
+in France. All t' Government did was to offer Captain Fordland, who
+fished t' big Jersey rooms across near Isle au Loup on Labrador,
+another hundred dollars to bring back Skipper Bill with him in t'
+fall. T' captain told his men that they could divide t' money if they
+liked to catch old Portland out of hours.
+
+"I 'lows it was more t' fun of hunting than anything else that started
+'em, though two hundred dollars cash meant a nice bit in them times.
+Soon there were half a dozen small crowds keeping an eye out for Bill.
+There were no wires or mail steamers to carry news them days, and it
+so happened that Bill fell right into t' trap. For Captain Fordland
+did a bit o' trade, and Bill, being out of flour, come along to buy a
+barrel. Half a dozen men soon had him and his boat as well. T' trouble
+was where to keep him till they went home in t' fall, which was a full
+two months anyhow.
+
+"The crowd what took him got leave from Skipper Fordland to lock Bill
+up in t' top storey of t' old Jersey brick store on the Island; and
+'em fixed it like sailors so that not even Bill should get away. They
+had to share t' expense of feeding and looking after he between 'em,
+and though they didn't give he none too much it took quite a bit of
+their wages--only a hundred dollars for the whole summer.
+
+"Bill had been there nearly six weeks and all hands were thinking of
+going home, when one day he told t' cook who brought up his food that
+he was fair dying of doing nothing, and couldn't he give him some
+work. Being an old sailor, he set Bill to making bread bags, and for a
+few days he made a whole lot, and t' cook took it easy. All he gave
+Bill was some canvas, a pocket-knife, and some needles and thread.
+Bill, however, saved a lot of canvas out of them bags and made himself
+a long rope of it. Then he just worked on, waiting for a real dark
+night and an offshore wind, when he let hisself down through t'
+window, swam off to t' best fishing bully Captain Fordland had, and
+was out of sight before daylight.
+
+"You may bet they was all mad, more especially t' captain, who swore
+that t' crowd would have to pay for his good boat. What they said and
+did to t' cook be scarcely fit for ears to hear. Anyhow, no one knowed
+where Bill had gone, and none of that crowd ever saw him again. He
+weren't very dear to memory either.
+
+"T' next place us heard of him was on the West Coast. He brought with
+him an Eskimo wife he called Nancy, who was very good at doctoring.
+She could make poultices out of herbs and medicines out of t' woods,
+and she would charm toothache and warts and such like, and could stop
+bleeding by just tying green worsted round your left arm. She had a
+haddock's fin-bone that never touched any boat that she used to lend
+out for rheumatism. She did a lot o' good, they says, Doctor, and she
+made a nice bit of money, too, so that old Bill had an easy time. But
+he spent most of t' cash in liquor, and at last she wouldn't work any
+more for he and he got beating her. One, day he come rowing down right
+into Port Warfield, with she tied up in t' bottom of t' boat, and a
+stone tied round her neck as well! It so happened that big Skipper
+Weymouth came alongside and seed her.
+
+"'What be you going to do wi' she?' he asked, he not being afraid as
+most were. 'Why drown her, to be sure,' said Bill. 'I towed her behind
+t' boat for a mile a week ago come Sunday to drive t' devil out of
+her. But she ain't no good to me now, and so I reckon I'll get
+another.'
+
+"The skipper saw that Bill had liquor in him and was quarrelsome, and
+feared that he'd just as likely as not upset t' boat--and drowned t'
+woman would be sure enough with that stone round her neck. So he says,
+'Drown her! Not on this coast and lobsters just setting in. She'd
+spoil the catch all summer just to spite you.' Bill looked puzzled.
+'You're right, sure enough, Skipper Alf. I'll have to do for she some
+other way'--and round he goes and rows her home again.
+
+"The people, howsomever, was real afraid, and letters went up to the
+Government. No doubt Bill heard about it. But there were no place left
+now for him to go safely, so he just drank and drank where he was, all
+he could lay hands on; and when he couldn't get no more I guess he
+must have gone mad. For he were found dead on t' floor of his house,
+with a great big knife he had for hunting deer in his hand.
+
+"Yes, his wife's alive to this day so far as us knows. Her son Bill
+found a box of old silver dollars, Spanish and French, buried under t'
+house Bill had on Labrador, the time he were trapped by Captain
+Fordland's men. They were mostly about a hundred years old. I saw many
+of them, but where they come from, or how he come by 'em, no one ever
+knew. We heard, however, that they helped poor Nancy to get back to
+her people again all right."
+
+
+
+
+KAIACHOUOUK
+
+
+The brief summer of Northern Labrador had passed, and the Eskimos
+around the Hudson's Bay Post at Katatallik were busy preparing for the
+approaching winter. The season previous, according to the accurate
+notes of the Moravians, kept for over a hundred years, had been the
+worst on record; and now again, as the long, cold, icy grip of winter
+drew near, the prospect of supplies was menacingly poor. So the
+Innuits, that cheerful and resourceful little race of the North who
+wrest their living from so reluctant an environment, were putting
+forth all their energies in a "preparedness" from whose example many a
+civilized community might well have profited.
+
+Their chief Kaiachououk, of upright character, and the courage born of
+simplicity, was a familiar figure at the Hudson's Bay Post where my
+friend Barlow was _facteur_ for so many years. His acquaintance with
+the chieftain dated from an afternoon many years before, when he had
+first seen him, steering his large oomiavik, or flat-bottomed boat, up
+to the station, while his four lusty wives cheerily worked at the
+sweeps with his eldest son--an almost regal procession. It was on that
+same evening that he had told the _facteur_, after watching Mrs.
+Barlow prepare the evening meal, "Ananaudlualakuk" ("She is much too
+good for you"), and the frankness of his speech, far from seeming to
+disparage his host, endeared the speaker all the more to that
+hospitable and discerning person.
+
+Kaiachououk possessed qualities which evoked the respect and
+admiration of all with whom he came in contact. Very noticeable among
+these was his affection for his family. To this day on the coast there
+is a story told of him and his youngest wife. He had been camping on
+their outside walrus-hunting station, and as was customary, he was
+sometimes away two or three days at a time, having to take refuge on
+one of the off-lying islands, if bad weather or the fickleness of
+fortune involved longer distances to travel than he was able to
+accomplish in a short winter's day. It was on his return from one of
+these temporary absences that he was greeted with the news that his
+youngest wife, Kajue, was very ill. One might have supposed that
+having so generous a complement of that nature, the news would not
+have afflicted him in the same degree as one less gifted. But exactly
+the reverse proved to be the case. Kaiachououk was completely
+prostrated; and when the girl died two days later, having failed to
+make any rally in spite of all her husband's generous presents to
+Angelok, he literally went out of his mind.
+
+The Eskimo custom, still observed in the North, is to lay out the dead
+in all their clothing, but with no other covering, on the rocky summit
+of some projecting headland. The body thus placed on the surface of
+the rocks is walled in with tall, flat stones standing on end, long,
+narrow slits being left between them, so that air and light may freely
+circulate, and the spirit of the departed may come and go at will and
+keep watch on passing animals, whose spirits must serve the person in
+the spirit land just as, when embodied, they paid tribute to the
+needs and prowess of the dead. The top of the grave is also covered
+with large, flat slabs; and in a small separate cache of similar
+construction are stored all the personal belongings likely to be of
+use. The spirits of these latter are set free, either by having holes
+bored in them or some part of them broken or removed, so that thus
+being rendered useless to the living, they suffer what in the Eskimo
+mind corresponds to the death of inanimate objects.
+
+Kaiachououk was so convinced of the reality of the spirit world, and
+so heart-broken at his utter inability to bring back to life the one
+he had loved so well, that now nothing would satisfy his mind but that
+in order to continue the communion which had been so sweet to him on
+earth, he should be treated exactly as his lost wife, and be
+immediately buried alongside her on some point of vantage.
+
+At first his followers were inclined to treat his injunctions as mere
+vapourings, but they finally realized that the man was in deadly
+earnest, and were eventually compelled to comply with his wishes. The
+day being set, he was accordingly dressed in his finest garments, and,
+his dead wife being duly caparisoned and walled in in the customary
+manner, Kaiachououk, laid out on the rock beside her, was treated in
+an exactly similar fashion. There was no apparent alteration of the
+chief's attitude of mind as they proceeded with the walling up, and
+the heavy slabs were already being laid over him when two of the
+largest happened to become lodged on his chest. For a short time he
+made no sign and offered no kind of resistance; but it was gradually
+forced upon him that this method of translation into other worlds was
+far from being as easy as he had been inclined to suppose.
+Consequently, before the cortège had broken up and his last friends
+departed, he was loudly appealing to them to return and release him.
+
+He was never known afterwards to refer to the incident; but on the
+whole it had an excellent effect on the Innuits; and they realized, so
+far as their unimpressionable natures are capable of doing, the strong
+domestic affection for his wife which was one of their chief's
+pre-eminent sources of greatness.
+
+On this particular fall, when the last drama in Kaiachououk's life was
+played, when the northern lights sent their many-coloured banners
+floating over the heavens, and the stars looked so large and shining
+that it seemed one must surely touch them from the tops of the high
+hills, he was camping with his family and two or three others on a
+small ledge at the foot of the mighty Kiglapeit (shining top)
+Mountains, hunting walrus. This year the hunt was doubly important to
+them, and they delayed longer than was their wont. Here the great cape
+with which the spur ends marks the division of the whole trend of the
+land north from that which runs more directly south toward Katatallik.
+There the whole force of the south-going polar streams, focused on the
+ice, keeps open water long after all the rest of the coast is locked
+in the grim grip of winter. The walrus herds seem, in the evolution of
+ages, to have got an appreciation of this fact through their
+adamantine skulls. Therefore, from time immemorial, it has been
+chosen as a rendezvous of the Innuits in spring and fall. The chaos of
+ancient walrus bones which strews the stony beach reminds one of
+nothing so forcibly as the stacks of bleaching buffalo bones which
+disgrace the prairies.
+
+On several occasions during the year previous, Kalleligak (the
+Capelin) had been guilty of the worst crime in the Eskimo calendar--on
+several occasions he had failed to extend that hospitality to
+strangers without which life on the coast is scarcely possible. It had
+been brought to Kaiachououk's notice, and he had lost no time in
+seeking out the man and taxing him with his remissness. A mixture of
+traits like the colours in a variegated skein of worsted formed the
+spectrum of Kalleligak's character; and selfishness, which fortunately
+is rarer among the Eskimos than among those in keener competition with
+civilization, was too often the prevailing colour. After the
+interview, at which he had promised to mend his ways, he apparently
+always lived in fear that sooner or later Kaiachououk would have him
+punished, and even deprive him of some of his possessions. The
+obsession haunted him as the thought of the crime does the murderer,
+and at last impelled him to the act which, though it went unpunished
+by men, blasted the remainder of his days.
+
+Among the others who camped around Kaiachououk's igloo this year was
+as usual the sub-chief Kalleligak. He had been more than usually
+successful in his hunt, and was able to face the prospect of the
+oncoming winter with optimism. On the other hand, his supposed enemy,
+Kaiachououk, had been singularly unfortunate, largely owing to the
+fact that his kayak had been left farther to the north. He showed no
+signs of either impatience or jealousy, however, and never by word or
+act gave evidence that he so much as remembered the rebuke he had been
+forced to administer to the sub-chief. Finally he dispatched his
+eldest sons, Bakshuak and Kommak, with a big team of dogs, to hurry
+down north and bring the belated and forgotten boat back with all
+speed.
+
+Kalleligak, obsessed by his jealousy and chagrin, was able from his
+camp to watch every movement of the chief's. He positively brooded so
+much over the incident that he came to believe that his life was in
+danger at Kaiachououk's hands. The next steps were easy, for he was
+favoured both by the innocence of his superior and the weather. Days
+are short in the late fall in the North, and darkness falls before
+work is finished.
+
+In the late afternoon, two days after Bakshuak and Kommak's departure,
+while Kaiachououk was still out of his igloo and the darkness was
+rapidly coming on, Kalleligak stole inside and took the chief's gun.
+This he unloaded and then reloaded with two balls. Early next morning,
+before the dawn, he crept out, carrying his own and the stolen weapon,
+to watch his chance. Kaiachououk, emerging soon after from his snow
+house, turned his back on Kalleligak's igloo while he stooped to make
+a trifling repair on his own. Without a second's hesitation,
+Kalleligak seized Kaiachououk's own gun, and crawling and crouching up
+behind the five-foot snow ramparts which the Eskimos invariably build
+around their winter houses, he fired two bullets through the
+unsuspecting man's back and body. The chief fell head foremost, having
+received two fatal wounds; but Kalleligak, throwing down one gun had
+instantly grabbed the other, in order if necessary to finish the deed
+before the mortally wounded man could tell who was responsible. But
+Kaiachououk never moved, and his enemy slunk inside, believing that he
+had been unobserved.
+
+As fate would have it, Anatalik, another of the hunters, appeared at
+the entrance of his igloo just in time to see the smoking gun-barrel
+over the edge of the snow wall. Running to his fallen chief, he begged
+him to tell him what had occurred. The dying man had only strength
+left to whisper "Kiapevunga?" ("Who has killed me?"), and Anatalik
+could barely discern from his eye that he understood the answer,
+"Kalleligamut" ("It was Kalleligak who did it").
+
+It was probably this, to us, unimportant item which caused a
+confession ever to be made. Kalleligak, now convinced that the spirit
+of his dead chief knew he was the murderer, believed it would haunt
+him without mercy, and that his own life might be immediately forfeit
+unless he could appease it. He therefore at once set about
+preparations for a funeral befitting the dignity of the deceased;
+which, in the absence of Kaiachououk's eldest son, he himself
+personally supervised. When all was over he went to the igloo carrying
+gifts, and offered to support the entire family till the sons should
+be of an age to assume it. His overtures were as unwelcome as they
+were importunate; but the poor women were forced to listen in silence.
+Helpless as they were, with their young men away, they dared not anger
+the man, whose character was only too well known. Kalleligak, in order
+further to allay the anger of the spirit, with all speed set out on
+the trail to meet the dead man's returning sons, and apprize them
+personally of his version of the story.
+
+Bakshuak, the eldest, listened in silence while Kalleligak first
+recounted the long list of imaginary wrongs which he had suffered at
+the hands of his father, then made his plea of self-defence, and
+lastly recited the hateful overtures which he had made to the helpless
+family, who were now, in spite of themselves, under very definite
+obligations to the murderer.
+
+Angrily the lad repudiated any parleying. The family would far rather
+starve than be beholden to such infamy as was suggested. He was only a
+boy now, he declared, but he said fearlessly that if no one else
+killed him, he would do the deed himself as soon as he was big enough;
+and he raced on with his dogs, to reach home and comfort his poor
+mother. Had he but known it, he was really indebted for his life to
+the supposed wrath of his father's spirit and the restraining effect
+which it had on Kalleligak.
+
+Eskimos never refer to painful events if they can help it. They go
+even farther than certain modern "scientists," for if a person who
+dies happens to have had the same name as one still living in the
+vicinity, the latter incontinently changes his. As a result, confusion
+not infrequently arises, for a man whom you have known all his life
+as "John" is "William" the next time you meet him. Thus they avoid the
+mention of the word the memory of which might bring pain to the
+relatives. Much less would they bring bad news to a white man.
+
+They took good care, however, that the local Innuits should know that
+Kaiachououk was dead, hoping that they might give the great white man
+at the post the sad news of the loss of his friend. Barlow, as soon as
+he was certain of the main facts, at once dispatched messengers to
+summon to him Kalleligak, and Anatalik, who had seen the deed. The
+murderer had already expressed his willingness to surrender to the
+white man, and he at once packed up and accompanied the couriers back
+to Katatallik.
+
+Meanwhile the news had also reached Ekkoulak, the sister of
+Kaiachououk, and her husband, Semijak, immediately summoned his
+council to discuss matters. All were agreed that the tribal custom
+must be observed. "A life for a life" was the only law they
+recognized, and the two elder sons of Semijak were selected to carry
+the sentence into effect. Well armed and equipped, they started the
+very next morning for the North. The following day they walked into
+the Hudson's Bay Post to apprize the white man of their errand, so
+that there might be no suspicion of their blood-guiltiness, not
+knowing that by a strange whim of fortune Kalleligak and Anatalik were
+already there and were seated in one room while they were being
+received in another.
+
+In the room with Kalleligak and Anatalik was Mr. Barlow's daughter, a
+little child of six, who was amusing herself with a picture book of
+the life of Christ. The little girl began to show the pictures to the
+two men, telling them the story in their own tongue as she went along.
+She at last came to the picture of Christ upon the Cross between the
+two thieves. Mr. Barlow in the adjoining room heard Kalleligak ask the
+child if she thought Jesus would forgive any one who had killed
+another man, to which the little one replied, "Why, yes, if he were
+really sorry and tried to be better."
+
+The house of friends is neutral ground, and to start a quarrel in the
+great white man's house would be about as likely as that we should
+begin one on the steps of the altar. Thus, when Kalleligak and
+Anatalik were summoned to dinner, both parties proceeded as if nothing
+unusual were in the air and all refreshed themselves at the same
+board.
+
+Bidding them to keep the peace, Mr. Barlow made an effort to get to
+the bottom of the affair; but he found it very hard to know what to
+advise. The sister of Kaiachououk had begged and prayed her sons, now
+chosen as avengers, to have nothing to do with the slaying, saying,
+"It will only make more trouble. It will be Kalleligak's family who
+will suffer. They will surely starve to death." She had even sent a
+special messenger to the agent with an earnest plea that he would use
+all his influence to save her lads from the shedding of blood.
+
+Having decided that the matter should be settled in open court and to
+abide by the decision of the great white man, all concerned now
+adjourned to the kitchen, and not for the first time that humble room
+was transformed into a court of justice. Kalleligak first gave his
+version of the story without the slightest attempt to conceal
+anything. He said he had lived in constant terror of what Kaiachououk
+might inflict upon him; and then, turning to the two men, who were
+fully armed with loaded guns, he said:--
+
+"I know you have come to kill me. I shall never know good fortune
+again, anyhow. I have many skins and goods. With those I will pay for
+Kaiachououk. I can say no more."
+
+As he ceased speaking, Semijak's eldest son burst out angrily:--
+
+"Yes, we have come to kill you. Our law is a life for a life. We will
+not take any bribe."
+
+But Oggak, the second avenger, thought differently:--
+
+"We will hurt those who are not guilty. It would be different if he
+had no family. What offer does he make?"
+
+"You know that Kalleligak is the second best hunter in the North," the
+agent spoke up. "And your mother, the wife of Semijak, has also sent
+me a letter. She says nothing but evil will come from killing the head
+of another family. Cannot the spirit be satisfied in some other way?"
+
+Mr. Barlow said he would go out and return when they had talked over
+the matter among themselves. He always felt great pity for these
+far-off outcasts of humanity. To kill another could only make matters
+worse. It was quite probable that even a blood feud would be started
+and more valuable lives be sacrificed. The struggle for existence was
+hard enough in any case, and if he suggested their taking the law into
+their own hands, there was no telling where it would end.
+
+So it turned out that the matter was settled by simple word of mouth.
+That was absolutely sufficient for Kalleligak. If the avengers
+appointed by the tribe were satisfied, not only would the spirit of
+the murdered chief rest quietly, but the guilty one's life would be
+safe.
+
+The agreement, duly drawn up by the agent, read as follows:--
+
+    "We will not kill you.
+     You are to pay--
+     Two white bears.
+     Twelve white foxes.
+     Three live dogs."
+
+That was the value set on a really great man's life. It makes one
+wonder at what rate ours would be appraised in Eskimo land.
+
+
+
+
+TWO CHRISTMASES
+
+
+It was Christmas Eve, and Malcolm McCrea, just back from the woods,
+was throwing down some frozen seal meat from the scaffold for his
+hungry dogs after their long day's hauling. Malcolm was only eighteen,
+and in winter still lived with his father in their home below the
+falls of Pike's River. However, now that he had been away for two
+summers in his uncle's schooner fishing "down North," his eyes were
+already turned to some long-untenanted fjords in the mouths of which
+the craft had anchored.
+
+Pike's Falls was a lonely place, and the sound of a human voice
+calling to a dog team kept Malcolm standing with a fine forkful of
+meat in his hands long enough so greatly to tantalize the team below
+as to start a serious fight. This woke him from his reverie. "Ah, Ah!"
+he shouted, and, jumping down right into the middle of the fracas,
+soon had his dogs busy again with the frozen blocks which constituted
+their food for the day.
+
+"Is that you, Mr. Norman?" he exclaimed heartily. "Why, who would ever
+have thought of seeing you here, and alone, this evening of all days
+in t' year?"--as a middle-aged man jumped from an empty sledge and
+began unharnessing a half-starved-looking team. "Shall I give you a
+hand? They seem spun out."
+
+"Better not touch 'em, I reckon," was the gruff answer. "They're a bit
+surly with strangers." And indeed already the animals were snarling
+and showing their teeth at the other dogs finishing their meal near
+by.
+
+Malcolm, who at once proceeded to throw down a liberal allowance of
+seal meat for the newcomers' suppers, attributed the savage way in
+which their master whipped off his host's team from trying to get a
+second helping, to the weariness of a long journey. For to beat
+another man's dogs, especially with the long and heavy lash of our
+Northern whips, is a breach of the unwritten law of the Labrador.
+
+It was not until he had shared the steaming supper prepared for
+Malcolm that the strings of the visitor's tongue began to be unloosed.
+For it is not etiquette to ask a stranger's reasons for visiting a
+well-stocked house, in a country where the komatik trail is the only
+resource for the destitute.
+
+"It's to t' post I'm bound. We be short of grub south. T' fishery have
+been bad this three years, and there's six of us now," he began.
+"There wasn't more than a couple of bakings of flour in t' barrel when
+I left. I couldn't get no credit south at Deep-Water Creek; and so I
+just had to try north or starve."
+
+"'T is a long bit yet to t' post," replied Malcolm. "There is t'
+Monkey to cross if you goes inside; and us allows it a good hundred
+miles to go round t' cape. It'll take you a week to haul a barrel of
+flour from there here."
+
+Roderick, sitting back in his chair, was dejectedly surveying the
+comfortable-looking room. Malcolm caught his gaze, and realized what
+was passing in the poor fellow's mind.
+
+"Draw up, draw up, and light your pipe, Mr. Norman," he interposed.
+"'Tis only Home Rule tobacco, but it serves us down here."
+
+Eagerly enough Norman accepted the proffered plug, and then relapsed
+into a silence which Malcolm found it hard to break. So, excusing
+himself for a minute, he beckoned the old folk to come into their
+bedroom that they might talk over the situation in private.
+
+"He has four youngsters, and I knows they be hard up," he began. "They
+hasn't a chance where they are. T' neighbours blames Roderick for
+several little troubles which happened to t' southard, and t' traders
+won't advance more'n he can pay for. If it was any one else, and
+to-morrow wasn't Christmas, it would be just good fun to go down North
+with him and help haul back a barrel or so--that is, if they lets him
+have it."
+
+"That's not like you, Malcolm. You can't make a man good that way, any
+more'n you can a dog by beatin' him," chimed in his old mother. "I
+guess you'll go along with him, even to-morrow, if so be he wishes
+it."
+
+"S'pose I will, Mother, but--"
+
+"Course you would," said his father proudly. "They've never known a
+McCrea yet on this coast that would let even a dog starve. But
+there's a barrel of flour in our cellar which we can live without.
+Maybe it's t' kind of Christmas greeting t' poor fellow needs."
+
+"If you says so, it's all right, Father," said Malcolm, "and, seeing
+it's a good hundred miles to Mr. Norman's house, I guess I'll go
+along, anyhow, in t' morning and let my beauties help them half-fed
+pups of his, or it'll be Old Christmas Day before his kids get a bite
+out of it."
+
+Only the joy of the first tobacco for weeks was keeping the worn-out
+man from being fast asleep when Malcolm again took a chair beside him.
+
+"I've got to make a round south to-morrow, Mr. Norman," he began, "and
+it would be a pity if you had to be going t' other way. Father says he
+has a barrel of flour in t' cellar you can have and pay for it when
+youse can. So if that'll suit, I'd like to give you a hand some part
+of t' way, especially as there'll be a few gallons of molasses to
+carry also if you'll take 'em."
+
+Gratitude is a rare grace. The lack of it was one of the costly
+defects in Roderick's character. No longer hungry, sitting before a
+good fire with a well-filled pipe, even the cunning which usually
+supplies the vacancy failed him; and Malcolm had to force himself to
+put down to exhaustion the ungracious way in which his real sacrifice
+was accepted.
+
+In spite of hard work, they had only made thirty miles by sunset the
+next day, and, there being no shelter, they were obliged to camp early
+as light snow was falling. Yet it was a good Christmas night around
+the blazing fire with the special cheer the old mother had packed into
+the bread-boxes on their komatik. The following morning they did
+better, reaching the landwash of a big inlet forty miles farther south
+by noon. Here Malcolm had decided to turn back, for the remainder of
+the trail to Long Point lay practically over level ice. Just as they
+were saying good-bye, however, his quick eye detected something black
+moving out on the bay.
+
+"A fox, Mr. Norman. Look! A fox! And a black one too. You may be able
+to pay for that barrel of flour before t' day's out."
+
+They were both good furriers, and their plans were soon laid. The dogs
+were quickly hitched up to stumps, and, glad of a rest, were easily
+made to lie down. Alas, the men had only Malcolm's gun; but it was
+arranged that he should go out and turn the fox, and Norman, hiding at
+the third corner of the triangle, should try and shoot it passing or
+lure it in range down wind.
+
+Things went admirably. Malcolm by a long détour was able to turn the
+fox from far out without frightening it. Roderick, well hidden, and
+squeaking like a mouse, tolled it into easy range; and within an hour
+the two men held in their hands a skin worth at least four hundred
+dollars. It was agreed, at Roderick's suggestion, that he should carry
+it home, as he was nearer the fur-buyers, take the first offer over
+that sum, and then send the half due by the law of the woods to
+Malcolm north by the earliest mail-carrier.
+
+Malcolm added as he said good-bye, "I reckon maybe Father will want
+to let t' barrel go as good luck on t' bargain."
+
+Summer came, and open water with it, but the half value of that skin
+never arrived. Later, in reply to Malcolm's enquiry by letter, a note
+came to say that it was being held for a better price in the fall; and
+with that he had to be content.
+
+Winter followed summer, and when once again the "going was good,"
+Malcolm, "running light" with his dogs, made the journey to Long Point
+easily in two days. Yes, the skin was sold, but the agent had not yet
+sent the cash. It had brought $430 and the half would come along as
+soon as ever Monsieur Baillot forwarded the notes. But the winter
+again went by and no notes, no letters, or other news ever reached
+Malcolm McCrea. Six years passed, and still they never came, and the
+McCreas supposed the debt was time-barred. Indeed, they had almost
+forgotten the whole incident.
+
+Malcolm was still nominally at his father's house, but for three
+winters he had trapped on the Grand River, which flowed out into one
+of the bays he had discovered "down North." Here with the help of a
+hired man he had built up quite a fine little house, and made every
+preparation for that momentous life experience which usually comes
+early in life to every Labrador man. With characteristic caution he
+had waited for a good winter hunt to buy furnishings and traps. This
+had also given Nancy Grahame, who lived close to his home, time to get
+ready the needed linen and other requisites. "Clewing up" his salmon
+fishery in good time, Malcolm had cruised North in his own small
+sailboat, and till the first ice made had been very busy cutting wood,
+hauling food into the country for the winter tilts along his fur-path
+on the Grand River, completing his cellar, and safely storing his
+winter house supplies.
+
+His first hunt being mostly for foxes along the landwash of the bay,
+he had waited until the snow came to tail his traps, judging that
+although it would take a week with his dogs to fetch his wife to their
+new home, he might safely chance that length of time away without
+losing anything which might be snared in the meanwhile. This was the
+third winter he had furred this path without interruption, and by all
+the custom of the coast no one would now interfere with his claim. So
+Malcolm started south at a stretch gallop with a light heart.
+
+The two hundred and odd miles to the rendezvous at his father-in-law's
+winter home in the woods were covered with only two nights out, and
+that when the trails were as yet hardly broken and the young ice on
+the rivers would surely have delayed any man with less determination.
+
+The wedding was in real Labrador style. Every one from far and near
+was present, quite without the formality of an invitation. It would,
+indeed, be an ill omen for the future if any one were omitted through
+the miscarriage of an invitation. So the danger is averted by the
+grapevine telegraph, which simply signals the event in sufficient time
+to make it a man's own fault if he is not present. Malcolm had many
+friends and there had been great preparations in Capelin Bay. Every
+scrap of room was needed to accommodate the guests, and at night
+hardly an inch of floor space but lodged some sleeping form wrapped in
+a four-point blanket, while the hardier ones with sleeping-bags
+contentedly crawled into them out in the snow, as their fashion is
+when nothing better offers.
+
+The cooking had to be done in two large net-barking cauldrons over
+open fires under the trees; and as the fall deer hunt had been
+successful, and pork had not in those days assumed the present
+impossible prices, there were all kinds of joints, and no limit to
+proteids and carbohydrates. The great plum puddings which served for
+wedding cakes were pulled out of the same boiling froth, tightly
+wrapped in their cloth jackets, with long fish "pews" or forks.
+Unlimited spruce beer, brewed with molasses and fortified with "Old
+Jamaica," flowed from a large barrel during the two days that the
+celebration lasted.
+
+At twenty below zero a slight increase in the calories consumed or
+even in the excess of alcohol over the normal two per cent of spruce
+beer leaves little trace on hardy folk; and when on the third morning,
+McCrea and his bride fared forth behind their splendid dog-team, every
+guest was gathered at the starting-point to "whoop up" the departing
+couple.
+
+"'T is early I'll be starting in t' morning, Nancy, for it's nigh a
+fortnight since I tailed my traps, and there were good signs, too, by
+t' boiling brooks," said Malcolm the first evening they arrived home.
+"A fox following t' landwash from t' rattle must surely take t' path
+there, for t' cliff fair shoulders him off t' land, and t' ice isn't
+fast more'n a foot or so from t' bluff. 'T would be a pity to lose a
+good skin, and us just starting in housekeeping."
+
+"What's right's right, Malcolm," answered his wife, pouting just
+perceptibly. "Us must end our honeymoon with the journey down. I'll
+not be lonely, I reckon, getting t' house to rights." And she laughed
+gayly as she noticed the results of Malcolm's sincere but unique
+attempts at furnishing.
+
+"It'll be a ration of pork I'll be needing boiled, and a bun or two
+for my nonny-bag. I can cover t' path in two days so be t' going's
+good; but there's nothing like being prepared."
+
+"Get a few more splits, then, boy," she replied, "and I'll be cutting
+t' pork t' while." For she knew that Malcolm's estimate of the supply
+necessary for a possible delay was not the preparedness which would
+satisfy her ideas.
+
+Days are short in November in the North, and the moon was still up to
+see Malcolm picking his way along the unmade trail which led to the
+spot where the sea ice joined the "ballicaters" or heaped-up shore
+ice. In the late fall this is the happy hunting-ground of foxes, for a
+much-needed dinner is often to be picked up in the shape of some
+enfeebled auk or other sea-bird, while even a dead shark or smaller
+fish may be discovered.
+
+This was only a brief fall hunt. Malcolm had some fifty traps over ten
+miles of country, all of which he would take up the following month
+when the sea ice froze on permanently to the shore, re-tailing them
+along his real fur-path up the Grand River along the bank of which he
+had no less than three small shacks some thirty miles apart. Here he
+made his long winter hunt for sables, otters, and lynxes, using nearly
+three hundred traps.
+
+It was with keen expectation and brisk step that he now strode along
+over the open; only the unwritten law of silence for a trapper on his
+path prevented his whistling as he went. When passing through the long
+belt of woods which marks the edge of the river delta, he found
+numerous windfalls blocking his narrow trail; but, keyed up as he was,
+he managed to get by them without so much as rustling a twig. "I'm
+fending for two now," he said to himself, and the very thought was
+sweet, lending zest to the matching of his capacities against those of
+the wild.
+
+There was nothing in his first two traps. He hadn't expected anything.
+They were only a sort of outliers in case something went wrong with
+those in the sure places. But now he was nearing the Narrows, and
+already his fence running from the steep bluff to the river edge was
+visible. But there was no fox in number three. The trap had not been
+sprung. The bait was as he had left it. "Maybe there'll be more to t'
+eastward," he thought, "though there were signs on this side of t'
+river." And, resetting the trap, he plodded along farther on his
+round.
+
+Midday came. He had passed no less than fifteen of his best traps, and
+not only had no fox been found, but not one trap was sprung or one
+bait taken.
+
+Malcolm stood meditatively scratching his head by trap twenty.
+"Something's wrong," he said to himself,--"but what? Better boil t'
+kettle and think it over. Perhaps better luck after lunch."
+
+Unstringing his tomahawk, he started to find some dry wood with which
+to kindle a fire. None being close to the beach, he walked a few yards
+into the forest, and had just commenced on a tree when he noticed by
+the white scar that a branch had been broken quite recently from the
+very same trunk. "Wind and t' weight of t' silver thaw," he supposed,
+for there was no one living within fifty miles, and no other fur-path
+at that time, anyhow, in the bay. The northern komatik trail crossed
+twenty miles seaward, where the calm, wide expanse made the ice much
+safer in the early winter than near the swift current at the river
+mouth. But as he stooped to clear the trunk for his own axe, he
+noticed that, though disguised as a break, a cut had been first made
+to weaken the bough. "Some one's been here, that's sure," he said to
+himself. "Who can it be?" So much snow had fallen since Malcolm had
+gone after his wife that it was no easy matter to guess an
+answer--much less to read it from the trails around.
+
+His frugal meal finished, he sat meditatively smoking his pipe by the
+glowing embers of his generous fire. But no light came to him.
+Practically no one lived near. The few who did were as honest as
+daylight. He had not an enemy on earth so far as he knew; and yet he
+realized now that the good condition of his traps, and especially his
+baits, after a fortnight of the blusterous Labrador fall weather
+needed accounting for. Well, anyhow, there was only one thing to
+do--go and finish his round, and when he got back he could talk the
+trouble over with his wife.
+
+Slipping on his snow racquets and once more shouldering his nonny-bag,
+he strode off toward his next trap. It was new to him to suspect men.
+It was his business as a trapper to suspect Nature. It was, however,
+from this new viewpoint that he must approach his next task. For
+therein lies the intense interest of the trapper's life--every moment
+affords a keen problem. The gambler has the excitement of a possible
+big return, a sudden acquisition of gain. The trapper has all that,
+and the added satisfaction of knowing that it is his ability and not
+merely his luck which has won out.
+
+At first sight there seemed nothing amiss with trap twenty-one. It had
+been tailed on the top of a specially felled tree. There it was
+still--a little mound of snow above the great expanse of whiteness,
+only recognizable because a trapper knows every inch of his path as a
+priest does his breviary. True, as the surface snow was only two days
+old, many marks could not be expected upon it. All the same, it struck
+Malcolm as odd that not a single fox-footing had he sighted since
+leaving home. "Something must have been cleaning 'em up," he reasoned.
+"There were two broods on Whale Island and one at least on t' Isle of
+Hope. That's some twenty all told--and ne'er a wolf or lynx track out
+to t' landward t' year." Musing to himself, he knelt down by the trap
+to examine it more closely. Lifting it up, he blew off the loose snow
+and inspected the stump carefully. No, nothing to indicate that it had
+been moved. If it had been, it must have been replaced with consummate
+care; for the rain had fallen once since Malcolm had tailed it, and
+the trap lay exactly in the icy trough, its handle and chain lying in
+the same groove. But the very fact suggested an idea. Possibly, if he
+cleared the snow there might be a frozen footmark in the hard surface
+beneath. Carefully, handful by handful, he removed over a foot of snow
+from around the bottom of the old tree, till he felt with his fingers
+the frozen crust. It took him over an hour's cold, tedious work, for
+he feared to use a mitten to protect his hand lest he should destroy
+the very traces of which he was in search. Though it froze his fingers
+and meant a long delay, it was well worth while, for he had undeniable
+evidence of a man's footmark, without any racquet, made since the rain
+previous to the last snowfall. It was probably at least a week old.
+
+Again he examined the trap carefully. Not a hair, not a blood mark,
+not a sign to show that any fox had been in it. If it had been robbed,
+an expert had done it. There was another chance, however. Using his
+racquet as a spade, Malcolm was soon at work clearing the snow away
+right around the roots. The chain was a long one, and driven into one
+of the leaders was a steel fastener. It was as he expected. Not only
+had the chain been obviously gnawed, but there was considerable
+chafing of the bark as well. "He's been in it, sure enough, but the
+question is, Who's got t' skin?" Dark was coming on. There was no use
+going back; so, cutting down a few boughs and making a small lean-to
+under a big spruce, Malcolm kindled a blazing fire, "cooked the
+kettle," and turned in for the night.
+
+Nancy had seen her husband as soon as he crossed the shoulder of the
+hill on his home-coming the third morning. To tell the truth, it was
+her first experience of being quite alone in the forest, and she had
+been doing but little "furnishing" after the first night. Now she was
+sure he had made a fine haul, and hurried out to meet him and hear the
+news. Malcolm, with the canniness of his kind, at once told her he had
+had no luck.
+
+Now the actual amount of money lost may not have been great, but it
+had the irritating feature of being an unknown quantity and the
+additional vague risk of making all his winter work fruitless. It is
+useless to set traps if some one else is to follow around and rob
+them. So that night he told his wife the whole story. Discuss it as
+they would, there was no clue of any kind to follow; so like wise folk
+they decided to go on their way as if nothing had happened, keeping
+their mouths shut and their eyes and ears open.
+
+No one visited their bay before Malcolm went on his first long fur
+round, which he did earlier than was his wont in order to be back in
+time for the first of the two winter mails. This trip he made a much
+better hunt, setting his traps as he went into the country. He took
+good care to make long marches, and even one day to double back on his
+tracks, making a long détour to see if he might not possibly pick up
+some unexpected signs of another man on _his_ path. His, because,
+although there is no law on the subject, custom is law on Labrador,
+and the man who first finds a new trail for trapping has a conceded
+right of at least a mile in width for just as far as he cares to go.
+
+The whole round was made in ten days, and, coming back with six
+sables, two otter, and a few mink and ermine, he was fortunate enough
+to reach home some hours before the southern mail team.
+
+"What's t' news, Pat?" he asked, when at last supper was over, and
+the final pipe was being discussed by the fire.
+
+"Nothing to boast of," was the answer. "T' same old story, with some a
+feast and with some a famine. They do say Roderick Norman's luck seems
+to have turned at last. T' Company gave he over four hundred dollars
+for a dark silver he got, and as much more, some say, for a batch o'
+reds and patches. 'T is more than good luck that half-breed must have
+had, for he hasn't had a dozen traps to his name this five years."
+
+Before he had finished speaking, Malcolm was watching him narrowly,
+wondering if some sprite had whispered abroad the robbing of his
+traps. But Pat was evidently unconscious of any possible connection
+between his news and his audience. As absolute silence was the only
+possible road ever to learning the truth, Pat left the next day on his
+journey north, not a whit the wiser for his night at the new
+homestead.
+
+"It do sound strange, Nancy, don't it?" said her husband, after their
+guest had gone. "Roderick Norman can't have any grudge against me.
+Why, sure, it should be all t' other way." And he got up, stretched
+his splendid muscular limbs, and, picking up his axe, took out any
+excess of feeling there might be in his heart by a good two hours'
+work at the woodpile.
+
+Meanwhile his mind had not been idle. Whoever it was that robbed his
+traps could not have come along the usual trail. The ice outside had
+not been safe for travelling. He certainly must have come out from the
+country. It had never occurred to Malcolm to spend time exploring the
+land which lay south of his fur-path. But now it seemed to him that he
+must at all costs set out the following morning and verify his
+suspicions if he were to retain his hope of a livelihood in that
+locality.
+
+"I'm minded to try it right away, Nancy," said Malcolm. "If I could
+only get a good view from one of t' hilltops, I'd have no trouble, for
+there is still plenty of food in my tilts."
+
+"But, Malcolm, 't is only two days till Christmas and this is our
+first together. Surely no one ever goes on the fur-path
+Christmastime."
+
+"That's just it, lass. No one is on t' path as ought to be, and I
+reckon for that very reason there be more chance of seeing those as
+ought not."
+
+There was no escaping the logic of the Scotchman, and his wife
+acquiesced without further argument. He was well into the country
+before daylight next day.
+
+It was a glorious morning, as away there in utter solitude the
+evergreen trees, the red-faced cliffs, the startling whiteness of the
+snow, and exquisite blue overhead fading into the purple distance of
+the winding valley met his keen view from a mountain-top. It was
+Labrador at its best--clear, dry, cold, and not a sound to break the
+absolute silence, even the trickling of the rapids and the splashing
+of distant falls being muffled by then-heavy cloaks of ice.
+
+Suddenly Malcolm's face grew rigid and his eyes unconsciously fixed
+themselves on a moving object--a tiny whiff of blue smoke was curling
+up from the woods on the other side of the valley. Gentle though he
+was, his big muscles set and his jaw tightened as the idea of revenge
+flashed across his mind.
+
+A man does not learn to outwit successfully the keen senses of the
+denizens of the woods without finding it easy to solve a problem such
+as the one which Malcolm now faced. For all that, he decided not to
+approach too close till dark what he was now sure was a hut, for the
+way the smoke rose was quite unlike that from an open fire. Having,
+therefore, plenty of time, he made a long and cautious détour till he
+had at last completely encircled the spot. There were the marks of one
+pair of snow racquets only on the snow. The trail was possibly three
+days old. No snow had fallen for several days. "Reckon he is taking a
+good spell with that catch of his."
+
+This much he knew. He knew the stranger was in or close to the tilt.
+He was not trapping, though he had been inside the circle for several
+days, and he had no dogs.
+
+As it fell dark, Malcolm fully expected to see a light in the hut,
+but not a twinkle showed through the single-pane window light, which
+he had located from his hiding-place.
+
+Now he was crawling nearer. There was no chance of his being seen, as
+the moon had not yet risen and it was very dark among the trees. A
+light wind had risen, rustling the firs and spruces above his head.
+The fire worried him. Why had it almost died out? Heaven knows it was
+cold enough to need one, for with all his warm blood Malcolm himself
+was shivering. What could it mean?
+
+Suddenly he heard some one move inside. Then came the noise of sticks
+hitting a tin camp-stove and a sudden blaze flared up, burnt for a
+minute or two, and apparently went out again. Whoever it was must be
+ill, or hurt. He had no big billets or he wouldn't be firing with
+twigs.
+
+It could not do any harm now to enter, and Malcolm strode noisily to
+the door and peered inside.
+
+A man's weak voice greeted him. "Who's there? For God's sake, come
+in."
+
+"My name's Malcolm McCrea. Where's your light?"
+
+"Haven't got one. I've no candle either," came the answer. "Had an
+accident three days ago with my gun, and nearly blew my foot off. My
+leg's swelled up something wonderful."
+
+The voice, feeble almost to a whisper, conveyed no information as to
+the man's identity, except that the Scotchman's quick ear detected
+that there was resentment somehow mixed with satisfaction that a
+rescuer had come.
+
+"I've a drop of kerosene in my nonny-bag," was all Malcolm said, "but
+it's scarce, and I 'low I'll cut up some wood and get t' fire going
+before lighting up. You lie quiet for a minute or two and I'll get you
+a drop of tea."
+
+"Lie quiet!" snarled the other. "I've lain quiet for three days, and
+expected to stay till doomsday. It's no virtue keeps me lying quiet. I
+had no business to be here, anyhow, seeing there was no need of it."
+
+"Well, do as you please," answered McCrea. And without much delay he
+soon had a roaring fire in the camp-stove which turned the chimney
+red-hot and made it possible to see dimly stretched out on a bed of
+fir boughs the long, thin form of a man whose drawn, unshaven face
+showed that he was suffering much pain. His right foot was swaddled in
+an ominously stained bundle of rags--evidently some torn-up garment.
+
+Methodically lighting the bit of wick which he had placed in the
+kerosene bottle, Malcolm knelt down by the side of the injured man
+and, peering into the semi-darkness of the gloomy corner, found
+himself looking right into the eyes of Roderick Norman.
+
+Having made some hot tea and shared it with the sick man, he offered
+him part of the pork and hard biscuit, all that he had with him for
+his own supper. But Roderick was too feeble to touch more than a bit
+of it soaked in hot tea, and that seemed a small strength-giver for
+such a time of need.
+
+"If you'd a bit o' wire or line, I'd tail a snare for a rabbit when
+the moon rises and try if we couldn't get a drop o' hot stew to help
+out. But I haven't a bit in my bag."
+
+"There's a couple o' traps," growled the sick man, and then stopped
+suddenly, shutting his jaws with a snap.
+
+Malcolm looked around, but was unable to see any signs of them. "Where
+did you say they were?" he enquired; but no response came from the
+bunk.
+
+McCrea finished his supper, lit his pipe, and suggested trying to wash
+the wounded foot. But fearing to start the bleeding again, they
+decided to leave it till morning.
+
+"Where are those traps you spoke of, sir? The moon is beginning to
+show and I'll be needing to get 'em put out, if we're to have any
+chance." But still the other man made no answer. Malcolm went up close
+to the bed and knelt down by him again. "Mr. Norman," he said, "we're
+in a bad hole here. We're fifty miles from help, anyhow. We've no dogs
+and only one of us can walk. Moreover, there's almost no food. If
+you've got any traps, why not tell me where they are. I'm not going to
+steal 'em."
+
+Roderick Norman opened his eyes and looked at him. The dim rays of
+the little wick in the kerosene bottle gave scarcely enough light to
+show the ordinary eye where the lamp itself was. But when their
+glances met, it was enough to show Roderick that it was no longer a
+child with whom he was dealing. For a second neither spoke, then
+Malcolm, putting his hand on the man's shoulder, gripped it perhaps
+more roughly than he intended. "The traps," he repeated.
+
+Roderick winced. He saw that his secret was out. He was at the
+Scotchman's mercy, and he knew it. "They're stowed in t' hollow of t'
+old trunk, fifty yards back of t' tilt, damn you," he snarled, and
+tried to roll over, groaning bitterly with pain of both body and soul.
+
+The pity of it appealed straight to Malcolm's generous heart, and his
+grip relaxed instantly. He strove to make the other more comfortable,
+moving him gently in his great arms.
+
+"Forget it, Mr. Norman," he said. "No one shall ever know unless you
+tell 'em. I'll give you my word for that." The sick man said nothing.
+His deep breathing, painfully drawn, was, however, enough in that
+dead silence to warn Malcolm of the struggle going on so close to
+him--a struggle so much more momentous than one of tooth and claw. He
+slipped his hand into that of the other and held it gently.
+
+"You're very hot, sir," he remarked, just for something to say. "Shall
+I get you some cold water?"
+
+But still there was no answer. Evidently the man's mind was engrossed
+with other thoughts. A long pause followed.
+
+"Mr. Norman, for God's sake, forget it. No one's been hurt but
+yourself. If there's been any wrong, it's all forgiven and forgotten
+long ago. Let's just begin again. Remember 't is Christmas Eve night."
+
+Still there was no reply, but McCrea's intuition saved him from the
+mistake of saying more. The stillness became uncanny. Then an almost
+imperceptible pressure of the sick man's hand sent a thrill vibrating
+through the Scotchman's soul. Yes, and he had himself returned the
+pressure before he knew it. A shiver passed over the sick man's frame
+and the silence was broken by a sob.
+
+With an innate sense of fellow-feeling, Malcolm laid down the other's
+hand, rose, and went out without a word. The night was perfect with
+the glorious light of the waning moon. His mind was at once made up.
+He would be home by daylight and back again with his dogs by midday,
+with stimulants and blankets, and could have Roderick in Nancy's
+skilled hands before night.
+
+Noiselessly opening the door, he filled the stove once more, piled up
+spare billets close to the bedside, laid out what food was left,
+placed his kettle full of water on the ground within reach of the sick
+man, and, just whispering, "I'll be back soon, sir," disappeared into
+the night.
+
+How fast he sped only the stars and moon shall say. But joy lent him
+wings which brought him home before daylight. His faithful dogs,
+keeping their watch and ward out in the snow around his house, first
+brought the news to Nancy that her man was back so soon.
+
+A few minutes served to explain how matters stood, and in a few more
+everything was ready. The coach-box was strapped on the komatik. The
+bearskin rug and a feather bed were lashed inside it, with all the
+restoratives loving care could think of, and with the music of the
+wild barking of the dogs echoing from the mountain and valley, the
+sledge went whirling back over the crisp snow--the team no less
+excited than Malcolm himself at this unexpected call for their
+services.
+
+Everything was silent as once more they approached the scene of
+trouble. The dogs, panting and tired, having had no spell since they
+started, no longer broke the stillness with their barking. Malcolm
+hitched them up a hundred yards or so from the tilt, preferring to
+approach it on foot. He had long ago noticed that no smoke was coming
+from the funnel and it made his heart sink, for even in the woods the
+cold was intense.
+
+Malcolm always says that he knew the meaning of it before he opened
+the door. Roderick Norman had gone to spend his first Christmas in
+happier hunting-grounds.
+
+
+
+
+THE LEADING LIGHT
+
+
+It was getting late in the year. The steep cliffs that everywhere
+flank the sides of the great bay were already hoary with snow. The big
+ponds were all "fast," and the fall deer hunt which follows the
+fishery was over. Most of the boats were hauled up, well out of reach
+of the "ballicater" ice. The stage fronts had been taken down till the
+next spring, to save them from being torn to pieces by the rising and
+falling floe. Everywhere "young slob," as we call the endless round
+pans growing from the centre and covering the sea like the scales of a
+salmon, was making. But the people at the head of the bay were still
+waiting for those necessities of life, such as flour, molasses, and
+pork, which have to be imported as they are unable to provide them for
+themselves, and for which they must wait till the summer's voyage has
+been sent to market and sold to pay for them.
+
+The responsibility of getting these supplies to them rested heavily on
+the shoulders of my good friend John Bourne, the only trader in the
+district. Women, children, whole families, were looking to him for
+those "things" which if he failed to furnish would mean such woeful
+consequences that he could not face the winter without at least a
+serious attempt to provide them.
+
+In the harbour lay his schooner, a saucy little craft which he had
+purchased only a short while before. He knew her sea qualities; and as
+the ship tugged at her chains, moving to and fro on the swell, she
+kept a fine "swatch" of open water round her. Like some tethered
+animal, she seemed to be begging him to give her another run before
+Jack Frost gripped her in his chilly arms for months to come. The fact
+that he was a married man with hostages to fortune round his knees
+might have justified his conscience in not tempting the open sea at a
+time when frozen sheets and blocks choked with ice made it an open
+question if even a youngster ought to take the chances. But it
+happened that his "better half," like himself, had that "right stuff"
+in her which thinks of itself last, and her permission for the venture
+was never in question.
+
+So Trader Bourne, being, like all our men, a sailor first and a
+landsman after, with his crew of the mate and a boy, and the handicap
+of a passenger, put to sea one fine afternoon in late November, his
+vessel loaded with good things for his necessitous friends "up along."
+He was encouraged by a light breeze which, though blowing out of the
+bay and there ahead for him, gave smooth water and a clear sky.
+
+To those who would have persuaded him to linger for a fair wind he had
+cheerfully countered that the schooner had "two sides," meaning that
+she could hold her own in adversity, and could claw well to windward;
+besides, "'t will help to hold the Northern slob back"--that
+threatening spectre of our winters.
+
+When darkness fell, however, very little progress had been made. The
+wind kept shifting against the schooner, and all hands could still
+make out the distant lights of home twinkling like tiny stars,
+apparently not more than a couple of miles under their lee.
+
+"Shall us 'hard up,' and try it again at day light?" suggested the
+mate. "If anything happens 't is a poor time of year to be out all
+night in a small craft."
+
+But the skipper only shrugged his shoulders, aware that the mate was
+never a "snapper" seaman, being too much interested in gardens for his
+liking.
+
+"It's only a mile or two to Beach Rock Cove. We'll make it on the next
+tack if the wind holds. 'T is a long leg and a short one, and we'll
+have a good chance then to make the Boiling Brooks to-morrow."
+
+"Lee oh!" and, putting the helm up, the Leading Light was soon racing
+off into the increasing darkness towards the cliffs away on the
+opposite side of the bay.
+
+The wind freshened as the evening advanced--the usual experience of
+our late fall nights. An hour went by, and as the wind was still
+rising, the flying jib was taken in. After this the captain sent the
+crew below for a "mug o' tea" while he took the first trick at the
+wheel.
+
+Still the wind rose. The sea too was beginning to make, and the little
+craft started to fall to leeward too much to please the skipper. The
+men were again called, and together they reset all the head canvas.
+The Leading Light now answered better to her helm, and, heading up a
+point, reached well into the bay.
+
+"Smooth water again before dawn," said the skipper in his endeavour to
+cheer the despondent mate, when once more they had gone aft. "Looks
+like clearing overhead. I reckon she'll be well along by daylight."
+
+But the mate seemed "stun," and only grunted in return.
+
+"You go down and finish supper, and then you can give me a spell at
+the wheel while I get my pipe lighted," continued the captain.
+Thereupon the other, nothing loath to have something to keep his mind
+diverted, was soon below, searching for consolation in a steaming mug,
+but failing to find it, in spite of the welcome contrast between the
+cosy warm cabin, and the darkness and driving spume on deck, lacking
+as he did, alas, the sea genius of our race.
+
+"Watch on deck!" at length called Bourne; and a few minutes later,
+having entrusted the helm to the mate, he was lighting his pipe at the
+cabin fire. All of a sudden down, down, down went the lee floor of the
+cabin, and up, up, up went the weather, till it felt as if the little
+ship were really going over.
+
+"What's up?" the skipper fairly yelled through the companion, as
+clinging and struggling his utmost he forced his way on deck, as soon
+as the vessel righted herself enough to make it possible. "Hard down!
+Hard down! Let her come up! Ease her! Ease her!"--and whether the puff
+of wind slackened or the mate lost hold of the wheel, he never has
+been able to tell, but she righted enough for a moment to let him get
+on the deck and rush forward to slack up the fore-sheet, bawling
+meanwhile through the darkness to the mate to keep her head up, as he
+himself tore and tugged at the rope.
+
+The schooner, evidently well off the wind, yet with all her sheets
+hauled tight and clewed down, was literally flying ahead, but trying
+to dive right through the ponderous seas, instead of skimming over and
+laughing at them, as the captain well knew she ought to do. There
+wasn't a second to lose pondering the problem as to why she would not
+come up and save herself. Difficult and dangerous as it was in the
+pitch dark with the deck slippery with ice, and the dizzy angle at
+which it stood, the only certain way to save the situation was to let
+go that sheet. Frantically he struggled with the rope, firmly clinched
+though it was round its cleats with the ice that had made upon it.
+Knowing how sensitive the vessel was and that she would answer to a
+half-spoke turn of the wheel, and utterly at a loss to understand her
+present stubbornness, he still kept calling to the helmsman, "Hard
+down! Hard down!"--only to receive again the growling answer, "Hard
+down it is. She's been hard down this long time."
+
+It was all no good. Up, up came the weather rail under the terrific
+pressure of the wind. The fore-sheet was now already well under water,
+cleat and all, and the captain had just time to dash for the bulwark
+and hold on for dear life, when over went the stout little craft,
+sails, masts, and rigging, all disappearing beneath the waves. It
+seemed as if a minute more and she must surely vanish altogether, and
+all hands be lost almost within sight of their own homes.
+
+Tumultuous thoughts flooded the captain's mind as for one second he
+clung to the rail. Vain regrets were followed like lightning by a
+momentary resignation to fate. In the minds of most men hope would
+undoubtedly have perished right there. But Captain Bourne was made of
+better stuff. "Nil desperandum" is the Englishman's soul; and soon he
+found himself crawling carefully hand over hand towards the after end
+of the vessel. Suddenly in the darkness he bumped into something soft
+and warm lying out on the quarter. It proved to be his passenger,
+resigned and mute, with no suggestion to offer and no spirit to do
+more than lie and perish miserably.
+
+Still climbing along he could not help marking the absence of the mate
+and the boy from the rail, which standing out alone against the
+sky-line was occasionally visible. Doubtless they must have been
+washed overboard when the vessel turned turtle. There was some heavy
+ballast in the schooner besides the barrels of flour and other
+supplies in her hold. Her deck also was loaded with freight, and alas,
+the ship's boat was lashed down to the deck with strong gripes beneath
+a lot of it. Moreover, it was on the starboard side, and away down
+under water anyhow. Though every moment he was expecting the Leading
+Light to make her last long dive, his courage never for a second
+deserted him.
+
+He remembered that there was a new boat on the counter aft which he
+was carrying with him for one of his dealers. She was not lashed
+either, except that her painter was fast to a stanchion. It was just
+possible that she might still be afloat, riding to the schooner as a
+sea anchor. Still clinging to the rail he peered and peered through
+the darkness, only to see the great white mainsail now and again
+gleam ghostlike in the dim light when the super-incumbent water foamed
+over it, as the Leading Light wallowed in the sullen seas. Then
+something dark rose against the sky away out beyond the peak end of
+the gaff--something black looming up on the crest of a mighty comber.
+An uncanny feeling crept over him. Yet what else could it be but the
+boat? But what could that boat be doing out there? Fascinated, he kept
+glaring out in that direction. Yes, surely, there it flashed again
+across the sky-line. This time he was satisfied that it was the boat,
+and that she was afloat and partly protected by the breakwater formed
+by the schooner's hull. She was riding splendidly. In an instant he
+recalled that he had given her a new long painter; and that somehow
+she must have been thrown clear when the ship turned over. Anyhow, she
+was his only chance for life. Get her he must, and get her at once.
+Every second spelt less chance of success. Any moment she might break
+adrift or be dragged down by the sinking schooner. And then came the
+horrible memory that she too had been stowed on the lee side, and her
+painter also was under the mainsail and fastened now several feet
+below the surface. Even the sail itself was under water, and the sea
+breaking in big rushes over it with every comber that came along.
+
+To get the boat was surely impossible. It only added to the horror of
+the plight to perish there miserably of cold, thinking of home and of
+the loved ones peacefully asleep so near, while the way to them and
+safety lay only a few fathoms distant--torturing him by its very
+nearness. For every now and then driving hard to the end of her tether
+she would rush forward on a sea and appear to be coming within his
+reach, only to mock him by drifting away once more, like some
+relentless lady-love playing with his very heartstrings. The rope
+under the sunken mainsail prevented her from quite reaching him, and
+each time that she seemed coming to his arms, she again darted beyond
+his grasp.
+
+Whatever could be done must be done at once. Even now he realized
+that the cold and wet were robbing him of his store of strength. Could
+he possibly get out to where the boat was? There might be one way, but
+there could be only one, and even that appeared a desperate and
+utterly futile venture. It was to find a footing somehow, to let go
+his vise-like grip of the rail, and leap out into the darkness across
+the black and fathomless gulf of water surging up between the hull and
+the vessel's main boom in the hope of landing in the belly of the
+sail; to be able to keep his balance and walk out breast high through
+the rushing water into the blackness beyond till he should reach the
+gaff; and so, clinging there, perchance catch the boat's painter as
+she ran in on a rebounding sea. There would be nothing to hold on to.
+The ever swirling water would upset a man walking in daylight on a
+level quayside. He would have nothing but a sunken, bellying piece of
+canvas to support him--a piece only, for the little leach rope leading
+from the clew to the peak marked a sharp edge which would spell the
+dividing line between life and death.
+
+He had known men of courage; he had read of what Englishmen had done.
+But he had never suspected that in his own English blood could lie
+dormant that which makes heroes at all times. A hastily breathed
+prayer--his mind made up, letting go of the weather rail he commenced
+to lower himself to the wheel, hoping to get a footing there for the
+momentous spring that would in all probability land him in eternity.
+But even as he climbed a little farther aft to reach down to it, he
+found himself actually straddling the bodies of the missing mate and
+boy, who were cowering under the rail, supported by their feet against
+the steering-gear boxing.
+
+Like a thunderclap the whole cause of the disaster burst upon his
+mind. The mate's feet planked against the spokes of the wheel
+suggested it. The helm was not hard down at all, and never had been.
+It was hard up all the time. He remembered, now that it was too late,
+that the mate had always steered hitherto with a tiller; that a wheel
+turns exactly the opposite way to the tiller; and that with every
+sail hauled tight, and the helm held hard over, the loyal little craft
+had been as literally murdered as if she had been torpedoed, and also
+their lives jeopardized through this man's folly. What was the good of
+him even now? There he lay like a log, as dumb as the man whom he had
+left clinging to the taffrail.
+
+"What's to be done now?" he shouted, trying in vain to rouse the
+prostrate figure with his foot. "Rouse up! Rouse up, you fool!" he
+roared. "Are you going to die like a coward?" And letting himself
+down, he put his face close to that of the man who by his stupidity
+had brought them all to this terrible plight. But both the mate and
+boy seemed paralyzed. Not a word, not a moan could he get out of them.
+The help which they would have been was denied him. Once more he
+realized that if any one was to be saved, he and he alone must
+accomplish it. A momentary rest between two waves decided him. There
+was one half-second of trying to get his balance as he stood up, then
+came the plunge into the wild abyss, and he found himself floundering
+in the belly of the sail, struggling to keep his footing, but up to
+his waist in water. With a fierce sense of triumph that he was safely
+past the first danger, the yawning gulf between the rail and boom, he
+threw every grain of his remaining strength into the desperate task
+before him, and pushed out for the gaff that was lying on the surface
+of the sea, thirty feet away in the darkness. Even as he started a
+surging wave washed him off his feet, and again he found himself
+hopelessly wallowing in the water, but still in the great cauldron
+formed by the canvas.
+
+How any human being could walk even the length of the sail under such
+circumstances he does not know any more than I do. But the impossible
+was accomplished, and somehow he was clinging at last like a limpet to
+the very end of the gaff, his legs already dangling over the fatal
+edge, and with nothing to keep him from the clutch of death beyond it
+but his grip of the floating spar. To this he must cling until the
+mocking boat should again come taut on the line and possibly run
+within his reach. The next second out of the darkness what seemed to
+the man in the sail a mountain of blackness rushed hissing at him from
+the chaos beyond, actually swept across him into the belly of the
+sail, and tore him from his rapidly weakening hold of the spar. With
+the energy of despair his hands went up and caught something, probably
+a bight in the now slackened painter. In a trice he was gripping the
+rail, and a second later he was safely inside the boat, and standing
+shaking himself like some great Newfoundland dog.
+
+Even now a seemingly insuperable difficulty loomed ahead. He had no
+knife and was unable to let go the rope. Would he be able to take his
+comrades aboard, and would the schooner keep afloat and form a
+breastwork against the sea, or would it sink and, after all his
+battle, drag the boat and him down with it to perdition?
+
+Philosophizing is no help at such a time. He would try for the other
+men. To leave them was unthinkable. Once more fortune was on his side.
+The oars were still in the boat, lashed firmly to the thwarts--a plan
+upon which he had always insisted. Watching his chance, and skilfully
+manoeuvring, he succeeded in approaching the schooner stern first,
+when the cable just allowed him to touch the perpendicular deck. His
+shouts to the others had now quite a different ring. His words were
+commands, leaving no initiative to them. They realized also that their
+one and only chance for life lay in that boat; and returning hope lent
+them the courage which they had hitherto lacked. After a delay which
+seemed hours to the anxious captain at such a time, with skilful
+handling he had got all three aboard.
+
+Once more he was face to face with the problem of the relentless rope,
+but again fortune proved to be on his side. It was the passenger, the
+useless, burdensome passenger, who now held the key to the situation.
+He had sensed the danger in a moment, and instantly handed the skipper
+a large clasp-knife. With it to free the boat from the wreck was but
+the work of a moment.
+
+True, their position in a small open "rodney" in the middle of a dark,
+rough night in the North Atlantic was not exactly enviable, especially
+as the biting winter wind was freezing their clothing solid, and
+steadily sapping their small stock of remaining vitality.
+
+Yet these men felt that they had crossed a gulf almost as wide as that
+between Dives and Lazarus. If they could live, they knew that the boat
+could, for the ice would not clog her enough to sink her before
+daylight, and as for the sea--well, as with the schooner, it was only
+a matter of handling their craft till the light came.
+
+Meanwhile, though they did not then know it, they had drifted a very
+considerable way towards their own homes, so that, rowing in turn and
+constantly bailing out their boat they at length made the shore at the
+little village of Wild Bight, only a few miles away from their own.
+The good folk at once kindled fires, and bathed and chafed the
+half-frozen limbs and chilled bodies of the exhausted crew.
+
+Now the one anxiety of all hands was to get home as quickly as
+possible for fear that some rumor of the disaster in the form of
+wreckage from the schooner might carry to their loved ones news of the
+accident, and lead them to be terrified over their apparent deaths. As
+soon as possible after dawn of day, the skipper started for home,
+having borrowed a small rodney, and the wind still keeping in the same
+quarter. To his intense surprise a large trap-boat manned by several
+men, seeing his little boat, hailed him loudly, and when on drawing
+near it was discovered who they were, proceeded to congratulate him
+heartily on his escape. Already the very thing that he had dreaded
+might happen must surely have occurred.
+
+"How on earth did you know so soon?" he enquired, annoyed.
+
+"As we came along before t' wind we saw what us took to be a dead
+whale. But her turned out to be a schooner upside down. We made out
+she were t' Leading Light, and feared you must all have been drowned,
+as there was no sign of any one on her upturned keel. So we were
+hurrying to your house to find out t' truth."
+
+"Don't say a word about it, boys," said the skipper. "One of you take
+this skiff and row her back to Wild Bight, while I go with the others
+and try and tow in the wreck before the wind shifts. But be sure not
+to say anything about the business at home."
+
+The wind still held fair, and by the aid of a stout line they were
+able, after again finding the vessel, to tow her into their own
+harbour and away to the very bottom of the Bight, where they stranded
+her at high water on the tiny beach under the high crags which
+shoulder out the ocean. By a clever system of pulleys and blocks from
+the trunks of trees in the clefts of the cliff she was hauled upright,
+and held while the water fell. Then the Leading Light was pumped out
+and refloated on the following tide. On examination, she was
+pronounced uninjured by her untimely adventure.
+
+I owe it to John Bourne to say that the messenger forbidden to tell of
+the terrible experience told it to his own wife, and she told
+it--well, anyhow, the skipper's wife had heard of it before the
+Leading Light once more lay at anchor at her owner's wharf. Courage in
+a moment of danger, or to preserve life, is one thing. The courage
+that faces odds when the circumstances are prosaic and the decision
+deferred is a rarer quality. It was a real piece of courage which gave
+the little schooner another chance that fall to retrieve her
+reputation. She was permitted to deliver the goods against all odds,
+and what is more the captain's wife kissed him good-bye with a brave
+face when once again he let the foresail draw, and the Leading Light
+stood out to sea on her second and successful venture.
+
+There is no doubt that when she went to bed in the ice that winter,
+she carried with her the good wishes and grateful thanks of many poor
+and lonely souls; and some have said that when they were walking round
+the head of the cove in which it was the habit of the little craft to
+hibernate, strange sounds like that of a purring cat were ofttimes
+wafted shoreward. "It is only the wind in her rigging," the skeptical
+explained; but a suspicion still lurks in some of our minds that the
+Eskimo are not so far from the truth in conceding souls to inanimate
+objects.
+
+
+
+
+THE RED ISLAND SHOALS
+
+
+The house was fairly shaking in the gale, and any one but Uncle Rube,
+who had lived in it since he put it there forty years before, would
+have been expecting things to happen. But the old man sat dozing in
+his chair beside the crackling stove, and the circling rings of smoke
+rising over his snow-white head were the only signs of life about him.
+The only other occupant of the house was a little girl whom Uncle Rube
+had taken for "company," the year that his wife left him. The coast
+knew that his only lad had been lost aboard some sealer many years
+ago. The little girl was lying stretched out on the wooden settle
+close beside him. Twice already in the dim light of the tiny window,
+now well covered with snow outside and frost within, I had mistaken
+her towsly golden curls for a hearth-brush, she lay so still.
+
+At length, as the cottage gave a more violent lurch than usual, even
+my book failed to keep my mind at rest.
+
+"Aren't you afraid the house is going to blow away, Uncle Rube? You
+remember that our church blew into the harbor, pews and floor as well
+as walls and roof. You could see the pews at low water till the ice
+took them away."
+
+Crack! Crack! Crack!
+
+"No fear of she, Doctor. She's held on this forty years, and I reckon
+she won't bring her anchors home till I does myself."
+
+"Never to go again till the old man died," I hummed.
+
+Something, however, seemed to have roused up Uncle Rube. For,
+carefully laying his pipe in its place on the shelf, he went to the
+door, opening it enough to allow him to peer out through the crack.
+Unfortunately another eddying gust struck the house at that very
+moment, tore the door from his grasp, and by sweeping in and taking
+the fortress from within, very nearly gave it its _coup de grace_. In
+the momentary lull that followed we managed to shut the door, and to
+barricade it from inside.
+
+The child was astir before we got back to the genial warmth of the
+stove. Crack! Crack! Crack! went the little dwelling again, as a more
+than usually fierce blast of the hurricane, strengthened by the
+furiously driving snow, hit it like another hammer of Thor. Crack!
+Crack! The house seemed to swing like a pendulum before it came to
+rest again. I could see that the old man was uneasy.
+
+"What is it, Uncle Rube? What is it?" the little girl cried out
+petulantly.
+
+"Why, nothing, little one, nothing. Only 'tis as well to take a peek
+out on times. There's no knowing when there might be some one astray
+through this kind of weather. 'Tis no hurt to make sure, is it?"
+
+She was a pale-faced little thing, with the lustrous eyes and delicate
+skin that often so pathetically array the prospective victims of the
+White Man's Curse. She had been a tiny, unwanted item in a large
+family of twelve with which "Providence had blessed" a struggling
+friend and neighbor. The arrival of the last had robbed him of his
+only help. "Daddy gived me to Uncle Rube," was her only explanation of
+her being there.
+
+"'T is cold, though," she answered. "It made me dream that you were on
+the old island again, and I was with you, and then the house shook so
+that it woke me up."
+
+For answer he went to an old and well-worn seaman's chest which served
+ordinarily for an additional seat. The reverent care with which he
+turned over the contents would have honored a priest before the
+sanctuary. But eventually he returned with a really beautiful shawl
+which he tenderly wrapped around the child, and sitting down laid her
+head upon his shoulder. In this position she was almost immediately
+asleep again, and, fearing to wake her, I had forborne to break the
+silence. Indeed, I was far enough away from ice and snow and blizzards
+for the moment--the Indian shawl having carried me home to England,
+and the old camphor trunk which my own mother, herself born in India,
+had taught us boys to reverence as the old man did his, filled as
+ours was with specimens of weird patterns and exquisite workmanship.
+
+Uncle Rube had been watching my eyes fixed on the rich mantle that
+contrasted so strangely with every other surrounding.
+
+"I brought it from India when I used to go overseas. I keeps it
+because my Mary loved it so, though she 'lowed it was too rich for t'
+likes o' her to wear it much. But I guess it'll last now. 'T is t'
+last bit o' finery left," he smiled, "and 't is most time to be
+hauling that down. For I reckons Nellie won't last out to need it
+long. Eh, Doctor?" And for a moment a tear sparkled in his merry old
+eyes, as he peered from under his heavy white eyebrows.
+
+"You can always trust me to find a good home for Nellie, Uncle Rube,"
+I answered. "I've forty like her now, and one more won't sink the
+ship. But you know that better than I can tell you." And suddenly it
+flashed over me that Uncle Rube's unexpected visit to our Children's
+Home must had have some relation to the curly head on his shoulder.
+The tear fell on his tanned cheek, and he looked away and coughed. But
+he said nothing.
+
+"What was the old island that Nellie was talking about?" I broke in to
+relieve the situation. "It sounded as if you had been playing Robinson
+Crusoe some time," I added, "and have spun her yarns that you won't
+tell me." For the hope that here might be something which would fill
+in the time during which it was plain that Jack Frost intended to keep
+me prisoner in this bookless cabin, suddenly dawned upon me.
+
+"Island?" he smiled, after a brief pause. "Island? Oh! that was forty
+years ago, when us lost t' old Manxman on t' Red Island Shoals." And
+the _wanderlust_ of Uncle Rube's British blood, stirred by this leap
+back over the passing years, made him once more a bouncing,
+devil-may-care sailor lad. The sign of tears had vanished from his
+cheeks as he rose, and, gently laying the little figure in her old
+corner on the settle, leisurely lit his pipe. Like that of Nathaniel
+Hawthorne's Feather-top it seemed to send renewed youth through his
+veins with every puff he drew. Knowing that he was trying to think,
+and fearing to distract his mind, I again kept a discreet silence. At
+last, just as if he saw the scene again, his eyes closed and his
+splendid shock of long white hair was once more thrown back into its
+accustomed place in the rocking-chair.
+
+"It wasn't a fair deal, Doctor. Not a fair deal. We was sailors in
+those days, just as much as them is in they old tin kettles that
+rattles up and down t' Straits now, for all they big size and they
+gold braid. T' Manxman wouldn't have come by her end as she did if
+stout arms and good seamen could 'a' saved her. Murdered she was,
+Doctor, murdered by this same Jack Frost what's trying to blow us out
+o' house and home right now. But don't you have no uneasiness, Doctor,
+I've got him beat this time, and she'll not drag. No, sir, not till I
+do"--and a fierce spirit gleamed out through his eyes.
+
+We had often wondered why Uncle Rube, the genial, gentle, hospitable
+old man that the coast knew him to be, had come to put down his
+anchors in this wild and almost desolate gorge. Here was a possible
+explanation. The loss of his only lad must have been from this very
+Manxman, and by some strange twist of mentality the father had
+determined to plant himself just as near the scene and circumstance as
+human strength permitted, end there, single-handed if need be, fight
+out the battle of life, with the daily sense of flaunting the enemy
+that had robbed him of his joy in life--his one and only child. For
+with Chestertonian paradox this lonely man's passion was children.
+
+"No. No, he can't move her, Doctor," he repeated, as if he were
+reading my thoughts, as I truly believe that he was. For our minds in
+the North are not crusted like tender feet with horny coverings from
+the chafe of boots, or as are minds beset with telephones, special
+deliveries, and editions of the yellow press.
+
+"No, Uncle Rube, you don't think I'd sit here if I wasn't certain of
+it. You've got him beaten to a frazzle this time."
+
+I was right then, for Uncle Rube "slacked away" as he put it, and took
+up the thread of his story again without further comment, but not
+before apologizing for any undue familiarity into which the
+excitement, of which he was well aware, might have betrayed him.
+
+"Us found t' seals early that year, and panned a voyage of as fine
+young fat as ever a 'swiler' wished for, but t' weather was dirty from
+t' day us struck t' patch, as if Jack Frost was determined us
+shouldn't have 'em. Anyhow, afore we could pick up more'n half what
+us'd killed, a dozen o' our lads got adrift on t' floe, and though
+they got aboard another vessel, us thought 'em was lost. While us
+sailed about looking for 'em, us lost most o' t' pans. So round t'
+beginning of April t' skipper, in company with a score of other
+schooners, put her for the Norrard, in hopes of cutting off some of t'
+old seals in t' swatches. T' slob being very heavy outside, us lay for
+inside Belle Isle, and carried open water most across t' Straits.
+Well, sir, t' wind veered round all of a sudden, just as us was abeam
+of t' Devil's Table, and t' Gulf ice came out of t' Straits fair
+roaring"--and Uncle Rube took another contemplative puff at his pipe.
+
+"It would have been all right if only t' big field had gone off t'
+same time before t' wind. But somehow there were a big block held up
+by t' Islands, and t' western ice just came and hit it clip! It must
+have been all up with us right there but for t' northeast current, and
+that took our vessel like a nutshell and whisked her away in t' heavy
+slob as if to carry her along the Labrador coast. But it proved us was
+not far enough off t' land, for just about midday t' Red Islands come
+up like dark specks out o' t' ice--right ahead t' way we was being
+driven. T' other schooners was caught in t' jam too and drifting with
+us, little black dots scattered over t' surface of t' ice field like
+t' currants in slices of sweet white loaf.
+
+"I believe our skipper knowed it were no good, just as soon as t'
+watch called him to see for hisself. But he made out as if there was
+nothing to it, and ordered all hands to be ready to take t' ice, as
+though 't was a patch o' swiles instead of rocks ahead. But when he
+started getting up grub, and canvas, and all sorts of things, and had
+us put 'em in t' boats, us knew it were no old harps he was thinking
+of.
+
+"Well, sir, it seemed as if it had to be. The old Manxman went as fair
+for them reefs as if she was being hauled there with a capstan. It was
+fair uncanny, and I believes there be more in some one driving her
+there than most people 'lows. Anyhow, tied up as us was in t' heavy
+jam, right fair towards 'em she had to go, and then on to 'em, and up
+over t' reef as if us 'd laid t' course express for 'em, while every
+other vessel round us went clear. T' reef's about five feet out o'
+water at high springs, and about ten feet over surface on t' neaps.
+Springs it was that day, t' moon being nearly full, and t' first crack
+ripped t' bottom clean out o' t' old ship. Us all hustled out on to t'
+ice, taking with us all us could carry, working as quick as ever us
+could, for t' pressure o' wind was rafting t' pans on to t' rocks, and
+almost before us knew it, what remained of her above t' ice had gone
+right on over t' shoals; and long before dusk, I reckons, had gone
+down through it. At any rate, us saw no more of her. Us tried to make
+a bit of shelter for t' night out o' some of t' canvas, but t' wind
+never slacked a peck, and t' rafting ice soon carried away even t' few
+things us had saved.
+
+"Had us known in time us had better have stuck to t' boats, for they
+might have given us a chance. But t' wind being offshore, and t' ice
+running out to sea, made it seem safer to keep to t' rocks. For t' Red
+Island Shoal is only three or four miles from t' land, and there be
+liveyers, as us knew, almost opposite. If t' wind had held in t' same
+direction even then us might have escaped, but it dropped suddenly
+about day dawn, and there were huge swatches o' water between us and
+t' mainland before it came light enough to try and get across. Then
+just as suddenly t' wind clipped round, and t' sea began to make, and
+t' water started breaking right over them rocks.
+
+"Us had managed to build a fire out o' some of t' wreckage saved, and
+had thrown in bits o' canvas and some tarry oakum to make smoke. They
+had seen it too on t' land, and had lit three smoke fires in a line to
+let us know that they would send help if they could. But the veering
+of the wind had made that impossible, for they could only launch small
+skiffs, and they would not have lived more'n a few minutes for t' ice
+making on 'em.
+
+"T' breaking seas and driving spray soon wet all our men through.
+There were forty of us all told. But by night several were either dead
+or beyond help. T' ice had taken our boats, and now t' seas took all
+that was left. T' fire went out just before midday, and our bit o'
+grub got wet and frozen. Next morning t' sea was higher than ever, and
+t' bodies of t' men mostly washed away as they died. All that day t'
+rest of us just held on, some twenty or so; but it was a bare six of
+us that were living t' second night. There was no sleep, and not even
+any lying down if you wanted to live. None of them that slept ever
+woke again. I might have nodded standing up. Guess I must have. But
+t' third morning I was t' only man moving; and though it was as fine a
+shining morning as ever broke, and t' hot sun from t' ice soon put a
+little life in me, I never expected to see another night. Then I must
+have forgotten everything, even t' people on t' shore. For I never saw
+any boat coming, or any one land. Everything had been washed away but
+myself. I had been alone, I reckon, many hours. It seemed ages since I
+'d heard a human voice; but I still remembers some one putting his
+hand on my shoulder. They had been calling, so they told me, but
+somehow I heard nothing. They kept me a good many days before I knowed
+anything--doing for me like a mother would for her boy. But more'n a
+week had gone by before I could tell 'em who I was.
+
+"And then it all came back to me--t' cruel suffering of my shipmates,
+and most of all of Willy, t' only chick or child I ever had. He had my
+coat over his oil frock, and he were so brave, so young, and so
+strong. And he lived till morning--long after great strong men had
+perished--and me able to do nothing. Then his poor frozen body was
+washed to and fro in that terrible surf, as if my boy wouldn't leave
+me even if he was dead. Why I lived on, and why it pleased God to
+spare my poor life I never knowed, or shall know, Doctor, till he
+tells me himself."
+
+He was sitting bolt upright now, looking me straight in the face. But
+the fire died suddenly from Uncle Rube's eyes, and, exhausted by the
+effort and the memories the story brought back to him, he fell back in
+the chair as if he had been struck by some knock-out blow. The thud of
+the fall once more woke the child, and, seeing me jump to the old
+man's help, she began to sob piteously. It was only for a moment,
+however. The splendid vitality of the man, toughened by his hard life
+and simple fare, soon made him master of himself again, and,
+apologizing for giving me trouble, he took up the child, crooning over
+her to get her quiet.
+
+"Forty years I've been living here, Doctor," he went on. "Forty
+years--and t' last ten I've been all alone. Not a living soul have I
+had t' chance to save all these long years, though God knows I've kept
+as good a lookout as one watch could. Then Neighbor Blake lost his
+helpmate like I had mine, and he let me share up with him, and have
+Nellie. He wanted his boys to help him get food and things for t'
+rest, so a girl was what he gave me. And I couldn't have had a boy,
+Doctor, anyhow. Willy's place will never be filled for me, till he
+comes himself and fills it, and that won't be long now either." He
+looked at his pipe, which had gone out, and then continued: "No, I'm
+not one o' them as can take a new wife almost as soon as t' first
+one's gone"--and then suddenly: "But it's time to boil t' kettle.
+You'se getting hungry, I 'lows, and me chattering like a fool, and not
+thinking of anything beyond my own troubles. I'm forgetting you must
+be worriting over being kept so long in this bit of a tilt, but you'll
+not get away till morning, so just make yourself as miserable as you
+can!"
+
+As he bustled around filling the kettle with ice for water, and
+struggling to heat up a small molasses barrel in order to let out
+some "sweetness" for our tea, I had made a bird, a boat, and a couple
+of darts out of paper, as overtures to the lady of the house. Before
+the humble meal was spread she had the room ringing with her laughter,
+as she darted now here, now there, and at last succeeded in hitting
+the old man himself almost in the eye. Many times that meal has come
+back to my memory. The rough bare boards of the walls, naked but for
+one old picture of a horse cut from a magazine, carefully pasted
+upside down, and probably designed chiefly to cover some defective
+spot that was admitting too much coldness; the crazy table shaking
+with every gust and causing a tiny kerosene lamp to flare up and
+menace the dim religious darkness by depositing even more lamp-black
+than was its wont on its already negrine globe; the meagre board of
+dark bread, "oleo," and molasses; the weird minstrelsy of the
+hurricane--the whole a harmony of poverty and war. Yet the memory
+brings deeper pleasure to my mind than that of many costly
+banquets--and even I have eaten from plates of silver with implements
+of gold. For in the flickering light of the crackling logs I can still
+see the joy of the old man's kindly face over the boisterous happiness
+of his quaint ward, the dance in the eyes of the merry child as some
+colored candies placed in my nonny-bag by my wife fell somehow from
+the sky right on to the table before her. The telling of his story,
+never before mentioned to any one but his wife and foster child, but
+kept like some vendetta wrong waiting for revenge in his rebellious
+heart these many years, seemed to have renewed his youth. A merrier,
+happier party it has never been my lot to share in; and now that I
+know the pathos of the last chapter written in this strange life, I
+rejoice more than ever that for that night, anyhow, the enemy that
+haunted him overreached, and the very blizzard proved the key for one
+evening at least of freedom from his obsession.
+
+We were away before daylight, and I never saw Uncle Rube again. Life,
+it seems, went along tranquilly with him the following winter. As
+usual he kept his watch and ward on the cliffs by the Red Island
+Shoals. Then the fatal 10th of April came round. Once again it broke
+upon the solitary figure of the old man straining his eyes from his
+coign of vantage on the dread shoals of the Red Islands.
+Unquestionably he saw again reënacted there the weird tragedy that
+nearly half a century before had broken his life, bringing home with a
+strange fascination the moving picture to his very heart. But with it
+this spring he witnessed also a scene that for many years every man on
+the coast had prayed for, but no man had been privileged to take part
+in. The wind had come out of the Straits and the Gulf ice was driving
+swiftly towards the great Atlantic, exactly as it had done on the
+memorable day now forty years before. Once again there was ice in huge
+sheets jammed against the great cliffs of Belle Isle, and clear water
+between. Suddenly the straining eyes of the old sailor shone with a
+totally new light. He jumped to his feet, and with hands shading his
+starting eyes, stood motionless like a statue on the pedestal of his
+lookout, now white as the purest marble in its winter mantle.
+
+Was it age? Or the final break-up of his mind? No, neither--he was
+certain of it. There were black things moving on the white ice, and
+driving with it once more, just as the Manxman had, straight for the
+shoals of the Red Islands. Nearer and nearer they came. There could be
+no doubt now. They moved. They could be no land débris, no shadows
+from the rafted ice sheets. So quickly was the floe running that just
+as he remembered it, before anything could be done, clip! and the
+advancing edge had again struck the standing ice, and woe betide
+anything that was in or on it, anywhere near the line of contact. As a
+dazed mouse watches the cat that is toying with it, the rigid figure
+on the hilltop gazed at the impending tragedy--too far off for his
+material brain correctly to interpret the image on his actual retina.
+He was seeing, though he failed to realize it, the same impress that
+emotion had recorded on the tablets of his very soul.
+
+The realism of it was too much for human nature, and Uncle Rube, his
+hands covering his face, started running homewards over the familiar
+pathway he had trodden so often. Even as he reached the cottage in the
+gulch he was aware of loud shouting, and of a team of huskies
+literally tearing over the snow. They were making as if to pass his
+house without stopping, as no man ever did that lonely spot, if only
+for the cup of tea and the moment's "spell," and the kindly stimulus
+of the old man's company. Yes, the driver was shouting, shouting to
+him. "Ships, Uncle Rube!"--"What is it?"--"Ships on the ice!" the old
+man heard. Didn't he know it only too well?
+
+Another moment and the modern Paul Revere, with dogs for horses and
+ice and snow for a highway, was flying on his self-imposed journey,
+carrying his slogan from house to house and village to village along
+the sparsely inhabited coast-line. As Uncle Rube opened his door and
+peered into the little room, to his infinite joy he saw the golden
+curls in their proper place on the old settle by the stove, while the
+regular quiet breathing assured him that the child had not yet waked
+from sleep. As he softly tiptoed around, seeking the outfit he needed
+for his great adventure, the barrenness of the house, the poverty of
+it, struck him for the first time. God knows he had never thought of
+"things," except as he had needed them for himself or others; and now
+he wished suddenly that he had more of them for the child's sake.
+Suppose, now that his "day" had at last arrived, he should not return
+from the long-looked-for quest. He became strangely conscious that he
+had nothing laid up for his darling, the child who now filled the
+whole horizon of his cramped life. Her very clothes were in tatters.
+The Indian shawl, that I had seen pressed into the service against his
+enemy the Frost King, was now only a thing of rags and patches. Were
+it not for his own big coat, even at this moment his Princess would be
+shivering with cold. Furtively he glanced round for his rope and gaff,
+relics of the last time he had gone on the ice. All these years he had
+kept them ready for "the day," never able to break the spell woven
+around them on the ill-fated Manxman. There was his nonny-bag, in it
+already the sugar and oatmeal, the ration of pork, and the small
+bottle of brandy, that each year he kept ready when the 10th of March
+came round--the day on which the sealers leave for the ice fields. The
+new idea that his life was of value for the child's sake sent a
+half-guilty feeling through him, lest he be caught looking at these
+implements, where they lay with his old converted flintlock gun on the
+rack above the still glowing stove. Sh! The child on the settle
+muttered something in her sleep, and the old man, rigid as an ice
+block, stood listening to her breathing, as if he were a burglar
+robbing a rich man's bedroom, in which the owner himself lay sleeping.
+But she quieted down again, and once more he breathed freely.
+
+At last he was ready, all but the big coat. Well, he could do without
+that. If he were not back before dark the difference it would make
+would anyhow be negligible. There was no time to delay. He must go now
+or never; and the indomitable old warrior stooped over to kiss the
+child good-bye, though he dare only touch with his lips the golden
+hair, for fear of waking her. Then in his simple way he breathed a
+wordless prayer, committing her to God's keeping, and, stealthily
+letting himself out, made straight for the likeliest part of the
+headland from which to take the ice.
+
+As one thinks now of that old man setting out alone over that endless
+ocean of ice, one wonders if one has one's self ever attempted
+anything heroic. But Uncle Rube thought only of one thing that
+morning--of foiling his arch enemy on the Red Island Shoals; and
+though nearly fourscore years had passed over him, he felt like a lad
+of twenty as he strode rapidly along towards the landwash.
+
+Of course he must haul his boat, but that he could easily do. Had he
+not built her himself expressly, small, and of half-inch planking over
+the lightest of frames, with two bilge streaks to act as runners, and
+flat-bottomed that she should drag well over snow? When at length he
+had launched her over the "ballicater" ice, and had pulled her clear
+of the cracks by the landwash, he stopped and spent a grudgingly
+spared moment in lighting his pipe. Then, heigho, and away for the
+open sea--out on to which he marched with his head erect and his old
+heart dauntless, like the peaceful Minute-Men of 1776.
+
+Meanwhile an ever-increasing crowd of men, women, and even children
+were pouring from apparently nowhere out on to the floe. The young men
+were "copying," as we say, over the ice, that is, jumping from pan to
+pan as they ventured far out from the land seeking the seals which the
+running ice, driving out before the wind, had brought down from the
+Gulf, and then killing them, and hauling them back into safety.
+
+It was from them that I subsequently learned the story of the day.
+Before night fell the wind had risen, and blew directly from the land.
+Snow began to fall soon after midday, and by sundown a living blizzard
+howled over the frozen ocean. None of the distant neighbors had seen
+Uncle Rube set out; none of them even knew that he had left his
+house; no one before ever heard of his doing such a thing as start
+out on the ice alone. Nor was it till the next day that a half-frozen
+little girl, who was heard crying in the snow in front of a neighbor's
+house, disclosed the secret that Uncle Rube was missing.
+
+How had they known at all that there were seals on the ice that day?
+Known? Why, Mark Seaforth had gone all along the coast telling them
+early in the morning. He had got the news from the lighthouse, and it
+was the oldest of customs to give all hands a chance whenever the
+seals were sighted driving alongshore.
+
+It had not been the material ear drum to which the old man had
+listened for his sailing orders. On that day especially he had heard
+with other ears, and all the coast freed Mark from any blame for the
+old sailor's having understood "ships" instead of "seals."
+
+Late in the sealing season of that same year the good ship Artemis, a
+stout, steel-sheathed ice hunter, a unit of the modern fleet that have
+long ago displaced the wooden schooners that once in hundreds followed
+the seal herds, was steaming north to finish up shooting old harps in
+the swatches, having lost a number of her pans in bad weather farther
+south. Seals were scarce on the west side, and the wireless had warned
+the skipper that a patch of old seals was passing eastward through the
+Straits. Cape Bauld Light had been sighted, and so also had the new
+light on Belle Isle. The barrelmen were eagerly scanning the ice for
+any signs of the expected herd.
+
+"Something black on the ice on the port bow!" shouted the man from the
+foretop.
+
+"Where away?" answered the master of the bridge.
+
+"About four points to the northwest."
+
+"Hard astarboard!" from the bridge.
+
+"Starboard hard!" from the wheel, and the big ship wheeled a course
+direct for the Red Island Shoals.
+
+"Steady!" from the bridge.
+
+"Steady it is!" And the Artemis wheeled a little more, and leaving the
+shoals on her right, steamed towards the object that had attracted the
+attention of the watch. The bridge master, viewing it through his
+glasses, suddenly stopped short, fixing his gaze on the spot with far
+more than his wonted intensity.
+
+"What is it, John?" he said to the watchman. "Seems queer to me. It's
+no seal, I'll swear."
+
+John took the glasses, and, putting them to his eyes, made out at once
+what the object was.
+
+"'T is a small boat upside down--and yes, there's a man's body for
+certain, stretched out beside it," he announced in a subdued voice.
+
+"Go slow!" to the engine man.
+
+"Slow!" rang back the watchful engineer.
+
+"Stop her!" and over the side went half a dozen men.
+
+"Take that hatch over, and bring in the man off the ice."
+
+All the crew, some three hundred blackened figures, were now leaning
+over the rail to see the evidence of this latest tragedy. No one knew
+him, or could even guess where he and his boat had come from, or on
+what strange quest he had been bound. Those ice pans might have come
+from anywhere along the hundreds of miles between Anticosti and Cape
+Chidley. To these men, it was just the body of an old man, a stranger.
+Not much loss. He could not have lived many more years, anyhow.
+Probably no one would miss him. No need to trouble over it. A prompt
+burial at sea, thought the captain, would be as good as on the land,
+where a grave was an impossibility now, anyhow. Besides, he was
+obviously an old seaman, and what could be more appropriate? Moreover,
+the crew would rather have it so than to carry the corpse around while
+they were seal-hunting.
+
+There was no parson aboard, but the skipper was a God-fearing man. So
+the flags were hauled to half-mast, the ship hove to the wind, the
+crew called on deck just as they were, and when the skipper had read a
+brief prayer, "in sure and certain hope" the body of Uncle Reuben
+Marston, vanquished by his enemy at last, was committed to the deep
+within a biscuit toss of the Red Island Shoals.
+
+
+THE END
+
+The Riverside Press
+CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
+U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Labrador Days, by Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Labrador Days, by Wilfred Thomason Grenfell.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Labrador Days, by Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Labrador Days
+       Tales of the Sea Toilers
+
+Author: Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
+
+Release Date: March 15, 2008 [EBook #24832]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LABRADOR DAYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank, Jeannie Howse and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+
+<div class="tr">
+<p class="cen" style="font-weight: bold;">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+<br />
+<p class="noin">This e-text is full of Newfoundland and Labrador dialect, unusual spelling has been preserved.</p>
+<p class="noin">Click on the image to see a larger version.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<div class="img">
+<a href="images/frontis.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/frontis.jpg" width="60%" alt="NORTHWARD HO!" /></a>
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">NORTHWARD HO!</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+
+<h1>Labrador Days</h1>
+
+<h3>TALES OF THE SEA TOILERS</h3>
+
+<br />
+
+<h3>By</h3>
+
+<h2 style="margin-bottom: -1px;">Wilfred Thomason Grenfell</h2>
+<h4 style="margin-top: -1px;">M.D. (OXON.), C.M.G.</h4>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<div class="img">
+<img border="0" src="images/logo.png" width="10%" alt="publisher's logo" />
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h5>BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br />
+HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY<br />
+The Riverside Press Cambridge<br />
+1919</h5>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+
+<h4>COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY WILFRED THOMASON GRENFELL<br />
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED</h4>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="toc" id="toc"></a><hr />
+<br />
+
+<h3>Contents</h3>
+<br />
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" width="70%" summary="Table of Contents">
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc" width="80%"><a href="#TROUBLE_ON_THE_SEA">There's Trouble on the Sea</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr" width="20%">1</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#NANCY">Nancy</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">19</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#SALLYS_TURNS">Sally's "Turns"</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">38</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#BIG_FEE">The Doctor's Big Fee</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">61</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#TWO_CATS-PAWS">Two Cat's-Paws</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">73</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#THE_TRIPLE_ALLIANCE">The Triple Alliance</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">92</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#PORTLAND_BILL">Portland Bill</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">113</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#KAIACHOUOUK">Kaiachououk</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">130</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#TWO_CHRISTMASES">Two Christmases</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">148</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#THE_LEADING_LIGHT">The Leading Light</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">181</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#RED_ISLAND">The Red Island Shoals</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">203</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="TROUBLE_ON_THE_SEA" id="TROUBLE_ON_THE_SEA"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span><br />
+
+<h1>Labrador Days</h1>
+
+<h3>THERE'S TROUBLE ON THE SEA<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>The ice in the big bay had broken up suddenly that year in the latter
+part of March before a tremendous ocean swell heaving in beneath it.
+The piles of firewood and the loads of timber for the summer
+fishing-rooms on all the outer islands were left standing on the
+landwash. The dog-teams usually haul all this out at a stretch gallop
+over the glare ice which overlies in April the snow-covered surface of
+winter. For weeks, heavy pack ice, driven to and fro with the tides,
+but ever held in the bay with the onshore winds, had prevented the
+small boats' freighting more than their families and the merest
+necessities to the summer stations.</p>
+
+<p>So it came to pass that long after the usual time, indeed after the
+incoming shoals of fish were surely expected, John Mitchell's firewood
+still lay on the bank, some twenty miles up <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>the bay. When at last a
+spell of warm and offshore winds had driven the ice mostly clear, John
+announced to his eager lads that "come Monday, if the wind held
+westerly," he would go up the bay for a load. What a clamour ensued,
+for every one wanted to be one of the crew to go to the winter home.
+The lads, like ducklings, "fair loved the water"; and though John
+needed Jim, and was quite glad to have Tom, now of the important age
+of fourteen years, he did his best, well seconded by the wise old
+grandmother, to persuade Neddie, aged twelve, and Willie, aged ten, to
+stay behind.</p>
+
+<p>"You be too small, Ned, yet awhile. Next year perhaps father will take
+you," was the old lady's first argument. '"Twill be cold in t' boat,
+boy, and you'll perish altogether."</p>
+
+<p>"Father'll look after me, Grannie, and I'll wrap up ever so warm. Do
+let me go. There's a dear grannie."</p>
+
+<p>The curly-haired, rosy-cheeked lads were so insistent and so winsome
+that the old lady confessed to me afterwards, "They somehow got <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>round
+my heart as they mostly does, and I let 'em go, though sore against my
+mind, Doctor."</p>
+
+<p>Of course, Willie had to go if Neddie went, for "they'd be company
+while t' men worked, and he could carry small things as well as t'
+rest. He did so want to go."</p>
+
+<p>When at length Monday came, and a bright sun shone over a placid sea,
+the grandmother's last excuse to keep them at home was lost. Her
+consent was finally secured, and, before a light, fair wind the women
+watched, not without anxiety, so many of those whom they held dearer
+than life itself sail "out into the deep."</p>
+
+<p>Progress was slow, for the wind fell away almost altogether as the
+morning passed, but the glorious warmth and exuberance of life made
+the time seem as nothing. The picnic in the big trap boat was as good
+as a prince's banquet. For the fun of "boiling t' kettle yourself,"
+and an appetite bred of a day on the water, made the art of French
+cooks and the stimulus of patent relishes pale into insignificance.
+During the afternoon they "had a spurt <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>singing," and as the words of
+hymns were the only ones they knew, the old favourites were sung and
+resung. The little lads especially led the programme; and the others
+remembered Willie singing for them, as a solo, a childish favourite
+called "Bring Them In."</p>
+
+<p>It was just about seven o'clock in the evening. The boat was well out
+in the bay, between three and four miles from land, when John noticed
+a fresh "cat's-paw" of wind, just touching the water here and there.
+There was scarcely a cloud in the sky, and nothing whatever to suggest
+a squall. But as he looked again, a suspicious wisp of white water
+lifted suddenly from the surface a few yards to windward. Like a flash
+he remembered that the boat had no ballast in her, and was running
+with her sheets made fast. Instinctively he leaned forward to let go
+the foresail, but at the same moment the squall struck the boat like
+the hammer of Thor. Relieved of the fore canvas, the trap should have
+come to the wind in an instant. Instead, leaning over heavily with the
+immense pressure, she staggered and reeled <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>as if some unseen enemy
+had gripped her. Scarcely perceptibly she gave ground, and a lifetime
+seemed to elapse to John's horror-stricken mind as she fell slowly
+over, as if fighting for every inch, and conscious of her terrible
+responsibilities for the issues at stake.</p>
+
+<p>At last, in spite of her stout resistance, and before John could climb
+aft and get at the main sheet, or do anything to relieve the boat, her
+stern was driven right under water by the sheer pressure of the storm.
+Slowly she turned over, leaving all of her occupants struggling in the
+icy water, for there were many pieces of ice still "knocking around."</p>
+
+<p>The slow rate at which the boat had gone over was one point in their
+favour, however, for it enabled even the little lads to get clear of
+the gunwale; and by the help of John and Jim all five were soon
+huddled on the upturned keel of the boat. The boys being all safe for
+the moment, John rubbed his eyes, and, raising himself as high as he
+could, viewed the situation. Alas! the squall had come to stay.
+Everywhere now the placid surface of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>sea was ruffled and angry.
+The rising, flaky clouds convinced him even in that instantaneous
+glance that the brewing storm offered them little chance for their
+lives.</p>
+
+<p>Far away to leeward, not less than four miles distant, the loom of the
+land was only just visible. Well he realized that it would be many
+long hours before the boat, with her masts and sails still fast in,
+could drive near enough to enable them to make a landing. For, like
+most fishermen in these icy waters, none of them knew how to swim.
+Moreover, he soon found that the anchor, fast to the warp, had fallen
+out, and would certainly sooner or later touch bottom&mdash;thus robbing
+them of their one and only chance of escape by preventing the boat
+from drifting into shallow water.</p>
+
+<p>So cold was it already that it appeared as if a few moments at most
+must chill the life out of at least the younger children.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold Willie on, Ned, and ask God to bring us all safe home," said
+John. He told me that he felt somehow as if their prayers were more
+likely to be heard than his own. He then <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>crawled forward, having made
+up his mind to try and cut the anchor free, and to get the rope to tie
+round the boat and hold on the children. His determination was
+fortified by his anxiety; but it was a forlorn hope, for it meant
+lowering himself right into the water, and he knew well enough that he
+could not swim a yard. Then it was done, and he was once more clinging
+to the keel with the rope in his hand. It was not difficult to get a
+bight round the boat, and soon he had the children firmly lashed on
+and the boat was again making fair progress before the wind to the
+opposite shore.</p>
+
+<p>Hours seemed to go by. The children were sleepy. Apparently they no
+longer felt the cold, and the average man might have thought that it
+was a miracle on their behalf, for God knows they had prayed hard
+enough for one. But John recognized only too well that it was that
+merciful harbinger of the last long sleep, which had overtaken more
+than one of his best friends, when adrift in the storms of winter. And
+still the age-long journey dragged hopelessly on.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>At last the awful suspense, a thousand times more cruel for their
+being unable to do anything, was broken by even the welcome incident
+of a new danger. Breakers were visible in the direct course of their
+drift. "Maybe she'll turn over, Jim," whispered the skipper. "I reckon
+we must loose t' children for fear she does." This being effected as
+promptly as their condition allowed, Tom was told off to do nothing
+but watch them and keep them safe. For already the men had planned, if
+the slightest chance offered, to try and get the masts out while she
+lay on her beam-ends.</p>
+
+<p>The breakers? Well, they knew they were only of small extent. There
+was a pinnacle of rock and a single sea might possibly carry them over
+it; but the peril of being washed off was none the less. Now they
+could see the huge rise of the combing sea with its frowning black top
+rushing at the shoal, and smashing into an avalanche of snowy foam.
+They could hear the dull roar of the sea, and its mighty thunder, as
+it curled over and fell furiously upon itself, for want of other
+prey.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>"Good-bye, Jim," whispered the skipper. "The children is all right
+either way, but one of us may come through. Tell 'em home it was all
+right if I goes."</p>
+
+<p>Almost as he stopped speaking, the rising swell caught the craft, and
+threw her once more on her beam-ends. As for a moment she lay on her
+side, the men attempted to free the masts, but could do nothing, for
+the boat almost immediately again fell over, bottom up. But a second
+comber, lifting her with redoubled violence, threw them all clear of
+the boat, turned her momentarily right way up, and then breaking into
+the masts and sails, tipped her for the third time upside down,
+flinging her at the same instant in mad fury clear of the angry water.
+So violent had been the blow which had thrown them clear, that they
+must inevitably all have perished, had not the last effort of the
+breakers actually hurled the boat again almost on the top of them.
+Clutching as at a straw, the two men caught the loops of the rope
+which they had wound round their craft, but they could see nothing of
+the other three. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>Suddenly, from almost directly under the boat, Tom's
+head appeared within reach. Grabbing him, they tried to drag him up on
+to the keel. Rolling in the wake of the breakers which still followed
+them with vicious pertinacity, they twice lost their hold of the boy,
+their now numbed limbs scarcely giving them strength to grasp
+anything. It seemed of little account at the time either way. But
+their third attempt was successful, and they got the lad once more on
+to the bottom of the boat.</p>
+
+<p>Of the children they saw no more. Only when Tom had revived somewhat
+could he explain that the capsizing boat had caught them all three
+under it as in a trap, that he had succeeded, still clinging to
+Willie, to get him from under it, and that he was still holding his
+brother when he first came to the surface. After that he did not
+remember anything till they were calling to him on the boat's bottom.
+The men were sure that it was so&mdash;that because he had been true to the
+last to his trust, he had been such a deadweight the first two times
+he came to the surface.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>And now began again the cruel, wearisome, endless drift of the
+water-logged boat toward the still distant shore, lightened but little
+by the loss of the loved children. There was no longer any doubt left
+in their minds; unless something could be done, none of them would
+possibly live to tell the tale. It was the still active mind and
+indomitable courage of the skipper which found the solution. Crawling
+close to Jim, he said: "There's only one chance. We must turn her
+over, and get in her, or perish. I'm going to try and loose t' masts."</p>
+
+<p>Swinging himself once more into the bitter-cold water, he succeeded in
+finding the slight ropes which formed the stays, and though it is
+almost incredible, he actually managed to cut and free them all,
+before Jim hauled him back, more dead than alive, on to the boat's
+bottom. At all hazards they must right the boat and climb into her.
+Their plans were soon made. Tom, placed between the two men, was to do
+exactly as they did. Stretching themselves out, and holding the keel
+rope in their hands, they <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>all threw themselves over on one side,
+lying as nearly as possible at full length. The boat responded
+instantly, and their only fear was that, as she had done before, she
+might again go right over on them. But there were no masts now to hold
+the wind, so she stood up on her beam-ends. As the water took the
+weights of the men, it was all they could do to get her over.
+Moreover, the task was rendered doubly difficult and perilous by their
+exhaustion and inability to swim when the keel to which they were
+holding went under water. But their agility and self-reliance, evolved
+from a life next to Nature, stood them in good stead, and soon all
+three were actually standing inside the water-logged boat. The oars,
+lashed under the seats, were still in her, and, though almost up to
+their waists in water, they began sculling and rowing as hard as their
+strength and the dangerous roll of the sunken boat would permit.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the surf on the sandy beach drew near, and now, keeping her
+head before the breeze, they rolled along shorewards. Again, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>however,
+it became apparent that a new departure must be made. For a heavy surf
+was breaking on the shore which they were approaching, that ran off
+shallow for half a mile. There was not water enough to let the boat
+approach the land, and they realized that they had not sufficient
+strength left to walk through the breakers. Yet struggle as they
+would, the best they could do was to keep the boat very slightly
+across the wind.</p>
+
+<p>John maintains now that it was the direct intervention of Providence
+which spared them just when once more all hope seemed over. They
+suddenly noticed that while still forging shorewards they were also
+drifting rapidly into the bay. It was the first uprush of the strong
+rising tide, and they might yet be carried to a deep-water landing.
+The play of hope and fear made the remaining hours an agony of
+suspense. What would be the end of it all seemed a mere gamble. Every
+mark on the approaching shore was now familiar to them. It had become,
+they knew well enough, a question of life or death where the drifting
+boat would touch <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>the strand. Now it seemed impossible that she should
+clear the shallow surf, whose hungry roar sounded a death-knell to any
+one handed to its tender mercies. Now it seemed certain that she would
+be carried up the bay without touching land at all. Hope rose as a
+little later it became obvious that she would clear the sands.</p>
+
+<p>Now the rocky headland, round which their winter house stood, was
+coming rapidly into view. As the mouth of the bay narrowed, the pace
+of the current increased, and for a time they seemed to be hopelessly
+rushing past their one hope of landing. The excitement and the
+exertion of putting might and main into the oars had made them almost
+forget the wet and cold and darkness, now only relieved by the last
+afterglow of the setting sun. But it all appeared of no avail; they
+were still some hundred yards off as they passed the point. It might
+as well have been some hundred miles, for they drifted helplessly into
+the bay, which was widening out again.</p>
+
+<p>Despair, however, still failed to grip them, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>and apparently
+hopelessly they kept toiling on at the sweeps. Once more a miracle
+happened, and they were really apparently approaching the point a
+second time. The very violence of the tide had actually saved them,
+creating as it did a strong eddy, which with the little aid from the
+oars, bore them now steadily toward the land. Nearer and nearer they
+came. They were half a mile inside the head. Only a few boat-lengths
+now separated them from the beach. Would they be able to get ashore!</p>
+
+<p>Strange as it sounds, any and all speculations they might have with
+regard to where the boat would strike bottom were to be disappointed.
+Her keel never touched bottom at all. It was her gunwale which first
+bumped into the steep rocks&mdash;and that at a point only a few yards from
+their winter house.</p>
+
+<p>Even now their troubles were not over. Only the skipper could stand
+erect. Tom, dragged out by the others, lay an inert mass on the soft
+bed of crisp creeping plants which cover the bank. Jim was able to
+totter a few <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>yards, fell, and finally crawled part of the way to the
+house door. But the skipper, in spite of swollen and blackened legs,
+held out not only to get a fire lit, but to bring in the other two,
+and finally wean back their frozen limbs to life.</p>
+
+<p>It took two days to regain strength enough to haul up the boat and
+refit her; and then the sorrowful little company proceeded on their
+homeward journey. It was a sad home-coming after the brave start they
+had made. It was a terrible message which they had to carry to the
+anxious hearts awaiting them. For nothing in heaven or earth can
+replace the loss of loved ones suddenly taken from us.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been cruising in boats five and forty years," said John. "I were
+out two days and a night with t' Bonnie Lass when she were lost on t'
+Bristle Rocks, and us brought in only two of her crew alive. And I was
+out on t' ice in t' blizzard when Jim Warren drove off, and us brought
+he back dead to his wife next day. But this was the worst of all. As
+us passed t' rocky shoal, it seemed only a few minutes since us
+capsized on it; and I knowed Ned and Willie <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>must be right alongside.
+As us passed Snarly Bight, out of which t' puff came, us thought of t'
+boys singing their little songs, and know'd that they should be with
+us now; and when t' Lone Point loomed up, round which youse turn to
+make our harbour, us all sort of wished one more puff would come along
+and finish t' job properly. For it wouldn't have been hard to join t'
+children again, but to face t' women without 'em seemed more'n us
+could do.</p>
+
+<p>"How to break the news us had talked a dozen times, but never got no
+nearer what to say. As us ran in at last for t' stage, us could see
+that Mother had hoisted t' flag t' Company gived we t' year us bought
+furs for they, and that Grannie was out waiting for us on t' landwash.</p>
+
+<p>"All I remembers was that scarce a word was spoke. They know'd it. I
+believe they know'd it before they seed t' boat. If only them had
+cried I'd have been able to say something. But ne'er a word was spoke.
+So I says, 'Jim, go up and pull t' flag down quick. Us has no right to
+having t' flags flying for we.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>"Then Grannie, she gets her voice, and she says, 'No, Jimmie, don't
+you do it. It be just right as it is. For 't is for Neddie's and
+Willie's home-coming it be flying.'"</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="NANCY" id="NANCY"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>NANCY<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>We had just reached hospital from a long trip "on dogs." My driver was
+slipping the harnesses off the animals and giving them the customary
+friendly cuff and words of praise. Among the crowd which always
+gathered to greet us, one friend, after giving us the usual welcome of
+"What cheer, Doctor?" noticed apparently that I had a new winter
+<i>compagnon de voyage</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Joe's not with you, Doctor? Gone sawing t' winter, I hear. T' boys
+say he's got a fine bulk of timber cut already."</p>
+
+<p>"Working for the lumber camp, I suppose, Uncle Abe," I replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit of it," he chuckled. "'T is sawing for hisself he's gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Eh? Wants lumber, does he? Going to build a larger fishing boat?"</p>
+
+<p>"Youse can call it that if you likes, Doctor, for 't will be a fine
+fish he lands into it. But I reckon 't is more of a dock he'll need."
+And <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>the rest joined in hearty laughter at the sally.</p>
+
+<p>"'T is a full-rigged schooner he be going to moor there, with bunting
+enough to burn, and as saucy as a cyclone," chimed in another, while a
+third 'lowed, "'T is a great girl he's after, if he gets her, anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"Nancy's the pluckiest little girl for many a mile along this coast or
+she wouldn't be what she is, and her family so poor."</p>
+
+<p>A week or so later I fell in with half a dozen boisterous lads driving
+their sledges home laden with new wood. It proclaimed to the harbour
+that the rumour of Joe's big bulk of timber being ready so early had
+not been exaggerated. It was only then that I learned that he had in
+addition quickly got his floors down before the ground froze, so that
+he might finish building before the winter set in.</p>
+
+<p>Many hands make light work and every one was Joe's friend, so by the
+end of December the new house had not only been sheathed in, but
+roofed and floored, ready for occupation.</p>
+
+<p>In our scattered communities, isolated not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>only from one another, but
+also largely from the world outside, the simple incidents of everyday
+life afford just as much interest as the more artificial attractions
+of civilization. Every one on our coast in winter has to have a dog
+team, no matter how poor he is, in order to haul home his firewood. In
+summer there is no time and there are no roads, while in winter the
+snow makes the whole land one broad highway. There is no better fun
+than a "randy" over the snow on a light komatik. At this time even our
+older people go on "joy rides," visiting along the coast. Many a
+moonlight night, after the day's work is over, when the reflection
+from the snow makes it almost as light as day, an unexpected but
+welcome visitor comes knocking at one's door, asking for a shake-down
+just for the night.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Joe's secret was soon common property. His own enthusiasm,
+however, engendered a reflection of itself in other people, and almost
+before he had the cottage sheathed inside, and really "ready for
+launching," from here and there every one had come in, bringing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>at
+any rate the necessities to make it possible to put out to sea on the
+new voyage. Accordingly I was not surprised one evening a little later
+when a low knock at my door, followed by a summons to come in,
+revealed Joe standing somewhat sheepishly, cap in hand, in the
+entrance. Once the subject was broached, however, the matter was soon
+arranged, Joe having a direct way about him which ignored
+difficulties, and I, being a Justice of the Peace, was soon pledged to
+act as parson at the function.</p>
+
+<p>Everything went well. We struck glorious weather for the day of the
+wedding. Little deputations streamed in from other villages; gay flags
+and banners, though some of fearsome home-devised patterns, made a
+brave contrast to the white mantle of snow; while we supplemented the
+usual salvo of guns from portentous and historic fowling-pieces with a
+halo of distress rockets, which we burned from our hospital boat,
+which was lying frozen in our harbour.</p>
+
+<p>The excitement of the affair, like all other things human, soon passed
+away, and the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>ordinary routine of the wood-path, the fur-path, and
+seal-hunting, the saw-pit, the net-loft, and boat-building, turned our
+attention to our own affairs once more. The new venture was soon an
+old one, only we were glad to see, as we passed along the road, a
+fresh column of blue smoke rising, and speaking of another centre of
+life and activity in our village.</p>
+
+<p>Once more, as the sun crept north of the line, the ice bonds of our
+harbour began to melt. Once more the mighty ocean outside, freed from
+the restraint of the Arctic floe, generously sent surging into the
+landwash the very power we needed, and on which we depend, to break up
+and carry out the heavy ice accumulation of the winter, which must
+otherwise bar us altogether from the prosecution of our calling.</p>
+
+<p>My own vessel had been scraped and repainted. Her spars bright with
+new varnish, her funnel gay with our blue bunting flag contrasting
+with the yellow, she had come to the wharf for the last time before
+leaving for the long summer cruise among the Labrador <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>fishing fleet.
+Indeed, I was just working over the ship's course in my chart-room,
+when once more Joe, cap in hand, stood in the doorway&mdash;evidently with
+something very much on his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Joe? Come in and shut the door and sit down. You are only
+just in time, for I was going to ring for steam as you came along."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Doctor," he said, "'tis this way. I's only got hook and line to
+fish with as you knows; and that don't give a fellow a chance of
+putting anything by, no matter how well he does. There's no knowing
+now but what I may need more still. It isn't like when a man was alone
+in the world. I was aboard Captain Jackson of the Water Lily, what
+come in last night, and he says that he'd take me to the Labrador
+fishing, and give me a share in his cod trap, being as he is short of
+a hand. Well, 'tis a fine chance, Doctor. But Nancy won't hear of my
+going without her going too. She says that she is well able to do it,
+and well acquainted with schooners&mdash;and that's true, as you knows; but
+I'm afraid to take her as she is. Still, 'tis <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>a good chance, and I
+didn't like to let it go, so I just come to ask what your mind is
+about it."</p>
+
+<p>I had seen Nancy on my farewell round of the cottages, and although I
+should have preferred almost any other occupation for her, yet, taking
+into consideration the habits and customs of the people, and that to
+her the venture was in no way a new one, I advised him to accept the
+skipper's offer, and take Nancy along with him, if they could get
+decent accommodation. I received his assurance that he would keep a
+lookout for the hospital boat. With most sincere protestations of
+gratitude he bade me farewell, and when a few minutes later we steamed
+past his little house on our way out to sea, he was all ready with his
+long gun to fire us good-bye salutes, which we answered and
+re-answered with our steam whistle.</p>
+
+<p>All summer long we were cruising off the northern Labrador coast, now
+running into the fjords to visit the scattered settlers, now on the
+outside among the many fishing craft which were plying their calling
+on the banks that fringe the islands and outermost points of land.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>Fishermen from hundreds of vessels visited us for sickness, for books,
+for a thousand different reasons; but never a sight of the Water Lily
+did we see, and never a word did we hear of either Joe or Nancy the
+whole season through. True, in the number of other claims on our
+attention, it was not often that their fortunes came to one's mind.
+But now and again we asked about the schooner, and always got the same
+negative reply, "Reckon she 've got a load and gone south." This was a
+view which we were only too glad to adopt, as it meant the best
+possible luck for our friends.</p>
+
+<p>Now November had come round once more. The main fleet of vessels had
+long ago passed south. It was so long since we had seen even one of
+the belated craft which "bring up the heel of the Labrador" that we
+had closed up the summer stations, and were paying our last visits to
+our colleagues at the southern hospital, who were to remain through
+the winter.</p>
+
+<p>It was therefore no small surprise when Jake Low, from the village,
+who had been up spying from the lookout on the hill, came into the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>hospital and announced that a large schooner with a flag flying in her
+rigging was beating up to the harbour mouth from sea. "She's making
+good ground and is well fished," he added. "What's more, I guess from
+t' course she's shaping they know the way in all right. So it must be
+a doctor they wants, and not a pilot at this time of year."</p>
+
+<p>The news proved interesting enough to lure us up to the hilltop with
+the telescope, where in a short while we were enjoying the wonderful
+spectacle of watching a crew of the vikings of our day force their way
+through a winding narrow passage in a large vessel against a heavy
+winter head wind.</p>
+
+<p>The tide, too, was running out against her, and now and then a flaw of
+wind or a back eddy, caused by the cliffs on either side, would upset
+the helmsman's calculations. Yet with superb coolness he would drive
+her, till to us watchers, lying stretched out on the ground overhead,
+it seemed that her forefoot must surely be over the submerged
+cliff-side. Certainly the white surf from the rocks washed her
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>cutwater before the skipper who was "scunning" or directing, perched
+on the fore cross-tree, would sing out the "Ready about. Lee, oh!" for
+which the men at the sheets and bowlines were keenly waiting.</p>
+
+<p>A single slip, and she would have cracked like a nutshell against
+those adamantine walls. But to get into the harbour it was the only
+way, and as the skipper said afterwards, when I remonstrated on his
+apparent foolhardiness, "Needs must, when the devil drives."</p>
+
+<p>"There's a big crowd of men on deck, Doctor," said my companion.
+"Reckon she's been delayed with her freighters, and that there's a
+load of women and children in t' hold on t' fish."</p>
+
+<p>I had been so absorbed in watching his seamanship, that I had not been
+thinking about the stranger. Jake's remark changed the current of my
+thoughts; and soon the vessel's lines seemed to assume a familiar
+shape, and I began to realize that I must have seen her before. Then
+suddenly it flashed upon me&mdash;the Water Lily, of course.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>Yes, it was the Water Lily. Then Joe was on board, and the flag was
+because Nancy was in trouble. The reasoning was intuitive rather than
+didactic; but the conviction was so forcible that I instinctively rose
+to return to the hospital for the black bag that is my <i>fidus Achates</i>
+on every emergency call.</p>
+
+<p>"You isn't going till she rounds t' point of t' Chain Rocks, is you,
+Doctor? It's all she'll do with the wind and tide against her&mdash;if she
+does it. I minds more than one good vessel that's left her bones on
+them reefs."</p>
+
+<p>"As well stay, I suppose, Jake, for I'll be in time if I do. My! look
+at that!" I could not help shouting, as a flaw of wind struck the
+schooner right ahead as she was actually in stays, and it seemed she
+must either fall in sideways or drive stern foremost on the cliffs.
+But almost as quick as the eddy, the staysail and jib were let run and
+off her, and her main boom was pushed by a whole gang of men away out
+over the rail, so that by altering the points of pressure the good
+ship went safely round on her heel, and before we had time to discuss
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>it, her head sails were up again, and she was racing on her last tack
+to enable her to claw through the narrow channel between the Chain
+Rocks and the Cannons, which form the last breakwater for the harbour.</p>
+
+<p>"I think she'll do it, Jake!"</p>
+
+<p>"If she once gets in t' narrows and can't fetch t' point, it's all up
+with her. I 'lows 'tis time to get them women out of t' hold, anyhow,"
+he replied laconically, his eyes riveted all the while on the scene
+below. "There's a crowd standing by t' boat, I sees, and them's
+putting a line in her," he added a minute or two later, during which
+time excitement had prevented either of us from speaking. "Us'll know
+in a second one way or t'other."</p>
+
+<p>The crisis had soon arrived. The schooner had once more reached across
+the harbour channel, and was for the last time "in stays." A decision
+had to be arrived at instantly, and on it, and on the handling of the
+vessel, depended her fate.</p>
+
+<p>"He's game, sure enough, whoever he is. He's going for it hit or
+miss." And there was a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>touch of excitement evidenced even in Jake's
+undemonstrative exterior.</p>
+
+<p>We could now plainly see the master. He was standing on the
+cross-tree, whence he could tell, by looking into the water, almost to
+an inch how far it was possible to go before turning.</p>
+
+<p>"She'll do it, Jake, she'll do it. See, she's heading for the middle
+of the run."</p>
+
+<p>"She will if she does, and that's all, Doctor. She's falling off all
+t' while."</p>
+
+<p>It was only too true. The vessel could no longer head for the point.
+Her sails were aback, shaking in the wind, and she now heading
+straight for the rock itself. Surely she must at once try to come up
+in the wind, stop her way, drop her sails, if possible throw out the
+boat, and head for the open before she should strike on one side or
+the other of the run.</p>
+
+<p>But no, we could hear the stentorian tones of the skipper on the
+cross-trees shouting that which to any but an experienced sailor must
+have seemed certain suicide. "Keep her away! Keep her&mdash;full! Don't
+starve her! Give her way! Up topsail!"&mdash;the latter having been let
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>down to allow the vessel to lie closer hauled to the wind. "Stand by
+to douse the head sails! Stand by the topsail!" we heard him shout.
+"Stand by to shoot her into the wind!"&mdash;and then at last, just as the
+crash seemed inevitable, "Hard down! Shoot her up! Down sails!"</p>
+
+<p>We up above, with our hearts in our mouths, saw the plucky little
+vessel shoot true as a die up for the point. It was her only chance. I
+am sure that I could have heard my own heart beating as I saw her rise
+on the swell that ran up on the point, and it seemed to me she stopped
+and hung there. But before I could be certain whether she was ashore
+or not, another flood of the swell had rushed over the point, and she
+was fairly swirled around and dropped down into the safety of the
+harbour.</p>
+
+<p>"It's time to be going, Doctor," Jake remarked as he rose from the
+ground. "But I 'low t' point won't want painting t' winter," he added,
+with a twinkle in his eye. "Howsomever, he's a good one, he is,
+wherever he be from, and I don't care who says 'tain't so"&mdash;high
+praise from the laconic Jake.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>The Water Lily was at anchor when we reached the wharf, and a boat
+already rowing in to the landing. A minute later, just as I had
+expected, Joe was wringing me by the hand, as if he had a design on
+the continuity of my bones.</p>
+
+<p>"Nancy's bad," he blurted out. "Won't you come and see her to oncet?"</p>
+
+<p>I smiled in spite of my anxiety as I looked down at my trusty bag.
+"I'm all ready," I replied.</p>
+
+<p>The deck of the schooner was crowded with people as we came alongside.
+The main hatch had been taken off, and the women and children had come
+up for an airing. They, like our friends, were taking their passages
+home from their fishing stations. They are known as "freighters."</p>
+
+<p>"The skipper's been awful good, Doctor. When he heard Nancy were sick,
+he brought her out of t' hold, and give her his own bunk. But for that
+she'd have been dead long ago. She had t' fits that bad; and no one
+knowed what to do. She were ill when t' vessel comed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>into t' harbour,
+and t' skipper waited nigh three days till she seemed able to come
+along. Then her got worse again. Not a thing have passed her lips this
+two days now."</p>
+
+<p>In the little, dark after-cabin I found the sick girl, scarcely
+recognizable as the bonny lass whose wedding we had celebrated the
+previous winter with such rejoicings. There were two young women in
+the cabin, told off to "see to her," the kindly skipper and his
+officers having vacated their quarters and gone forward for poor
+Nancy's benefit.</p>
+
+<p>The case was a plain one. It was a matter of life and death. Before
+morning a baby boy had been brought into the world in that strange
+environment only to live a few hours. The following day we ventured to
+move the mother, still hanging between life and death, to the
+hospital.</p>
+
+<p>And now came the dilemma of our lives. It was impossible to delay the
+schooner, as already the crowd on board had lost several days; and it
+was not safe or right so late in the year to be keeping these other
+families from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>their homes. The Water Lily, so the kindly captain
+informed us, must absolutely sail south the following morning. My own
+vessel was in the same plight. We had more work outlined that we must
+do than the already forming ice promised to give us time to
+accomplish. To send poor Nancy untended to sea in a schooner was
+simply to sign her death-warrant. Indeed, I had small hope for her
+life anyhow.</p>
+
+<p>Our hospital was on the coast of Labrador, and the remorseless Straits
+of Belle Isle yawned forty miles wide between it and the nearest point
+of the island home of most of our friends. One belated vessel, still
+waiting to finish loading, lay in the harbour. She expected to be a
+week yet, and possibly ten days if the weather held bad. An interview
+with the skipper resulted in a promise to carry the sick woman to her
+harbour if she were still alive on the day of sailing, or news of her
+death if she passed away.</p>
+
+<p>Joe had no alternative. He certainly must go on, for he had nothing
+for the winter with him, no gear, and no way of procuring any. So it
+was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>agreed that Nancy should be left in our care, and, if alive,
+should follow by the schooner. Only poor Nancy was undisturbed next
+morning by the creaking of the mast hoops and the squealing of the
+blocks&mdash;the familiar warning to our ears that a vessel is leaving for
+sea. For she lay utterly unconscious of the happenings of the outside
+world, hovering between life and death in the ward upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>To whatever cause we ought to ascribe it does not much matter. But for
+the time, anyhow, our arrangements "panned out right." The weather
+delayed the fish vessel till our patient was well enough to be moved.
+Ten days later, sewed up in a blanket sleeping-bag, Nancy was
+painfully carried aboard and deposited in a captain's berth&mdash;again
+most generously put at her disposal.</p>
+
+<p>And so once more she put out to sea.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until the next spring that I heard the final outcome of all
+the troubles. Nancy had arrived home in safety, with only one
+hitch&mdash;her kit-bag and clothing had been forgotten in sailing, and
+when at length she <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>reached her harbour, she had had to be carried up
+to her home swathed only in a bag of blankets.</p>
+
+<p>Such are but incidents like head winds in the lives of the Labrador
+fisher-folk; but those who, like our people, are taught to meet
+troubles halfway look at the silver lining instead of the dark cloud.
+As for Joe himself, he is still unable to get into his head why these
+events should be of even passing interest to any one else.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="SALLYS_TURNS" id="SALLYS_TURNS"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>SALLY'S "TURNS"<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>"Spin me a yarn, Uncle Eph. I'm fairly played out. We've been on the
+go from daylight and I'm too tired to write up the day's work."</p>
+
+<p>"A yarn, Doctor. I'm no hand at yarns," said the master of the
+spick-and-span little cottage at which I and my dogs had brought up
+for the night. But the generously served supper, with the tin of milk
+and the pot of berry jam, kept in case some one might come along, and
+the genial features of my hospitable host, slowly puffing at his pipe
+on the other side of the fireplace, made me boldly insistent.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not anything special, Uncle Eph, just some yarn of an adventure
+with your dogs in the old days."</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Eph ruminated for quite a while, but I saw by the solid puffs he
+was taking at his pipe that his mind was working. Then a big smile,
+broader than ever, lit up his face, and he said slowly:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if you're so minded, I'll tell you a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>yarn about a fellow
+called 'Sally' who lived down our way in my early days."</p>
+
+<p>At this I just settled down comfortably to listen.</p>
+
+<p>Of course Sally was only a nickname, but on our coast nicknames last a
+man all his life. Thus my last patient, a woman of forty-odd years,
+trying to-day to identify herself, explained, "Why, you must know my
+father, Doctor. He be called 'Powder'&mdash;'Mr. Powder,' because of his
+red hair and whiskers."</p>
+
+<p>Sally's proper nickname was apparently "Chief," which the boys had
+given him because he had been a regular "Huck Finn" among the others.
+But in young manhood&mdash;some said it was because "Marjorie Sweetapple
+went and took Johnnie Barton instead o' he"&mdash;somehow or other "Chief"
+took a sudden "turn." This expression on our coast usually means a
+religious "turn," or a turn such as people take when "they sees
+something and be going to die"; it may be a ghost or sign. But this
+turn was neither. It was just a plain common "turn."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>It had manifested itself in "Chief" by his no longer going about with
+the other boys, by his habits becoming solitary, and by his neglecting
+his personal appearance, especially in letting his very abundant hair
+grow longer than fashion dictates for the young manhood of the coast.
+That was the reason some wag one day dubbed him "Absalom," which the
+rest caught up and soon shortened to "Sally." In the proper order of
+things it should have been "Abe." Wasn't Absalom Sims always called
+"Abe"? There was obviously an intentional tinge of satire in this
+unusual abbreviation.</p>
+
+<p>Whether it was due to the "turn" or not, the fact remained that at the
+advanced age of four and twenty Sally was still unmarried. He lived
+and fished and hunted mostly alone. No one, therefore, had much to say
+of him, good or bad. In its kindly way the coast just left him alone,
+seeing that was what he wished.</p>
+
+<p>As the years went by it happened that hard tunes with a scarcity of
+food struck "Frying-Pan Tickle," the hospitable name of the cove where
+Sally was reared. Fish were scarce, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>capelin never struck in, fur
+could not be got. This particular season every kind of fur had been
+scarce. A forest fire had driven the deer into the country out of
+reach. The young bachelor seals, called "bedlamers," that precede the
+breeding herd on their annual southern whelping excursion, and
+normally afford us a much-needed proteid supply, had evidently skipped
+their visit to the bay; while continuous onshore winds made it
+impossible in small boats to intercept the mighty rafts, or flocks, of
+ducks which pass south every fall. As a rule the ducks "take a spell"
+feeding off the shoals and islands as they go on their way, but the
+northeaster had robbed our larders of this other supply of meat, which
+we are in the habit of freezing up for spring use.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the ice jam, packed by the unfriendly winds, the men had
+ventured to set their big seal nets as usual, not expecting the long
+persistence of "weather" that now seriously endangered their recovery.</p>
+
+<p>The time to move to the winter houses up the bay had already passed,
+and so the men at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>last thought best to go on and get them ready and
+then come out once more to haul and stow the nets and carry the women
+back with them. The long-delayed break came suddenly at last, with a
+blue sky and a bright, calm morning, but alas! no wind to move the
+packed-in slob ice. So there was no help for it but to get away early
+on shanks' pony, if they decided to go on; and that would mean they
+would not "reach down" before dark. There were only three of them, but
+they were all family men: Hezekiah Black, called "Ky"; Joseph Stedman,
+known as "Patsy," and old Uncle John Sanborne. They got under way
+bright and early, but the weather clouded up soon after they left, and
+a puff or two of wind should have warned them all under ordinary
+circumstances to abandon the attempt, or at least to branch off and
+take shelter in the "Featherbed Tilt" before trying to cross the White
+Hills.</p>
+
+<p>As it was, Uncle John decided to adopt that plan, leaving the younger
+men, whom nothing would dissuade from pushing ahead. After <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>all, they
+knew every turn of the trail, every rock and landmark on the hillside;
+and one need not wonder if the modern spirit of "hustle" finds an echo
+even in these far-off wilds. Throwing precaution to the winds, the two
+young men pushed on regardless of signs and omens.</p>
+
+<p>Sally just knew it. Nothing would ever convince him that they did not
+deserve to get into trouble for not respecting "signs." Even Uncle
+John had often talked about "t' foolishness o' signs," and many a time
+Ky, once a humble member of Chief's followers, had laughed at what he
+called "old women's stuff." But what Sally thought of signs would not
+have been of any interest in itself. The interesting thing was that
+though he was in the country hunting, having moved long ago to his
+winter trapping-grounds, he saw signs enough to make him anxious about
+the three fathers of families tramping over the bleak hills that day.
+When snow began to fall with a westerly wind, that was sign number
+one. Something uncanny was about to happen. Then there was sign
+number <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>two of bad weather coming, namely, the tingling in his fingers
+and sometimes "a scattered pain in t' joints." So Sally left his
+fur-path for the day, hurried back to his tiny home among the trees,
+and, calling his dogs together, harnessed them quickly and started at
+once for the winter houses at the bottom of Grey Wolf Bay.</p>
+
+<p>A tenderfoot could have told now that they were "in for weather." The
+snow by midday was not falling, it was being shovelled down in loads.
+The temperature had dropped so rapidly that the flakes, as large as
+goose feathers, were dry and light, a fact that with the increasing
+wind made the going like travelling through a seething cauldron.
+Unfortunately the men were already over the crest of the White Hills
+when they realized that the storm which had swept down on them had
+come to stay. There was no stemming the gale on the wind-swept ice of
+those hillsides, even could they have faced the fiercely driving snow.
+All they could do was to hurry along before it, knowing there would be
+no shelter for them <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>till they reached Frying-Pan Tickle. For the
+forest had retired there beyond the hills before the onslaught of man
+and the carelessness that had caused forest fires.</p>
+
+<p>No one who has not been through it has any conception of the
+innumerable little accidents which in circumstances like these eat up
+the stock of chances for coming through. It did seem foolish that
+Patsy got his mittens wet in salt water coming through the broken
+ballicater ice as they tried to make the short cut across the Maiden's
+Arm; and that they froze while he was trying to warm his hands, so
+that he could not get them on again. It sounds like madness on Ky's
+part to have let his nor'wester cap get blown away, but it really only
+fell from his numbed hands while he was knocking the snow off, and was
+instantly swept away in a flurry of snow in the darkness. When the
+beam broke in his snow racquet, one of a pair he had absolutely
+counted on as beyond accident, he could scarcely get ahead at all.</p>
+
+<p>To stop and try to "boil the kettle" would not only have occupied too
+much time, but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>under the circumstances making a fire was practically
+impossible. Neither of the men carried a watch, and the unusual
+darkness caused by the thick snow made it impossible for them to tell
+what progress they were making. They supposed that surely between the
+worst snow "dweys" they would catch sight of some familiar leading
+mark, but that proved only another of their small but fatal
+miscalculations. The storm never did let up. More than once they
+discovered they were out of the track, and, knowing well their danger,
+had grudgingly to sacrifice time and strength in groping their way
+back to a spot where they could recognize the trail again.</p>
+
+<p>December days are short, anyhow, "down north" and every moment warned
+them that the chances of getting out before dark were rapidly
+diminishing. All the strength and endurance of which they were capable
+were unstintingly utilized to get ahead; but when night finally
+overtook them, they knew well that there were several miles to go,
+while to move ahead meant almost certainly losing the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>trail, which
+inevitably spelt death. It was only the winter before that Jake
+Newman, of Rogers Cove, left his own home after dinner, "just to fetch
+in a load of wood," and he wasn't found till three days later, buried
+in snow not two hundred yards from his front door, frozen to death.
+But if to advance meant death, to stop moving was equally dangerous.
+So there was nothing to do but keep moving round and round a big rock
+in hopes of living out the long, terrible night.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Sally was under way. Though he knew that the men were crazy
+to get back, it was only his surmise that they had started, so he had
+to call round at the winter cottages in the bay to make sure. He
+realized full well it was a man's job he was about to undertake, and
+had no wish to attempt it unnecessarily. As he expected, however, he
+found that the houses were all shut up, and such tracks as there were
+on the snow about the trail end showed quite clearly three men's
+footmarks. "Uncle John's gone with t' others," he muttered to himself.
+"I 'low 't is t' last journey <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>some of 'em 'll make, unless they
+minded the signs before too late. 'Tis lucky that I hadn't left old
+Surefoot at t' tilt; more'n likely I shall be needing he before t'
+night's out." And he called his one earthly chum and constant
+companion to him, rubbed his head, and made him nose the men's tracks
+which he was about to follow.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of his nickname, Sally was no greenhorn on occasions like
+this. Every harness was carefully gone over, every trace tested; the
+runners and cross-bars of his komatik all came in for a critical
+overhauling. The contents of the nonny-bag were amply replenished; the
+matches in the water-tight bottle were tested for dampness; his small
+compass was securely lashed to the chain of his belt. His one bottle
+of spirits, "kept against sickness," was carefully stowed with the tea
+and hardtack. A bundle of warm wraps, with his axe, and even a few dry
+splits, completed his equipment. Then once more Surefoot was shown the
+tracks on the threshold, the trailing loops of the traces were hitched
+on their respective <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>toggles, the stern line was slipped, and away
+went his sturdy team into the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>That animals have a sense of direction that man has lost is clearly
+proven by the seals, birds, polar bears, and our northern migratory
+animals generally, who every year follow in their season the right
+trails to their destinations, even though thousands of miles distant
+and over pathless seas or trackless snows and barrens. That instinct
+is nowhere more keenly developed than in our draught dogs; and amongst
+these there are always now and again, as in human relationships, those
+that are peerless among their fellows. Surefoot's name, like Sally's
+own, was not strictly his baptismal cognomen, the original name of
+"Whitefoot" having been relegated to oblivion early in life owing to
+some clever trail-following the pup had achieved.</p>
+
+<p>Many men would face an aeroplane flight with a sinking sensation. Many
+would have to acknowledge some qualms on a start with "mere dogs" in a
+blizzard like this one. But Sally, unemotional as a statue and serene
+as a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>judge, knew his pilot too well to worry, and, stretched out full
+length on the sledge, occupied himself with combating the snow in
+between "spells" of hauling the komatik out of hopeless snowbanks. "It
+won't do to pass the Featherbed without making sure them's not there,"
+thought Sally. "If Ky had any wits about him, he'd never try the
+Hanging Marshes a night like this." So when at last the team actually
+divided round the leading mark-pole, Surefoot having rubbed his side
+on it, so straight had he travelled even in that inferno, Sally leaped
+off immediately, and, following the line of poles, was cheered to see
+sparks issuing from the snug tilt among the trees. But alas, there was
+only one man, old Uncle John, resting there safely when Sally came
+tumbling in. The cheerful wood fire, the contrast of the warmth and
+quiet with the howling and darkness of the storm outside, called
+loudly to every physical faculty to stay for the night.</p>
+
+<p>"Where be them gone?" queried Sally as soon as the old man had roused
+himself enough to understand the sudden <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>interruption. "Where's Ky and
+Patsy? I thought you was all together by t' tracks."</p>
+
+<p>"So we was, so we was, boy. But them's gone on, while I thought I'd
+bide till daylight."</p>
+
+<p>The loud wail of the dogs in chorus, as they chafed at being left out
+of sight or knowledge of their master's whereabouts, was plainly
+audible to both men, and suggested the cruel bleakness of the night
+outside.</p>
+
+<p>"Youse isn't going on to look for 'em, is you? There be no chance of
+doing nothing a night like this," added the old man.</p>
+
+<p>But Sally was in another world. He could see the two men adrift and
+trying to keep life in themselves on the White Hills just as plainly
+as the cry made him see his beloved dogs calling to him from the
+exposed trail outside.</p>
+
+<p>"There'll be nothing left anyhow to do by morning, Uncle John," he
+answered. "Look after yourself well and keep t' fire in; maybe I'll be
+back sooner than us expects. Goodnight to you." And Sally disappeared
+once more into the night.</p>
+
+<p>They were still alive when Surefoot found <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>them, though far more
+played out than one would suppose strong men could be in so short a
+time. The extra wraps were at once requisitioned, a ration from the
+spirit flask was rapidly given to each, and then, forcing them to sit
+down on the sledge, Sally again encouraged Surefoot to take the trail.
+Downhill, they managed to move along, but the heavy thatch of snow
+made progress difficult on the level and almost impossible uphill,
+just when exhaustion made marching impracticable even with a line from
+the sledge lashed to their arms. Sally found his last device
+unavailable. The men must get off for the uphill work, and that is
+what it became increasingly impossible for them to do.</p>
+
+<p>Apparently Ky was the worse off. He didn't seem to know what was going
+on. Sally noticed that his hat had gone and thought his head was
+freezing, so without hesitation he covered it with his own warm
+nor'wester. Ky lay mostly on the komatik now, and it took all Sally's
+strength and such little aid as Patsy could give to enable the dogs to
+haul up the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>Frenchman's Leap, usually nearly perpendicular, but now
+fortunately sloped off by the heavy drift. Each man had to take a
+trace ahead and haul exactly like two big dogs, thus strengthening the
+team. At last the komatik topped the brow and was once more coming
+along after them. But Patsy was so played out that Sally drove him
+back to the sledge, hoping that the dogs could now haul the two men
+again. To his horror on reaching the komatik he found the real cause
+of its running so much more easily. Ky was gone. Probably he had only
+just slipped off. He would go back and look for him. But then he would
+lose the dogs. Patsy was too lost to the world to understand anything
+or to help. If he went back alone the dogs might follow and he would
+lose Patsy as well. Still he must try it. Halting the dogs he turned
+the komatik over, driving the upturned nose of the runners deep into
+the snow; then he laid Patsy on the top, and, lashing him on, finally
+began groping back down the steep rise for the missing man.</p>
+
+<p>Not a sign was to be found; any traces he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>had left were not only
+invisible, but impossible to feel, though he took off his mittens to
+try. The pitiless, driving snow instantly levelled off every mark. How
+long dare he delay? He remembered at last that even if he found him he
+could do no good. He could never carry him up the hill. But he had
+tried&mdash;had done his best and his conscience felt easier. And then
+there was Patsy. He might save Patsy yet. It was right he should go
+on. Fortunately the dogs were giving tongue when he crawled and
+stumbled once more up the Leap. They knew their master had left them
+and had come back to the komatik to wait. Some of them were huddled up
+against the motionless body of the man. Surefoot, bolt upright on the
+topmost bend, was leading the chorus. The komatik had to be extricated
+and righted. Patsy was still breathing. His body must be re-lashed on
+the right side; and then once more the weary march began&mdash;the march
+that was a battle for every inch.</p>
+
+<p>Of the remainder of the journey Sally never had much remembrance. It
+was like a moving <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>dream&mdash;he knew it was crowded with adventures, but
+the details had vanished completely from his ken. It was his old
+father who told the remainder of the story. He had turned into bed as
+usual, never dreaming any man was astir on such a night as that. He
+was sleeping the sleep of the righteous when he suddenly became
+conscious of dogs howling. Even dogs would not be out unless they were
+in harness on such a night. His own dogs he knew were safely barred
+into their kennels after being fed at sundown. For a few minutes he
+lay awake and listened. The sounds came no nearer, but they were quite
+distinct. There was something astir in the darkness&mdash;something
+uncanny. Sally would have called it a "sign." Uneasily he arose and
+lit the lamp. He could not hear a soul stirring. Even the howling of
+the dogs had ceased. Nothing but the noise of the house creaking and
+groaning under the wind pressure was discernible. And then, just as
+the bitter cold, dark, and loneliness made him long to get into his
+warm bed again, the wail of a lone dog was distinctly audible. Uncle
+Eben, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>pulling the lamp safely out of the draught, opened a crack of
+the porch door only to be saluted by a rush of cold wind and snow
+which nearly swept him off his feet. But again clearer than before
+came the wail of the dog.</p>
+
+<p>"He must be hitched up by mistake or in harness," he thought. "I 'low
+I'll fire a powder gun."</p>
+
+<p>Going back into the bedroom, the old man warned his wife that he was
+going to shoot and not to be frightened. Then taking his old
+muzzle-loader, which was always kept ready, from among the lesser
+weapons which stood in the gun-rack, he poked the muzzle through the
+crack and fired it into the air. True he had thought there might be
+some one adrift. But even a prophet could not have imagined that what
+did happen could have done so. For the sound of the explosion had not
+done echoing through the empty rooms before the door was burst
+suddenly in by some heavy body falling against it. The thud of some
+weighty mass falling on the floor was all that Uncle Eben could make
+out, for the gust through the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>wide-open door at once extinguished the
+light. It seemed as if some huge bird must have been hovering overhead
+and have fallen to the charge of the big gun. The door must be shut at
+all costs, and shut at once; so Uncle Eben, stooping to feel his way
+over the fallen object, put his hands out to find where it lay in the
+darkness. Instantly he recognized the body of a man&mdash;a man alive too,
+but apparently unable to speak or move. Like lightning he had the door
+closed. The vigour of youth seemed to leap into his old veins. The
+light was soon burning again, to reveal to him the prostrate body of
+his own son, ice-covered from head to foot, his hatless head like a
+great snow cannon-ball, his face so iced up that it was scarcely
+recognizable. No&mdash;he was unwounded and there was life in him. "I had
+just to thaw his head out first," Uncle Eben said, "and then us rubbed
+him and got something down his throat. He roused himself, got up, and
+told us his dogs must be snarled up in t' woodpile on the hillside,
+only a few minutes away, and he kept signing that there were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>a man,
+possibly still alive, lashed on t' komatik." It was no night for the
+old man to go out. "He'd be dead, bless you," before he got anywhere;
+and it seemed impossible to let Sally go out again. The stranger must
+surely be dead long ago. But, weak as he was, Sally would go. He could
+stand now and was once more blundering toward the door. To live and
+think he had let a man perish alongside was as impossible to one man
+as to the other.</p>
+
+<p>It was Uncle Eben who solved the problem. There were a dozen balls of
+stout seal twine lying in the locker. The old man, unable longer to
+haul wood or drive dogs himself, spent much of his time knitting up
+gear for the boys. He put on Sally his own cap, coat, and mits, tied
+the twine round his wrist, and then let him out to find the komatik
+again if he could; while if he fell exhausted Uncle Eben could at
+least follow the line and perhaps get him back again.</p>
+
+<p>As events turned out they were justified in making the attempt. The
+cold wind served only as a lash to Sally's reserve strength and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>his
+grit. That night he certainly found himself again. He reached the
+sledge, cut the traces he could not disentangle, and, keeping Surefoot
+by him, he cleared the komatik of the woodpile. Once more he hitched
+in the dogs, which he knew would make straight for the house, while he
+piloted down that last hillside.</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr style='width: 15%;' />
+<br />
+
+<p>Patsy got well again, though his toes and fingers alike were badly
+burned. Ky was not found till a few days later. He had evidently
+wandered to the edge of the cliffs, which near the Jump fall
+perpendicularly a hundred feet on to the rocky beach below, and had
+slipped over in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Eben's shot had passed almost immediately over Sally's head. He
+remembers being unable to free the dogs, realizing he was close home,
+and stumbling on for only a minute or two before something exploded
+just above him; then he recalls nothing till Uncle Eben had thawed out
+the touselly head and rubbed back the circulation into the frozen
+limbs.</p>
+
+<p>The slur so obviously intentional in the old <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>nickname made it
+impossible for any one to use it longer. It was unanimously agreed
+that he had established most surely his right to his old name of
+"Chief," and by this for many years he was known. With the lapse of
+years and the advent of grey hairs, even that was gradually recognized
+as too familiar, and he received the cognomen of "Uncle," the title of
+endearment of the coast, attached to his own name of Ephraim.
+Moreover, this proved to be the last of Sally's "turns," for the long
+hair and the lonely habits disappeared. The barrier that had grown up
+between him and his fellows vanished, as they always do before the
+warmth of unselfish deeds&mdash;and the next time "Chief" asked a girl the
+fateful question, there proved to be no Johnnie Barton in his way.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Sally living still?" I asked, my keenness of interpretation
+obscured by weariness or by interest in the details.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, he's alive all right," replied my host&mdash;and my mind at once
+apologized, as I realized he had been telling me the story of his own
+early life.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="BIG_FEE" id="BIG_FEE"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>THE DOCTOR'S BIG FEE<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>A crowd of visitors had landed from the fortnightly mail boat, and had
+come up to see the sights of our little harbour while our mails and
+freight were being landed and the usual two hours were allowed to
+collect and put aboard any return packages or letters. The island on
+which the station stands is a very small one, attractions are
+naturally few, and custom has reconciled us to the experience, strange
+enough at first, of being included in the list of "sights."</p>
+
+<p>A nice, cheerful group had just "done the hospital" and its
+appendages, and were resting on the rocky hilltop, after seeing the
+winter dog-team and examining the hospital reservoir. The
+ever-recurrent questions had been asked, and patiently answered&mdash;yes,
+the ice was cold, but not always wet; the glare of the snow was hard
+on the eyes; dogs do delight to bite; and so on. Conversation flagged
+a little till some one enquired the names of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>headlands and bays
+stretching away in succession beneath our view.</p>
+
+<p>"It all looks so grim and cold, and the people seem so scattered and
+so poor. Surely they can't pay a doctor's fees?" some one asked.</p>
+
+<p>"That depends on what you mean by a fee. We don't expect to get blood
+out of a stone."</p>
+
+<p>"Is all your work done for nothing, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, not exactly for nothing. There is no produce of the coast which
+has not been used to express gratitude, and 'to help the hospital
+along.' Codfish is a common fee. Sealskins, venison, wild ducks,
+beadwork, embroidered skinwork, feathers, firewood&mdash;nothing is too
+bizarre to offer."</p>
+
+<p>"Do they never pay money?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sometimes. Of late years, a little more each year. But when we
+began work, they practically never got any with which to pay. The
+fur-trading companies settled in kind, values were often measured, not
+by so many dollars, but by so many pelts. The traders gave out
+supplies on credit, took the fish or fur from their planters in
+return, and made up the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>balance, when there was any, in goods. Even
+barter was quite unusual, though some traders had a 'cash price' for
+produce paid down at once, besides the credit price."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think it a sound policy to be providing services, drugs, and
+nursing free?" chimed in a grey-bearded old fellow, evidently the
+philosopher of the party.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes, sir, policies must be adopted which are rendered necessary
+for the time by conditions. Besides, as I have said, the people pay
+what they can, and, after all, it is they who catch the fish and fur,
+reaping harvests for the world's benefit&mdash;for not much return."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm glad that you don't do it for nothing, anyhow. That would
+be an imposition on the workers as well as on the subscribers."</p>
+
+<p>The old gentleman seemed a bit disgruntled, so I ventured to put my
+viewpoint in a different way.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see that steep, rocky cape over there?" I asked. "It is the
+most northerly you can distinguish."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>"A great landmark, and worth the journey up here only to look at it,"
+he answered with an enthusiasm which showed that he had a tender spot
+for Nature's beauties, and that even if the shell was hard, the kernel
+was soft.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a little village just behind that head. It is hidden away in
+a rift in the mountain which forms a tiny cove for a safe anchorage. I
+had as big a fee there only two days ago as ever I received when I was
+practising in London."</p>
+
+<p>The company looked up in astonishment, but like Brer Rabbit, I lay low
+to see if they cared for an explanation. I thought I saw a twinkle in
+my critic's eye as it caught mine.</p>
+
+<p>"Go ahead," was all that he said, however.</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr style='width: 15%;' />
+<br />
+
+<p>Deep-Water "Crik," we call it. About half a dozen fishermen's families
+live there. Well, three days ago a boat came over at daylight to see
+if they could get a doctor, and I was debating as to the advisability
+of leaving the hospital, when an old skipper from a schooner in the
+harbour came ashore to tell me: "It's t' old <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>Englishman; Uncle
+Solomon they calls him. He's had a bad place this twelvemonth."</p>
+
+<p>"How's the wind outside?"</p>
+
+<p>"Soldier's wind. Abeam both ways."</p>
+
+<p>"Think I could get back to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, by after dark."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's get right away, then."</p>
+
+<p>But other calls delayed us, and it was nearly midday before we started
+for the cape. Unfortunately, the wind veered as the sun sank, and
+"headed" us continually. The northern current was running strong, and
+it was just "duckish" when at last we entered the creek.</p>
+
+<p>The former glories of Deep-Water Creek have passed away. Fortune has
+decreed that seals and mackerel and even salmon to a large extent
+should not "strike in" along that shore. Bad seasons and the wretched
+trading system have impoverished the fishermen, while the opening of
+the southern mines has taken away some of the most able-bodied. Here
+and there a braver cottage still boasts a coat of whitewash and a
+mixture of cod oil and red dust on the roof. But for the most part
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>there is a sombre, dejected look about the human part of the harbour
+that suggests nothing but sordid poverty.</p>
+
+<p>It had commenced to rain, and we were wet, cold, and feeling generally
+blue as we landed at a small fish stage, whose very cleanliness helped
+further to depress us, telling as it did the tale of a bad "voyage."
+For now it ought to have reeked of fish and oil; and piles of cod
+heads, instead of the cleanest of cold water, should have covered the
+rocks beneath. So many of our troubles are due to deficient dietary,
+winter was already on our heels, and there seemed to be the shadow of
+hunger in the very air.</p>
+
+<p>As soon, however, as we landed, a black-bearded, bright-faced man of
+about fifty gave us a hearty greeting, and such evident happiness lit
+up his peculiarly piercing eyes that it made us feel a little more
+cheerful, even before he had taken us into his house. There we found a
+cup of steaming hot tea prepared. That tea did not seem a whit less
+sweet, because "there be ne'er a drop o' milk in t' harbour, Doctor,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>and molasses be scarce, too, till t' fish be dry."</p>
+
+<p>Everything was so clean that you could have eaten off the floor. The
+pots and pans and tin cooking-utensils shone so brightly from the
+walls that the flame of the tiny kerosene lamp, reflected from so many
+sides at once, suggested ten hundredfold the candle-power it
+possessed. A museumful of treasures could not have added to the charm
+of the simplicity of the room, which, though small, was ever so cosy
+compared with the surroundings outside. Three children were playing on
+the hearth with a younger man, evidently their father.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Doctor, they aren't ours exactly," replied our host, in answer to
+my question, "but us took Sam as our own when he was born, and his
+mother lay dead, and he've been with us ever since. Those be his
+little ones. You remember Kate, his wife, what died in the hospital?"</p>
+
+<p>Yes, I remembered her very well, and the struggle we had had in trying
+to save her.</p>
+
+<p>"Skipper John," I said as soon as tea was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>over, "let's get out and
+see the old Englishman. He'll be tired waiting."</p>
+
+<p>"Youse needn't go out, Doctor. He be upstairs in bed."</p>
+
+<p>So upstairs, or rather up the ladder, we went, to find the oddest
+arrangement, and yet far the most sensible under the peculiar
+circumstances. "Upstairs" was the triangular space between the roof
+and the ceiling of the ground floor. At each end was a tiny window,
+and the whole, windows included, had been divided longitudinally by a
+single thickness of hand-sawn lumber, up to the tiny cross-beams.
+There was no lofting, and both windows were open, so that a cool
+breeze was blowing right through. Cheerfulness was given by a bright
+white paper which had been pasted on over everything. Home-made rag
+mats covered the planed boards. At one end a screen of cheesecloth
+veiled off the corner. Sitting bolt upright on a low bench, and
+leaning against the partition, was a very aged-looking woman, staring
+fixedly in front of her, and swaying forwards and backwards like some
+whirling Dervish. She <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>ceaselessly monotoned what was intended for a
+hymn.</p>
+
+<p>"The old gentleman sleeps over there," said the skipper with his head
+just above the floor level. He indicated the screened corner, and then
+bobbed down and disappeared, being far too courteous a man to intrude.</p>
+
+<p>The old lady took no notice whatever as I approached. No head was
+visible among the rude collection of bedclothes which, with a mattress
+on the boards, served for the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle Solomon, it's the Doctor," I called.</p>
+
+<p>The mass of clothes moved, and a trembling old hand came out to meet
+mine.</p>
+
+<p>"Not so well, Uncle Solomon? No pain, I hope?"</p>
+
+<p>"No pain, Doctor, thank t' good Lord&mdash;and Skipper John," he added. "He
+took us in, Doctor, when t' old lady and I were starving."</p>
+
+<p>The terrible cancer in spite of which his iron constitution still kept
+him alive had so extended its fearful ravages that the reason for the
+veiled corner was at once apparent, and also the effective measures
+for ventilation.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>The old lady had now caught the meaning of my presence. "He suffers a
+lot, Doctor, though he won't say it. If it wasn't for me singing to
+him, I don't know how he would bear up." And, strangely enough, even I
+had noticed the apparent descent from an odd, dreamy state to crude
+realities, as the old lady abandoned her droning, and talked of
+symptoms.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Aunt Anne," I said, "you can't keep it up all night as well as
+all day?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, not exactly, Doctor, but I mostly sleeps very little." And to my
+no small astonishment she now shut up like an umbrella, and at once
+recommenced her mesmeric monotone.</p>
+
+<p>When the interview was over, and all my notes made and lines of action
+decided, I still did not feel like moving. I was standing in a brown
+study when I heard the skipper's voice calling me.</p>
+
+<p>"Be you through, Doctor? There be two or three as wants to see you,"
+it said; but it meant, "Is there anything wrong?" The long silence
+might mean that the sight had been too much for me.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>"There's no hurry, Doctor," it hastened to add, for his quick ear had
+caught the noise of my start as I came to earth again.</p>
+
+<p>"What can be the meaning of it all?" I was pondering. Is there any
+more explanation to the riddle of life than to Alice in Wonderland?
+Are we not all a lot of "slithy toves, that gyre and gimble in the
+wabe"&mdash;or worse? Must we who love living only regard it as one long
+tragedy?</p>
+
+<p>The clinic of Skipper John's lower room included one or two pathetic
+tales, and evidently my face showed discouragement, but I confess I
+was surprised when the last poor creature had left, to find my host's
+hand on my shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be wanting a good hot cup o' tea, I knows, Doctor. And t'
+wife's made you a bit o' toast, and a taste o' hot berry jam. We are
+so grateful you comed, Doctor. T' poor old creatures won't last long.
+But thanks aren't dollars."</p>
+
+<p>At that minute his happy, optimistic eyes chanced to meet mine. They
+seemed like good, deep water, and just for a second the thought
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>crossed my mind that perhaps he knew more of the real troubles of life
+than his intellectual opportunities might suggest.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Skipper," was all I said. "We doctors, anyhow, find them quite as
+scarce."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Doctor," he added, "please God if I gets a skin t' winter I'll
+try and pay you for your visit, anyhow. But I hasn't a cent in the
+world just now. The old couple has taken the little us had put by."</p>
+
+<p>"Skipper John, what relation are those people to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Doctor, no relation 'zactly."</p>
+
+<p>"Do they pay nothing at all?"</p>
+
+<p>"Them has nothing," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you take them in?"</p>
+
+<p>"They was homeless, Doctor, and the old lady was already blind."</p>
+
+<p>"How long have they been with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just twelve months come Saturday."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, Skipper," was all I could say, but I found myself standing
+with my hat off in the presence of this man. I thought then, and still
+think, I had received one of my largest fees.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="TWO_CATS-PAWS" id="TWO_CATS-PAWS"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>TWO CAT'S-PAWS<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>Jean Marquette had nothing French about him but his name. Indeed
+"ne'er a word of French" could the old man remember, for he had lived
+for many years on the bleak, northeast side of Labrador; and few folk
+knew why, for all his forbears from sunny France had studiously
+avoided the Atlantic seaboard.</p>
+
+<p>Over his evening pipe, when the sparkling forks of fire bursting from
+the crackling logs seemed to materialize before his eyes again the
+scenes of his venturous life in the wild, as if they had been
+imperishably imprinted in the old trunks which had witnessed them, the
+old <i>coureur de bois</i> spirit, and even accent, flashed out as he
+carried his listeners back into the gallant days of the men who
+founded the great <i>seigneuries</i> which still stretch along the thousand
+miles of coast from the barren Atlantic seaboard to the bold heights
+of Quebec.</p>
+
+<p>In this country, only separated from the land of Evangeline by a few
+miles of salt water, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>one might reasonably suppose that the good folk
+would look to the soil and the peaceful pursuits of Arcady for at
+least some part of their daily bread. But, with the exception of a few
+watery potatoes, Uncle Johnnie had never "growed e'er a thing in his
+life." His rifle and axe, his traps and his lines, had exacted
+sufficient tribute from wild nature around him, not only to keep the
+wolf from the door, but to lay up in the stocking in his ancient
+French trunk dollars enough to give his only child, Marie-Joseph,
+quite a little dowry for that coast.</p>
+
+<p>It had often been a puzzle to us why this lonely old man, with no one
+belonging to him but one unusually pretty daughter, should have
+migrated to the lonely North. He had been asked more than once what
+the reason was, but he had always put the curious off by saying,
+"Hunting must be a lonesome trade. You wants a lot of room to catch
+foxes."</p>
+
+<p>But one night, when he was in a more communicative mood than usual, we
+got the whole story out of him.</p>
+
+<p>Late one fall, when the southern fishing craft <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>had gone south, and
+the ground was crisp with the first frost of winter, the lovely calm
+and sunny October morning had induced him to suggest to his wife that
+she should go over to the neighbouring island with their two elder
+children, a girl and a boy, and have a picnic, while they gathered
+some of the beautiful red cranberries to "stow away" for the winter.
+The baby girl, Marie, was left at home with the little servant maid.
+The children had jumped for joy at the idea, and early after breakfast
+he had rowed them across to the island, returning himself to finish
+loading his small schooner with the household goods and chattels which
+they must take up the bay to their winter home in the woods. So busy
+had he been with work that only as it came time to go off for the
+family did he notice how suddenly the weather had chopped around. A
+sinister northerly flaw was already rippling the surface of the
+hitherto placid sea; and Uncle Johnnie, accustomed to read the sky
+like a book, hurried as he seldom did to get the small boat under way.
+No one could have driven her faster than he drove her, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>and the pace
+satisfied even his uneasy mind. The "cat's-paw" had stiffened to a
+bitter blast behind him, and long before the boat reached the beach,
+it was difficult enough to look to windward. Hauling up the boat, he
+gave the familiar call which his wife knew so well; but no answer came
+to greet him. Following along the shore, and still finding no traces,
+he suddenly remembered that there was an old deserted house nearly a
+mile farther along, and incontinently he started to run as fast as he
+could in its direction. As he drew near, to his infinite joy he caught
+sight of smoke issuing from holes in the leaky roof. Calling as he
+went, he soon reached the cabin, to find the little party trying to
+dry themselves before a wood fire in the crazy stove, which had no
+funnelling, and was filling the hut with eye-torturing smoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Come along, Mother," he cried. "There's no time to be lost. If we
+hurry, we may get over before dark."</p>
+
+<p>A little delay was caused by the children, who were unwilling to leave
+even that pretence <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>of a shelter; and more time was lost crossing the
+island, the children having to be carried most of the way. At last,
+having placed them all safely in the boat, Uncle Johnnie proceeded to
+launch her, and by wading into the water himself, succeeded in keeping
+them dry for the start. But the increasing sea soon made even that
+sacrifice of little avail, for broken water and driving spray, with
+the now heavily falling snow, soon soaked them through and through, at
+last half filling the boat itself with water.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Johnnie knew by instinct that it was now neck or nothing. He
+must get across that strip of water if human endurance could do it. So
+he kept on and on, long after he might have gone back, and put the
+boat before it once more to run for the island only after it was well
+dark, and he was being blown astern anyhow in spite of his best
+efforts. Nearing the shore, he had every reason to expect disaster,
+for the boat was now half filled, and he could see no place to make a
+landing. So as soon as his oars struck bottom he once more jumped
+into <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>the water, and, holding the boat in his iron grip, he dragged it
+and its precious freight once more out of the furious violence of the
+sea.</p>
+
+<p>The children by this time were quite unable to "travel"; so, sending
+his wife ahead, Uncle Johnnie struggled along with the little ones as
+best he could.</p>
+
+<p>Alas, all of them were thoroughly beaten out. As he passed a big
+boulder halfway across the island which served as a landmark for the
+pathway, Uncle Johnnie found his poor wife lying in the snow, and
+already beyond any help he could give. Hurrying on to the cottage as
+best he could, he deposited the children, and once more fled out into
+the darkness for his wife, only to be, as he feared, too late, and to
+be obliged to leave her where she had fallen. Distracted as he was, he
+could only once more hurry to the hut, where again nothing but
+disaster awaited him. The place was flooded, the fire was out, no dry
+matches were left, and the little boy was already following his mother
+into the great beyond. Tearing off his coat and shirt, and pressing
+the little girl to his naked <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>skin, he covered himself up again as
+best he could, and was actually able by moving about the whole night
+long, not only to keep himself alive, but to preserve the vital spark
+in his little daughter. Help came in the morning from the nearest
+neighbour some miles away, who had been given the alarm by the servant
+maid from his home. But there was still one more loss for him to meet,
+his little daughter failing to react to all their tenderest efforts to
+bring her back to life.</p>
+
+<p>Before Marie was out of her teens, half the young bloods of the
+neighbourhood were courting around Uncle Johnnie's house. But none of
+them ever made any headway, for Uncle Johnnie clung to his one ewe
+lamb with almost childish dependence, and guarded her with all the
+wiles of his lifelong woodcraft.</p>
+
+<p>"'T is natural enough," thought young Ned Waring, "that t' old man
+don't want to part with she. For there be nothing else for he round
+here now. Every stone on t' beach reminds he of his terrible
+misfortune." He had said this often enough before, but one day it
+struck him&mdash; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>"When you wants to outwit a beaver, youse got to bank on
+dem t'ings that are real part of his make-up, and which he can no more
+help than a bear can help licking molasses. Fishing isn't as good as
+it used to be round here, and swiles<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>&mdash;well, there be'ant one year
+in a dozen when they comes in any quantity. I reckon I'll rig t' Saucy
+Lass for a longer trip t' year, and see what luck'll bring lower down
+t' Labrador."</p>
+
+<p>So it came to pass that year that on a day in June, with his two
+brothers and a shipped "hand," Ned landed north of fifty-three in a
+lovely cove in some islands off the mouth of a long bay. Even as he
+passed in he had seen fish schooling so thick "you could catch 'em by
+the tails." His vessel safely anchored, he went ashore, much as did
+the old navigators in the brave days of the French explorers. No sign
+of human beings existed anywhere. Thick groves of evergreen trees
+covered all the slopes of the valleys which held the river in whose
+mouth they had anchored. But though signs of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>rabbits, foxes, and
+other game greeted their trained eyes, not a living animal was to be
+seen moving anywhere.</p>
+
+<p>It so happened, however, that as they stretched themselves out on the
+brow of the hill before returning to their schooner, Ned chanced to
+disturb a large bee, which resented painfully the intrusion of these
+idlers on his labours. It was an insect rare enough on Labrador; so,
+taking the overture as a touch of personal interest rather than
+hostility, they christened their cove "Bumble-Bee Bight," and the home
+which they partly built before the winter drove them south again, "the
+Hive"; while for purposes of his own Ned left the island unnamed.</p>
+
+<p>The trip proved a bumper one. They carried a full fare home; and big
+were the rumours which got around of the fisherman's paradise which
+Ned Waring had discovered. When the voyage was turned in, Ned was able
+to purchase every essential and many comforts for the new home in the
+North, and yet have a balance coming to him large enough to furnish
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>him with the bravest winter outfit a young suitor could wish.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Johnnie was, however, all the time "one too many" for him as
+well as all the rest; and never was he able to catch Marie alone.
+Things went on uneventfully through Christmas and the New Year. The
+old man no longer drove dogs. He spent almost all his time pottering
+around his own house, now and again cleaving a few billets of wood;
+but to all intents and purposes he was hibernating like one of our
+Labrador bears.</p>
+
+<p>When March month once more came around, the magic word "swiles" was
+whispered from mouth to mouth, and Uncle Johnnie woke up like a weasel
+when a rabbit is about. Every day he sallied up to his lookout on the
+hill, telescope in hand, at stated hours. But the hours were so timed
+that Marie could always go with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Swiles" are second nature to most Labrador men. As for Uncle Johnnie,
+he would leave his Christmas dinner any time if any one came and
+called, "Swiles!" He would rather haul <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>a two-dollar pelt over "t'
+ballicaters" than make two hundred in any other way.</p>
+
+<p>"So I reckoned," said Ned cannily, "one chance to make t' old man
+friendly was to put him in t' way o' doing again what he was really
+scarcely able to do any longer; and that was, to have as many notches
+on his gaff-stick for dead seals as any other man.</p>
+
+<p>"It were, however, longer than I cares to remember now, before much of
+a chance come my way, but it come at last. T' spring had been that
+hard and that quiet that I 'lows us could have walked over to t' Gasp&eacute;
+shore if us had been so minded. T' standing ice never broke up from
+Christmas to April month; and there'd been ne'er a bit of whelping ice
+near enough to see with a spyglass, or a swatch big enough for an old
+harp to put his whiskers through. So when us woke one morning and
+found that t' sea had heaved in overnight unbeknownst to us, and that
+there was lakes of blue water everywhere, every man was out with his
+rope and gaff, as natural as a young duck takes to water.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>"That evening t' ice packed in again, and by nightfall it all seemed
+fast as ever. There was always a big tide made round Cape Blowmedown,
+and as t' land fell sharp away on each side of it, it were never too
+safe to go off very far on t' ice. But, that being a bad year, every
+man was on his mettle, and us all took more chances than was real
+right.</p>
+
+<p>"From t' bluff of t' head Uncle Johnnie had spied old and young seals
+on t' ice before most of t' boys was out o' bed; and us had a dozen or
+so on t' rocks before t'others was out t' ice at all. As those near t'
+land got cleaned up, us went a bit farther out each time; and more'n
+one seal I didn't exactly see so's to give Uncle Johnnie a better
+chance, and to let me keep all t' time outside o' he.</p>
+
+<p>"Just before it came dark and we was two or three miles out, t' wind
+shifted all of a sudden and came off t' land. Uncle Johnnie had a tow
+of three big pelts, and, believe me, heaven and earth wouldn't have
+made he leave them swiles behind. I'd left mine just as quick as I
+felt t' shift, and never let on I had any, so's I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>could rope up Uncle
+Johnnie's load and hustle him toward t' land. But t' ice was that
+hummicky it was an hour before us got near, and there we were, almost
+dark, t' ice broken off, driving along about twenty yards from t'
+standing ice almost as fast as a man could walk, and t' wind
+freshening every minute. There was about a mile to t' bill of t' Cape,
+and after that there'd be no hope whatever.</p>
+
+<p>"Four years before Jim Willis and his brother Joe had been caught just
+t' same way. Joe had perished in his brother's arms next day after
+he'd carried him for some hours, and Jim had drifted ashore on t'
+second day with only a spark of life left in him.</p>
+
+<p>"Every other man had been ashore and gone home for long ago, not
+knowing we was working outside, and only one chance were left for we.
+For t' gap of water was getting wider every minute, and there wasn't a
+loose pan to ferry over on big enough to float a dog. So I shouted to
+Uncle Johnnie to run along t' ice edge back up the bay just as hard as
+he could go, and I'd jump into t' water and swim for t' <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>standing ice
+edge. I never expected to get out again, but t' good Lord arranged it,
+I suppose, that I should strike a low shelf running off level with t'
+water, and by kicking like a swile, I was able to climb up and on to
+the ballicaters.</p>
+
+<p>"There was always a boat hauled up on t' cape for men gunning to get
+birds or swiles, and t' only chance was to get there and launch her
+before t' ice passed out. T' rise and fall of t' tide had piled up t'
+ballicaters at t' foot of t' cliffs like young mountains, and it was
+already dark, too, while my wet clothes froze on me like a box. I
+reckon that saved my legs from being broken more'n once, for I fell
+into holes and slid down precipices, and, anyhow, next day I was black
+and blue from head to toe&mdash;though for that matter I'd have been green
+and pink glad enough to have t' chance it gave me.</p>
+
+<p>"Anyhow, I got t' boat in t' water at last, and pulled out toward t'
+floe, but ne'er a sign could I make out of Uncle Johnnie. There
+weren't a moment for waste, for spray was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>drifting over t' punt, and
+she was icing up that fast that if we lost much time I knew that it
+was good-bye to home for both of us. So I had to risk hauling her up
+on t' ice, while I ran along t' edge, shouting for all I knew. I
+hadn't gone many yards before I stumbled right over t' old man. In t'
+dark he had slipped into a lake of water that had gathered on t' ice,
+and was about half-dead already. For I had been moving and hadn't
+noticed t' time, and Uncle Johnnie had given out quickly, thinking I
+were lost, anyhow. Well, in t' dark it was not an easy job to
+half-carry t' old man back to where I'd left t' boat. But when you
+must 'tis wonderful what you can do; and even dragging him weren't as
+hard as rowing ashore against t' wind.</p>
+
+<p>"T' men thought us would never reach land, for t' ice made so fast on
+t' punt and oars, and us were carried well outside t' bill while I was
+getting Uncle Johnnie. When we did at last make t' standing ice edge,
+it would have been t' end again if Marie hadn't been clever enough to
+go and rouse out t' boys, and come <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>with them right to t' very edge of
+t' ice looking for us. And she hadn't forgotten some hot stuff nor a
+blanket neither. She told us afterwards that she saw Uncle Johnnie
+perishing of cold away out off t' cape before she left t' cottage,
+just as clear as she did when t' boys hauled us out of t' punt.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle Johnnie pulled round in a day or so, but I pulled round early
+next morning, and those two days gave me t' first chance I'd had to
+get to windward of t' old man, and have Marie for an hour or two by
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>"T' business soon blew over, as I knew it would, and what's more,
+Uncle Johnnie were no more for letting any one get Marie away from him
+than he'd been afore. Indeed, it seemed to me that it made him cling
+closer to she than ever; and I got real down-hearted when it come time
+to fit out t' Saucy Lass for North Labrador once more.</p>
+
+<p>"Lucky for me, I'd made t' most of my time when Uncle Johnnie were
+ill, and talked many times to Marie about how her father might get
+young again if he could go where he could <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>forget the old scenes. So
+when we had had t' schooner painted up and launched, and t' sails bent
+and began getting firewood and things aboard, I got her to talk to he
+about coming along with we.</p>
+
+<p>"I've often noticed how t' very things you thought t' last on earth to
+happen come about just as easy as falling off a log. When I went over
+next morning to pretend to say good-bye, Marie whispered in my ear,
+'He really wants to go. He only wants asking'&mdash;and before night we had
+it all arranged. We was to fix up t' hold for him and Marie, and
+they'd come along and make a new home alongside us at Bumble-Bee
+Bight.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't trouble you with t' story of t' voyage down, only to say that
+we found that two could play better than one at hide-and-seek. When at
+last we anchored off t' river mouth, Uncle Johnnie was fair delighted.
+Nothing would satisfy him but he must choose a spot for his new house
+right away. But meanwhile t' cargo had to be stored in t' 'Hive' out
+o' t' weather. Uncle Johnnie was always extra <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>careful about his
+things and wouldn't allow no one but he to handle 'em. So Marie went
+up to get a fire and tidy up, while t' old man handed t' things up to
+we. For my part I found that I had to stay up at t' 'Hive' and help
+arrange t' goods as they came along; and, 'lowing it might be t' last
+chance, for we'd be into t' fishery straight away, I up and asked
+Marie if it wouldn't be as well not to build another house after all.
+All I wanted was her to share t' house we'd built already; and Uncle
+Johnnie would be less lonesome than he'd ever been since his accident,
+because instead of losing one, he'd be getting two. I'm not telling
+you all what was said; as I'd told t' boys not to hurry with t'
+unloading, and Uncle Johnnie didn't get ashore till real late. By that
+time it was all fixed up, but nothing was to be said till the house
+was ready next night.</p>
+
+<p>"When us come in together hand in hand that evening, Uncle Johnnie had
+started his pipe after tea. He guessed right away something was up,
+but maybe he had guessed something before. All he said was, 'Well,
+Ned, all <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>my bridges is burnt behind me, as you know, anyhow, and if
+it hadn't been for you, there'd be no need of asking any one for
+Marie, for I'd have been gone. So I can't well say no; and she might
+go farther and fare worse for sure. So I'll just leave it to Marie
+herself, and if she says so, so it shall be.'</p>
+
+<p>"And that's all there is to tell about it. Sure people often wonders
+how others came to live 'way down on these lonesome shores. But
+Marquette Islands have given me fish and fur and good life, with ne'er
+a cent owing to any man, and there's four fine youngsters to help out
+when we can no longer fend for ourselves."</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr style='width: 15%;' />
+<br />
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Seals.</p></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="THE_TRIPLE_ALLIANCE" id="THE_TRIPLE_ALLIANCE"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>"They brought in a blind man last night," said the house surgeon. "It
+only seemed a case of starvation, so I didn't call you."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he from?"</p>
+
+<p>"About thirty miles in the country down north somewhere. Apparently he
+has been living at the bottom of a bay 'way out of the line of the
+komatik trail. Formerly he could get firewood easily, and a few bay
+seals and game to live on. He seems too proud to let people know how
+badly off he was."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the history?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has a wife and two girls, who appear to be in almost as poor shape
+as he is himself. He has been gradually growing blind for some time,
+and was up here two years ago to see the eye specialist. His name is
+Emile Moreau."</p>
+
+<p>"A Frenchman! Why, I remember the man perfectly. A slow-growing
+cerebral tumor."</p>
+
+<p>He had been under observation for some weeks, and we had had to decide
+that he would <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>not be benefited by an operation. So he went away,
+promising to return soon. But this is the way he had kept his promise.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later I stood by the bedside of the blind Frenchman. The
+poor fellow was a skeleton, with the characteristic sunken face and
+fallen skin with which we are familiar in those living on what we know
+as "dry diet." He had nothing to say for himself except, "Times has
+been none too good, Doctor. It is a bad country when a fellow can't
+see where he is going. 'T is many an odd tumble I've had, too,
+knocking around." Emile had been away from France for many a long day,
+and the only English he had ever heard was the vernacular of our
+Northern Coast.</p>
+
+<p>"How's your wife and the kiddies you told us about when you were here
+last time? It strikes me that they may have had a tumble too."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I 'lows, Doctor, them has been clemmed up on times. But,
+Jeanie, she never says nothing; she's that busy with t' things I can't
+do. She 'lowed she'd stay and mind t' <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>children till I get better a
+bit. No, that's right. She hasn't much grub. But us uses very little,
+and she never complains."</p>
+
+<p>Two days later our good dogs brought in the rest of the family&mdash;the
+babes to the warm welcome and plenty at the Children's Home, while one
+of the pluckiest little women I have ever known, even in a country of
+brave and self-reliant women, was carried into the hospital partially
+paralyzed with beri-beri. She was so close to the gate from which
+there is no returning that it took our nurses six months to wean her
+back to another spell of usefulness.</p>
+
+<p>It was no ordinary conundrum which vexed my mind when the house
+surgeon at last announced, "These Moreau patients are well enough to
+leave hospital," though I had realized that for good or evil the day
+was near.</p>
+
+<p>Neither had said a word about the future. The worst feature of sending
+them out was the personal affection which their lessons in contentment
+had kindled in us. How could this helpless family ever hope to keep
+the wolf from the door. A council of war was called the same <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>evening,
+and some neighbours who well knew the dilemma in which we found
+ourselves asked to be allowed to attend. There was an old shack in the
+compound in which some workmen had once been housed, and which had
+subsequently been used as a small store-house. It was proposed, in the
+absence of funds, for all hands to assault this stronghold, and
+convert it as far as possible into a habitable home.</p>
+
+<p>Thus came into existence what developed later into the general
+headquarters of the "triple entente."</p>
+
+<p>To relieve the situation, one child was adopted by a childless,
+well-to-do neighbour, and the other was left for education and care
+with our little wards in the Home. Emile learned basket-work; Jeanie
+took in washing. The Moreau exchequer once more was in funds. But two
+difficulties soon presented themselves. There was a glut in our basket
+market, and Emile found life without being able to move out of the
+house almost more than a man born to the sea and the trail could
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>bear. Small dogs in civilization are wont to fill this gap. But alas,
+"down North" small dogs are taboo&mdash;their imperious Eskimo congeners
+having decided against them.</p>
+
+<p>There happened to be at this time also under our care an Eskimo lad
+from the Far North, whom we had picked up suffering with a form of
+lung trouble which only the radical operation of collapsing one side
+of his chest wall could relieve. The ribs had been removed. The boy
+had recovered slowly; but, having only a very limited breathing
+capacity, he had been allowed to remain for the chores he could do.
+Without kith, kin, or even fellow countrymen, he was a veritable
+pelican in the wilderness without any home attachments&mdash;and a very
+serious problem to ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>Emile could cut wood, being strong as a horse and an excellent axeman;
+but he could not find it alone. He could carry heavy packages, but he
+could not find his way. He could haul water, but could not
+economically direct his energies. Karlek's eyes were the best part of
+him. So it came about that one morning on <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>the way to the hospital I
+met Emile whistling like a newly arrived robin in spring, his hand on
+Karlek's shoulder, and on his back a heavy sack of potatoes which he
+was bringing up to the hospital kitchen from the frost-proof cellar in
+the cove.</p>
+
+<p>It brought a smile to one's lips to see the nonchalance and almost
+braggadocio of his gait as he stepped out boldly, covering the ground
+at a speed which was itself a luxury to one so long cut off from that
+<i>joie de vivre</i> of a strong man. And more, it brought a smile to one's
+soul to see the joy of victory flashing in the features of the
+upturned face&mdash;the triumph of the man over the pitifulness of his
+sightless eyes. The international dual alliance was making its d&eacute;but
+on the field. The firm of Karlek and Moreau, Eskimo and Frenchman, had
+come to stay.</p>
+
+<p>So time went on, cheerfully and even rapidly for all concerned&mdash;the
+Mission developing its labour-saving devices as the work increased,
+and the help of its friends made it possible. A water-supply system
+soon partially obviated <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>the need for hauling barrels in the summer
+from our spring and puncheons on the dog sledges in the winter. A
+roadway and narrow-gauge railway track relieved us of the necessity of
+so much portage on men's backs; and a circular saw, run by a small
+gasoline engine, cut up our firewood with less waste and with more
+satisfactory results.</p>
+
+<p>As with the basket market, so with the chore market, the ground was
+once more falling away from beneath our poor friends' feet. Only the
+indefatigable Jeanie held the household together, for in the heyday of
+the dual alliance's prosperity, the little daughter had been permitted
+to return to her parents from the Children's Home.</p>
+
+<p>With the lapse of years, however, even if Emile could see no better
+with his eyes, his other faculties had developed so largely as to
+surrender to him again the joy of independence of outside help, and
+with characteristic self-reliance and optimism he once more tackled
+his own difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>I was recently visiting a small cottage, built <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>on a tiny ledge under
+the shadow of gloomy, high cliffs. It was far from any pathway and
+only approachable by stumbling over huge rocks&mdash;the d&eacute;bris of the
+crags behind. The hut had been built by a lonely old fellow who
+resorted to it in summer because it was right on the fishing-grounds,
+and he was getting unable any longer to face the long row to and from
+his house in the harbour. Nowhere in the world is the old adage
+concerning the birds of a feather truer than on this coast. The poorer
+and lonelier a man is, the greater is the certainty that some other
+poor and lonely person will seek the shelter of their poverty. Thus it
+had been with old man Martin.</p>
+
+<p>One day there had appeared at the cottage door from twenty miles
+farther down the coast one-legged Ike, an irregular, angular youth,
+who, stumbling over the hillside, and magnified into portentous
+proportions by one of our Promethean fogs, had nearly scared the wits
+out of even my trusty dog team. Quite without invitation from old man
+Martin, one-legged Ike had come to stay. The proximity to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>the
+fishing-grounds suited this seafarer, who shared in every particular
+the limpet-like characteristics of Sinbad's Old Man of the Sea.</p>
+
+<p>Anyhow, old Martin had never shaken him off, and had been heard to
+excuse himself by saying, "After all, he can sit in a boat as well as
+any of them with two legs." "Where there's room for one, there's room
+for two," is almost an axiom of life on these shores. In the lapse of
+time the old man had taken his last voyage, and Ike had come into full
+possession of the estate, living almost like Robinson Crusoe, cut off
+from his fellows by to him impassable barriers.</p>
+
+<p>It was a reported lapse in some other portion of Ike's anatomy that
+had led me to scramble along the landwash to the cottage. The ice
+having broken up and gone out of the harbour, I should have considered
+longer the advisability of the trip,&mdash;for the morning frosts left the
+jagged rock masses at the foot of the cliff harbingers of ill omen to
+the traveller,&mdash;had it not been that his isolation might <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>possibly
+make even trivial trouble serious. For he had come safely through so
+many scrapes, not a few being of his own making, that I had nicknamed
+him in my mind "indestructible Ike."</p>
+
+<p>At last, congratulating myself that I had arrived without any untoward
+happenings, I rapped loudly on his door, expecting to hear his
+squeaky, perpetually broken voice bid me enter. Much to my surprise,
+therefore, the door opened itself, and smiling in the doorway stood
+our blind friend.</p>
+
+<p>"Good Heavens! Emile, how on earth did you get here? And why did you
+ever want to come, anyhow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I thought it was a good plan for me to go fishing," he replied,
+addressing apparently a huge rock, so accurately poised over the hut
+that it suggested any moment an annihilating assault upon it. "Ike's
+going to be pilot and I'm to do t' rowing. We're to be partners for t'
+summer, and Karlek's going to look after t' family and help out when
+he can. It feels like being young again to be on t' <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>water with a
+fishing-line. And, mind you, Ike knows a few tricks with a line that's
+worth more'n another leg to we, once we be on t' grounds. They all
+'lows he be as good as t' next man for hauling in fish, so be as
+there's any around."</p>
+
+<p>Ike's indisposition, as I had surmised, was not of a serious nature,
+and I learned subsequently that it was the proper ratification of the
+terms of the new triple alliance that had more to do with the sick
+call than any undue foreboding of impending dissolution on Ike's part.
+There had been some hitch in coming to terms, and Emile had put the
+only one point in them to his credit, when he saw through the trick,
+and "plumped for a magistrate," feeling also that he could trust me
+for more than mere legal technicalities.</p>
+
+<p>It was obviously an offensive campaign on which I found them bent. Ike
+had himself carefully repaired the boat's structure, having always a
+keen eye to comfort and safety; while from Emile's hands I could see
+that the task of tarring their warship, owing to Ike's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>temporary
+indisposition and the need for immediate preparedness, had fallen to
+him. His only method for finding out where he had applied that hot and
+adhesive liquid had left very apparent evidences of both his energy
+and his zeal. To Emile also had fallen the rearrangement of the big
+rocks, so as to form as level a surface as possible on which to dry
+the fish. It was a Sisyphean task, and poor Emile had spent much sweat
+and not a little blood in his efforts. But, as Ike told him, "lifting
+rocks weren't no work for a man with one leg." So he had offset
+against it getting the meals ready, and what he called "tidying things
+up." But as Karlek was, unrewarded, to bring the bread, Ike's
+household labours did not promise to be onerous.</p>
+
+<p>In one sense the entente campaign proved victorious, for they had a
+goodly catch; but in the division of the spoils it apparently turned
+out that it had been so arranged that Emile's share was to catch the
+fish, Karlek's to dry it, and Ike's to exchange it piecemeal for
+tobacco or "things for t' house," as he called them.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>Ever since Stevenson wrote of the one-legged rascal Silver, one
+associates with that handicap a tendency to try to outwit others;
+while the dependence of blind men presupposes simplicity and
+trustfulness.</p>
+
+<p>Emile worked like a tiger, with the single-mindedness of the Verdun
+spirit of France, blissfully supposing that Ike did the same in his
+end of the boat. Fishing in sixty fathoms of icy water, Emile would
+haul his lines up and down, re-bait and tend them, till his hands were
+blue with cold, and the skin "fair wore off t' bones." One day,
+however, a harbour trap boat happened to pass close by their rodney
+while they were anchored on the fishing-grounds, and the owner called
+out, "Wake up, Ike! Price of dream fish is down." Ike had somewhat
+loudly and not too politely responded to the salutation, but all the
+same it awoke a first suspicion in Emile's mind. While not slacking
+himself, he "kept an eye" on his partner as best he could.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that a one-legged man must sit down for work, while for his
+part he stood, but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>he had not realized that Ike considered any more
+restful posture essential. "A blind man sees more'n most folk" is a
+common claim of Emile's. It is tedious pegging away when fish are
+scarce, yet fishing is a trade where "'tis dogged as does it." He
+suspected that Ike took it easy in the stern while he worked in the
+bow; and his doubts were confirmed when one day, from a passing boat,
+some one called out: "'Tain't safe for you to be out alone, Emile.
+You'll be running some one down one of these days." It was obvious
+that Ike was not visible over the gunwale.</p>
+
+<p>From that day on, Emile began to count his catch and to put a
+cross-thwait in the middle of the boat to keep them separate&mdash;"Something
+to push my feet against when I rows, I called 'un," he told me. Still
+Ike was almost too much for him, for Karlek remembered seeing him
+sorting out the fish as he landed them, and the big ones, somehow or
+other, all found their way into Ike's yaffles. Ike also discovered that
+it was good economy constantly to change the location of such things as
+the tobacco box, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>butter tub, and molasses jar, for it often meant that
+the good-natured Emile went without.</p>
+
+<p>The cold weather set in early, and though the contract was not up,
+Ike's hereditary instinct that hardship was bad for his constitution
+made him decide to stop if he could. But Emile went steadily on,
+having learned from Karlek that there were occasional leakages from
+the fish pile. He ventured to remonstrate with his partner, but as
+fish were plentiful, he refused to cancel the contract before the
+proper date.</p>
+
+<p>It was Ike who finally forced the issue. Emile being bowman, it was
+their custom always to come in to the ladder leading to the stage
+platform head on, when Emile, grabbing the cross-bars with one hand
+and holding the painter in the other, climbed up and "made her fast."
+Projecting from the stage head is a long pole used for preventing
+boats that are made fast from bumping against the stage. Coming in a
+day or so later, Ike drove the punt in parallel with the stage head,
+and the pole coming into Emile's hands deceived him into thinking that
+the stage was above him as usual. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>He promptly stepped off the boat,
+and naturally fell into the water. Naturally also, it shook Emile up a
+good deal, for he was in the water quite a while. After the incident
+Ike's tender heart had made him absolutely refuse the responsibility
+of a blind man in a small boat in fall weather. As we walked up the
+wharf together Emile told me many more such details of the
+transactions of our only "triple alliance." All he wanted me to do was
+to add up his own tally of the fish he had caught, multiplying it by a
+reasonable average fish, and for the sake of the family help him to
+get from his ally a return for his labour which would enable him to
+buy food for the winter for Jeanie and the little girl.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately it proved to be not too late. You cannot "get the breeks
+off a Highlander," and after a week or two not a cod tail or a cent
+would have been available from Ike. As it was, my coming to the
+assistance of my poor friend happened to save the "entente" from being
+a tragedy, and enabled us to relegate the whole incident to our comedy
+group.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>A peremptory order to Ike to wait for me at midday at the room we call
+the court-house would, I knew, impress him with the necessity of
+obedience, far more than a second visit to his cabin. The effort which
+the journey would cost him and the time allowed for reflection would,
+moreover, punctuate the importance of the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>Emile's calculation of the amount of fish caught, corrected by Karlek
+by the simple process of multiplying the sum by two, and with a bit
+more added by myself to be sure not to underestimate it, formed all
+the legal data I needed. The lean, scrawny figure of Ike, twisting and
+squirming with evident uneasiness, awaited my arrival at the appointed
+time. Ike's fear of "t' Law" was the superstition of a child. It was
+to him a great big man waiting to pounce upon you and "lug youse
+away." Indeed, I learned afterwards that he had stayed in bed for fear
+of being carried off surreptitiously. "'T is a lonesome spot I lives
+in," he had explained.</p>
+
+<p>"To steal from a blind man, Ike," I began, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>"is bad. Moreover, it
+doesn't bring any one any luck ever. Where have you put those sixty
+quintals of fish which belong to Emile?"</p>
+
+<p>"It took more'n half t' voyage, believe me, Doctor, to meet t'
+summer's expenses. There wasn't more'n thirty quintals all told, and
+half of that was mine. Samuels only allowed we four dollars a quintal,
+and his flour was eight, and molasses seventy cents. He said he'd land
+Emile's share when he comes in on his home trip."</p>
+
+<p>"The Law will have to send down and search your house and all around
+it, and carry off things while you wait here, and you won't get any
+credit for it either. I told you there was no luck for those who rob a
+blind man, unless they confess in time. I'll come back in half an hour
+for your decision." And, having an unfair advantage of a one-legged
+man, I locked the door and was well down the road before Ike had made
+a move.</p>
+
+<p>Our little rickety court-house, in order to be in the centre of the
+village, stands on a rocky hill-crest away by itself. When the wind
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>blows high, awesome noises with much creaking and groaning help to
+suggest to the guilty conscience that supernatural agencies are at
+work. The half-hour was purposely a long one, and had the desired
+effect. Ike made a full confession of his delinquencies and promised
+reparation. An immediate search while he was in this frame of mind
+revealed that Emile's winter food could only be obtained by leaving
+Ike to a diet of hope and charity. The lesson being necessary,
+however, the whole of his supplies were loaded into the boat, and Ike
+condemned to row it to Emile's house and land it at once. It was late
+and dark, but the fear of what might happen to him alone on his point,
+now that it was known that he had robbed a blind man, held more
+terrors even than hunger for Ike. So the judgment of the court was
+carried out that very night.</p>
+
+<p>Partly moved by curiosity, Christmas found me once again visiting the
+mansion under the cliff. A shortage in the commissariat was, I knew,
+no new experience to the poor fellow, and even the wiles of a
+"one-legger" cannot <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>convert stones into bread. Ike, radiant with
+smiles and fat as a spring seal, was out to meet me on my
+arrival&mdash;which circumstance was a little difficult at first to
+understand. Then he explained:</p>
+
+<p>"You'm right, Doctor. It drives away t' bad luck when you pays up a
+blind man. I hasn't wanted ne'er a t'ing since."</p>
+
+<p>It had been a good voyage that year, and, as a matter of fact, every
+one had a warm spot somewhere in his heart for "that rascal Ike." For
+though he was admittedly a rogue, he was always such an amusing,
+hail-fellow-well-met rogue, and not the really mean type which every
+one dislikes. All the shore had heard of his dilemma, and, isolation
+not allowing one man to know what another is doing, indiscriminate
+charity had poured in upon poor Ike, without possibly doing him much
+harm, for he attributed it absolutely to that oftentimes useful mentor
+of the feeble-minded, the great god of good luck.</p>
+
+<p>To my surprise it was Emile who really suffered most, though he would
+not admit it, but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>by actual computation of the supplies in his very
+give-away storeroom, I learned that he had secretly carried back to
+Ike's beach in the dark just one half of those goods which "t' Law"
+had recovered for him; and which Ike to this day believes were
+deposited for his benefit by the good-luck fairy.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="PORTLAND_BILL" id="PORTLAND_BILL"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>PORTLAND BILL<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>"It must be nigh sixty years ago, but I remembers it as if it was
+yesterday, when a new settler come to live in our harbour," said
+Skipper Life Flynn, at whose house I was spending the night with my
+driver and dogs.</p>
+
+<p>"Life" was short for Eliphoreth&mdash;the "given" names being mostly out of
+the Bible down North. "It were a wonderful thing them days, for Father
+were the only Liveyer then&mdash;that is, as stayed all the year round. He
+didn't mind being alone, and t' moving in t' schooner every spring and
+fall were bad for Mother. Fish were plenty every season one side or
+t'other of Deadman's Cape, and there was lots of fur and swiles t'
+winter. So he built a house in Sleepy Cove, and there us grew up!</p>
+
+<p>"No, Doctor, I'm not able now to read and write. None of us is, for us
+had no teachers. But we was all big, strong men, and handy at that,
+and there wasn't a thing to be done wi' axe or saw about boats and
+timber us <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>couldn't do. We made a good deal at furring, too, and
+many's and many's t' night in winter I've laid down under t' trees and
+slept&mdash;with ne'er a greatcoat neither. An' if us wasn't brought up
+scholars, Father taught us to be honest, and to fear God and nothing
+and nobody else.</p>
+
+<p>"It were our way them days to greet every stranger as a friend, and so
+when Bill started his cabin,&mdash;for that was all it ever were,&mdash;us lads
+all went in and helped him chop and saw t' logs for studding.</p>
+
+<p>"In winter Father minded t' big French Room; but he were away hunting
+most of t' time, there being no need to watch much, being as there was
+no one besides ourselves anywhere near. But early spring and late fall
+when t' fleets were passing, it were day and night watch, and not
+without a gun neither.</p>
+
+<p>"But it would have paid us better to have watched that winter; for
+when t' Frenchmen come in t' spring there was a number of little
+things missing that Father had to stand to&mdash;and, somehow, us never
+suspected t' newcomer.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>"It was only long afterwards us learned how t' new settler come by his
+name&mdash;which was 'Skipper Bill Portland.' Seems that's where the big
+English convict prison is. So after Bill escaped, he not being good at
+letters, and not wanting exactly to use his own name, he just twisted
+her round, and to this day no one's ever found out really who he was
+before.</p>
+
+<p>"Hundreds of schooners anchored in the Bight in our harbour that
+spring, t' whitecoats having come right in on t' floe, just t' other
+side of t' Deadman's Cape. One day a schooner captain read we a piece
+in t' papers about a man what had been a pirate, what had escaped to
+Newfoundland; and a hundred dollars was being offered for his head.
+Reading about that man made us all think of Skipper Portland. It were
+his build and his kind, too. But us folk never mixed with that kind of
+work; and all us did was to keep a good lookout for t' future. But a
+poor neighbour he proved to be, for he were as cute as a fox, and he
+had no fear o' nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"He weren't no idle man, though, Skipper <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>Bill weren't. That second
+winter he set to and built a ten-tonner all by hisself&mdash;that is, t'
+hull. He had galvanized fastenings for her, such as he never bought
+fair in Newfoundland. But o' course he had no gear to fit her out, and
+he couldn't get any more than he'd got already off our room. We lads
+saw to that, and he knew it, too&mdash;and that it weren't safe playing no
+games, neither.</p>
+
+<p>"He were away t' following winter, 'furring,' so he told we, but no
+fox could ever get fooled by a trap Skipper Bill set. It weren't in
+his line, getting round animals. Beyond which he had ne'er a trap. He
+'lowed he just set deadfalls&mdash;a good name for his work, I'm thinking
+now. Anyhow, he came back with enough gear, stolen off French Rooms to
+t' south, I reckon, to get his boat afloat by t' time t' owners got
+back.</p>
+
+<p>"She were an odd craft, built for a crew of one man only. For Skipper
+Bill hadn't much trust in any man 'cept hisself. Once when he were
+full o' French brandy he told me that when he were working on t'
+cliffs in England, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>he found out that his mate were going to 'squeal,'
+as he called it, about his leaving, so he'd given him such a kick
+behind when he weren't expecting it that no one had ever heard from
+him since. He meant, we reckoned, that t' poor fellow had fell off t'
+bill into t' sea.</p>
+
+<p>"When he built that boat he were thinking already that he might have
+to leave sudden, and perhaps a crew wouldn't be willing to, even if he
+got one. So he trimmed his teller lanyards to run forrard, so as he
+could steer before t' foremast, and handle t' headsheets hisself going
+to windward, and at t' same time keep a lookout for ice and slob.</p>
+
+<p>"Many's t' time I've seen him sailing along with ne'er a watch on deck
+at all, he being below aft steering by compass from t' locker, with t'
+tiller lines leading down the companion hatch.</p>
+
+<p>"I minds one fall that he brought in a big cask o' rum and a lot o'
+brandy, which he were going to sell to us folk. But Father wouldn't
+stand for that. He said that he'd seen too much of it when he were
+young to want any more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>lying round. We lads found it only fun to go
+over and knock t' heads in, and hear what old Portland had to say
+about we.</p>
+
+<p>"One day, however, a fellow all dressed in blue came down from St.
+John's to take he along, and before Bill knew it t' boat were
+alongside his craft and t' man calling he to come ashore. Bill knowed
+what he were at once. He'd had experience. 'All right, Officer,' he
+said, 'I'll just get my coat and come along,' But when he come up on
+deck he had a barrel of gunpowder all open and a box of matches in his
+hand. 'Come on, now,' he shouted with an oath, 'let's all go to hell
+together.' But just as soon as ever t' small boat backed off, he runs
+forrard and slips his cable, and was off before t' wind before youse
+could say 'Jack Robinson.'</p>
+
+<p>"He always left his mainsail up, Skipper Bill did. 'Better be sure
+than sorry' was a rule he always told us were his religion.</p>
+
+<p>"T' policeman seemed in two minds about following t' boat, but when
+she rounded Deadman's Cape, he rows back ashore. I minds running up t'
+hill to watch where Skipper Bill <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>would go, but he stood right on
+across for t' Larbadore. T' policeman said that that weren't his beat;
+and he looked glad enough that it weren't neither. Old Portland never
+came back to Sleepy Cove to live. He just left everything
+standing&mdash;which were mostly only what he couldn't take away with him
+anyhow.</p>
+
+<p>"That fall one of t' Frenchmen stowed away in t' woods when their ship
+was getting ready for home. His name was Louis Marteau; and his vessel
+had no sooner gone than in he goes and lives in Bill's house across t'
+cove. Things got missing again that winter, and though Father had to
+feed him, seeing that he hadn't been able to steal a diet, we lads
+give him notice to quit in t' spring. As he didn't show no signs of
+moving, us just put a couple of big trees for shoes under t' house,
+and ran it and Louis, too, out onto t' ice as far as t' cape&mdash;a matter
+of two miles or more.</p>
+
+<p>"So us thought us had done with both of them, and a good riddance too;
+but when t' spring opened t' Frenchman wrote up to t' English
+man-o'-war captain to come in and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>find out about t' things what
+they'd lost. So one day in comes t' big ship and anchors right
+alongside in our bay. T' very first man to come rowing across and go
+aboard to see what he could get, I reckon, was Louis Marteau. When t'
+captain asked him what he wanted, he said that he had come over to ask
+him to send a boat to t' cape to search his rooms, as t' neighbours
+blamed he for having taken their things.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it were a long way to go and there were no motor boats them
+days; and t' captain must have thought if Louis had taken anything he
+had it hid away where no one would find it. So they just didn't take
+t' trouble to send out a crew and look. At the same time Louis had
+stolen fish drying on his flakes, and stolen twine right in his open
+fish stage to go and catch more with.</p>
+
+<p>"Another steamer came in t' fall, and Louis, thinking that t' trouble
+had blown over, went aboard as usual. One of t' officers, thinking
+that the man was just a fisherman, and as simple as most o' we, asked
+him if he didn't know <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>where a man called Louis Marteau was. 'Yes,"
+said Louis, 'I knows he well. He be here to-day, and gone
+to-morrow'&mdash;and with that he slips away, and was far enough in the
+woods for safety long before the searching party landed.</p>
+
+<p>"Louis, like old Bill, was as fond o' liquor as a cat is o' milk; and
+when he got French brandy in him, he didn't care what he did. There be
+only one law here which every one keeps, as you knows, Doctor, on this
+coast. Whatever else you does, you must never touch t' property of
+another settler, whether he be good or bad, or whether he be away
+fishing, or whether he be in America. Because any time he may need to
+come back, and that many are away summers fishing, if they can't leave
+their homes locked and feel 'em safe, they can't live at all. So
+everybody minds that law, whether it be written in St. John's or not.
+There are new stages, yes, and houses, too, and plenty of 'em, and
+boats hauled up, that men has left and gone to Canada years ago.
+They're tumbling down right alongside folk as needs 'em as bad as gold
+just for firewood, but ne'er a stick <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>is touched come year, go
+year&mdash;not till they rots or t' sea comes and carries 'em away.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Louis and a man called Tom Marling got some liquor aboard that
+day, and started scrapping, Marling saying that Louis must be a crook
+or he wouldn't steal another man's house. T' end of that was that
+Louis shot Marling through the shoulder and nearly blew his arm off.</p>
+
+<p>"Next spring a large bully sailed across t' Straits and four men
+landed in my cove. It chanced that old Skipper Sam Brewer caught sight
+of 'em, and he recognized Bill Portland from t' old days. T' other
+three was Tom Marling's brothers. All t' men had guns, and old Skipper
+Sam guessed they was after Louis. So he sent off his lad Mose to run
+out to t' cape and give he warning. Though why he should I can't say.
+Louis just said, 'All right, I'll be ready for 'em, boy,' and started
+right in loading his two big guns and his rifle. Then he fixed up t'
+windows and barred t' door, and when Mose come away he could see Louis
+moving round inside and swearing enough to frighten <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>t' fish off t'
+coast for t' whole summer. Mose waited round out of sight all day to
+see what would happen. But nothing did, only before dark he saw the
+four men making their campfire on the edge of the woods near Louis's
+house. I reckon they knew he'd be ready and wanted to keep him
+waiting. Anyway, they was there all next day.</p>
+
+<p>"T' third morning I caught sight of some men loading a boat at Louis's
+stage, so, being only a hobbledehoy then, I guessed they'd not take
+much notice of me, and no more they did. They told me Louis had tried
+to break away t' second night in t' dark, but they caught him and
+carried his pack back for him, and what else they did to he I don't
+rightly know. Anyhow, they loaded up their own boat and then Louis's
+two boats with fish and twine, and everything else that were worth
+taking and they could stow, not forgetting t' barrel of flour and t'
+keg of molasses.</p>
+
+<p>"Skipper Bill told me that t' Governor offered to make him t' captain
+of a man-o'-war, just to stop t' law-breaking on the coast. But <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>he
+were a policeman instead because he felt ashamed to see t' laws broken
+and villains like Louis go free. 'It's to teach you people on t' coast
+to be good boys what brings us away from our homes so far in t'
+fishing season.'</p>
+
+<p>"They never stopped loading a minute all t' time, and as soon as ever
+they were ready, and that wasn't long after it were light, away they
+goes towing t' two boats behind, and giving it to her straight for t'
+Labrador. 'Skipper Life,' Bill shouted, just after the anchor was up,
+'if you sees Louis be sure and tell him to be good and say his
+prayers, and when he is ready, not to forget his uncles in Labrador
+and come over and settle down peaceful like.'</p>
+
+<p>"No, Doctor, Louis never got so much as a match back, though he wrote
+and wrote about it&mdash;and Louis were a good scholar, being well learnt
+in France. All t' Government did was to offer Captain Fordland, who
+fished t' big Jersey rooms across near Isle au Loup on Labrador,
+another hundred dollars to bring back Skipper Bill with him in t'
+fall. T' captain told his men that they could divide t' money <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>if they
+liked to catch old Portland out of hours.</p>
+
+<p>"I 'lows it was more t' fun of hunting than anything else that started
+'em, though two hundred dollars cash meant a nice bit in them times.
+Soon there were half a dozen small crowds keeping an eye out for Bill.
+There were no wires or mail steamers to carry news them days, and it
+so happened that Bill fell right into t' trap. For Captain Fordland
+did a bit o' trade, and Bill, being out of flour, come along to buy a
+barrel. Half a dozen men soon had him and his boat as well. T' trouble
+was where to keep him till they went home in t' fall, which was a full
+two months anyhow.</p>
+
+<p>"The crowd what took him got leave from Skipper Fordland to lock Bill
+up in t' top storey of t' old Jersey brick store on the Island; and
+'em fixed it like sailors so that not even Bill should get away. They
+had to share t' expense of feeding and looking after he between 'em,
+and though they didn't give he none too much it took quite a bit of
+their wages&mdash;only a hundred dollars for the whole summer.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>"Bill had been there nearly six weeks and all hands were thinking of
+going home, when one day he told t' cook who brought up his food that
+he was fair dying of doing nothing, and couldn't he give him some
+work. Being an old sailor, he set Bill to making bread bags, and for a
+few days he made a whole lot, and t' cook took it easy. All he gave
+Bill was some canvas, a pocket-knife, and some needles and thread.
+Bill, however, saved a lot of canvas out of them bags and made himself
+a long rope of it. Then he just worked on, waiting for a real dark
+night and an offshore wind, when he let hisself down through t'
+window, swam off to t' best fishing bully Captain Fordland had, and
+was out of sight before daylight.</p>
+
+<p>"You may bet they was all mad, more especially t' captain, who swore
+that t' crowd would have to pay for his good boat. What they said and
+did to t' cook be scarcely fit for ears to hear. Anyhow, no one knowed
+where Bill had gone, and none of that crowd ever saw him again. He
+weren't very dear to memory either.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>"T' next place us heard of him was on the West Coast. He brought with
+him an Eskimo wife he called Nancy, who was very good at doctoring.
+She could make poultices out of herbs and medicines out of t' woods,
+and she would charm toothache and warts and such like, and could stop
+bleeding by just tying green worsted round your left arm. She had a
+haddock's fin-bone that never touched any boat that she used to lend
+out for rheumatism. She did a lot o' good, they says, Doctor, and she
+made a nice bit of money, too, so that old Bill had an easy time. But
+he spent most of t' cash in liquor, and at last she wouldn't work any
+more for he and he got beating her. One, day he come rowing down right
+into Port Warfield, with she tied up in t' bottom of t' boat, and a
+stone tied round her neck as well! It so happened that big Skipper
+Weymouth came alongside and seed her.</p>
+
+<p>"'What be you going to do wi' she?' he asked, he not being afraid as
+most were. 'Why drown her, to be sure,' said Bill. 'I towed her behind
+t' boat for a mile a week ago come <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>Sunday to drive t' devil out of
+her. But she ain't no good to me now, and so I reckon I'll get
+another.'</p>
+
+<p>"The skipper saw that Bill had liquor in him and was quarrelsome, and
+feared that he'd just as likely as not upset t' boat&mdash;and drowned t'
+woman would be sure enough with that stone round her neck. So he says,
+'Drown her! Not on this coast and lobsters just setting in. She'd
+spoil the catch all summer just to spite you.' Bill looked puzzled.
+'You're right, sure enough, Skipper Alf. I'll have to do for she some
+other way'&mdash;and round he goes and rows her home again.</p>
+
+<p>"The people, howsomever, was real afraid, and letters went up to the
+Government. No doubt Bill heard about it. But there were no place left
+now for him to go safely, so he just drank and drank where he was, all
+he could lay hands on; and when he couldn't get no more I guess he
+must have gone mad. For he were found dead on t' floor of his house,
+with a great big knife he had for hunting deer in his hand.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>"Yes, his wife's alive to this day so far as us knows. Her son Bill
+found a box of old silver dollars, Spanish and French, buried under t'
+house Bill had on Labrador, the time he were trapped by Captain
+Fordland's men. They were mostly about a hundred years old. I saw many
+of them, but where they come from, or how he come by 'em, no one ever
+knew. We heard, however, that they helped poor Nancy to get back to
+her people again all right."</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="KAIACHOUOUK" id="KAIACHOUOUK"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>KAIACHOUOUK<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>The brief summer of Northern Labrador had passed, and the Eskimos
+around the Hudson's Bay Post at Katatallik were busy preparing for the
+approaching winter. The season previous, according to the accurate
+notes of the Moravians, kept for over a hundred years, had been the
+worst on record; and now again, as the long, cold, icy grip of winter
+drew near, the prospect of supplies was menacingly poor. So the
+Innuits, that cheerful and resourceful little race of the North who
+wrest their living from so reluctant an environment, were putting
+forth all their energies in a "preparedness" from whose example many a
+civilized community might well have profited.</p>
+
+<p>Their chief Kaiachououk, of upright character, and the courage born of
+simplicity, was a familiar figure at the Hudson's Bay Post where my
+friend Barlow was <i>facteur</i> for so many years. His acquaintance with
+the chieftain dated from an afternoon many years <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>before, when he had
+first seen him, steering his large oomiavik, or flat-bottomed boat, up
+to the station, while his four lusty wives cheerily worked at the
+sweeps with his eldest son&mdash;an almost regal procession. It was on that
+same evening that he had told the <i>facteur</i>, after watching Mrs.
+Barlow prepare the evening meal, "Ananaudlualakuk" ("She is much too
+good for you"), and the frankness of his speech, far from seeming to
+disparage his host, endeared the speaker all the more to that
+hospitable and discerning person.</p>
+
+<p>Kaiachououk possessed qualities which evoked the respect and
+admiration of all with whom he came in contact. Very noticeable among
+these was his affection for his family. To this day on the coast there
+is a story told of him and his youngest wife. He had been camping on
+their outside walrus-hunting station, and as was customary, he was
+sometimes away two or three days at a time, having to take refuge on
+one of the off-lying islands, if bad weather or the fickleness of
+fortune involved longer distances to travel than he was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>able to
+accomplish in a short winter's day. It was on his return from one of
+these temporary absences that he was greeted with the news that his
+youngest wife, Kajue, was very ill. One might have supposed that
+having so generous a complement of that nature, the news would not
+have afflicted him in the same degree as one less gifted. But exactly
+the reverse proved to be the case. Kaiachououk was completely
+prostrated; and when the girl died two days later, having failed to
+make any rally in spite of all her husband's generous presents to
+Angelok, he literally went out of his mind.</p>
+
+<p>The Eskimo custom, still observed in the North, is to lay out the dead
+in all their clothing, but with no other covering, on the rocky summit
+of some projecting headland. The body thus placed on the surface of
+the rocks is walled in with tall, flat stones standing on end, long,
+narrow slits being left between them, so that air and light may freely
+circulate, and the spirit of the departed may come and go at will and
+keep watch on passing animals, whose spirits must serve the person in
+the spirit land <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>just as, when embodied, they paid tribute to the
+needs and prowess of the dead. The top of the grave is also covered
+with large, flat slabs; and in a small separate cache of similar
+construction are stored all the personal belongings likely to be of
+use. The spirits of these latter are set free, either by having holes
+bored in them or some part of them broken or removed, so that thus
+being rendered useless to the living, they suffer what in the Eskimo
+mind corresponds to the death of inanimate objects.</p>
+
+<p>Kaiachououk was so convinced of the reality of the spirit world, and
+so heart-broken at his utter inability to bring back to life the one
+he had loved so well, that now nothing would satisfy his mind but that
+in order to continue the communion which had been so sweet to him on
+earth, he should be treated exactly as his lost wife, and be
+immediately buried alongside her on some point of vantage.</p>
+
+<p>At first his followers were inclined to treat his injunctions as mere
+vapourings, but they finally realized that the man was in deadly
+earnest, and were eventually compelled to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>comply with his wishes. The
+day being set, he was accordingly dressed in his finest garments, and,
+his dead wife being duly caparisoned and walled in in the customary
+manner, Kaiachououk, laid out on the rock beside her, was treated in
+an exactly similar fashion. There was no apparent alteration of the
+chief's attitude of mind as they proceeded with the walling up, and
+the heavy slabs were already being laid over him when two of the
+largest happened to become lodged on his chest. For a short time he
+made no sign and offered no kind of resistance; but it was gradually
+forced upon him that this method of translation into other worlds was
+far from being as easy as he had been inclined to suppose.
+Consequently, before the cort&egrave;ge had broken up and his last friends
+departed, he was loudly appealing to them to return and release him.</p>
+
+<p>He was never known afterwards to refer to the incident; but on the
+whole it had an excellent effect on the Innuits; and they realized, so
+far as their unimpressionable natures are capable of doing, the strong
+domestic affection <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>for his wife which was one of their chief's
+pre-eminent sources of greatness.</p>
+
+<p>On this particular fall, when the last drama in Kaiachououk's life was
+played, when the northern lights sent their many-coloured banners
+floating over the heavens, and the stars looked so large and shining
+that it seemed one must surely touch them from the tops of the high
+hills, he was camping with his family and two or three others on a
+small ledge at the foot of the mighty Kiglapeit (shining top)
+Mountains, hunting walrus. This year the hunt was doubly important to
+them, and they delayed longer than was their wont. Here the great cape
+with which the spur ends marks the division of the whole trend of the
+land north from that which runs more directly south toward Katatallik.
+There the whole force of the south-going polar streams, focused on the
+ice, keeps open water long after all the rest of the coast is locked
+in the grim grip of winter. The walrus herds seem, in the evolution of
+ages, to have got an appreciation of this fact through their
+adamantine skulls. Therefore, from time <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>immemorial, it has been
+chosen as a rendezvous of the Innuits in spring and fall. The chaos of
+ancient walrus bones which strews the stony beach reminds one of
+nothing so forcibly as the stacks of bleaching buffalo bones which
+disgrace the prairies.</p>
+
+<p>On several occasions during the year previous, Kalleligak (the
+Capelin) had been guilty of the worst crime in the Eskimo calendar&mdash;on
+several occasions he had failed to extend that hospitality to
+strangers without which life on the coast is scarcely possible. It had
+been brought to Kaiachououk's notice, and he had lost no time in
+seeking out the man and taxing him with his remissness. A mixture of
+traits like the colours in a variegated skein of worsted formed the
+spectrum of Kalleligak's character; and selfishness, which fortunately
+is rarer among the Eskimos than among those in keener competition with
+civilization, was too often the prevailing colour. After the
+interview, at which he had promised to mend his ways, he apparently
+always lived in fear that sooner or later Kaiachououk would have him
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>punished, and even deprive him of some of his possessions. The
+obsession haunted him as the thought of the crime does the murderer,
+and at last impelled him to the act which, though it went unpunished
+by men, blasted the remainder of his days.</p>
+
+<p>Among the others who camped around Kaiachououk's igloo this year was
+as usual the sub-chief Kalleligak. He had been more than usually
+successful in his hunt, and was able to face the prospect of the
+oncoming winter with optimism. On the other hand, his supposed enemy,
+Kaiachououk, had been singularly unfortunate, largely owing to the
+fact that his kayak had been left farther to the north. He showed no
+signs of either impatience or jealousy, however, and never by word or
+act gave evidence that he so much as remembered the rebuke he had been
+forced to administer to the sub-chief. Finally he dispatched his
+eldest sons, Bakshuak and Kommak, with a big team of dogs, to hurry
+down north and bring the belated and forgotten boat back with all
+speed.</p>
+
+<p>Kalleligak, obsessed by his jealousy and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>chagrin, was able from his
+camp to watch every movement of the chief's. He positively brooded so
+much over the incident that he came to believe that his life was in
+danger at Kaiachououk's hands. The next steps were easy, for he was
+favoured both by the innocence of his superior and the weather. Days
+are short in the late fall in the North, and darkness falls before
+work is finished.</p>
+
+<p>In the late afternoon, two days after Bakshuak and Kommak's departure,
+while Kaiachououk was still out of his igloo and the darkness was
+rapidly coming on, Kalleligak stole inside and took the chief's gun.
+This he unloaded and then reloaded with two balls. Early next morning,
+before the dawn, he crept out, carrying his own and the stolen weapon,
+to watch his chance. Kaiachououk, emerging soon after from his snow
+house, turned his back on Kalleligak's igloo while he stooped to make
+a trifling repair on his own. Without a second's hesitation,
+Kalleligak seized Kaiachououk's own gun, and crawling and crouching up
+behind the five-foot snow ramparts which the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>Eskimos invariably build
+around their winter houses, he fired two bullets through the
+unsuspecting man's back and body. The chief fell head foremost, having
+received two fatal wounds; but Kalleligak, throwing down one gun had
+instantly grabbed the other, in order if necessary to finish the deed
+before the mortally wounded man could tell who was responsible. But
+Kaiachououk never moved, and his enemy slunk inside, believing that he
+had been unobserved.</p>
+
+<p>As fate would have it, Anatalik, another of the hunters, appeared at
+the entrance of his igloo just in time to see the smoking gun-barrel
+over the edge of the snow wall. Running to his fallen chief, he begged
+him to tell him what had occurred. The dying man had only strength
+left to whisper "Kiapevunga?" ("Who has killed me?"), and Anatalik
+could barely discern from his eye that he understood the answer,
+"Kalleligamut" ("It was Kalleligak who did it").</p>
+
+<p>It was probably this, to us, unimportant item which caused a
+confession ever to be made. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>Kalleligak, now convinced that the spirit
+of his dead chief knew he was the murderer, believed it would haunt
+him without mercy, and that his own life might be immediately forfeit
+unless he could appease it. He therefore at once set about
+preparations for a funeral befitting the dignity of the deceased;
+which, in the absence of Kaiachououk's eldest son, he himself
+personally supervised. When all was over he went to the igloo carrying
+gifts, and offered to support the entire family till the sons should
+be of an age to assume it. His overtures were as unwelcome as they
+were importunate; but the poor women were forced to listen in silence.
+Helpless as they were, with their young men away, they dared not anger
+the man, whose character was only too well known. Kalleligak, in order
+further to allay the anger of the spirit, with all speed set out on
+the trail to meet the dead man's returning sons, and apprize them
+personally of his version of the story.</p>
+
+<p>Bakshuak, the eldest, listened in silence while Kalleligak first
+recounted the long list of imaginary wrongs which he had suffered at
+the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>hands of his father, then made his plea of self-defence, and
+lastly recited the hateful overtures which he had made to the helpless
+family, who were now, in spite of themselves, under very definite
+obligations to the murderer.</p>
+
+<p>Angrily the lad repudiated any parleying. The family would far rather
+starve than be beholden to such infamy as was suggested. He was only a
+boy now, he declared, but he said fearlessly that if no one else
+killed him, he would do the deed himself as soon as he was big enough;
+and he raced on with his dogs, to reach home and comfort his poor
+mother. Had he but known it, he was really indebted for his life to
+the supposed wrath of his father's spirit and the restraining effect
+which it had on Kalleligak.</p>
+
+<p>Eskimos never refer to painful events if they can help it. They go
+even farther than certain modern "scientists," for if a person who
+dies happens to have had the same name as one still living in the
+vicinity, the latter incontinently changes his. As a result, confusion
+not infrequently arises, for a man whom you have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>known all his life
+as "John" is "William" the next time you meet him. Thus they avoid the
+mention of the word the memory of which might bring pain to the
+relatives. Much less would they bring bad news to a white man.</p>
+
+<p>They took good care, however, that the local Innuits should know that
+Kaiachououk was dead, hoping that they might give the great white man
+at the post the sad news of the loss of his friend. Barlow, as soon as
+he was certain of the main facts, at once dispatched messengers to
+summon to him Kalleligak, and Anatalik, who had seen the deed. The
+murderer had already expressed his willingness to surrender to the
+white man, and he at once packed up and accompanied the couriers back
+to Katatallik.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the news had also reached Ekkoulak, the sister of
+Kaiachououk, and her husband, Semijak, immediately summoned his
+council to discuss matters. All were agreed that the tribal custom
+must be observed. "A life for a life" was the only law they
+recognized, and the two elder sons of Semijak were selected to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>carry
+the sentence into effect. Well armed and equipped, they started the
+very next morning for the North. The following day they walked into
+the Hudson's Bay Post to apprize the white man of their errand, so
+that there might be no suspicion of their blood-guiltiness, not
+knowing that by a strange whim of fortune Kalleligak and Anatalik were
+already there and were seated in one room while they were being
+received in another.</p>
+
+<p>In the room with Kalleligak and Anatalik was Mr. Barlow's daughter, a
+little child of six, who was amusing herself with a picture book of
+the life of Christ. The little girl began to show the pictures to the
+two men, telling them the story in their own tongue as she went along.
+She at last came to the picture of Christ upon the Cross between the
+two thieves. Mr. Barlow in the adjoining room heard Kalleligak ask the
+child if she thought Jesus would forgive any one who had killed
+another man, to which the little one replied, "Why, yes, if he were
+really sorry and tried to be better."</p>
+
+<p>The house of friends is neutral ground, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>to start a quarrel in the
+great white man's house would be about as likely as that we should
+begin one on the steps of the altar. Thus, when Kalleligak and
+Anatalik were summoned to dinner, both parties proceeded as if nothing
+unusual were in the air and all refreshed themselves at the same
+board.</p>
+
+<p>Bidding them to keep the peace, Mr. Barlow made an effort to get to
+the bottom of the affair; but he found it very hard to know what to
+advise. The sister of Kaiachououk had begged and prayed her sons, now
+chosen as avengers, to have nothing to do with the slaying, saying,
+"It will only make more trouble. It will be Kalleligak's family who
+will suffer. They will surely starve to death." She had even sent a
+special messenger to the agent with an earnest plea that he would use
+all his influence to save her lads from the shedding of blood.</p>
+
+<p>Having decided that the matter should be settled in open court and to
+abide by the decision of the great white man, all concerned now
+adjourned to the kitchen, and not for the first <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>time that humble room
+was transformed into a court of justice. Kalleligak first gave his
+version of the story without the slightest attempt to conceal
+anything. He said he had lived in constant terror of what Kaiachououk
+might inflict upon him; and then, turning to the two men, who were
+fully armed with loaded guns, he said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I know you have come to kill me. I shall never know good fortune
+again, anyhow. I have many skins and goods. With those I will pay for
+Kaiachououk. I can say no more."</p>
+
+<p>As he ceased speaking, Semijak's eldest son burst out angrily:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we have come to kill you. Our law is a life for a life. We will
+not take any bribe."</p>
+
+<p>But Oggak, the second avenger, thought differently:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We will hurt those who are not guilty. It would be different if he
+had no family. What offer does he make?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know that Kalleligak is the second best hunter in the North," the
+agent spoke up. "And your mother, the wife of Semijak, has <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>also sent
+me a letter. She says nothing but evil will come from killing the head
+of another family. Cannot the spirit be satisfied in some other way?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Barlow said he would go out and return when they had talked over
+the matter among themselves. He always felt great pity for these
+far-off outcasts of humanity. To kill another could only make matters
+worse. It was quite probable that even a blood feud would be started
+and more valuable lives be sacrificed. The struggle for existence was
+hard enough in any case, and if he suggested their taking the law into
+their own hands, there was no telling where it would end.</p>
+
+<p>So it turned out that the matter was settled by simple word of mouth.
+That was absolutely sufficient for Kalleligak. If the avengers
+appointed by the tribe were satisfied, not only would the spirit of
+the murdered chief rest quietly, but the guilty one's life would be
+safe.</p>
+
+<p>The agreement, duly drawn up by the agent, read as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="block"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+<p class="noin">"We will not kill you.<br />
+You are to pay&mdash;<br />
+Two white bears.<br />
+Twelve white foxes.<br />
+Three live dogs."</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>That was the value set on a really great man's life. It makes one
+wonder at what rate ours would be appraised in Eskimo land.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="TWO_CHRISTMASES" id="TWO_CHRISTMASES"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>TWO CHRISTMASES<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>It was Christmas Eve, and Malcolm McCrea, just back from the woods,
+was throwing down some frozen seal meat from the scaffold for his
+hungry dogs after their long day's hauling. Malcolm was only eighteen,
+and in winter still lived with his father in their home below the
+falls of Pike's River. However, now that he had been away for two
+summers in his uncle's schooner fishing "down North," his eyes were
+already turned to some long-untenanted fjords in the mouths of which
+the craft had anchored.</p>
+
+<p>Pike's Falls was a lonely place, and the sound of a human voice
+calling to a dog team kept Malcolm standing with a fine forkful of
+meat in his hands long enough so greatly to tantalize the team below
+as to start a serious fight. This woke him from his reverie. "Ah, Ah!"
+he shouted, and, jumping down right into the middle of the fracas,
+soon had his dogs busy again with the frozen blocks which constituted
+their food for the day.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>"Is that you, Mr. Norman?" he exclaimed heartily. "Why, who would ever
+have thought of seeing you here, and alone, this evening of all days
+in t' year?"&mdash;as a middle-aged man jumped from an empty sledge and
+began unharnessing a half-starved-looking team. "Shall I give you a
+hand? They seem spun out."</p>
+
+<p>"Better not touch 'em, I reckon," was the gruff answer. "They're a bit
+surly with strangers." And indeed already the animals were snarling
+and showing their teeth at the other dogs finishing their meal near
+by.</p>
+
+<p>Malcolm, who at once proceeded to throw down a liberal allowance of
+seal meat for the newcomers' suppers, attributed the savage way in
+which their master whipped off his host's team from trying to get a
+second helping, to the weariness of a long journey. For to beat
+another man's dogs, especially with the long and heavy lash of our
+Northern whips, is a breach of the unwritten law of the Labrador.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until he had shared the steaming supper prepared for
+Malcolm that the strings of the visitor's tongue began to be unloosed.
+For <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>it is not etiquette to ask a stranger's reasons for visiting a
+well-stocked house, in a country where the komatik trail is the only
+resource for the destitute.</p>
+
+<p>"It's to t' post I'm bound. We be short of grub south. T' fishery have
+been bad this three years, and there's six of us now," he began.
+"There wasn't more than a couple of bakings of flour in t' barrel when
+I left. I couldn't get no credit south at Deep-Water Creek; and so I
+just had to try north or starve."</p>
+
+<p>"'T is a long bit yet to t' post," replied Malcolm. "There is t'
+Monkey to cross if you goes inside; and us allows it a good hundred
+miles to go round t' cape. It'll take you a week to haul a barrel of
+flour from there here."</p>
+
+<p>Roderick, sitting back in his chair, was dejectedly surveying the
+comfortable-looking room. Malcolm caught his gaze, and realized what
+was passing in the poor fellow's mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Draw up, draw up, and light your pipe, Mr. Norman," he interposed.
+"'Tis only Home Rule tobacco, but it serves us down here."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>Eagerly enough Norman accepted the proffered plug, and then relapsed
+into a silence which Malcolm found it hard to break. So, excusing
+himself for a minute, he beckoned the old folk to come into their
+bedroom that they might talk over the situation in private.</p>
+
+<p>"He has four youngsters, and I knows they be hard up," he began. "They
+hasn't a chance where they are. T' neighbours blames Roderick for
+several little troubles which happened to t' southard, and t' traders
+won't advance more'n he can pay for. If it was any one else, and
+to-morrow wasn't Christmas, it would be just good fun to go down North
+with him and help haul back a barrel or so&mdash;that is, if they lets him
+have it."</p>
+
+<p>"That's not like you, Malcolm. You can't make a man good that way, any
+more'n you can a dog by beatin' him," chimed in his old mother. "I
+guess you'll go along with him, even to-morrow, if so be he wishes
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"S'pose I will, Mother, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Course you would," said his father proudly. "They've never known a
+McCrea <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>yet on this coast that would let even a dog starve. But
+there's a barrel of flour in our cellar which we can live without.
+Maybe it's t' kind of Christmas greeting t' poor fellow needs."</p>
+
+<p>"If you says so, it's all right, Father," said Malcolm, "and, seeing
+it's a good hundred miles to Mr. Norman's house, I guess I'll go
+along, anyhow, in t' morning and let my beauties help them half-fed
+pups of his, or it'll be Old Christmas Day before his kids get a bite
+out of it."</p>
+
+<p>Only the joy of the first tobacco for weeks was keeping the worn-out
+man from being fast asleep when Malcolm again took a chair beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got to make a round south to-morrow, Mr. Norman," he began, "and
+it would be a pity if you had to be going t' other way. Father says he
+has a barrel of flour in t' cellar you can have and pay for it when
+youse can. So if that'll suit, I'd like to give you a hand some part
+of t' way, especially as there'll be a few gallons of molasses to
+carry also if you'll take 'em."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>Gratitude is a rare grace. The lack of it was one of the costly
+defects in Roderick's character. No longer hungry, sitting before a
+good fire with a well-filled pipe, even the cunning which usually
+supplies the vacancy failed him; and Malcolm had to force himself to
+put down to exhaustion the ungracious way in which his real sacrifice
+was accepted.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of hard work, they had only made thirty miles by sunset the
+next day, and, there being no shelter, they were obliged to camp early
+as light snow was falling. Yet it was a good Christmas night around
+the blazing fire with the special cheer the old mother had packed into
+the bread-boxes on their komatik. The following morning they did
+better, reaching the landwash of a big inlet forty miles farther south
+by noon. Here Malcolm had decided to turn back, for the remainder of
+the trail to Long Point lay practically over level ice. Just as they
+were saying good-bye, however, his quick eye detected something black
+moving out on the bay.</p>
+
+<p>"A fox, Mr. Norman. Look! A fox! And a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>black one too. You may be able
+to pay for that barrel of flour before t' day's out."</p>
+
+<p>They were both good furriers, and their plans were soon laid. The dogs
+were quickly hitched up to stumps, and, glad of a rest, were easily
+made to lie down. Alas, the men had only Malcolm's gun; but it was
+arranged that he should go out and turn the fox, and Norman, hiding at
+the third corner of the triangle, should try and shoot it passing or
+lure it in range down wind.</p>
+
+<p>Things went admirably. Malcolm by a long d&eacute;tour was able to turn the
+fox from far out without frightening it. Roderick, well hidden, and
+squeaking like a mouse, tolled it into easy range; and within an hour
+the two men held in their hands a skin worth at least four hundred
+dollars. It was agreed, at Roderick's suggestion, that he should carry
+it home, as he was nearer the fur-buyers, take the first offer over
+that sum, and then send the half due by the law of the woods to
+Malcolm north by the earliest mail-carrier.</p>
+
+<p>Malcolm added as he said good-bye, "I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>reckon maybe Father will want
+to let t' barrel go as good luck on t' bargain."</p>
+
+<p>Summer came, and open water with it, but the half value of that skin
+never arrived. Later, in reply to Malcolm's enquiry by letter, a note
+came to say that it was being held for a better price in the fall; and
+with that he had to be content.</p>
+
+<p>Winter followed summer, and when once again the "going was good,"
+Malcolm, "running light" with his dogs, made the journey to Long Point
+easily in two days. Yes, the skin was sold, but the agent had not yet
+sent the cash. It had brought $430 and the half would come along as
+soon as ever Monsieur Baillot forwarded the notes. But the winter
+again went by and no notes, no letters, or other news ever reached
+Malcolm McCrea. Six years passed, and still they never came, and the
+McCreas supposed the debt was time-barred. Indeed, they had almost
+forgotten the whole incident.</p>
+
+<p>Malcolm was still nominally at his father's house, but for three
+winters he had trapped on <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>the Grand River, which flowed out into one
+of the bays he had discovered "down North." Here with the help of a
+hired man he had built up quite a fine little house, and made every
+preparation for that momentous life experience which usually comes
+early in life to every Labrador man. With characteristic caution he
+had waited for a good winter hunt to buy furnishings and traps. This
+had also given Nancy Grahame, who lived close to his home, time to get
+ready the needed linen and other requisites. "Clewing up" his salmon
+fishery in good time, Malcolm had cruised North in his own small
+sailboat, and till the first ice made had been very busy cutting wood,
+hauling food into the country for the winter tilts along his fur-path
+on the Grand River, completing his cellar, and safely storing his
+winter house supplies.</p>
+
+<p>His first hunt being mostly for foxes along the landwash of the bay,
+he had waited until the snow came to tail his traps, judging that
+although it would take a week with his dogs to fetch his wife to their
+new home, he might <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>safely chance that length of time away without
+losing anything which might be snared in the meanwhile. This was the
+third winter he had furred this path without interruption, and by all
+the custom of the coast no one would now interfere with his claim. So
+Malcolm started south at a stretch gallop with a light heart.</p>
+
+<p>The two hundred and odd miles to the rendezvous at his father-in-law's
+winter home in the woods were covered with only two nights out, and
+that when the trails were as yet hardly broken and the young ice on
+the rivers would surely have delayed any man with less determination.</p>
+
+<p>The wedding was in real Labrador style. Every one from far and near
+was present, quite without the formality of an invitation. It would,
+indeed, be an ill omen for the future if any one were omitted through
+the miscarriage of an invitation. So the danger is averted by the
+grapevine telegraph, which simply signals the event in sufficient time
+to make it a man's own fault if he is not present. Malcolm had many
+friends and there had been great <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>preparations in Capelin Bay. Every
+scrap of room was needed to accommodate the guests, and at night
+hardly an inch of floor space but lodged some sleeping form wrapped in
+a four-point blanket, while the hardier ones with sleeping-bags
+contentedly crawled into them out in the snow, as their fashion is
+when nothing better offers.</p>
+
+<p>The cooking had to be done in two large net-barking cauldrons over
+open fires under the trees; and as the fall deer hunt had been
+successful, and pork had not in those days assumed the present
+impossible prices, there were all kinds of joints, and no limit to
+proteids and carbohydrates. The great plum puddings which served for
+wedding cakes were pulled out of the same boiling froth, tightly
+wrapped in their cloth jackets, with long fish "pews" or forks.
+Unlimited spruce beer, brewed with molasses and fortified with "Old
+Jamaica," flowed from a large barrel during the two days that the
+celebration lasted.</p>
+
+<p>At twenty below zero a slight increase in the calories consumed or
+even in the excess of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>alcohol over the normal two per cent of spruce
+beer leaves little trace on hardy folk; and when on the third morning,
+McCrea and his bride fared forth behind their splendid dog-team, every
+guest was gathered at the starting-point to "whoop up" the departing
+couple.</p>
+
+<p>"'T is early I'll be starting in t' morning, Nancy, for it's nigh a
+fortnight since I tailed my traps, and there were good signs, too, by
+t' boiling brooks," said Malcolm the first evening they arrived home.
+"A fox following t' landwash from t' rattle must surely take t' path
+there, for t' cliff fair shoulders him off t' land, and t' ice isn't
+fast more'n a foot or so from t' bluff. 'T would be a pity to lose a
+good skin, and us just starting in housekeeping."</p>
+
+<p>"What's right's right, Malcolm," answered his wife, pouting just
+perceptibly. "Us must end our honeymoon with the journey down. I'll
+not be lonely, I reckon, getting t' house to rights." And she laughed
+gayly as she noticed the results of Malcolm's sincere but unique
+attempts at furnishing.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be a ration of pork I'll be needing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>boiled, and a bun or two
+for my nonny-bag. I can cover t' path in two days so be t' going's
+good; but there's nothing like being prepared."</p>
+
+<p>"Get a few more splits, then, boy," she replied, "and I'll be cutting
+t' pork t' while." For she knew that Malcolm's estimate of the supply
+necessary for a possible delay was not the preparedness which would
+satisfy her ideas.</p>
+
+<p>Days are short in November in the North, and the moon was still up to
+see Malcolm picking his way along the unmade trail which led to the
+spot where the sea ice joined the "ballicaters" or heaped-up shore
+ice. In the late fall this is the happy hunting-ground of foxes, for a
+much-needed dinner is often to be picked up in the shape of some
+enfeebled auk or other sea-bird, while even a dead shark or smaller
+fish may be discovered.</p>
+
+<p>This was only a brief fall hunt. Malcolm had some fifty traps over ten
+miles of country, all of which he would take up the following month
+when the sea ice froze on permanently to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>shore, re-tailing them
+along his real fur-path up the Grand River along the bank of which he
+had no less than three small shacks some thirty miles apart. Here he
+made his long winter hunt for sables, otters, and lynxes, using nearly
+three hundred traps.</p>
+
+<p>It was with keen expectation and brisk step that he now strode along
+over the open; only the unwritten law of silence for a trapper on his
+path prevented his whistling as he went. When passing through the long
+belt of woods which marks the edge of the river delta, he found
+numerous windfalls blocking his narrow trail; but, keyed up as he was,
+he managed to get by them without so much as rustling a twig. "I'm
+fending for two now," he said to himself, and the very thought was
+sweet, lending zest to the matching of his capacities against those of
+the wild.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing in his first two traps. He hadn't expected anything.
+They were only a sort of outliers in case something went wrong with
+those in the sure places. But now he was nearing the Narrows, and
+already his fence <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>running from the steep bluff to the river edge was
+visible. But there was no fox in number three. The trap had not been
+sprung. The bait was as he had left it. "Maybe there'll be more to t'
+eastward," he thought, "though there were signs on this side of t'
+river." And, resetting the trap, he plodded along farther on his
+round.</p>
+
+<p>Midday came. He had passed no less than fifteen of his best traps, and
+not only had no fox been found, but not one trap was sprung or one
+bait taken.</p>
+
+<p>Malcolm stood meditatively scratching his head by trap twenty.
+"Something's wrong," he said to himself,&mdash;"but what? Better boil t'
+kettle and think it over. Perhaps better luck after lunch."</p>
+
+<p>Unstringing his tomahawk, he started to find some dry wood with which
+to kindle a fire. None being close to the beach, he walked a few yards
+into the forest, and had just commenced on a tree when he noticed by
+the white scar that a branch had been broken quite recently from the
+very same trunk. "Wind and t' <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>weight of t' silver thaw," he supposed,
+for there was no one living within fifty miles, and no other fur-path
+at that time, anyhow, in the bay. The northern komatik trail crossed
+twenty miles seaward, where the calm, wide expanse made the ice much
+safer in the early winter than near the swift current at the river
+mouth. But as he stooped to clear the trunk for his own axe, he
+noticed that, though disguised as a break, a cut had been first made
+to weaken the bough. "Some one's been here, that's sure," he said to
+himself. "Who can it be?" So much snow had fallen since Malcolm had
+gone after his wife that it was no easy matter to guess an
+answer&mdash;much less to read it from the trails around.</p>
+
+<p>His frugal meal finished, he sat meditatively smoking his pipe by the
+glowing embers of his generous fire. But no light came to him.
+Practically no one lived near. The few who did were as honest as
+daylight. He had not an enemy on earth so far as he knew; and yet he
+realized now that the good condition of his traps, and especially his
+baits, after a fortnight <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>of the blusterous Labrador fall weather
+needed accounting for. Well, anyhow, there was only one thing to
+do&mdash;go and finish his round, and when he got back he could talk the
+trouble over with his wife.</p>
+
+<p>Slipping on his snow racquets and once more shouldering his nonny-bag,
+he strode off toward his next trap. It was new to him to suspect men.
+It was his business as a trapper to suspect Nature. It was, however,
+from this new viewpoint that he must approach his next task. For
+therein lies the intense interest of the trapper's life&mdash;every moment
+affords a keen problem. The gambler has the excitement of a possible
+big return, a sudden acquisition of gain. The trapper has all that,
+and the added satisfaction of knowing that it is his ability and not
+merely his luck which has won out.</p>
+
+<p>At first sight there seemed nothing amiss with trap twenty-one. It had
+been tailed on the top of a specially felled tree. There it was
+still&mdash;a little mound of snow above the great expanse of whiteness,
+only recognizable because a trapper knows every inch of his path as a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>priest does his breviary. True, as the surface snow was only two days
+old, many marks could not be expected upon it. All the same, it struck
+Malcolm as odd that not a single fox-footing had he sighted since
+leaving home. "Something must have been cleaning 'em up," he reasoned.
+"There were two broods on Whale Island and one at least on t' Isle of
+Hope. That's some twenty all told&mdash;and ne'er a wolf or lynx track out
+to t' landward t' year." Musing to himself, he knelt down by the trap
+to examine it more closely. Lifting it up, he blew off the loose snow
+and inspected the stump carefully. No, nothing to indicate that it had
+been moved. If it had been, it must have been replaced with consummate
+care; for the rain had fallen once since Malcolm had tailed it, and
+the trap lay exactly in the icy trough, its handle and chain lying in
+the same groove. But the very fact suggested an idea. Possibly, if he
+cleared the snow there might be a frozen footmark in the hard surface
+beneath. Carefully, handful by handful, he removed over a foot of snow
+from around the bottom of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>the old tree, till he felt with his fingers
+the frozen crust. It took him over an hour's cold, tedious work, for
+he feared to use a mitten to protect his hand lest he should destroy
+the very traces of which he was in search. Though it froze his fingers
+and meant a long delay, it was well worth while, for he had undeniable
+evidence of a man's footmark, without any racquet, made since the rain
+previous to the last snowfall. It was probably at least a week old.</p>
+
+<p>Again he examined the trap carefully. Not a hair, not a blood mark,
+not a sign to show that any fox had been in it. If it had been robbed,
+an expert had done it. There was another chance, however. Using his
+racquet as a spade, Malcolm was soon at work clearing the snow away
+right around the roots. The chain was a long one, and driven into one
+of the leaders was a steel fastener. It was as he expected. Not only
+had the chain been obviously gnawed, but there was considerable
+chafing of the bark as well. "He's been in it, sure enough, but the
+question is, Who's got t' skin?" Dark was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>coming on. There was no use
+going back; so, cutting down a few boughs and making a small lean-to
+under a big spruce, Malcolm kindled a blazing fire, "cooked the
+kettle," and turned in for the night.</p>
+
+<p>Nancy had seen her husband as soon as he crossed the shoulder of the
+hill on his home-coming the third morning. To tell the truth, it was
+her first experience of being quite alone in the forest, and she had
+been doing but little "furnishing" after the first night. Now she was
+sure he had made a fine haul, and hurried out to meet him and hear the
+news. Malcolm, with the canniness of his kind, at once told her he had
+had no luck.</p>
+
+<p>Now the actual amount of money lost may not have been great, but it
+had the irritating feature of being an unknown quantity and the
+additional vague risk of making all his winter work fruitless. It is
+useless to set traps if some one else is to follow around and rob
+them. So that night he told his wife the whole story. Discuss it as
+they would, there was no clue of any kind to follow; so like wise folk
+they <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>decided to go on their way as if nothing had happened, keeping
+their mouths shut and their eyes and ears open.</p>
+
+<p>No one visited their bay before Malcolm went on his first long fur
+round, which he did earlier than was his wont in order to be back in
+time for the first of the two winter mails. This trip he made a much
+better hunt, setting his traps as he went into the country. He took
+good care to make long marches, and even one day to double back on his
+tracks, making a long d&eacute;tour to see if he might not possibly pick up
+some unexpected signs of another man on <i>his</i> path. His, because,
+although there is no law on the subject, custom is law on Labrador,
+and the man who first finds a new trail for trapping has a conceded
+right of at least a mile in width for just as far as he cares to go.</p>
+
+<p>The whole round was made in ten days, and, coming back with six
+sables, two otter, and a few mink and ermine, he was fortunate enough
+to reach home some hours before the southern mail team.</p>
+
+<p>"What's t' news, Pat?" he asked, when at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>last supper was over, and
+the final pipe was being discussed by the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing to boast of," was the answer. "T' same old story, with some a
+feast and with some a famine. They do say Roderick Norman's luck seems
+to have turned at last. T' Company gave he over four hundred dollars
+for a dark silver he got, and as much more, some say, for a batch o'
+reds and patches. 'T is more than good luck that half-breed must have
+had, for he hasn't had a dozen traps to his name this five years."</p>
+
+<p>Before he had finished speaking, Malcolm was watching him narrowly,
+wondering if some sprite had whispered abroad the robbing of his
+traps. But Pat was evidently unconscious of any possible connection
+between his news and his audience. As absolute silence was the only
+possible road ever to learning the truth, Pat left the next day on his
+journey north, not a whit the wiser for his night at the new
+homestead.</p>
+
+<p>"It do sound strange, Nancy, don't it?" said her husband, after their
+guest had gone. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>"Roderick Norman can't have any grudge against me.
+Why, sure, it should be all t' other way." And he got up, stretched
+his splendid muscular limbs, and, picking up his axe, took out any
+excess of feeling there might be in his heart by a good two hours'
+work at the woodpile.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile his mind had not been idle. Whoever it was that robbed his
+traps could not have come along the usual trail. The ice outside had
+not been safe for travelling. He certainly must have come out from the
+country. It had never occurred to Malcolm to spend time exploring the
+land which lay south of his fur-path. But now it seemed to him that he
+must at all costs set out the following morning and verify his
+suspicions if he were to retain his hope of a livelihood in that
+locality.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm minded to try it right away, Nancy," said Malcolm. "If I could
+only get a good view from one of t' hilltops, I'd have no trouble, for
+there is still plenty of food in my tilts."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Malcolm, 't is only two days till Christmas and this is our
+first together. Surely <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>no one ever goes on the fur-path
+Christmastime."</p>
+
+<p>"That's just it, lass. No one is on t' path as ought to be, and I
+reckon for that very reason there be more chance of seeing those as
+ought not."</p>
+
+<p>There was no escaping the logic of the Scotchman, and his wife
+acquiesced without further argument. He was well into the country
+before daylight next day.</p>
+
+<p>It was a glorious morning, as away there in utter solitude the
+evergreen trees, the red-faced cliffs, the startling whiteness of the
+snow, and exquisite blue overhead fading into the purple distance of
+the winding valley met his keen view from a mountain-top. It was
+Labrador at its best&mdash;clear, dry, cold, and not a sound to break the
+absolute silence, even the trickling of the rapids and the splashing
+of distant falls being muffled by then-heavy cloaks of ice.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Malcolm's face grew rigid and his eyes unconsciously fixed
+themselves on a moving object&mdash;a tiny whiff of blue smoke was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>curling
+up from the woods on the other side of the valley. Gentle though he
+was, his big muscles set and his jaw tightened as the idea of revenge
+flashed across his mind.</p>
+
+<p>A man does not learn to outwit successfully the keen senses of the
+denizens of the woods without finding it easy to solve a problem such
+as the one which Malcolm now faced. For all that, he decided not to
+approach too close till dark what he was now sure was a hut, for the
+way the smoke rose was quite unlike that from an open fire. Having,
+therefore, plenty of time, he made a long and cautious d&eacute;tour till he
+had at last completely encircled the spot. There were the marks of one
+pair of snow racquets only on the snow. The trail was possibly three
+days old. No snow had fallen for several days. "Reckon he is taking a
+good spell with that catch of his."</p>
+
+<p>This much he knew. He knew the stranger was in or close to the tilt.
+He was not trapping, though he had been inside the circle for several
+days, and he had no dogs.</p>
+
+<p>As it fell dark, Malcolm fully expected to see <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>a light in the hut,
+but not a twinkle showed through the single-pane window light, which
+he had located from his hiding-place.</p>
+
+<p>Now he was crawling nearer. There was no chance of his being seen, as
+the moon had not yet risen and it was very dark among the trees. A
+light wind had risen, rustling the firs and spruces above his head.
+The fire worried him. Why had it almost died out? Heaven knows it was
+cold enough to need one, for with all his warm blood Malcolm himself
+was shivering. What could it mean?</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he heard some one move inside. Then came the noise of sticks
+hitting a tin camp-stove and a sudden blaze flared up, burnt for a
+minute or two, and apparently went out again. Whoever it was must be
+ill, or hurt. He had no big billets or he wouldn't be firing with
+twigs.</p>
+
+<p>It could not do any harm now to enter, and Malcolm strode noisily to
+the door and peered inside.</p>
+
+<p>A man's weak voice greeted him. "Who's there? For God's sake, come
+in."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>"My name's Malcolm McCrea. Where's your light?"</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't got one. I've no candle either," came the answer. "Had an
+accident three days ago with my gun, and nearly blew my foot off. My
+leg's swelled up something wonderful."</p>
+
+<p>The voice, feeble almost to a whisper, conveyed no information as to
+the man's identity, except that the Scotchman's quick ear detected
+that there was resentment somehow mixed with satisfaction that a
+rescuer had come.</p>
+
+<p>"I've a drop of kerosene in my nonny-bag," was all Malcolm said, "but
+it's scarce, and I 'low I'll cut up some wood and get t' fire going
+before lighting up. You lie quiet for a minute or two and I'll get you
+a drop of tea."</p>
+
+<p>"Lie quiet!" snarled the other. "I've lain quiet for three days, and
+expected to stay till doomsday. It's no virtue keeps me lying quiet. I
+had no business to be here, anyhow, seeing there was no need of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, do as you please," answered McCrea. And without much delay he
+soon had a roaring fire in the camp-stove which turned <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>the chimney
+red-hot and made it possible to see dimly stretched out on a bed of
+fir boughs the long, thin form of a man whose drawn, unshaven face
+showed that he was suffering much pain. His right foot was swaddled in
+an ominously stained bundle of rags&mdash;evidently some torn-up garment.</p>
+
+<p>Methodically lighting the bit of wick which he had placed in the
+kerosene bottle, Malcolm knelt down by the side of the injured man
+and, peering into the semi-darkness of the gloomy corner, found
+himself looking right into the eyes of Roderick Norman.</p>
+
+<p>Having made some hot tea and shared it with the sick man, he offered
+him part of the pork and hard biscuit, all that he had with him for
+his own supper. But Roderick was too feeble to touch more than a bit
+of it soaked in hot tea, and that seemed a small strength-giver for
+such a time of need.</p>
+
+<p>"If you'd a bit o' wire or line, I'd tail a snare for a rabbit when
+the moon rises and try if we couldn't get a drop o' hot stew to help
+out. But I haven't a bit in my bag."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>"There's a couple o' traps," growled the sick man, and then stopped
+suddenly, shutting his jaws with a snap.</p>
+
+<p>Malcolm looked around, but was unable to see any signs of them. "Where
+did you say they were?" he enquired; but no response came from the
+bunk.</p>
+
+<p>McCrea finished his supper, lit his pipe, and suggested trying to wash
+the wounded foot. But fearing to start the bleeding again, they
+decided to leave it till morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are those traps you spoke of, sir? The moon is beginning to
+show and I'll be needing to get 'em put out, if we're to have any
+chance." But still the other man made no answer. Malcolm went up close
+to the bed and knelt down by him again. "Mr. Norman," he said, "we're
+in a bad hole here. We're fifty miles from help, anyhow. We've no dogs
+and only one of us can walk. Moreover, there's almost no food. If
+you've got any traps, why not tell me where they are. I'm not going to
+steal 'em."</p>
+
+<p>Roderick Norman opened his eyes and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>looked at him. The dim rays of
+the little wick in the kerosene bottle gave scarcely enough light to
+show the ordinary eye where the lamp itself was. But when their
+glances met, it was enough to show Roderick that it was no longer a
+child with whom he was dealing. For a second neither spoke, then
+Malcolm, putting his hand on the man's shoulder, gripped it perhaps
+more roughly than he intended. "The traps," he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>Roderick winced. He saw that his secret was out. He was at the
+Scotchman's mercy, and he knew it. "They're stowed in t' hollow of t'
+old trunk, fifty yards back of t' tilt, damn you," he snarled, and
+tried to roll over, groaning bitterly with pain of both body and soul.</p>
+
+<p>The pity of it appealed straight to Malcolm's generous heart, and his
+grip relaxed instantly. He strove to make the other more comfortable,
+moving him gently in his great arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Forget it, Mr. Norman," he said. "No one shall ever know unless you
+tell 'em. I'll give you my word for that." The sick man said nothing.
+His deep <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>breathing, painfully drawn, was, however, enough in that
+dead silence to warn Malcolm of the struggle going on so close to
+him&mdash;a struggle so much more momentous than one of tooth and claw. He
+slipped his hand into that of the other and held it gently.</p>
+
+<p>"You're very hot, sir," he remarked, just for something to say. "Shall
+I get you some cold water?"</p>
+
+<p>But still there was no answer. Evidently the man's mind was engrossed
+with other thoughts. A long pause followed.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Norman, for God's sake, forget it. No one's been hurt but
+yourself. If there's been any wrong, it's all forgiven and forgotten
+long ago. Let's just begin again. Remember 't is Christmas Eve night."</p>
+
+<p>Still there was no reply, but McCrea's intuition saved him from the
+mistake of saying more. The stillness became uncanny. Then an almost
+imperceptible pressure of the sick man's hand sent a thrill vibrating
+through the Scotchman's soul. Yes, and he had himself returned the
+pressure before he knew it. A shiver <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>passed over the sick man's frame
+and the silence was broken by a sob.</p>
+
+<p>With an innate sense of fellow-feeling, Malcolm laid down the other's
+hand, rose, and went out without a word. The night was perfect with
+the glorious light of the waning moon. His mind was at once made up.
+He would be home by daylight and back again with his dogs by midday,
+with stimulants and blankets, and could have Roderick in Nancy's
+skilled hands before night.</p>
+
+<p>Noiselessly opening the door, he filled the stove once more, piled up
+spare billets close to the bedside, laid out what food was left,
+placed his kettle full of water on the ground within reach of the sick
+man, and, just whispering, "I'll be back soon, sir," disappeared into
+the night.</p>
+
+<p>How fast he sped only the stars and moon shall say. But joy lent him
+wings which brought him home before daylight. His faithful dogs,
+keeping their watch and ward out in the snow around his house, first
+brought the news to Nancy that her man was back so soon.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes served to explain how <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>matters stood, and in a few more
+everything was ready. The coach-box was strapped on the komatik. The
+bearskin rug and a feather bed were lashed inside it, with all the
+restoratives loving care could think of, and with the music of the
+wild barking of the dogs echoing from the mountain and valley, the
+sledge went whirling back over the crisp snow&mdash;the team no less
+excited than Malcolm himself at this unexpected call for their
+services.</p>
+
+<p>Everything was silent as once more they approached the scene of
+trouble. The dogs, panting and tired, having had no spell since they
+started, no longer broke the stillness with their barking. Malcolm
+hitched them up a hundred yards or so from the tilt, preferring to
+approach it on foot. He had long ago noticed that no smoke was coming
+from the funnel and it made his heart sink, for even in the woods the
+cold was intense.</p>
+
+<p>Malcolm always says that he knew the meaning of it before he opened
+the door. Roderick Norman had gone to spend his first Christmas in
+happier hunting-grounds.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="THE_LEADING_LIGHT" id="THE_LEADING_LIGHT"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>THE LEADING LIGHT<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>It was getting late in the year. The steep cliffs that everywhere
+flank the sides of the great bay were already hoary with snow. The big
+ponds were all "fast," and the fall deer hunt which follows the
+fishery was over. Most of the boats were hauled up, well out of reach
+of the "ballicater" ice. The stage fronts had been taken down till the
+next spring, to save them from being torn to pieces by the rising and
+falling floe. Everywhere "young slob," as we call the endless round
+pans growing from the centre and covering the sea like the scales of a
+salmon, was making. But the people at the head of the bay were still
+waiting for those necessities of life, such as flour, molasses, and
+pork, which have to be imported as they are unable to provide them for
+themselves, and for which they must wait till the summer's voyage has
+been sent to market and sold to pay for them.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>The responsibility of getting these supplies to them rested heavily on
+the shoulders of my good friend John Bourne, the only trader in the
+district. Women, children, whole families, were looking to him for
+those "things" which if he failed to furnish would mean such woeful
+consequences that he could not face the winter without at least a
+serious attempt to provide them.</p>
+
+<p>In the harbour lay his schooner, a saucy little craft which he had
+purchased only a short while before. He knew her sea qualities; and as
+the ship tugged at her chains, moving to and fro on the swell, she
+kept a fine "swatch" of open water round her. Like some tethered
+animal, she seemed to be begging him to give her another run before
+Jack Frost gripped her in his chilly arms for months to come. The fact
+that he was a married man with hostages to fortune round his knees
+might have justified his conscience in not tempting the open sea at a
+time when frozen sheets and blocks choked with ice made it an open
+question if even a youngster ought to take the chances. But it
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>happened that his "better half," like himself, had that "right stuff"
+in her which thinks of itself last, and her permission for the venture
+was never in question.</p>
+
+<p>So Trader Bourne, being, like all our men, a sailor first and a
+landsman after, with his crew of the mate and a boy, and the handicap
+of a passenger, put to sea one fine afternoon in late November, his
+vessel loaded with good things for his necessitous friends "up along."
+He was encouraged by a light breeze which, though blowing out of the
+bay and there ahead for him, gave smooth water and a clear sky.</p>
+
+<p>To those who would have persuaded him to linger for a fair wind he had
+cheerfully countered that the schooner had "two sides," meaning that
+she could hold her own in adversity, and could claw well to windward;
+besides, "'t will help to hold the Northern slob back"&mdash;that
+threatening spectre of our winters.</p>
+
+<p>When darkness fell, however, very little progress had been made. The
+wind kept shifting against the schooner, and all hands could still
+make out the distant lights of home <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>twinkling like tiny stars,
+apparently not more than a couple of miles under their lee.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall us 'hard up,' and try it again at day light?" suggested the
+mate. "If anything happens 't is a poor time of year to be out all
+night in a small craft."</p>
+
+<p>But the skipper only shrugged his shoulders, aware that the mate was
+never a "snapper" seaman, being too much interested in gardens for his
+liking.</p>
+
+<p>"It's only a mile or two to Beach Rock Cove. We'll make it on the next
+tack if the wind holds. 'T is a long leg and a short one, and we'll
+have a good chance then to make the Boiling Brooks to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Lee oh!" and, putting the helm up, the Leading Light was soon racing
+off into the increasing darkness towards the cliffs away on the
+opposite side of the bay.</p>
+
+<p>The wind freshened as the evening advanced&mdash;the usual experience of
+our late fall nights. An hour went by, and as the wind was still
+rising, the flying jib was taken in. After this the captain sent the
+crew below for a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>"mug o' tea" while he took the first trick at the
+wheel.</p>
+
+<p>Still the wind rose. The sea too was beginning to make, and the little
+craft started to fall to leeward too much to please the skipper. The
+men were again called, and together they reset all the head canvas.
+The Leading Light now answered better to her helm, and, heading up a
+point, reached well into the bay.</p>
+
+<p>"Smooth water again before dawn," said the skipper in his endeavour to
+cheer the despondent mate, when once more they had gone aft. "Looks
+like clearing overhead. I reckon she'll be well along by daylight."</p>
+
+<p>But the mate seemed "stun," and only grunted in return.</p>
+
+<p>"You go down and finish supper, and then you can give me a spell at
+the wheel while I get my pipe lighted," continued the captain.
+Thereupon the other, nothing loath to have something to keep his mind
+diverted, was soon below, searching for consolation in a steaming mug,
+but failing to find it, in spite of the welcome contrast between the
+cosy warm cabin, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>and the darkness and driving spume on deck, lacking
+as he did, alas, the sea genius of our race.</p>
+
+<p>"Watch on deck!" at length called Bourne; and a few minutes later,
+having entrusted the helm to the mate, he was lighting his pipe at the
+cabin fire. All of a sudden down, down, down went the lee floor of the
+cabin, and up, up, up went the weather, till it felt as if the little
+ship were really going over.</p>
+
+<p>"What's up?" the skipper fairly yelled through the companion, as
+clinging and struggling his utmost he forced his way on deck, as soon
+as the vessel righted herself enough to make it possible. "Hard down!
+Hard down! Let her come up! Ease her! Ease her!"&mdash;and whether the puff
+of wind slackened or the mate lost hold of the wheel, he never has
+been able to tell, but she righted enough for a moment to let him get
+on the deck and rush forward to slack up the fore-sheet, bawling
+meanwhile through the darkness to the mate to keep her head up, as he
+himself tore and tugged at the rope.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>The schooner, evidently well off the wind, yet with all her sheets
+hauled tight and clewed down, was literally flying ahead, but trying
+to dive right through the ponderous seas, instead of skimming over and
+laughing at them, as the captain well knew she ought to do. There
+wasn't a second to lose pondering the problem as to why she would not
+come up and save herself. Difficult and dangerous as it was in the
+pitch dark with the deck slippery with ice, and the dizzy angle at
+which it stood, the only certain way to save the situation was to let
+go that sheet. Frantically he struggled with the rope, firmly clinched
+though it was round its cleats with the ice that had made upon it.
+Knowing how sensitive the vessel was and that she would answer to a
+half-spoke turn of the wheel, and utterly at a loss to understand her
+present stubbornness, he still kept calling to the helmsman, "Hard
+down! Hard down!"&mdash;only to receive again the growling answer, "Hard
+down it is. She's been hard down this long time."</p>
+
+<p>It was all no good. Up, up came the weather <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>rail under the terrific
+pressure of the wind. The fore-sheet was now already well under water,
+cleat and all, and the captain had just time to dash for the bulwark
+and hold on for dear life, when over went the stout little craft,
+sails, masts, and rigging, all disappearing beneath the waves. It
+seemed as if a minute more and she must surely vanish altogether, and
+all hands be lost almost within sight of their own homes.</p>
+
+<p>Tumultuous thoughts flooded the captain's mind as for one second he
+clung to the rail. Vain regrets were followed like lightning by a
+momentary resignation to fate. In the minds of most men hope would
+undoubtedly have perished right there. But Captain Bourne was made of
+better stuff. "Nil desperandum" is the Englishman's soul; and soon he
+found himself crawling carefully hand over hand towards the after end
+of the vessel. Suddenly in the darkness he bumped into something soft
+and warm lying out on the quarter. It proved to be his passenger,
+resigned and mute, with no suggestion to offer and no spirit to do
+more than lie and perish miserably.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>Still climbing along he could not help marking the absence of the mate
+and the boy from the rail, which standing out alone against the
+sky-line was occasionally visible. Doubtless they must have been
+washed overboard when the vessel turned turtle. There was some heavy
+ballast in the schooner besides the barrels of flour and other
+supplies in her hold. Her deck also was loaded with freight, and alas,
+the ship's boat was lashed down to the deck with strong gripes beneath
+a lot of it. Moreover, it was on the starboard side, and away down
+under water anyhow. Though every moment he was expecting the Leading
+Light to make her last long dive, his courage never for a second
+deserted him.</p>
+
+<p>He remembered that there was a new boat on the counter aft which he
+was carrying with him for one of his dealers. She was not lashed
+either, except that her painter was fast to a stanchion. It was just
+possible that she might still be afloat, riding to the schooner as a
+sea anchor. Still clinging to the rail he peered and peered through
+the darkness, only to see the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>great white mainsail now and again
+gleam ghostlike in the dim light when the super-incumbent water foamed
+over it, as the Leading Light wallowed in the sullen seas. Then
+something dark rose against the sky away out beyond the peak end of
+the gaff&mdash;something black looming up on the crest of a mighty comber.
+An uncanny feeling crept over him. Yet what else could it be but the
+boat? But what could that boat be doing out there? Fascinated, he kept
+glaring out in that direction. Yes, surely, there it flashed again
+across the sky-line. This time he was satisfied that it was the boat,
+and that she was afloat and partly protected by the breakwater formed
+by the schooner's hull. She was riding splendidly. In an instant he
+recalled that he had given her a new long painter; and that somehow
+she must have been thrown clear when the ship turned over. Anyhow, she
+was his only chance for life. Get her he must, and get her at once.
+Every second spelt less chance of success. Any moment she might break
+adrift or be dragged down by the sinking schooner. And then came <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>the
+horrible memory that she too had been stowed on the lee side, and her
+painter also was under the mainsail and fastened now several feet
+below the surface. Even the sail itself was under water, and the sea
+breaking in big rushes over it with every comber that came along.</p>
+
+<p>To get the boat was surely impossible. It only added to the horror of
+the plight to perish there miserably of cold, thinking of home and of
+the loved ones peacefully asleep so near, while the way to them and
+safety lay only a few fathoms distant&mdash;torturing him by its very
+nearness. For every now and then driving hard to the end of her tether
+she would rush forward on a sea and appear to be coming within his
+reach, only to mock him by drifting away once more, like some
+relentless lady-love playing with his very heartstrings. The rope
+under the sunken mainsail prevented her from quite reaching him, and
+each time that she seemed coming to his arms, she again darted beyond
+his grasp.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever could be done must be done at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>once. Even now he realized
+that the cold and wet were robbing him of his store of strength. Could
+he possibly get out to where the boat was? There might be one way, but
+there could be only one, and even that appeared a desperate and
+utterly futile venture. It was to find a footing somehow, to let go
+his vise-like grip of the rail, and leap out into the darkness across
+the black and fathomless gulf of water surging up between the hull and
+the vessel's main boom in the hope of landing in the belly of the
+sail; to be able to keep his balance and walk out breast high through
+the rushing water into the blackness beyond till he should reach the
+gaff; and so, clinging there, perchance catch the boat's painter as
+she ran in on a rebounding sea. There would be nothing to hold on to.
+The ever swirling water would upset a man walking in daylight on a
+level quayside. He would have nothing but a sunken, bellying piece of
+canvas to support him&mdash;a piece only, for the little leach rope leading
+from the clew to the peak marked a sharp edge which would spell the
+dividing line between life and death.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>He had known men of courage; he had read of what Englishmen had done.
+But he had never suspected that in his own English blood could lie
+dormant that which makes heroes at all times. A hastily breathed
+prayer&mdash;his mind made up, letting go of the weather rail he commenced
+to lower himself to the wheel, hoping to get a footing there for the
+momentous spring that would in all probability land him in eternity.
+But even as he climbed a little farther aft to reach down to it, he
+found himself actually straddling the bodies of the missing mate and
+boy, who were cowering under the rail, supported by their feet against
+the steering-gear boxing.</p>
+
+<p>Like a thunderclap the whole cause of the disaster burst upon his
+mind. The mate's feet planked against the spokes of the wheel
+suggested it. The helm was not hard down at all, and never had been.
+It was hard up all the time. He remembered, now that it was too late,
+that the mate had always steered hitherto with a tiller; that a wheel
+turns exactly the opposite way to the tiller; and that with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>every
+sail hauled tight, and the helm held hard over, the loyal little craft
+had been as literally murdered as if she had been torpedoed, and also
+their lives jeopardized through this man's folly. What was the good of
+him even now? There he lay like a log, as dumb as the man whom he had
+left clinging to the taffrail.</p>
+
+<p>"What's to be done now?" he shouted, trying in vain to rouse the
+prostrate figure with his foot. "Rouse up! Rouse up, you fool!" he
+roared. "Are you going to die like a coward?" And letting himself
+down, he put his face close to that of the man who by his stupidity
+had brought them all to this terrible plight. But both the mate and
+boy seemed paralyzed. Not a word, not a moan could he get out of them.
+The help which they would have been was denied him. Once more he
+realized that if any one was to be saved, he and he alone must
+accomplish it. A momentary rest between two waves decided him. There
+was one half-second of trying to get his balance as he stood up, then
+came the plunge into the wild abyss, and he found himself floundering
+in the belly of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>the sail, struggling to keep his footing, but up to
+his waist in water. With a fierce sense of triumph that he was safely
+past the first danger, the yawning gulf between the rail and boom, he
+threw every grain of his remaining strength into the desperate task
+before him, and pushed out for the gaff that was lying on the surface
+of the sea, thirty feet away in the darkness. Even as he started a
+surging wave washed him off his feet, and again he found himself
+hopelessly wallowing in the water, but still in the great cauldron
+formed by the canvas.</p>
+
+<p>How any human being could walk even the length of the sail under such
+circumstances he does not know any more than I do. But the impossible
+was accomplished, and somehow he was clinging at last like a limpet to
+the very end of the gaff, his legs already dangling over the fatal
+edge, and with nothing to keep him from the clutch of death beyond it
+but his grip of the floating spar. To this he must cling until the
+mocking boat should again come taut on the line and possibly run
+within his reach. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>The next second out of the darkness what seemed to
+the man in the sail a mountain of blackness rushed hissing at him from
+the chaos beyond, actually swept across him into the belly of the
+sail, and tore him from his rapidly weakening hold of the spar. With
+the energy of despair his hands went up and caught something, probably
+a bight in the now slackened painter. In a trice he was gripping the
+rail, and a second later he was safely inside the boat, and standing
+shaking himself like some great Newfoundland dog.</p>
+
+<p>Even now a seemingly insuperable difficulty loomed ahead. He had no
+knife and was unable to let go the rope. Would he be able to take his
+comrades aboard, and would the schooner keep afloat and form a
+breastwork against the sea, or would it sink and, after all his
+battle, drag the boat and him down with it to perdition?</p>
+
+<p>Philosophizing is no help at such a time. He would try for the other
+men. To leave them was unthinkable. Once more fortune was on his side.
+The oars were still in the boat, lashed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>firmly to the thwarts&mdash;a plan
+upon which he had always insisted. Watching his chance, and skilfully
+man&oelig;uvring, he succeeded in approaching the schooner stern first,
+when the cable just allowed him to touch the perpendicular deck. His
+shouts to the others had now quite a different ring. His words were
+commands, leaving no initiative to them. They realized also that their
+one and only chance for life lay in that boat; and returning hope lent
+them the courage which they had hitherto lacked. After a delay which
+seemed hours to the anxious captain at such a time, with skilful
+handling he had got all three aboard.</p>
+
+<p>Once more he was face to face with the problem of the relentless rope,
+but again fortune proved to be on his side. It was the passenger, the
+useless, burdensome passenger, who now held the key to the situation.
+He had sensed the danger in a moment, and instantly handed the skipper
+a large clasp-knife. With it to free the boat from the wreck was but
+the work of a moment.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>True, their position in a small open "rodney" in the middle of a dark,
+rough night in the North Atlantic was not exactly enviable, especially
+as the biting winter wind was freezing their clothing solid, and
+steadily sapping their small stock of remaining vitality.</p>
+
+<p>Yet these men felt that they had crossed a gulf almost as wide as that
+between Dives and Lazarus. If they could live, they knew that the boat
+could, for the ice would not clog her enough to sink her before
+daylight, and as for the sea&mdash;well, as with the schooner, it was only
+a matter of handling their craft till the light came.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, though they did not then know it, they had drifted a very
+considerable way towards their own homes, so that, rowing in turn and
+constantly bailing out their boat they at length made the shore at the
+little village of Wild Bight, only a few miles away from their own.
+The good folk at once kindled fires, and bathed and chafed the
+half-frozen limbs and chilled bodies of the exhausted crew.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>Now the one anxiety of all hands was to get home as quickly as
+possible for fear that some rumor of the disaster in the form of
+wreckage from the schooner might carry to their loved ones news of the
+accident, and lead them to be terrified over their apparent deaths. As
+soon as possible after dawn of day, the skipper started for home,
+having borrowed a small rodney, and the wind still keeping in the same
+quarter. To his intense surprise a large trap-boat manned by several
+men, seeing his little boat, hailed him loudly, and when on drawing
+near it was discovered who they were, proceeded to congratulate him
+heartily on his escape. Already the very thing that he had dreaded
+might happen must surely have occurred.</p>
+
+<p>"How on earth did you know so soon?" he enquired, annoyed.</p>
+
+<p>"As we came along before t' wind we saw what us took to be a dead
+whale. But her turned out to be a schooner upside down. We made out
+she were t' Leading Light, and feared you must all have been drowned,
+as there was no sign of any one on her upturned <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>keel. So we were
+hurrying to your house to find out t' truth."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say a word about it, boys," said the skipper. "One of you take
+this skiff and row her back to Wild Bight, while I go with the others
+and try and tow in the wreck before the wind shifts. But be sure not
+to say anything about the business at home."</p>
+
+<p>The wind still held fair, and by the aid of a stout line they were
+able, after again finding the vessel, to tow her into their own
+harbour and away to the very bottom of the Bight, where they stranded
+her at high water on the tiny beach under the high crags which
+shoulder out the ocean. By a clever system of pulleys and blocks from
+the trunks of trees in the clefts of the cliff she was hauled upright,
+and held while the water fell. Then the Leading Light was pumped out
+and refloated on the following tide. On examination, she was
+pronounced uninjured by her untimely adventure.</p>
+
+<p>I owe it to John Bourne to say that the messenger forbidden to tell of
+the terrible <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>experience told it to his own wife, and she told
+it&mdash;well, anyhow, the skipper's wife had heard of it before the
+Leading Light once more lay at anchor at her owner's wharf. Courage in
+a moment of danger, or to preserve life, is one thing. The courage
+that faces odds when the circumstances are prosaic and the decision
+deferred is a rarer quality. It was a real piece of courage which gave
+the little schooner another chance that fall to retrieve her
+reputation. She was permitted to deliver the goods against all odds,
+and what is more the captain's wife kissed him good-bye with a brave
+face when once again he let the foresail draw, and the Leading Light
+stood out to sea on her second and successful venture.</p>
+
+<p>There is no doubt that when she went to bed in the ice that winter,
+she carried with her the good wishes and grateful thanks of many poor
+and lonely souls; and some have said that when they were walking round
+the head of the cove in which it was the habit of the little craft to
+hibernate, strange sounds like that of a purring cat were ofttimes
+wafted shoreward. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>"It is only the wind in her rigging," the skeptical
+explained; but a suspicion still lurks in some of our minds that the
+Eskimo are not so far from the truth in conceding souls to inanimate
+objects.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="RED_ISLAND" id="RED_ISLAND"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>THE RED ISLAND SHOALS<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>The house was fairly shaking in the gale, and any one but Uncle Rube,
+who had lived in it since he put it there forty years before, would
+have been expecting things to happen. But the old man sat dozing in
+his chair beside the crackling stove, and the circling rings of smoke
+rising over his snow-white head were the only signs of life about him.
+The only other occupant of the house was a little girl whom Uncle Rube
+had taken for "company," the year that his wife left him. The coast
+knew that his only lad had been lost aboard some sealer many years
+ago. The little girl was lying stretched out on the wooden settle
+close beside him. Twice already in the dim light of the tiny window,
+now well covered with snow outside and frost within, I had mistaken
+her towsly golden curls for a hearth-brush, she lay so still.</p>
+
+<p>At length, as the cottage gave a more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>violent lurch than usual, even
+my book failed to keep my mind at rest.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you afraid the house is going to blow away, Uncle Rube? You
+remember that our church blew into the harbor, pews and floor as well
+as walls and roof. You could see the pews at low water till the ice
+took them away."</p>
+
+<p>Crack! Crack! Crack!</p>
+
+<p>"No fear of she, Doctor. She's held on this forty years, and I reckon
+she won't bring her anchors home till I does myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Never to go again till the old man died," I hummed.</p>
+
+<p>Something, however, seemed to have roused up Uncle Rube. For,
+carefully laying his pipe in its place on the shelf, he went to the
+door, opening it enough to allow him to peer out through the crack.
+Unfortunately another eddying gust struck the house at that very
+moment, tore the door from his grasp, and by sweeping in and taking
+the fortress from within, very nearly gave it its <i>coup de grace</i>. In
+the momentary lull that followed we <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>managed to shut the door, and to
+barricade it from inside.</p>
+
+<p>The child was astir before we got back to the genial warmth of the
+stove. Crack! Crack! Crack! went the little dwelling again, as a more
+than usually fierce blast of the hurricane, strengthened by the
+furiously driving snow, hit it like another hammer of Thor. Crack!
+Crack! The house seemed to swing like a pendulum before it came to
+rest again. I could see that the old man was uneasy.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Uncle Rube? What is it?" the little girl cried out
+petulantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, nothing, little one, nothing. Only 'tis as well to take a peek
+out on times. There's no knowing when there might be some one astray
+through this kind of weather. 'Tis no hurt to make sure, is it?"</p>
+
+<p>She was a pale-faced little thing, with the lustrous eyes and delicate
+skin that often so pathetically array the prospective victims of the
+White Man's Curse. She had been a tiny, unwanted item in a large
+family of twelve with which "Providence had blessed" a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>struggling
+friend and neighbor. The arrival of the last had robbed him of his
+only help. "Daddy gived me to Uncle Rube," was her only explanation of
+her being there.</p>
+
+<p>"'T is cold, though," she answered. "It made me dream that you were on
+the old island again, and I was with you, and then the house shook so
+that it woke me up."</p>
+
+<p>For answer he went to an old and well-worn seaman's chest which served
+ordinarily for an additional seat. The reverent care with which he
+turned over the contents would have honored a priest before the
+sanctuary. But eventually he returned with a really beautiful shawl
+which he tenderly wrapped around the child, and sitting down laid her
+head upon his shoulder. In this position she was almost immediately
+asleep again, and, fearing to wake her, I had forborne to break the
+silence. Indeed, I was far enough away from ice and snow and blizzards
+for the moment&mdash;the Indian shawl having carried me home to England,
+and the old camphor trunk which my own mother, herself born in India,
+had taught us boys to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>reverence as the old man did his, filled as
+ours was with specimens of weird patterns and exquisite workmanship.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Rube had been watching my eyes fixed on the rich mantle that
+contrasted so strangely with every other surrounding.</p>
+
+<p>"I brought it from India when I used to go overseas. I keeps it
+because my Mary loved it so, though she 'lowed it was too rich for t'
+likes o' her to wear it much. But I guess it'll last now. 'T is t'
+last bit o' finery left," he smiled, "and 't is most time to be
+hauling that down. For I reckons Nellie won't last out to need it
+long. Eh, Doctor?" And for a moment a tear sparkled in his merry old
+eyes, as he peered from under his heavy white eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>"You can always trust me to find a good home for Nellie, Uncle Rube,"
+I answered. "I've forty like her now, and one more won't sink the
+ship. But you know that better than I can tell you." And suddenly it
+flashed over me that Uncle Rube's unexpected visit to our Children's
+Home must had have some <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>relation to the curly head on his shoulder.
+The tear fell on his tanned cheek, and he looked away and coughed. But
+he said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"What was the old island that Nellie was talking about?" I broke in to
+relieve the situation. "It sounded as if you had been playing Robinson
+Crusoe some time," I added, "and have spun her yarns that you won't
+tell me." For the hope that here might be something which would fill
+in the time during which it was plain that Jack Frost intended to keep
+me prisoner in this bookless cabin, suddenly dawned upon me.</p>
+
+<p>"Island?" he smiled, after a brief pause. "Island? Oh! that was forty
+years ago, when us lost t' old Manxman on t' Red Island Shoals." And
+the <i>wanderlust</i> of Uncle Rube's British blood, stirred by this leap
+back over the passing years, made him once more a bouncing,
+devil-may-care sailor lad. The sign of tears had vanished from his
+cheeks as he rose, and, gently laying the little figure in her old
+corner on the settle, leisurely lit his pipe. Like that of Nathaniel
+Hawthorne's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>Feather-top it seemed to send renewed youth through his
+veins with every puff he drew. Knowing that he was trying to think,
+and fearing to distract his mind, I again kept a discreet silence. At
+last, just as if he saw the scene again, his eyes closed and his
+splendid shock of long white hair was once more thrown back into its
+accustomed place in the rocking-chair.</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't a fair deal, Doctor. Not a fair deal. We was sailors in
+those days, just as much as them is in they old tin kettles that
+rattles up and down t' Straits now, for all they big size and they
+gold braid. T' Manxman wouldn't have come by her end as she did if
+stout arms and good seamen could 'a' saved her. Murdered she was,
+Doctor, murdered by this same Jack Frost what's trying to blow us out
+o' house and home right now. But don't you have no uneasiness, Doctor,
+I've got him beat this time, and she'll not drag. No, sir, not till I
+do"&mdash;and a fierce spirit gleamed out through his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>We had often wondered why Uncle Rube, the genial, gentle, hospitable
+old man that the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>coast knew him to be, had come to put down his
+anchors in this wild and almost desolate gorge. Here was a possible
+explanation. The loss of his only lad must have been from this very
+Manxman, and by some strange twist of mentality the father had
+determined to plant himself just as near the scene and circumstance as
+human strength permitted, end there, single-handed if need be, fight
+out the battle of life, with the daily sense of flaunting the enemy
+that had robbed him of his joy in life&mdash;his one and only child. For
+with Chestertonian paradox this lonely man's passion was children.</p>
+
+<p>"No. No, he can't move her, Doctor," he repeated, as if he were
+reading my thoughts, as I truly believe that he was. For our minds in
+the North are not crusted like tender feet with horny coverings from
+the chafe of boots, or as are minds beset with telephones, special
+deliveries, and editions of the yellow press.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Uncle Rube, you don't think I'd sit here if I wasn't certain of
+it. You've got him beaten to a frazzle this time."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>I was right then, for Uncle Rube "slacked away" as he put it, and took
+up the thread of his story again without further comment, but not
+before apologizing for any undue familiarity into which the
+excitement, of which he was well aware, might have betrayed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Us found t' seals early that year, and panned a voyage of as fine
+young fat as ever a 'swiler' wished for, but t' weather was dirty from
+t' day us struck t' patch, as if Jack Frost was determined us
+shouldn't have 'em. Anyhow, afore we could pick up more'n half what
+us'd killed, a dozen o' our lads got adrift on t' floe, and though
+they got aboard another vessel, us thought 'em was lost. While us
+sailed about looking for 'em, us lost most o' t' pans. So round t'
+beginning of April t' skipper, in company with a score of other
+schooners, put her for the Norrard, in hopes of cutting off some of t'
+old seals in t' swatches. T' slob being very heavy outside, us lay for
+inside Belle Isle, and carried open water most across t' Straits.
+Well, sir, t' wind veered round all of a sudden, just as us was abeam
+of t' Devil's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>Table, and t' Gulf ice came out of t' Straits fair
+roaring"&mdash;and Uncle Rube took another contemplative puff at his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>"It would have been all right if only t' big field had gone off t'
+same time before t' wind. But somehow there were a big block held up
+by t' Islands, and t' western ice just came and hit it clip! It must
+have been all up with us right there but for t' northeast current, and
+that took our vessel like a nutshell and whisked her away in t' heavy
+slob as if to carry her along the Labrador coast. But it proved us was
+not far enough off t' land, for just about midday t' Red Islands come
+up like dark specks out o' t' ice&mdash;right ahead t' way we was being
+driven. T' other schooners was caught in t' jam too and drifting with
+us, little black dots scattered over t' surface of t' ice field like
+t' currants in slices of sweet white loaf.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe our skipper knowed it were no good, just as soon as t'
+watch called him to see for hisself. But he made out as if there was
+nothing to it, and ordered all hands to be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>ready to take t' ice, as
+though 't was a patch o' swiles instead of rocks ahead. But when he
+started getting up grub, and canvas, and all sorts of things, and had
+us put 'em in t' boats, us knew it were no old harps he was thinking
+of.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, it seemed as if it had to be. The old Manxman went as fair
+for them reefs as if she was being hauled there with a capstan. It was
+fair uncanny, and I believes there be more in some one driving her
+there than most people 'lows. Anyhow, tied up as us was in t' heavy
+jam, right fair towards 'em she had to go, and then on to 'em, and up
+over t' reef as if us 'd laid t' course express for 'em, while every
+other vessel round us went clear. T' reef's about five feet out o'
+water at high springs, and about ten feet over surface on t' neaps.
+Springs it was that day, t' moon being nearly full, and t' first crack
+ripped t' bottom clean out o' t' old ship. Us all hustled out on to t'
+ice, taking with us all us could carry, working as quick as ever us
+could, for t' pressure o' wind was rafting t' pans on to t' rocks, and
+almost before us <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>knew it, what remained of her above t' ice had gone
+right on over t' shoals; and long before dusk, I reckons, had gone
+down through it. At any rate, us saw no more of her. Us tried to make
+a bit of shelter for t' night out o' some of t' canvas, but t' wind
+never slacked a peck, and t' rafting ice soon carried away even t' few
+things us had saved.</p>
+
+<p>"Had us known in time us had better have stuck to t' boats, for they
+might have given us a chance. But t' wind being offshore, and t' ice
+running out to sea, made it seem safer to keep to t' rocks. For t' Red
+Island Shoal is only three or four miles from t' land, and there be
+liveyers, as us knew, almost opposite. If t' wind had held in t' same
+direction even then us might have escaped, but it dropped suddenly
+about day dawn, and there were huge swatches o' water between us and
+t' mainland before it came light enough to try and get across. Then
+just as suddenly t' wind clipped round, and t' sea began to make, and
+t' water started breaking right over them rocks.</p>
+
+<p>"Us had managed to build a fire out o' some <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>of t' wreckage saved, and
+had thrown in bits o' canvas and some tarry oakum to make smoke. They
+had seen it too on t' land, and had lit three smoke fires in a line to
+let us know that they would send help if they could. But the veering
+of the wind had made that impossible, for they could only launch small
+skiffs, and they would not have lived more'n a few minutes for t' ice
+making on 'em.</p>
+
+<p>"T' breaking seas and driving spray soon wet all our men through.
+There were forty of us all told. But by night several were either dead
+or beyond help. T' ice had taken our boats, and now t' seas took all
+that was left. T' fire went out just before midday, and our bit o'
+grub got wet and frozen. Next morning t' sea was higher than ever, and
+t' bodies of t' men mostly washed away as they died. All that day t'
+rest of us just held on, some twenty or so; but it was a bare six of
+us that were living t' second night. There was no sleep, and not even
+any lying down if you wanted to live. None of them that slept ever
+woke again. I might have nodded standing up. Guess I must <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>have. But
+t' third morning I was t' only man moving; and though it was as fine a
+shining morning as ever broke, and t' hot sun from t' ice soon put a
+little life in me, I never expected to see another night. Then I must
+have forgotten everything, even t' people on t' shore. For I never saw
+any boat coming, or any one land. Everything had been washed away but
+myself. I had been alone, I reckon, many hours. It seemed ages since I
+'d heard a human voice; but I still remembers some one putting his
+hand on my shoulder. They had been calling, so they told me, but
+somehow I heard nothing. They kept me a good many days before I knowed
+anything&mdash;doing for me like a mother would for her boy. But more'n a
+week had gone by before I could tell 'em who I was.</p>
+
+<p>"And then it all came back to me&mdash;t' cruel suffering of my shipmates,
+and most of all of Willy, t' only chick or child I ever had. He had my
+coat over his oil frock, and he were so brave, so young, and so
+strong. And he lived till morning&mdash;long after great strong men had
+perished&mdash;and me able to do nothing. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>Then his poor frozen body was
+washed to and fro in that terrible surf, as if my boy wouldn't leave
+me even if he was dead. Why I lived on, and why it pleased God to
+spare my poor life I never knowed, or shall know, Doctor, till he
+tells me himself."</p>
+
+<p>He was sitting bolt upright now, looking me straight in the face. But
+the fire died suddenly from Uncle Rube's eyes, and, exhausted by the
+effort and the memories the story brought back to him, he fell back in
+the chair as if he had been struck by some knock-out blow. The thud of
+the fall once more woke the child, and, seeing me jump to the old
+man's help, she began to sob piteously. It was only for a moment,
+however. The splendid vitality of the man, toughened by his hard life
+and simple fare, soon made him master of himself again, and,
+apologizing for giving me trouble, he took up the child, crooning over
+her to get her quiet.</p>
+
+<p>"Forty years I've been living here, Doctor," he went on. "Forty
+years&mdash;and t' last ten I've been all alone. Not a living soul have I
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>had t' chance to save all these long years, though God knows I've kept
+as good a lookout as one watch could. Then Neighbor Blake lost his
+helpmate like I had mine, and he let me share up with him, and have
+Nellie. He wanted his boys to help him get food and things for t'
+rest, so a girl was what he gave me. And I couldn't have had a boy,
+Doctor, anyhow. Willy's place will never be filled for me, till he
+comes himself and fills it, and that won't be long now either." He
+looked at his pipe, which had gone out, and then continued: "No, I'm
+not one o' them as can take a new wife almost as soon as t' first
+one's gone"&mdash;and then suddenly: "But it's time to boil t' kettle.
+You'se getting hungry, I 'lows, and me chattering like a fool, and not
+thinking of anything beyond my own troubles. I'm forgetting you must
+be worriting over being kept so long in this bit of a tilt, but you'll
+not get away till morning, so just make yourself as miserable as you
+can!"</p>
+
+<p>As he bustled around filling the kettle with ice for water, and
+struggling to heat up a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>small molasses barrel in order to let out
+some "sweetness" for our tea, I had made a bird, a boat, and a couple
+of darts out of paper, as overtures to the lady of the house. Before
+the humble meal was spread she had the room ringing with her laughter,
+as she darted now here, now there, and at last succeeded in hitting
+the old man himself almost in the eye. Many times that meal has come
+back to my memory. The rough bare boards of the walls, naked but for
+one old picture of a horse cut from a magazine, carefully pasted
+upside down, and probably designed chiefly to cover some defective
+spot that was admitting too much coldness; the crazy table shaking
+with every gust and causing a tiny kerosene lamp to flare up and
+menace the dim religious darkness by depositing even more lamp-black
+than was its wont on its already negrine globe; the meagre board of
+dark bread, "oleo," and molasses; the weird minstrelsy of the
+hurricane&mdash;the whole a harmony of poverty and war. Yet the memory
+brings deeper pleasure to my mind than that of many costly
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>banquets&mdash;and even I have eaten from plates of silver with implements
+of gold. For in the flickering light of the crackling logs I can still
+see the joy of the old man's kindly face over the boisterous happiness
+of his quaint ward, the dance in the eyes of the merry child as some
+colored candies placed in my nonny-bag by my wife fell somehow from
+the sky right on to the table before her. The telling of his story,
+never before mentioned to any one but his wife and foster child, but
+kept like some vendetta wrong waiting for revenge in his rebellious
+heart these many years, seemed to have renewed his youth. A merrier,
+happier party it has never been my lot to share in; and now that I
+know the pathos of the last chapter written in this strange life, I
+rejoice more than ever that for that night, anyhow, the enemy that
+haunted him overreached, and the very blizzard proved the key for one
+evening at least of freedom from his obsession.</p>
+
+<p>We were away before daylight, and I never saw Uncle Rube again. Life,
+it seems, went along tranquilly with him the following winter. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>As
+usual he kept his watch and ward on the cliffs by the Red Island
+Shoals. Then the fatal 10th of April came round. Once again it broke
+upon the solitary figure of the old man straining his eyes from his
+coign of vantage on the dread shoals of the Red Islands.
+Unquestionably he saw again re&euml;nacted there the weird tragedy that
+nearly half a century before had broken his life, bringing home with a
+strange fascination the moving picture to his very heart. But with it
+this spring he witnessed also a scene that for many years every man on
+the coast had prayed for, but no man had been privileged to take part
+in. The wind had come out of the Straits and the Gulf ice was driving
+swiftly towards the great Atlantic, exactly as it had done on the
+memorable day now forty years before. Once again there was ice in huge
+sheets jammed against the great cliffs of Belle Isle, and clear water
+between. Suddenly the straining eyes of the old sailor shone with a
+totally new light. He jumped to his feet, and with hands shading his
+starting eyes, stood motionless like a statue on the pedestal of his
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>lookout, now white as the purest marble in its winter mantle.</p>
+
+<p>Was it age? Or the final break-up of his mind? No, neither&mdash;he was
+certain of it. There were black things moving on the white ice, and
+driving with it once more, just as the Manxman had, straight for the
+shoals of the Red Islands. Nearer and nearer they came. There could be
+no doubt now. They moved. They could be no land d&eacute;bris, no shadows
+from the rafted ice sheets. So quickly was the floe running that just
+as he remembered it, before anything could be done, clip! and the
+advancing edge had again struck the standing ice, and woe betide
+anything that was in or on it, anywhere near the line of contact. As a
+dazed mouse watches the cat that is toying with it, the rigid figure
+on the hilltop gazed at the impending tragedy&mdash;too far off for his
+material brain correctly to interpret the image on his actual retina.
+He was seeing, though he failed to realize it, the same impress that
+emotion had recorded on the tablets of his very soul.</p>
+
+<p>The realism of it was too much for human <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>nature, and Uncle Rube, his
+hands covering his face, started running homewards over the familiar
+pathway he had trodden so often. Even as he reached the cottage in the
+gulch he was aware of loud shouting, and of a team of huskies
+literally tearing over the snow. They were making as if to pass his
+house without stopping, as no man ever did that lonely spot, if only
+for the cup of tea and the moment's "spell," and the kindly stimulus
+of the old man's company. Yes, the driver was shouting, shouting to
+him. "Ships, Uncle Rube!"&mdash;"What is it?"&mdash;"Ships on the ice!" the old
+man heard. Didn't he know it only too well?</p>
+
+<p>Another moment and the modern Paul Revere, with dogs for horses and
+ice and snow for a highway, was flying on his self-imposed journey,
+carrying his slogan from house to house and village to village along
+the sparsely inhabited coast-line. As Uncle Rube opened his door and
+peered into the little room, to his infinite joy he saw the golden
+curls in their proper place on the old settle by the stove, while the
+regular quiet breathing assured him <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>that the child had not yet waked
+from sleep. As he softly tiptoed around, seeking the outfit he needed
+for his great adventure, the barrenness of the house, the poverty of
+it, struck him for the first time. God knows he had never thought of
+"things," except as he had needed them for himself or others; and now
+he wished suddenly that he had more of them for the child's sake.
+Suppose, now that his "day" had at last arrived, he should not return
+from the long-looked-for quest. He became strangely conscious that he
+had nothing laid up for his darling, the child who now filled the
+whole horizon of his cramped life. Her very clothes were in tatters.
+The Indian shawl, that I had seen pressed into the service against his
+enemy the Frost King, was now only a thing of rags and patches. Were
+it not for his own big coat, even at this moment his Princess would be
+shivering with cold. Furtively he glanced round for his rope and gaff,
+relics of the last time he had gone on the ice. All these years he had
+kept them ready for "the day," never able to break the spell woven
+around them on the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>ill-fated Manxman. There was his nonny-bag, in it
+already the sugar and oatmeal, the ration of pork, and the small
+bottle of brandy, that each year he kept ready when the 10th of March
+came round&mdash;the day on which the sealers leave for the ice fields. The
+new idea that his life was of value for the child's sake sent a
+half-guilty feeling through him, lest he be caught looking at these
+implements, where they lay with his old converted flintlock gun on the
+rack above the still glowing stove. Sh! The child on the settle
+muttered something in her sleep, and the old man, rigid as an ice
+block, stood listening to her breathing, as if he were a burglar
+robbing a rich man's bedroom, in which the owner himself lay sleeping.
+But she quieted down again, and once more he breathed freely.</p>
+
+<p>At last he was ready, all but the big coat. Well, he could do without
+that. If he were not back before dark the difference it would make
+would anyhow be negligible. There was no time to delay. He must go now
+or never; and the indomitable old warrior stooped over to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>kiss the
+child good-bye, though he dare only touch with his lips the golden
+hair, for fear of waking her. Then in his simple way he breathed a
+wordless prayer, committing her to God's keeping, and, stealthily
+letting himself out, made straight for the likeliest part of the
+headland from which to take the ice.</p>
+
+<p>As one thinks now of that old man setting out alone over that endless
+ocean of ice, one wonders if one has one's self ever attempted
+anything heroic. But Uncle Rube thought only of one thing that
+morning&mdash;of foiling his arch enemy on the Red Island Shoals; and
+though nearly fourscore years had passed over him, he felt like a lad
+of twenty as he strode rapidly along towards the landwash.</p>
+
+<p>Of course he must haul his boat, but that he could easily do. Had he
+not built her himself expressly, small, and of half-inch planking over
+the lightest of frames, with two bilge streaks to act as runners, and
+flat-bottomed that she should drag well over snow? When at length he
+had launched her over the "ballicater" ice, and had pulled her clear
+of the cracks by the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>landwash, he stopped and spent a grudgingly
+spared moment in lighting his pipe. Then, heigho, and away for the
+open sea&mdash;out on to which he marched with his head erect and his old
+heart dauntless, like the peaceful Minute-Men of 1776.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile an ever-increasing crowd of men, women, and even children
+were pouring from apparently nowhere out on to the floe. The young men
+were "copying," as we say, over the ice, that is, jumping from pan to
+pan as they ventured far out from the land seeking the seals which the
+running ice, driving out before the wind, had brought down from the
+Gulf, and then killing them, and hauling them back into safety.</p>
+
+<p>It was from them that I subsequently learned the story of the day.
+Before night fell the wind had risen, and blew directly from the land.
+Snow began to fall soon after midday, and by sundown a living blizzard
+howled over the frozen ocean. None of the distant neighbors had seen
+Uncle Rube set out; none of them even knew that he had left his
+house; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>no one before ever heard of his doing such a thing as start
+out on the ice alone. Nor was it till the next day that a half-frozen
+little girl, who was heard crying in the snow in front of a neighbor's
+house, disclosed the secret that Uncle Rube was missing.</p>
+
+<p>How had they known at all that there were seals on the ice that day?
+Known? Why, Mark Seaforth had gone all along the coast telling them
+early in the morning. He had got the news from the lighthouse, and it
+was the oldest of customs to give all hands a chance whenever the
+seals were sighted driving alongshore.</p>
+
+<p>It had not been the material ear drum to which the old man had
+listened for his sailing orders. On that day especially he had heard
+with other ears, and all the coast freed Mark from any blame for the
+old sailor's having understood "ships" instead of "seals."</p>
+
+<p>Late in the sealing season of that same year the good ship Artemis, a
+stout, steel-sheathed ice hunter, a unit of the modern fleet that have
+long ago displaced the wooden schooners that once in hundreds followed
+the seal herds, was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>steaming north to finish up shooting old harps in
+the swatches, having lost a number of her pans in bad weather farther
+south. Seals were scarce on the west side, and the wireless had warned
+the skipper that a patch of old seals was passing eastward through the
+Straits. Cape Bauld Light had been sighted, and so also had the new
+light on Belle Isle. The barrelmen were eagerly scanning the ice for
+any signs of the expected herd.</p>
+
+<p>"Something black on the ice on the port bow!" shouted the man from the
+foretop.</p>
+
+<p>"Where away?" answered the master of the bridge.</p>
+
+<p>"About four points to the northwest."</p>
+
+<p>"Hard astarboard!" from the bridge.</p>
+
+<p>"Starboard hard!" from the wheel, and the big ship wheeled a course
+direct for the Red Island Shoals.</p>
+
+<p>"Steady!" from the bridge.</p>
+
+<p>"Steady it is!" And the Artemis wheeled a little more, and leaving the
+shoals on her right, steamed towards the object that had attracted the
+attention of the watch. The bridge <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>master, viewing it through his
+glasses, suddenly stopped short, fixing his gaze on the spot with far
+more than his wonted intensity.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, John?" he said to the watchman. "Seems queer to me. It's
+no seal, I'll swear."</p>
+
+<p>John took the glasses, and, putting them to his eyes, made out at once
+what the object was.</p>
+
+<p>"'T is a small boat upside down&mdash;and yes, there's a man's body for
+certain, stretched out beside it," he announced in a subdued voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Go slow!" to the engine man.</p>
+
+<p>"Slow!" rang back the watchful engineer.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop her!" and over the side went half a dozen men.</p>
+
+<p>"Take that hatch over, and bring in the man off the ice."</p>
+
+<p>All the crew, some three hundred blackened figures, were now leaning
+over the rail to see the evidence of this latest tragedy. No one knew
+him, or could even guess where he and his boat had come from, or on
+what strange quest he had been bound. Those ice pans might have come
+from anywhere along the hundreds <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>of miles between Anticosti and Cape
+Chidley. To these men, it was just the body of an old man, a stranger.
+Not much loss. He could not have lived many more years, anyhow.
+Probably no one would miss him. No need to trouble over it. A prompt
+burial at sea, thought the captain, would be as good as on the land,
+where a grave was an impossibility now, anyhow. Besides, he was
+obviously an old seaman, and what could be more appropriate? Moreover,
+the crew would rather have it so than to carry the corpse around while
+they were seal-hunting.</p>
+
+<p>There was no parson aboard, but the skipper was a God-fearing man. So
+the flags were hauled to half-mast, the ship hove to the wind, the
+crew called on deck just as they were, and when the skipper had read a
+brief prayer, "in sure and certain hope" the body of Uncle Reuben
+Marston, vanquished by his enemy at last, was committed to the deep
+within a biscuit toss of the Red Island Shoals.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>THE END</h4>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h5>The Riverside Press<br />
+CAMBRIDGE &middot; &nbsp; MASSACHUSETTS<br />
+U.S.A.</h5>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Labrador Days, by Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Labrador Days, by Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Labrador Days
+       Tales of the Sea Toilers
+
+Author: Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
+
+Release Date: March 15, 2008 [EBook #24832]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LABRADOR DAYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank, Jeannie Howse and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | This e-text is full of Newfoundland and Labrador dialect, |
+    | unusual spelling has been preserved.                      |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+    [Illustration: NORTHWARD HO!]
+
+
+
+
+Labrador Days
+
+TALES OF THE SEA TOILERS
+
+By
+
+Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
+M.D. (OXON.), C.M.G.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
+The Riverside Press Cambridge
+1919
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY WILFRED THOMASON GRENFELL
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+THERE'S TROUBLE ON THE SEA                                 1
+
+NANCY                                                     19
+
+SALLY'S "TURNS"                                           38
+
+THE DOCTOR'S BIG FEE                                      61
+
+TWO CAT'S-PAWS                                            73
+
+THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE                                       92
+
+PORTLAND BILL                                            113
+
+KAIACHOUOUK                                              130
+
+TWO CHRISTMASES                                          148
+
+THE LEADING LIGHT                                        181
+
+THE RED ISLAND SHOALS                                    203
+
+
+
+
+Labrador Days
+
+
+
+
+THERE'S TROUBLE ON THE SEA
+
+
+The ice in the big bay had broken up suddenly that year in the latter
+part of March before a tremendous ocean swell heaving in beneath it.
+The piles of firewood and the loads of timber for the summer
+fishing-rooms on all the outer islands were left standing on the
+landwash. The dog-teams usually haul all this out at a stretch gallop
+over the glare ice which overlies in April the snow-covered surface of
+winter. For weeks, heavy pack ice, driven to and fro with the tides,
+but ever held in the bay with the onshore winds, had prevented the
+small boats' freighting more than their families and the merest
+necessities to the summer stations.
+
+So it came to pass that long after the usual time, indeed after the
+incoming shoals of fish were surely expected, John Mitchell's firewood
+still lay on the bank, some twenty miles up the bay. When at last a
+spell of warm and offshore winds had driven the ice mostly clear, John
+announced to his eager lads that "come Monday, if the wind held
+westerly," he would go up the bay for a load. What a clamour ensued,
+for every one wanted to be one of the crew to go to the winter home.
+The lads, like ducklings, "fair loved the water"; and though John
+needed Jim, and was quite glad to have Tom, now of the important age
+of fourteen years, he did his best, well seconded by the wise old
+grandmother, to persuade Neddie, aged twelve, and Willie, aged ten, to
+stay behind.
+
+"You be too small, Ned, yet awhile. Next year perhaps father will take
+you," was the old lady's first argument. '"Twill be cold in t' boat,
+boy, and you'll perish altogether."
+
+"Father'll look after me, Grannie, and I'll wrap up ever so warm. Do
+let me go. There's a dear grannie."
+
+The curly-haired, rosy-cheeked lads were so insistent and so winsome
+that the old lady confessed to me afterwards, "They somehow got round
+my heart as they mostly does, and I let 'em go, though sore against my
+mind, Doctor."
+
+Of course, Willie had to go if Neddie went, for "they'd be company
+while t' men worked, and he could carry small things as well as t'
+rest. He did so want to go."
+
+When at length Monday came, and a bright sun shone over a placid sea,
+the grandmother's last excuse to keep them at home was lost. Her
+consent was finally secured, and, before a light, fair wind the women
+watched, not without anxiety, so many of those whom they held dearer
+than life itself sail "out into the deep."
+
+Progress was slow, for the wind fell away almost altogether as the
+morning passed, but the glorious warmth and exuberance of life made
+the time seem as nothing. The picnic in the big trap boat was as good
+as a prince's banquet. For the fun of "boiling t' kettle yourself,"
+and an appetite bred of a day on the water, made the art of French
+cooks and the stimulus of patent relishes pale into insignificance.
+During the afternoon they "had a spurt singing," and as the words of
+hymns were the only ones they knew, the old favourites were sung and
+resung. The little lads especially led the programme; and the others
+remembered Willie singing for them, as a solo, a childish favourite
+called "Bring Them In."
+
+It was just about seven o'clock in the evening. The boat was well out
+in the bay, between three and four miles from land, when John noticed
+a fresh "cat's-paw" of wind, just touching the water here and there.
+There was scarcely a cloud in the sky, and nothing whatever to suggest
+a squall. But as he looked again, a suspicious wisp of white water
+lifted suddenly from the surface a few yards to windward. Like a flash
+he remembered that the boat had no ballast in her, and was running
+with her sheets made fast. Instinctively he leaned forward to let go
+the foresail, but at the same moment the squall struck the boat like
+the hammer of Thor. Relieved of the fore canvas, the trap should have
+come to the wind in an instant. Instead, leaning over heavily with the
+immense pressure, she staggered and reeled as if some unseen enemy
+had gripped her. Scarcely perceptibly she gave ground, and a lifetime
+seemed to elapse to John's horror-stricken mind as she fell slowly
+over, as if fighting for every inch, and conscious of her terrible
+responsibilities for the issues at stake.
+
+At last, in spite of her stout resistance, and before John could climb
+aft and get at the main sheet, or do anything to relieve the boat, her
+stern was driven right under water by the sheer pressure of the storm.
+Slowly she turned over, leaving all of her occupants struggling in the
+icy water, for there were many pieces of ice still "knocking around."
+
+The slow rate at which the boat had gone over was one point in their
+favour, however, for it enabled even the little lads to get clear of
+the gunwale; and by the help of John and Jim all five were soon
+huddled on the upturned keel of the boat. The boys being all safe for
+the moment, John rubbed his eyes, and, raising himself as high as he
+could, viewed the situation. Alas! the squall had come to stay.
+Everywhere now the placid surface of the sea was ruffled and angry.
+The rising, flaky clouds convinced him even in that instantaneous
+glance that the brewing storm offered them little chance for their
+lives.
+
+Far away to leeward, not less than four miles distant, the loom of the
+land was only just visible. Well he realized that it would be many
+long hours before the boat, with her masts and sails still fast in,
+could drive near enough to enable them to make a landing. For, like
+most fishermen in these icy waters, none of them knew how to swim.
+Moreover, he soon found that the anchor, fast to the warp, had fallen
+out, and would certainly sooner or later touch bottom--thus robbing
+them of their one and only chance of escape by preventing the boat
+from drifting into shallow water.
+
+So cold was it already that it appeared as if a few moments at most
+must chill the life out of at least the younger children.
+
+"Hold Willie on, Ned, and ask God to bring us all safe home," said
+John. He told me that he felt somehow as if their prayers were more
+likely to be heard than his own. He then crawled forward, having made
+up his mind to try and cut the anchor free, and to get the rope to tie
+round the boat and hold on the children. His determination was
+fortified by his anxiety; but it was a forlorn hope, for it meant
+lowering himself right into the water, and he knew well enough that he
+could not swim a yard. Then it was done, and he was once more clinging
+to the keel with the rope in his hand. It was not difficult to get a
+bight round the boat, and soon he had the children firmly lashed on
+and the boat was again making fair progress before the wind to the
+opposite shore.
+
+Hours seemed to go by. The children were sleepy. Apparently they no
+longer felt the cold, and the average man might have thought that it
+was a miracle on their behalf, for God knows they had prayed hard
+enough for one. But John recognized only too well that it was that
+merciful harbinger of the last long sleep, which had overtaken more
+than one of his best friends, when adrift in the storms of winter. And
+still the age-long journey dragged hopelessly on.
+
+At last the awful suspense, a thousand times more cruel for their
+being unable to do anything, was broken by even the welcome incident
+of a new danger. Breakers were visible in the direct course of their
+drift. "Maybe she'll turn over, Jim," whispered the skipper. "I reckon
+we must loose t' children for fear she does." This being effected as
+promptly as their condition allowed, Tom was told off to do nothing
+but watch them and keep them safe. For already the men had planned, if
+the slightest chance offered, to try and get the masts out while she
+lay on her beam-ends.
+
+The breakers? Well, they knew they were only of small extent. There
+was a pinnacle of rock and a single sea might possibly carry them over
+it; but the peril of being washed off was none the less. Now they
+could see the huge rise of the combing sea with its frowning black top
+rushing at the shoal, and smashing into an avalanche of snowy foam.
+They could hear the dull roar of the sea, and its mighty thunder, as
+it curled over and fell furiously upon itself, for want of other
+prey.
+
+"Good-bye, Jim," whispered the skipper. "The children is all right
+either way, but one of us may come through. Tell 'em home it was all
+right if I goes."
+
+Almost as he stopped speaking, the rising swell caught the craft, and
+threw her once more on her beam-ends. As for a moment she lay on her
+side, the men attempted to free the masts, but could do nothing, for
+the boat almost immediately again fell over, bottom up. But a second
+comber, lifting her with redoubled violence, threw them all clear of
+the boat, turned her momentarily right way up, and then breaking into
+the masts and sails, tipped her for the third time upside down,
+flinging her at the same instant in mad fury clear of the angry water.
+So violent had been the blow which had thrown them clear, that they
+must inevitably all have perished, had not the last effort of the
+breakers actually hurled the boat again almost on the top of them.
+Clutching as at a straw, the two men caught the loops of the rope
+which they had wound round their craft, but they could see nothing of
+the other three. Suddenly, from almost directly under the boat, Tom's
+head appeared within reach. Grabbing him, they tried to drag him up on
+to the keel. Rolling in the wake of the breakers which still followed
+them with vicious pertinacity, they twice lost their hold of the boy,
+their now numbed limbs scarcely giving them strength to grasp
+anything. It seemed of little account at the time either way. But
+their third attempt was successful, and they got the lad once more on
+to the bottom of the boat.
+
+Of the children they saw no more. Only when Tom had revived somewhat
+could he explain that the capsizing boat had caught them all three
+under it as in a trap, that he had succeeded, still clinging to
+Willie, to get him from under it, and that he was still holding his
+brother when he first came to the surface. After that he did not
+remember anything till they were calling to him on the boat's bottom.
+The men were sure that it was so--that because he had been true to the
+last to his trust, he had been such a deadweight the first two times
+he came to the surface.
+
+And now began again the cruel, wearisome, endless drift of the
+water-logged boat toward the still distant shore, lightened but little
+by the loss of the loved children. There was no longer any doubt left
+in their minds; unless something could be done, none of them would
+possibly live to tell the tale. It was the still active mind and
+indomitable courage of the skipper which found the solution. Crawling
+close to Jim, he said: "There's only one chance. We must turn her
+over, and get in her, or perish. I'm going to try and loose t' masts."
+
+Swinging himself once more into the bitter-cold water, he succeeded in
+finding the slight ropes which formed the stays, and though it is
+almost incredible, he actually managed to cut and free them all,
+before Jim hauled him back, more dead than alive, on to the boat's
+bottom. At all hazards they must right the boat and climb into her.
+Their plans were soon made. Tom, placed between the two men, was to do
+exactly as they did. Stretching themselves out, and holding the keel
+rope in their hands, they all threw themselves over on one side,
+lying as nearly as possible at full length. The boat responded
+instantly, and their only fear was that, as she had done before, she
+might again go right over on them. But there were no masts now to hold
+the wind, so she stood up on her beam-ends. As the water took the
+weights of the men, it was all they could do to get her over.
+Moreover, the task was rendered doubly difficult and perilous by their
+exhaustion and inability to swim when the keel to which they were
+holding went under water. But their agility and self-reliance, evolved
+from a life next to Nature, stood them in good stead, and soon all
+three were actually standing inside the water-logged boat. The oars,
+lashed under the seats, were still in her, and, though almost up to
+their waists in water, they began sculling and rowing as hard as their
+strength and the dangerous roll of the sunken boat would permit.
+
+Slowly the surf on the sandy beach drew near, and now, keeping her
+head before the breeze, they rolled along shorewards. Again, however,
+it became apparent that a new departure must be made. For a heavy surf
+was breaking on the shore which they were approaching, that ran off
+shallow for half a mile. There was not water enough to let the boat
+approach the land, and they realized that they had not sufficient
+strength left to walk through the breakers. Yet struggle as they
+would, the best they could do was to keep the boat very slightly
+across the wind.
+
+John maintains now that it was the direct intervention of Providence
+which spared them just when once more all hope seemed over. They
+suddenly noticed that while still forging shorewards they were also
+drifting rapidly into the bay. It was the first uprush of the strong
+rising tide, and they might yet be carried to a deep-water landing.
+The play of hope and fear made the remaining hours an agony of
+suspense. What would be the end of it all seemed a mere gamble. Every
+mark on the approaching shore was now familiar to them. It had become,
+they knew well enough, a question of life or death where the drifting
+boat would touch the strand. Now it seemed impossible that she should
+clear the shallow surf, whose hungry roar sounded a death-knell to any
+one handed to its tender mercies. Now it seemed certain that she would
+be carried up the bay without touching land at all. Hope rose as a
+little later it became obvious that she would clear the sands.
+
+Now the rocky headland, round which their winter house stood, was
+coming rapidly into view. As the mouth of the bay narrowed, the pace
+of the current increased, and for a time they seemed to be hopelessly
+rushing past their one hope of landing. The excitement and the
+exertion of putting might and main into the oars had made them almost
+forget the wet and cold and darkness, now only relieved by the last
+afterglow of the setting sun. But it all appeared of no avail; they
+were still some hundred yards off as they passed the point. It might
+as well have been some hundred miles, for they drifted helplessly into
+the bay, which was widening out again.
+
+Despair, however, still failed to grip them, and apparently
+hopelessly they kept toiling on at the sweeps. Once more a miracle
+happened, and they were really apparently approaching the point a
+second time. The very violence of the tide had actually saved them,
+creating as it did a strong eddy, which with the little aid from the
+oars, bore them now steadily toward the land. Nearer and nearer they
+came. They were half a mile inside the head. Only a few boat-lengths
+now separated them from the beach. Would they be able to get ashore!
+
+Strange as it sounds, any and all speculations they might have with
+regard to where the boat would strike bottom were to be disappointed.
+Her keel never touched bottom at all. It was her gunwale which first
+bumped into the steep rocks--and that at a point only a few yards from
+their winter house.
+
+Even now their troubles were not over. Only the skipper could stand
+erect. Tom, dragged out by the others, lay an inert mass on the soft
+bed of crisp creeping plants which cover the bank. Jim was able to
+totter a few yards, fell, and finally crawled part of the way to the
+house door. But the skipper, in spite of swollen and blackened legs,
+held out not only to get a fire lit, but to bring in the other two,
+and finally wean back their frozen limbs to life.
+
+It took two days to regain strength enough to haul up the boat and
+refit her; and then the sorrowful little company proceeded on their
+homeward journey. It was a sad home-coming after the brave start they
+had made. It was a terrible message which they had to carry to the
+anxious hearts awaiting them. For nothing in heaven or earth can
+replace the loss of loved ones suddenly taken from us.
+
+"I've been cruising in boats five and forty years," said John. "I were
+out two days and a night with t' Bonnie Lass when she were lost on t'
+Bristle Rocks, and us brought in only two of her crew alive. And I was
+out on t' ice in t' blizzard when Jim Warren drove off, and us brought
+he back dead to his wife next day. But this was the worst of all. As
+us passed t' rocky shoal, it seemed only a few minutes since us
+capsized on it; and I knowed Ned and Willie must be right alongside.
+As us passed Snarly Bight, out of which t' puff came, us thought of t'
+boys singing their little songs, and know'd that they should be with
+us now; and when t' Lone Point loomed up, round which youse turn to
+make our harbour, us all sort of wished one more puff would come along
+and finish t' job properly. For it wouldn't have been hard to join t'
+children again, but to face t' women without 'em seemed more'n us
+could do.
+
+"How to break the news us had talked a dozen times, but never got no
+nearer what to say. As us ran in at last for t' stage, us could see
+that Mother had hoisted t' flag t' Company gived we t' year us bought
+furs for they, and that Grannie was out waiting for us on t' landwash.
+
+"All I remembers was that scarce a word was spoke. They know'd it. I
+believe they know'd it before they seed t' boat. If only them had
+cried I'd have been able to say something. But ne'er a word was spoke.
+So I says, 'Jim, go up and pull t' flag down quick. Us has no right to
+having t' flags flying for we.'
+
+"Then Grannie, she gets her voice, and she says, 'No, Jimmie, don't
+you do it. It be just right as it is. For 't is for Neddie's and
+Willie's home-coming it be flying.'"
+
+
+
+
+NANCY
+
+
+We had just reached hospital from a long trip "on dogs." My driver was
+slipping the harnesses off the animals and giving them the customary
+friendly cuff and words of praise. Among the crowd which always
+gathered to greet us, one friend, after giving us the usual welcome of
+"What cheer, Doctor?" noticed apparently that I had a new winter
+_compagnon de voyage_.
+
+"Joe's not with you, Doctor? Gone sawing t' winter, I hear. T' boys
+say he's got a fine bulk of timber cut already."
+
+"Working for the lumber camp, I suppose, Uncle Abe," I replied.
+
+"Not a bit of it," he chuckled. "'T is sawing for hisself he's gone."
+
+"Eh? Wants lumber, does he? Going to build a larger fishing boat?"
+
+"Youse can call it that if you likes, Doctor, for 't will be a fine
+fish he lands into it. But I reckon 't is more of a dock he'll need."
+And the rest joined in hearty laughter at the sally.
+
+"'T is a full-rigged schooner he be going to moor there, with bunting
+enough to burn, and as saucy as a cyclone," chimed in another, while a
+third 'lowed, "'T is a great girl he's after, if he gets her, anyhow."
+
+"Nancy's the pluckiest little girl for many a mile along this coast or
+she wouldn't be what she is, and her family so poor."
+
+A week or so later I fell in with half a dozen boisterous lads driving
+their sledges home laden with new wood. It proclaimed to the harbour
+that the rumour of Joe's big bulk of timber being ready so early had
+not been exaggerated. It was only then that I learned that he had in
+addition quickly got his floors down before the ground froze, so that
+he might finish building before the winter set in.
+
+Many hands make light work and every one was Joe's friend, so by the
+end of December the new house had not only been sheathed in, but
+roofed and floored, ready for occupation.
+
+In our scattered communities, isolated not only from one another, but
+also largely from the world outside, the simple incidents of everyday
+life afford just as much interest as the more artificial attractions
+of civilization. Every one on our coast in winter has to have a dog
+team, no matter how poor he is, in order to haul home his firewood. In
+summer there is no time and there are no roads, while in winter the
+snow makes the whole land one broad highway. There is no better fun
+than a "randy" over the snow on a light komatik. At this time even our
+older people go on "joy rides," visiting along the coast. Many a
+moonlight night, after the day's work is over, when the reflection
+from the snow makes it almost as light as day, an unexpected but
+welcome visitor comes knocking at one's door, asking for a shake-down
+just for the night.
+
+Thus Joe's secret was soon common property. His own enthusiasm,
+however, engendered a reflection of itself in other people, and almost
+before he had the cottage sheathed inside, and really "ready for
+launching," from here and there every one had come in, bringing at
+any rate the necessities to make it possible to put out to sea on the
+new voyage. Accordingly I was not surprised one evening a little later
+when a low knock at my door, followed by a summons to come in,
+revealed Joe standing somewhat sheepishly, cap in hand, in the
+entrance. Once the subject was broached, however, the matter was soon
+arranged, Joe having a direct way about him which ignored
+difficulties, and I, being a Justice of the Peace, was soon pledged to
+act as parson at the function.
+
+Everything went well. We struck glorious weather for the day of the
+wedding. Little deputations streamed in from other villages; gay flags
+and banners, though some of fearsome home-devised patterns, made a
+brave contrast to the white mantle of snow; while we supplemented the
+usual salvo of guns from portentous and historic fowling-pieces with a
+halo of distress rockets, which we burned from our hospital boat,
+which was lying frozen in our harbour.
+
+The excitement of the affair, like all other things human, soon passed
+away, and the ordinary routine of the wood-path, the fur-path, and
+seal-hunting, the saw-pit, the net-loft, and boat-building, turned our
+attention to our own affairs once more. The new venture was soon an
+old one, only we were glad to see, as we passed along the road, a
+fresh column of blue smoke rising, and speaking of another centre of
+life and activity in our village.
+
+Once more, as the sun crept north of the line, the ice bonds of our
+harbour began to melt. Once more the mighty ocean outside, freed from
+the restraint of the Arctic floe, generously sent surging into the
+landwash the very power we needed, and on which we depend, to break up
+and carry out the heavy ice accumulation of the winter, which must
+otherwise bar us altogether from the prosecution of our calling.
+
+My own vessel had been scraped and repainted. Her spars bright with
+new varnish, her funnel gay with our blue bunting flag contrasting
+with the yellow, she had come to the wharf for the last time before
+leaving for the long summer cruise among the Labrador fishing fleet.
+Indeed, I was just working over the ship's course in my chart-room,
+when once more Joe, cap in hand, stood in the doorway--evidently with
+something very much on his mind.
+
+"What is it, Joe? Come in and shut the door and sit down. You are only
+just in time, for I was going to ring for steam as you came along."
+
+"Well, Doctor," he said, "'tis this way. I's only got hook and line to
+fish with as you knows; and that don't give a fellow a chance of
+putting anything by, no matter how well he does. There's no knowing
+now but what I may need more still. It isn't like when a man was alone
+in the world. I was aboard Captain Jackson of the Water Lily, what
+come in last night, and he says that he'd take me to the Labrador
+fishing, and give me a share in his cod trap, being as he is short of
+a hand. Well, 'tis a fine chance, Doctor. But Nancy won't hear of my
+going without her going too. She says that she is well able to do it,
+and well acquainted with schooners--and that's true, as you knows; but
+I'm afraid to take her as she is. Still, 'tis a good chance, and I
+didn't like to let it go, so I just come to ask what your mind is
+about it."
+
+I had seen Nancy on my farewell round of the cottages, and although I
+should have preferred almost any other occupation for her, yet, taking
+into consideration the habits and customs of the people, and that to
+her the venture was in no way a new one, I advised him to accept the
+skipper's offer, and take Nancy along with him, if they could get
+decent accommodation. I received his assurance that he would keep a
+lookout for the hospital boat. With most sincere protestations of
+gratitude he bade me farewell, and when a few minutes later we steamed
+past his little house on our way out to sea, he was all ready with his
+long gun to fire us good-bye salutes, which we answered and
+re-answered with our steam whistle.
+
+All summer long we were cruising off the northern Labrador coast, now
+running into the fjords to visit the scattered settlers, now on the
+outside among the many fishing craft which were plying their calling
+on the banks that fringe the islands and outermost points of land.
+Fishermen from hundreds of vessels visited us for sickness, for books,
+for a thousand different reasons; but never a sight of the Water Lily
+did we see, and never a word did we hear of either Joe or Nancy the
+whole season through. True, in the number of other claims on our
+attention, it was not often that their fortunes came to one's mind.
+But now and again we asked about the schooner, and always got the same
+negative reply, "Reckon she 've got a load and gone south." This was a
+view which we were only too glad to adopt, as it meant the best
+possible luck for our friends.
+
+Now November had come round once more. The main fleet of vessels had
+long ago passed south. It was so long since we had seen even one of
+the belated craft which "bring up the heel of the Labrador" that we
+had closed up the summer stations, and were paying our last visits to
+our colleagues at the southern hospital, who were to remain through
+the winter.
+
+It was therefore no small surprise when Jake Low, from the village,
+who had been up spying from the lookout on the hill, came into the
+hospital and announced that a large schooner with a flag flying in her
+rigging was beating up to the harbour mouth from sea. "She's making
+good ground and is well fished," he added. "What's more, I guess from
+t' course she's shaping they know the way in all right. So it must be
+a doctor they wants, and not a pilot at this time of year."
+
+The news proved interesting enough to lure us up to the hilltop with
+the telescope, where in a short while we were enjoying the wonderful
+spectacle of watching a crew of the vikings of our day force their way
+through a winding narrow passage in a large vessel against a heavy
+winter head wind.
+
+The tide, too, was running out against her, and now and then a flaw of
+wind or a back eddy, caused by the cliffs on either side, would upset
+the helmsman's calculations. Yet with superb coolness he would drive
+her, till to us watchers, lying stretched out on the ground overhead,
+it seemed that her forefoot must surely be over the submerged
+cliff-side. Certainly the white surf from the rocks washed her
+cutwater before the skipper who was "scunning" or directing, perched
+on the fore cross-tree, would sing out the "Ready about. Lee, oh!" for
+which the men at the sheets and bowlines were keenly waiting.
+
+A single slip, and she would have cracked like a nutshell against
+those adamantine walls. But to get into the harbour it was the only
+way, and as the skipper said afterwards, when I remonstrated on his
+apparent foolhardiness, "Needs must, when the devil drives."
+
+"There's a big crowd of men on deck, Doctor," said my companion.
+"Reckon she's been delayed with her freighters, and that there's a
+load of women and children in t' hold on t' fish."
+
+I had been so absorbed in watching his seamanship, that I had not been
+thinking about the stranger. Jake's remark changed the current of my
+thoughts; and soon the vessel's lines seemed to assume a familiar
+shape, and I began to realize that I must have seen her before. Then
+suddenly it flashed upon me--the Water Lily, of course.
+
+Yes, it was the Water Lily. Then Joe was on board, and the flag was
+because Nancy was in trouble. The reasoning was intuitive rather than
+didactic; but the conviction was so forcible that I instinctively rose
+to return to the hospital for the black bag that is my _fidus Achates_
+on every emergency call.
+
+"You isn't going till she rounds t' point of t' Chain Rocks, is you,
+Doctor? It's all she'll do with the wind and tide against her--if she
+does it. I minds more than one good vessel that's left her bones on
+them reefs."
+
+"As well stay, I suppose, Jake, for I'll be in time if I do. My! look
+at that!" I could not help shouting, as a flaw of wind struck the
+schooner right ahead as she was actually in stays, and it seemed she
+must either fall in sideways or drive stern foremost on the cliffs.
+But almost as quick as the eddy, the staysail and jib were let run and
+off her, and her main boom was pushed by a whole gang of men away out
+over the rail, so that by altering the points of pressure the good
+ship went safely round on her heel, and before we had time to discuss
+it, her head sails were up again, and she was racing on her last tack
+to enable her to claw through the narrow channel between the Chain
+Rocks and the Cannons, which form the last breakwater for the harbour.
+
+"I think she'll do it, Jake!"
+
+"If she once gets in t' narrows and can't fetch t' point, it's all up
+with her. I 'lows 'tis time to get them women out of t' hold, anyhow,"
+he replied laconically, his eyes riveted all the while on the scene
+below. "There's a crowd standing by t' boat, I sees, and them's
+putting a line in her," he added a minute or two later, during which
+time excitement had prevented either of us from speaking. "Us'll know
+in a second one way or t'other."
+
+The crisis had soon arrived. The schooner had once more reached across
+the harbour channel, and was for the last time "in stays." A decision
+had to be arrived at instantly, and on it, and on the handling of the
+vessel, depended her fate.
+
+"He's game, sure enough, whoever he is. He's going for it hit or
+miss." And there was a touch of excitement evidenced even in Jake's
+undemonstrative exterior.
+
+We could now plainly see the master. He was standing on the
+cross-tree, whence he could tell, by looking into the water, almost to
+an inch how far it was possible to go before turning.
+
+"She'll do it, Jake, she'll do it. See, she's heading for the middle
+of the run."
+
+"She will if she does, and that's all, Doctor. She's falling off all
+t' while."
+
+It was only too true. The vessel could no longer head for the point.
+Her sails were aback, shaking in the wind, and she now heading
+straight for the rock itself. Surely she must at once try to come up
+in the wind, stop her way, drop her sails, if possible throw out the
+boat, and head for the open before she should strike on one side or
+the other of the run.
+
+But no, we could hear the stentorian tones of the skipper on the
+cross-trees shouting that which to any but an experienced sailor must
+have seemed certain suicide. "Keep her away! Keep her--full! Don't
+starve her! Give her way! Up topsail!"--the latter having been let
+down to allow the vessel to lie closer hauled to the wind. "Stand by
+to douse the head sails! Stand by the topsail!" we heard him shout.
+"Stand by to shoot her into the wind!"--and then at last, just as the
+crash seemed inevitable, "Hard down! Shoot her up! Down sails!"
+
+We up above, with our hearts in our mouths, saw the plucky little
+vessel shoot true as a die up for the point. It was her only chance. I
+am sure that I could have heard my own heart beating as I saw her rise
+on the swell that ran up on the point, and it seemed to me she stopped
+and hung there. But before I could be certain whether she was ashore
+or not, another flood of the swell had rushed over the point, and she
+was fairly swirled around and dropped down into the safety of the
+harbour.
+
+"It's time to be going, Doctor," Jake remarked as he rose from the
+ground. "But I 'low t' point won't want painting t' winter," he added,
+with a twinkle in his eye. "Howsomever, he's a good one, he is,
+wherever he be from, and I don't care who says 'tain't so"--high
+praise from the laconic Jake.
+
+The Water Lily was at anchor when we reached the wharf, and a boat
+already rowing in to the landing. A minute later, just as I had
+expected, Joe was wringing me by the hand, as if he had a design on
+the continuity of my bones.
+
+"Nancy's bad," he blurted out. "Won't you come and see her to oncet?"
+
+I smiled in spite of my anxiety as I looked down at my trusty bag.
+"I'm all ready," I replied.
+
+The deck of the schooner was crowded with people as we came alongside.
+The main hatch had been taken off, and the women and children had come
+up for an airing. They, like our friends, were taking their passages
+home from their fishing stations. They are known as "freighters."
+
+"The skipper's been awful good, Doctor. When he heard Nancy were sick,
+he brought her out of t' hold, and give her his own bunk. But for that
+she'd have been dead long ago. She had t' fits that bad; and no one
+knowed what to do. She were ill when t' vessel comed into t' harbour,
+and t' skipper waited nigh three days till she seemed able to come
+along. Then her got worse again. Not a thing have passed her lips this
+two days now."
+
+In the little, dark after-cabin I found the sick girl, scarcely
+recognizable as the bonny lass whose wedding we had celebrated the
+previous winter with such rejoicings. There were two young women in
+the cabin, told off to "see to her," the kindly skipper and his
+officers having vacated their quarters and gone forward for poor
+Nancy's benefit.
+
+The case was a plain one. It was a matter of life and death. Before
+morning a baby boy had been brought into the world in that strange
+environment only to live a few hours. The following day we ventured to
+move the mother, still hanging between life and death, to the
+hospital.
+
+And now came the dilemma of our lives. It was impossible to delay the
+schooner, as already the crowd on board had lost several days; and it
+was not safe or right so late in the year to be keeping these other
+families from their homes. The Water Lily, so the kindly captain
+informed us, must absolutely sail south the following morning. My own
+vessel was in the same plight. We had more work outlined that we must
+do than the already forming ice promised to give us time to
+accomplish. To send poor Nancy untended to sea in a schooner was
+simply to sign her death-warrant. Indeed, I had small hope for her
+life anyhow.
+
+Our hospital was on the coast of Labrador, and the remorseless Straits
+of Belle Isle yawned forty miles wide between it and the nearest point
+of the island home of most of our friends. One belated vessel, still
+waiting to finish loading, lay in the harbour. She expected to be a
+week yet, and possibly ten days if the weather held bad. An interview
+with the skipper resulted in a promise to carry the sick woman to her
+harbour if she were still alive on the day of sailing, or news of her
+death if she passed away.
+
+Joe had no alternative. He certainly must go on, for he had nothing
+for the winter with him, no gear, and no way of procuring any. So it
+was agreed that Nancy should be left in our care, and, if alive,
+should follow by the schooner. Only poor Nancy was undisturbed next
+morning by the creaking of the mast hoops and the squealing of the
+blocks--the familiar warning to our ears that a vessel is leaving for
+sea. For she lay utterly unconscious of the happenings of the outside
+world, hovering between life and death in the ward upstairs.
+
+To whatever cause we ought to ascribe it does not much matter. But for
+the time, anyhow, our arrangements "panned out right." The weather
+delayed the fish vessel till our patient was well enough to be moved.
+Ten days later, sewed up in a blanket sleeping-bag, Nancy was
+painfully carried aboard and deposited in a captain's berth--again
+most generously put at her disposal.
+
+And so once more she put out to sea.
+
+It was not until the next spring that I heard the final outcome of all
+the troubles. Nancy had arrived home in safety, with only one
+hitch--her kit-bag and clothing had been forgotten in sailing, and
+when at length she reached her harbour, she had had to be carried up
+to her home swathed only in a bag of blankets.
+
+Such are but incidents like head winds in the lives of the Labrador
+fisher-folk; but those who, like our people, are taught to meet
+troubles halfway look at the silver lining instead of the dark cloud.
+As for Joe himself, he is still unable to get into his head why these
+events should be of even passing interest to any one else.
+
+
+
+
+SALLY'S "TURNS"
+
+
+"Spin me a yarn, Uncle Eph. I'm fairly played out. We've been on the
+go from daylight and I'm too tired to write up the day's work."
+
+"A yarn, Doctor. I'm no hand at yarns," said the master of the
+spick-and-span little cottage at which I and my dogs had brought up
+for the night. But the generously served supper, with the tin of milk
+and the pot of berry jam, kept in case some one might come along, and
+the genial features of my hospitable host, slowly puffing at his pipe
+on the other side of the fireplace, made me boldly insistent.
+
+"Oh, not anything special, Uncle Eph, just some yarn of an adventure
+with your dogs in the old days."
+
+Uncle Eph ruminated for quite a while, but I saw by the solid puffs he
+was taking at his pipe that his mind was working. Then a big smile,
+broader than ever, lit up his face, and he said slowly:
+
+"Well, if you're so minded, I'll tell you a yarn about a fellow
+called 'Sally' who lived down our way in my early days."
+
+At this I just settled down comfortably to listen.
+
+Of course Sally was only a nickname, but on our coast nicknames last a
+man all his life. Thus my last patient, a woman of forty-odd years,
+trying to-day to identify herself, explained, "Why, you must know my
+father, Doctor. He be called 'Powder'--'Mr. Powder,' because of his
+red hair and whiskers."
+
+Sally's proper nickname was apparently "Chief," which the boys had
+given him because he had been a regular "Huck Finn" among the others.
+But in young manhood--some said it was because "Marjorie Sweetapple
+went and took Johnnie Barton instead o' he"--somehow or other "Chief"
+took a sudden "turn." This expression on our coast usually means a
+religious "turn," or a turn such as people take when "they sees
+something and be going to die"; it may be a ghost or sign. But this
+turn was neither. It was just a plain common "turn."
+
+It had manifested itself in "Chief" by his no longer going about with
+the other boys, by his habits becoming solitary, and by his neglecting
+his personal appearance, especially in letting his very abundant hair
+grow longer than fashion dictates for the young manhood of the coast.
+That was the reason some wag one day dubbed him "Absalom," which the
+rest caught up and soon shortened to "Sally." In the proper order of
+things it should have been "Abe." Wasn't Absalom Sims always called
+"Abe"? There was obviously an intentional tinge of satire in this
+unusual abbreviation.
+
+Whether it was due to the "turn" or not, the fact remained that at the
+advanced age of four and twenty Sally was still unmarried. He lived
+and fished and hunted mostly alone. No one, therefore, had much to say
+of him, good or bad. In its kindly way the coast just left him alone,
+seeing that was what he wished.
+
+As the years went by it happened that hard tunes with a scarcity of
+food struck "Frying-Pan Tickle," the hospitable name of the cove where
+Sally was reared. Fish were scarce, capelin never struck in, fur
+could not be got. This particular season every kind of fur had been
+scarce. A forest fire had driven the deer into the country out of
+reach. The young bachelor seals, called "bedlamers," that precede the
+breeding herd on their annual southern whelping excursion, and
+normally afford us a much-needed proteid supply, had evidently skipped
+their visit to the bay; while continuous onshore winds made it
+impossible in small boats to intercept the mighty rafts, or flocks, of
+ducks which pass south every fall. As a rule the ducks "take a spell"
+feeding off the shoals and islands as they go on their way, but the
+northeaster had robbed our larders of this other supply of meat, which
+we are in the habit of freezing up for spring use.
+
+In spite of the ice jam, packed by the unfriendly winds, the men had
+ventured to set their big seal nets as usual, not expecting the long
+persistence of "weather" that now seriously endangered their recovery.
+
+The time to move to the winter houses up the bay had already passed,
+and so the men at last thought best to go on and get them ready and
+then come out once more to haul and stow the nets and carry the women
+back with them. The long-delayed break came suddenly at last, with a
+blue sky and a bright, calm morning, but alas! no wind to move the
+packed-in slob ice. So there was no help for it but to get away early
+on shanks' pony, if they decided to go on; and that would mean they
+would not "reach down" before dark. There were only three of them, but
+they were all family men: Hezekiah Black, called "Ky"; Joseph Stedman,
+known as "Patsy," and old Uncle John Sanborne. They got under way
+bright and early, but the weather clouded up soon after they left, and
+a puff or two of wind should have warned them all under ordinary
+circumstances to abandon the attempt, or at least to branch off and
+take shelter in the "Featherbed Tilt" before trying to cross the White
+Hills.
+
+As it was, Uncle John decided to adopt that plan, leaving the younger
+men, whom nothing would dissuade from pushing ahead. After all, they
+knew every turn of the trail, every rock and landmark on the hillside;
+and one need not wonder if the modern spirit of "hustle" finds an echo
+even in these far-off wilds. Throwing precaution to the winds, the two
+young men pushed on regardless of signs and omens.
+
+Sally just knew it. Nothing would ever convince him that they did not
+deserve to get into trouble for not respecting "signs." Even Uncle
+John had often talked about "t' foolishness o' signs," and many a time
+Ky, once a humble member of Chief's followers, had laughed at what he
+called "old women's stuff." But what Sally thought of signs would not
+have been of any interest in itself. The interesting thing was that
+though he was in the country hunting, having moved long ago to his
+winter trapping-grounds, he saw signs enough to make him anxious about
+the three fathers of families tramping over the bleak hills that day.
+When snow began to fall with a westerly wind, that was sign number
+one. Something uncanny was about to happen. Then there was sign
+number two of bad weather coming, namely, the tingling in his fingers
+and sometimes "a scattered pain in t' joints." So Sally left his
+fur-path for the day, hurried back to his tiny home among the trees,
+and, calling his dogs together, harnessed them quickly and started at
+once for the winter houses at the bottom of Grey Wolf Bay.
+
+A tenderfoot could have told now that they were "in for weather." The
+snow by midday was not falling, it was being shovelled down in loads.
+The temperature had dropped so rapidly that the flakes, as large as
+goose feathers, were dry and light, a fact that with the increasing
+wind made the going like travelling through a seething cauldron.
+Unfortunately the men were already over the crest of the White Hills
+when they realized that the storm which had swept down on them had
+come to stay. There was no stemming the gale on the wind-swept ice of
+those hillsides, even could they have faced the fiercely driving snow.
+All they could do was to hurry along before it, knowing there would be
+no shelter for them till they reached Frying-Pan Tickle. For the
+forest had retired there beyond the hills before the onslaught of man
+and the carelessness that had caused forest fires.
+
+No one who has not been through it has any conception of the
+innumerable little accidents which in circumstances like these eat up
+the stock of chances for coming through. It did seem foolish that
+Patsy got his mittens wet in salt water coming through the broken
+ballicater ice as they tried to make the short cut across the Maiden's
+Arm; and that they froze while he was trying to warm his hands, so
+that he could not get them on again. It sounds like madness on Ky's
+part to have let his nor'wester cap get blown away, but it really only
+fell from his numbed hands while he was knocking the snow off, and was
+instantly swept away in a flurry of snow in the darkness. When the
+beam broke in his snow racquet, one of a pair he had absolutely
+counted on as beyond accident, he could scarcely get ahead at all.
+
+To stop and try to "boil the kettle" would not only have occupied too
+much time, but under the circumstances making a fire was practically
+impossible. Neither of the men carried a watch, and the unusual
+darkness caused by the thick snow made it impossible for them to tell
+what progress they were making. They supposed that surely between the
+worst snow "dweys" they would catch sight of some familiar leading
+mark, but that proved only another of their small but fatal
+miscalculations. The storm never did let up. More than once they
+discovered they were out of the track, and, knowing well their danger,
+had grudgingly to sacrifice time and strength in groping their way
+back to a spot where they could recognize the trail again.
+
+December days are short, anyhow, "down north" and every moment warned
+them that the chances of getting out before dark were rapidly
+diminishing. All the strength and endurance of which they were capable
+were unstintingly utilized to get ahead; but when night finally
+overtook them, they knew well that there were several miles to go,
+while to move ahead meant almost certainly losing the trail, which
+inevitably spelt death. It was only the winter before that Jake
+Newman, of Rogers Cove, left his own home after dinner, "just to fetch
+in a load of wood," and he wasn't found till three days later, buried
+in snow not two hundred yards from his front door, frozen to death.
+But if to advance meant death, to stop moving was equally dangerous.
+So there was nothing to do but keep moving round and round a big rock
+in hopes of living out the long, terrible night.
+
+Meanwhile Sally was under way. Though he knew that the men were crazy
+to get back, it was only his surmise that they had started, so he had
+to call round at the winter cottages in the bay to make sure. He
+realized full well it was a man's job he was about to undertake, and
+had no wish to attempt it unnecessarily. As he expected, however, he
+found that the houses were all shut up, and such tracks as there were
+on the snow about the trail end showed quite clearly three men's
+footmarks. "Uncle John's gone with t' others," he muttered to himself.
+"I 'low 't is t' last journey some of 'em 'll make, unless they
+minded the signs before too late. 'Tis lucky that I hadn't left old
+Surefoot at t' tilt; more'n likely I shall be needing he before t'
+night's out." And he called his one earthly chum and constant
+companion to him, rubbed his head, and made him nose the men's tracks
+which he was about to follow.
+
+In spite of his nickname, Sally was no greenhorn on occasions like
+this. Every harness was carefully gone over, every trace tested; the
+runners and cross-bars of his komatik all came in for a critical
+overhauling. The contents of the nonny-bag were amply replenished; the
+matches in the water-tight bottle were tested for dampness; his small
+compass was securely lashed to the chain of his belt. His one bottle
+of spirits, "kept against sickness," was carefully stowed with the tea
+and hardtack. A bundle of warm wraps, with his axe, and even a few dry
+splits, completed his equipment. Then once more Surefoot was shown the
+tracks on the threshold, the trailing loops of the traces were hitched
+on their respective toggles, the stern line was slipped, and away
+went his sturdy team into the darkness.
+
+That animals have a sense of direction that man has lost is clearly
+proven by the seals, birds, polar bears, and our northern migratory
+animals generally, who every year follow in their season the right
+trails to their destinations, even though thousands of miles distant
+and over pathless seas or trackless snows and barrens. That instinct
+is nowhere more keenly developed than in our draught dogs; and amongst
+these there are always now and again, as in human relationships, those
+that are peerless among their fellows. Surefoot's name, like Sally's
+own, was not strictly his baptismal cognomen, the original name of
+"Whitefoot" having been relegated to oblivion early in life owing to
+some clever trail-following the pup had achieved.
+
+Many men would face an aeroplane flight with a sinking sensation. Many
+would have to acknowledge some qualms on a start with "mere dogs" in a
+blizzard like this one. But Sally, unemotional as a statue and serene
+as a judge, knew his pilot too well to worry, and, stretched out full
+length on the sledge, occupied himself with combating the snow in
+between "spells" of hauling the komatik out of hopeless snowbanks. "It
+won't do to pass the Featherbed without making sure them's not there,"
+thought Sally. "If Ky had any wits about him, he'd never try the
+Hanging Marshes a night like this." So when at last the team actually
+divided round the leading mark-pole, Surefoot having rubbed his side
+on it, so straight had he travelled even in that inferno, Sally leaped
+off immediately, and, following the line of poles, was cheered to see
+sparks issuing from the snug tilt among the trees. But alas, there was
+only one man, old Uncle John, resting there safely when Sally came
+tumbling in. The cheerful wood fire, the contrast of the warmth and
+quiet with the howling and darkness of the storm outside, called
+loudly to every physical faculty to stay for the night.
+
+"Where be them gone?" queried Sally as soon as the old man had roused
+himself enough to understand the sudden interruption. "Where's Ky and
+Patsy? I thought you was all together by t' tracks."
+
+"So we was, so we was, boy. But them's gone on, while I thought I'd
+bide till daylight."
+
+The loud wail of the dogs in chorus, as they chafed at being left out
+of sight or knowledge of their master's whereabouts, was plainly
+audible to both men, and suggested the cruel bleakness of the night
+outside.
+
+"Youse isn't going on to look for 'em, is you? There be no chance of
+doing nothing a night like this," added the old man.
+
+But Sally was in another world. He could see the two men adrift and
+trying to keep life in themselves on the White Hills just as plainly
+as the cry made him see his beloved dogs calling to him from the
+exposed trail outside.
+
+"There'll be nothing left anyhow to do by morning, Uncle John," he
+answered. "Look after yourself well and keep t' fire in; maybe I'll be
+back sooner than us expects. Goodnight to you." And Sally disappeared
+once more into the night.
+
+They were still alive when Surefoot found them, though far more
+played out than one would suppose strong men could be in so short a
+time. The extra wraps were at once requisitioned, a ration from the
+spirit flask was rapidly given to each, and then, forcing them to sit
+down on the sledge, Sally again encouraged Surefoot to take the trail.
+Downhill, they managed to move along, but the heavy thatch of snow
+made progress difficult on the level and almost impossible uphill,
+just when exhaustion made marching impracticable even with a line from
+the sledge lashed to their arms. Sally found his last device
+unavailable. The men must get off for the uphill work, and that is
+what it became increasingly impossible for them to do.
+
+Apparently Ky was the worse off. He didn't seem to know what was going
+on. Sally noticed that his hat had gone and thought his head was
+freezing, so without hesitation he covered it with his own warm
+nor'wester. Ky lay mostly on the komatik now, and it took all Sally's
+strength and such little aid as Patsy could give to enable the dogs to
+haul up the Frenchman's Leap, usually nearly perpendicular, but now
+fortunately sloped off by the heavy drift. Each man had to take a
+trace ahead and haul exactly like two big dogs, thus strengthening the
+team. At last the komatik topped the brow and was once more coming
+along after them. But Patsy was so played out that Sally drove him
+back to the sledge, hoping that the dogs could now haul the two men
+again. To his horror on reaching the komatik he found the real cause
+of its running so much more easily. Ky was gone. Probably he had only
+just slipped off. He would go back and look for him. But then he would
+lose the dogs. Patsy was too lost to the world to understand anything
+or to help. If he went back alone the dogs might follow and he would
+lose Patsy as well. Still he must try it. Halting the dogs he turned
+the komatik over, driving the upturned nose of the runners deep into
+the snow; then he laid Patsy on the top, and, lashing him on, finally
+began groping back down the steep rise for the missing man.
+
+Not a sign was to be found; any traces he had left were not only
+invisible, but impossible to feel, though he took off his mittens to
+try. The pitiless, driving snow instantly levelled off every mark. How
+long dare he delay? He remembered at last that even if he found him he
+could do no good. He could never carry him up the hill. But he had
+tried--had done his best and his conscience felt easier. And then
+there was Patsy. He might save Patsy yet. It was right he should go
+on. Fortunately the dogs were giving tongue when he crawled and
+stumbled once more up the Leap. They knew their master had left them
+and had come back to the komatik to wait. Some of them were huddled up
+against the motionless body of the man. Surefoot, bolt upright on the
+topmost bend, was leading the chorus. The komatik had to be extricated
+and righted. Patsy was still breathing. His body must be re-lashed on
+the right side; and then once more the weary march began--the march
+that was a battle for every inch.
+
+Of the remainder of the journey Sally never had much remembrance. It
+was like a moving dream--he knew it was crowded with adventures, but
+the details had vanished completely from his ken. It was his old
+father who told the remainder of the story. He had turned into bed as
+usual, never dreaming any man was astir on such a night as that. He
+was sleeping the sleep of the righteous when he suddenly became
+conscious of dogs howling. Even dogs would not be out unless they were
+in harness on such a night. His own dogs he knew were safely barred
+into their kennels after being fed at sundown. For a few minutes he
+lay awake and listened. The sounds came no nearer, but they were quite
+distinct. There was something astir in the darkness--something
+uncanny. Sally would have called it a "sign." Uneasily he arose and
+lit the lamp. He could not hear a soul stirring. Even the howling of
+the dogs had ceased. Nothing but the noise of the house creaking and
+groaning under the wind pressure was discernible. And then, just as
+the bitter cold, dark, and loneliness made him long to get into his
+warm bed again, the wail of a lone dog was distinctly audible. Uncle
+Eben, pulling the lamp safely out of the draught, opened a crack of
+the porch door only to be saluted by a rush of cold wind and snow
+which nearly swept him off his feet. But again clearer than before
+came the wail of the dog.
+
+"He must be hitched up by mistake or in harness," he thought. "I 'low
+I'll fire a powder gun."
+
+Going back into the bedroom, the old man warned his wife that he was
+going to shoot and not to be frightened. Then taking his old
+muzzle-loader, which was always kept ready, from among the lesser
+weapons which stood in the gun-rack, he poked the muzzle through the
+crack and fired it into the air. True he had thought there might be
+some one adrift. But even a prophet could not have imagined that what
+did happen could have done so. For the sound of the explosion had not
+done echoing through the empty rooms before the door was burst
+suddenly in by some heavy body falling against it. The thud of some
+weighty mass falling on the floor was all that Uncle Eben could make
+out, for the gust through the wide-open door at once extinguished the
+light. It seemed as if some huge bird must have been hovering overhead
+and have fallen to the charge of the big gun. The door must be shut at
+all costs, and shut at once; so Uncle Eben, stooping to feel his way
+over the fallen object, put his hands out to find where it lay in the
+darkness. Instantly he recognized the body of a man--a man alive too,
+but apparently unable to speak or move. Like lightning he had the door
+closed. The vigour of youth seemed to leap into his old veins. The
+light was soon burning again, to reveal to him the prostrate body of
+his own son, ice-covered from head to foot, his hatless head like a
+great snow cannon-ball, his face so iced up that it was scarcely
+recognizable. No--he was unwounded and there was life in him. "I had
+just to thaw his head out first," Uncle Eben said, "and then us rubbed
+him and got something down his throat. He roused himself, got up, and
+told us his dogs must be snarled up in t' woodpile on the hillside,
+only a few minutes away, and he kept signing that there were a man,
+possibly still alive, lashed on t' komatik." It was no night for the
+old man to go out. "He'd be dead, bless you," before he got anywhere;
+and it seemed impossible to let Sally go out again. The stranger must
+surely be dead long ago. But, weak as he was, Sally would go. He could
+stand now and was once more blundering toward the door. To live and
+think he had let a man perish alongside was as impossible to one man
+as to the other.
+
+It was Uncle Eben who solved the problem. There were a dozen balls of
+stout seal twine lying in the locker. The old man, unable longer to
+haul wood or drive dogs himself, spent much of his time knitting up
+gear for the boys. He put on Sally his own cap, coat, and mits, tied
+the twine round his wrist, and then let him out to find the komatik
+again if he could; while if he fell exhausted Uncle Eben could at
+least follow the line and perhaps get him back again.
+
+As events turned out they were justified in making the attempt. The
+cold wind served only as a lash to Sally's reserve strength and his
+grit. That night he certainly found himself again. He reached the
+sledge, cut the traces he could not disentangle, and, keeping Surefoot
+by him, he cleared the komatik of the woodpile. Once more he hitched
+in the dogs, which he knew would make straight for the house, while he
+piloted down that last hillside.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Patsy got well again, though his toes and fingers alike were badly
+burned. Ky was not found till a few days later. He had evidently
+wandered to the edge of the cliffs, which near the Jump fall
+perpendicularly a hundred feet on to the rocky beach below, and had
+slipped over in the darkness.
+
+Uncle Eben's shot had passed almost immediately over Sally's head. He
+remembers being unable to free the dogs, realizing he was close home,
+and stumbling on for only a minute or two before something exploded
+just above him; then he recalls nothing till Uncle Eben had thawed out
+the touselly head and rubbed back the circulation into the frozen
+limbs.
+
+The slur so obviously intentional in the old nickname made it
+impossible for any one to use it longer. It was unanimously agreed
+that he had established most surely his right to his old name of
+"Chief," and by this for many years he was known. With the lapse of
+years and the advent of grey hairs, even that was gradually recognized
+as too familiar, and he received the cognomen of "Uncle," the title of
+endearment of the coast, attached to his own name of Ephraim.
+Moreover, this proved to be the last of Sally's "turns," for the long
+hair and the lonely habits disappeared. The barrier that had grown up
+between him and his fellows vanished, as they always do before the
+warmth of unselfish deeds--and the next time "Chief" asked a girl the
+fateful question, there proved to be no Johnnie Barton in his way.
+
+"Is Sally living still?" I asked, my keenness of interpretation
+obscured by weariness or by interest in the details.
+
+"Oh, yes, he's alive all right," replied my host--and my mind at once
+apologized, as I realized he had been telling me the story of his own
+early life.
+
+
+
+
+THE DOCTOR'S BIG FEE
+
+
+A crowd of visitors had landed from the fortnightly mail boat, and had
+come up to see the sights of our little harbour while our mails and
+freight were being landed and the usual two hours were allowed to
+collect and put aboard any return packages or letters. The island on
+which the station stands is a very small one, attractions are
+naturally few, and custom has reconciled us to the experience, strange
+enough at first, of being included in the list of "sights."
+
+A nice, cheerful group had just "done the hospital" and its
+appendages, and were resting on the rocky hilltop, after seeing the
+winter dog-team and examining the hospital reservoir. The
+ever-recurrent questions had been asked, and patiently answered--yes,
+the ice was cold, but not always wet; the glare of the snow was hard
+on the eyes; dogs do delight to bite; and so on. Conversation flagged
+a little till some one enquired the names of the headlands and bays
+stretching away in succession beneath our view.
+
+"It all looks so grim and cold, and the people seem so scattered and
+so poor. Surely they can't pay a doctor's fees?" some one asked.
+
+"That depends on what you mean by a fee. We don't expect to get blood
+out of a stone."
+
+"Is all your work done for nothing, then?"
+
+"No, not exactly for nothing. There is no produce of the coast which
+has not been used to express gratitude, and 'to help the hospital
+along.' Codfish is a common fee. Sealskins, venison, wild ducks,
+beadwork, embroidered skinwork, feathers, firewood--nothing is too
+bizarre to offer."
+
+"Do they never pay money?"
+
+"Yes, sometimes. Of late years, a little more each year. But when we
+began work, they practically never got any with which to pay. The
+fur-trading companies settled in kind, values were often measured, not
+by so many dollars, but by so many pelts. The traders gave out
+supplies on credit, took the fish or fur from their planters in
+return, and made up the balance, when there was any, in goods. Even
+barter was quite unusual, though some traders had a 'cash price' for
+produce paid down at once, besides the credit price."
+
+"Do you think it a sound policy to be providing services, drugs, and
+nursing free?" chimed in a grey-bearded old fellow, evidently the
+philosopher of the party.
+
+"Sometimes, sir, policies must be adopted which are rendered necessary
+for the time by conditions. Besides, as I have said, the people pay
+what they can, and, after all, it is they who catch the fish and fur,
+reaping harvests for the world's benefit--for not much return."
+
+"Well, I'm glad that you don't do it for nothing, anyhow. That would
+be an imposition on the workers as well as on the subscribers."
+
+The old gentleman seemed a bit disgruntled, so I ventured to put my
+viewpoint in a different way.
+
+"Do you see that steep, rocky cape over there?" I asked. "It is the
+most northerly you can distinguish."
+
+"A great landmark, and worth the journey up here only to look at it,"
+he answered with an enthusiasm which showed that he had a tender spot
+for Nature's beauties, and that even if the shell was hard, the kernel
+was soft.
+
+"There is a little village just behind that head. It is hidden away in
+a rift in the mountain which forms a tiny cove for a safe anchorage. I
+had as big a fee there only two days ago as ever I received when I was
+practising in London."
+
+The company looked up in astonishment, but like Brer Rabbit, I lay low
+to see if they cared for an explanation. I thought I saw a twinkle in
+my critic's eye as it caught mine.
+
+"Go ahead," was all that he said, however.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Deep-Water "Crik," we call it. About half a dozen fishermen's families
+live there. Well, three days ago a boat came over at daylight to see
+if they could get a doctor, and I was debating as to the advisability
+of leaving the hospital, when an old skipper from a schooner in the
+harbour came ashore to tell me: "It's t' old Englishman; Uncle
+Solomon they calls him. He's had a bad place this twelvemonth."
+
+"How's the wind outside?"
+
+"Soldier's wind. Abeam both ways."
+
+"Think I could get back to-night?"
+
+"Yes, by after dark."
+
+"Let's get right away, then."
+
+But other calls delayed us, and it was nearly midday before we started
+for the cape. Unfortunately, the wind veered as the sun sank, and
+"headed" us continually. The northern current was running strong, and
+it was just "duckish" when at last we entered the creek.
+
+The former glories of Deep-Water Creek have passed away. Fortune has
+decreed that seals and mackerel and even salmon to a large extent
+should not "strike in" along that shore. Bad seasons and the wretched
+trading system have impoverished the fishermen, while the opening of
+the southern mines has taken away some of the most able-bodied. Here
+and there a braver cottage still boasts a coat of whitewash and a
+mixture of cod oil and red dust on the roof. But for the most part
+there is a sombre, dejected look about the human part of the harbour
+that suggests nothing but sordid poverty.
+
+It had commenced to rain, and we were wet, cold, and feeling generally
+blue as we landed at a small fish stage, whose very cleanliness helped
+further to depress us, telling as it did the tale of a bad "voyage."
+For now it ought to have reeked of fish and oil; and piles of cod
+heads, instead of the cleanest of cold water, should have covered the
+rocks beneath. So many of our troubles are due to deficient dietary,
+winter was already on our heels, and there seemed to be the shadow of
+hunger in the very air.
+
+As soon, however, as we landed, a black-bearded, bright-faced man of
+about fifty gave us a hearty greeting, and such evident happiness lit
+up his peculiarly piercing eyes that it made us feel a little more
+cheerful, even before he had taken us into his house. There we found a
+cup of steaming hot tea prepared. That tea did not seem a whit less
+sweet, because "there be ne'er a drop o' milk in t' harbour, Doctor,
+and molasses be scarce, too, till t' fish be dry."
+
+Everything was so clean that you could have eaten off the floor. The
+pots and pans and tin cooking-utensils shone so brightly from the
+walls that the flame of the tiny kerosene lamp, reflected from so many
+sides at once, suggested ten hundredfold the candle-power it
+possessed. A museumful of treasures could not have added to the charm
+of the simplicity of the room, which, though small, was ever so cosy
+compared with the surroundings outside. Three children were playing on
+the hearth with a younger man, evidently their father.
+
+"No, Doctor, they aren't ours exactly," replied our host, in answer to
+my question, "but us took Sam as our own when he was born, and his
+mother lay dead, and he've been with us ever since. Those be his
+little ones. You remember Kate, his wife, what died in the hospital?"
+
+Yes, I remembered her very well, and the struggle we had had in trying
+to save her.
+
+"Skipper John," I said as soon as tea was over, "let's get out and
+see the old Englishman. He'll be tired waiting."
+
+"Youse needn't go out, Doctor. He be upstairs in bed."
+
+So upstairs, or rather up the ladder, we went, to find the oddest
+arrangement, and yet far the most sensible under the peculiar
+circumstances. "Upstairs" was the triangular space between the roof
+and the ceiling of the ground floor. At each end was a tiny window,
+and the whole, windows included, had been divided longitudinally by a
+single thickness of hand-sawn lumber, up to the tiny cross-beams.
+There was no lofting, and both windows were open, so that a cool
+breeze was blowing right through. Cheerfulness was given by a bright
+white paper which had been pasted on over everything. Home-made rag
+mats covered the planed boards. At one end a screen of cheesecloth
+veiled off the corner. Sitting bolt upright on a low bench, and
+leaning against the partition, was a very aged-looking woman, staring
+fixedly in front of her, and swaying forwards and backwards like some
+whirling Dervish. She ceaselessly monotoned what was intended for a
+hymn.
+
+"The old gentleman sleeps over there," said the skipper with his head
+just above the floor level. He indicated the screened corner, and then
+bobbed down and disappeared, being far too courteous a man to intrude.
+
+The old lady took no notice whatever as I approached. No head was
+visible among the rude collection of bedclothes which, with a mattress
+on the boards, served for the bed.
+
+"Uncle Solomon, it's the Doctor," I called.
+
+The mass of clothes moved, and a trembling old hand came out to meet
+mine.
+
+"Not so well, Uncle Solomon? No pain, I hope?"
+
+"No pain, Doctor, thank t' good Lord--and Skipper John," he added. "He
+took us in, Doctor, when t' old lady and I were starving."
+
+The terrible cancer in spite of which his iron constitution still kept
+him alive had so extended its fearful ravages that the reason for the
+veiled corner was at once apparent, and also the effective measures
+for ventilation.
+
+The old lady had now caught the meaning of my presence. "He suffers a
+lot, Doctor, though he won't say it. If it wasn't for me singing to
+him, I don't know how he would bear up." And, strangely enough, even I
+had noticed the apparent descent from an odd, dreamy state to crude
+realities, as the old lady abandoned her droning, and talked of
+symptoms.
+
+"But, Aunt Anne," I said, "you can't keep it up all night as well as
+all day?"
+
+"No, not exactly, Doctor, but I mostly sleeps very little." And to my
+no small astonishment she now shut up like an umbrella, and at once
+recommenced her mesmeric monotone.
+
+When the interview was over, and all my notes made and lines of action
+decided, I still did not feel like moving. I was standing in a brown
+study when I heard the skipper's voice calling me.
+
+"Be you through, Doctor? There be two or three as wants to see you,"
+it said; but it meant, "Is there anything wrong?" The long silence
+might mean that the sight had been too much for me.
+
+"There's no hurry, Doctor," it hastened to add, for his quick ear had
+caught the noise of my start as I came to earth again.
+
+"What can be the meaning of it all?" I was pondering. Is there any
+more explanation to the riddle of life than to Alice in Wonderland?
+Are we not all a lot of "slithy toves, that gyre and gimble in the
+wabe"--or worse? Must we who love living only regard it as one long
+tragedy?
+
+The clinic of Skipper John's lower room included one or two pathetic
+tales, and evidently my face showed discouragement, but I confess I
+was surprised when the last poor creature had left, to find my host's
+hand on my shoulder.
+
+"You'll be wanting a good hot cup o' tea, I knows, Doctor. And t'
+wife's made you a bit o' toast, and a taste o' hot berry jam. We are
+so grateful you comed, Doctor. T' poor old creatures won't last long.
+But thanks aren't dollars."
+
+At that minute his happy, optimistic eyes chanced to meet mine. They
+seemed like good, deep water, and just for a second the thought
+crossed my mind that perhaps he knew more of the real troubles of life
+than his intellectual opportunities might suggest.
+
+"No, Skipper," was all I said. "We doctors, anyhow, find them quite as
+scarce."
+
+"Well, Doctor," he added, "please God if I gets a skin t' winter I'll
+try and pay you for your visit, anyhow. But I hasn't a cent in the
+world just now. The old couple has taken the little us had put by."
+
+"Skipper John, what relation are those people to you?"
+
+"Well, Doctor, no relation 'zactly."
+
+"Do they pay nothing at all?"
+
+"Them has nothing," he replied.
+
+"Why did you take them in?"
+
+"They was homeless, Doctor, and the old lady was already blind."
+
+"How long have they been with you?"
+
+"Just twelve months come Saturday."
+
+"Thanks, Skipper," was all I could say, but I found myself standing
+with my hat off in the presence of this man. I thought then, and still
+think, I had received one of my largest fees.
+
+
+
+
+TWO CAT'S-PAWS
+
+
+Jean Marquette had nothing French about him but his name. Indeed
+"ne'er a word of French" could the old man remember, for he had lived
+for many years on the bleak, northeast side of Labrador; and few folk
+knew why, for all his forbears from sunny France had studiously
+avoided the Atlantic seaboard.
+
+Over his evening pipe, when the sparkling forks of fire bursting from
+the crackling logs seemed to materialize before his eyes again the
+scenes of his venturous life in the wild, as if they had been
+imperishably imprinted in the old trunks which had witnessed them, the
+old _coureur de bois_ spirit, and even accent, flashed out as he
+carried his listeners back into the gallant days of the men who
+founded the great _seigneuries_ which still stretch along the thousand
+miles of coast from the barren Atlantic seaboard to the bold heights
+of Quebec.
+
+In this country, only separated from the land of Evangeline by a few
+miles of salt water, one might reasonably suppose that the good folk
+would look to the soil and the peaceful pursuits of Arcady for at
+least some part of their daily bread. But, with the exception of a few
+watery potatoes, Uncle Johnnie had never "growed e'er a thing in his
+life." His rifle and axe, his traps and his lines, had exacted
+sufficient tribute from wild nature around him, not only to keep the
+wolf from the door, but to lay up in the stocking in his ancient
+French trunk dollars enough to give his only child, Marie-Joseph,
+quite a little dowry for that coast.
+
+It had often been a puzzle to us why this lonely old man, with no one
+belonging to him but one unusually pretty daughter, should have
+migrated to the lonely North. He had been asked more than once what
+the reason was, but he had always put the curious off by saying,
+"Hunting must be a lonesome trade. You wants a lot of room to catch
+foxes."
+
+But one night, when he was in a more communicative mood than usual, we
+got the whole story out of him.
+
+Late one fall, when the southern fishing craft had gone south, and
+the ground was crisp with the first frost of winter, the lovely calm
+and sunny October morning had induced him to suggest to his wife that
+she should go over to the neighbouring island with their two elder
+children, a girl and a boy, and have a picnic, while they gathered
+some of the beautiful red cranberries to "stow away" for the winter.
+The baby girl, Marie, was left at home with the little servant maid.
+The children had jumped for joy at the idea, and early after breakfast
+he had rowed them across to the island, returning himself to finish
+loading his small schooner with the household goods and chattels which
+they must take up the bay to their winter home in the woods. So busy
+had he been with work that only as it came time to go off for the
+family did he notice how suddenly the weather had chopped around. A
+sinister northerly flaw was already rippling the surface of the
+hitherto placid sea; and Uncle Johnnie, accustomed to read the sky
+like a book, hurried as he seldom did to get the small boat under way.
+No one could have driven her faster than he drove her, and the pace
+satisfied even his uneasy mind. The "cat's-paw" had stiffened to a
+bitter blast behind him, and long before the boat reached the beach,
+it was difficult enough to look to windward. Hauling up the boat, he
+gave the familiar call which his wife knew so well; but no answer came
+to greet him. Following along the shore, and still finding no traces,
+he suddenly remembered that there was an old deserted house nearly a
+mile farther along, and incontinently he started to run as fast as he
+could in its direction. As he drew near, to his infinite joy he caught
+sight of smoke issuing from holes in the leaky roof. Calling as he
+went, he soon reached the cabin, to find the little party trying to
+dry themselves before a wood fire in the crazy stove, which had no
+funnelling, and was filling the hut with eye-torturing smoke.
+
+"Come along, Mother," he cried. "There's no time to be lost. If we
+hurry, we may get over before dark."
+
+A little delay was caused by the children, who were unwilling to leave
+even that pretence of a shelter; and more time was lost crossing the
+island, the children having to be carried most of the way. At last,
+having placed them all safely in the boat, Uncle Johnnie proceeded to
+launch her, and by wading into the water himself, succeeded in keeping
+them dry for the start. But the increasing sea soon made even that
+sacrifice of little avail, for broken water and driving spray, with
+the now heavily falling snow, soon soaked them through and through, at
+last half filling the boat itself with water.
+
+Uncle Johnnie knew by instinct that it was now neck or nothing. He
+must get across that strip of water if human endurance could do it. So
+he kept on and on, long after he might have gone back, and put the
+boat before it once more to run for the island only after it was well
+dark, and he was being blown astern anyhow in spite of his best
+efforts. Nearing the shore, he had every reason to expect disaster,
+for the boat was now half filled, and he could see no place to make a
+landing. So as soon as his oars struck bottom he once more jumped
+into the water, and, holding the boat in his iron grip, he dragged it
+and its precious freight once more out of the furious violence of the
+sea.
+
+The children by this time were quite unable to "travel"; so, sending
+his wife ahead, Uncle Johnnie struggled along with the little ones as
+best he could.
+
+Alas, all of them were thoroughly beaten out. As he passed a big
+boulder halfway across the island which served as a landmark for the
+pathway, Uncle Johnnie found his poor wife lying in the snow, and
+already beyond any help he could give. Hurrying on to the cottage as
+best he could, he deposited the children, and once more fled out into
+the darkness for his wife, only to be, as he feared, too late, and to
+be obliged to leave her where she had fallen. Distracted as he was, he
+could only once more hurry to the hut, where again nothing but
+disaster awaited him. The place was flooded, the fire was out, no dry
+matches were left, and the little boy was already following his mother
+into the great beyond. Tearing off his coat and shirt, and pressing
+the little girl to his naked skin, he covered himself up again as
+best he could, and was actually able by moving about the whole night
+long, not only to keep himself alive, but to preserve the vital spark
+in his little daughter. Help came in the morning from the nearest
+neighbour some miles away, who had been given the alarm by the servant
+maid from his home. But there was still one more loss for him to meet,
+his little daughter failing to react to all their tenderest efforts to
+bring her back to life.
+
+Before Marie was out of her teens, half the young bloods of the
+neighbourhood were courting around Uncle Johnnie's house. But none of
+them ever made any headway, for Uncle Johnnie clung to his one ewe
+lamb with almost childish dependence, and guarded her with all the
+wiles of his lifelong woodcraft.
+
+"'T is natural enough," thought young Ned Waring, "that t' old man
+don't want to part with she. For there be nothing else for he round
+here now. Every stone on t' beach reminds he of his terrible
+misfortune." He had said this often enough before, but one day it
+struck him-- "When you wants to outwit a beaver, youse got to bank on
+dem t'ings that are real part of his make-up, and which he can no more
+help than a bear can help licking molasses. Fishing isn't as good as
+it used to be round here, and swiles[1]--well, there be'ant one year
+in a dozen when they comes in any quantity. I reckon I'll rig t' Saucy
+Lass for a longer trip t' year, and see what luck'll bring lower down
+t' Labrador."
+
+So it came to pass that year that on a day in June, with his two
+brothers and a shipped "hand," Ned landed north of fifty-three in a
+lovely cove in some islands off the mouth of a long bay. Even as he
+passed in he had seen fish schooling so thick "you could catch 'em by
+the tails." His vessel safely anchored, he went ashore, much as did
+the old navigators in the brave days of the French explorers. No sign
+of human beings existed anywhere. Thick groves of evergreen trees
+covered all the slopes of the valleys which held the river in whose
+mouth they had anchored. But though signs of rabbits, foxes, and
+other game greeted their trained eyes, not a living animal was to be
+seen moving anywhere.
+
+It so happened, however, that as they stretched themselves out on the
+brow of the hill before returning to their schooner, Ned chanced to
+disturb a large bee, which resented painfully the intrusion of these
+idlers on his labours. It was an insect rare enough on Labrador; so,
+taking the overture as a touch of personal interest rather than
+hostility, they christened their cove "Bumble-Bee Bight," and the home
+which they partly built before the winter drove them south again, "the
+Hive"; while for purposes of his own Ned left the island unnamed.
+
+The trip proved a bumper one. They carried a full fare home; and big
+were the rumours which got around of the fisherman's paradise which
+Ned Waring had discovered. When the voyage was turned in, Ned was able
+to purchase every essential and many comforts for the new home in the
+North, and yet have a balance coming to him large enough to furnish
+him with the bravest winter outfit a young suitor could wish.
+
+Uncle Johnnie was, however, all the time "one too many" for him as
+well as all the rest; and never was he able to catch Marie alone.
+Things went on uneventfully through Christmas and the New Year. The
+old man no longer drove dogs. He spent almost all his time pottering
+around his own house, now and again cleaving a few billets of wood;
+but to all intents and purposes he was hibernating like one of our
+Labrador bears.
+
+When March month once more came around, the magic word "swiles" was
+whispered from mouth to mouth, and Uncle Johnnie woke up like a weasel
+when a rabbit is about. Every day he sallied up to his lookout on the
+hill, telescope in hand, at stated hours. But the hours were so timed
+that Marie could always go with him.
+
+"Swiles" are second nature to most Labrador men. As for Uncle Johnnie,
+he would leave his Christmas dinner any time if any one came and
+called, "Swiles!" He would rather haul a two-dollar pelt over "t'
+ballicaters" than make two hundred in any other way.
+
+"So I reckoned," said Ned cannily, "one chance to make t' old man
+friendly was to put him in t' way o' doing again what he was really
+scarcely able to do any longer; and that was, to have as many notches
+on his gaff-stick for dead seals as any other man.
+
+"It were, however, longer than I cares to remember now, before much of
+a chance come my way, but it come at last. T' spring had been that
+hard and that quiet that I 'lows us could have walked over to t' Gaspe
+shore if us had been so minded. T' standing ice never broke up from
+Christmas to April month; and there'd been ne'er a bit of whelping ice
+near enough to see with a spyglass, or a swatch big enough for an old
+harp to put his whiskers through. So when us woke one morning and
+found that t' sea had heaved in overnight unbeknownst to us, and that
+there was lakes of blue water everywhere, every man was out with his
+rope and gaff, as natural as a young duck takes to water.
+
+"That evening t' ice packed in again, and by nightfall it all seemed
+fast as ever. There was always a big tide made round Cape Blowmedown,
+and as t' land fell sharp away on each side of it, it were never too
+safe to go off very far on t' ice. But, that being a bad year, every
+man was on his mettle, and us all took more chances than was real
+right.
+
+"From t' bluff of t' head Uncle Johnnie had spied old and young seals
+on t' ice before most of t' boys was out o' bed; and us had a dozen or
+so on t' rocks before t'others was out t' ice at all. As those near t'
+land got cleaned up, us went a bit farther out each time; and more'n
+one seal I didn't exactly see so's to give Uncle Johnnie a better
+chance, and to let me keep all t' time outside o' he.
+
+"Just before it came dark and we was two or three miles out, t' wind
+shifted all of a sudden and came off t' land. Uncle Johnnie had a tow
+of three big pelts, and, believe me, heaven and earth wouldn't have
+made he leave them swiles behind. I'd left mine just as quick as I
+felt t' shift, and never let on I had any, so's I could rope up Uncle
+Johnnie's load and hustle him toward t' land. But t' ice was that
+hummicky it was an hour before us got near, and there we were, almost
+dark, t' ice broken off, driving along about twenty yards from t'
+standing ice almost as fast as a man could walk, and t' wind
+freshening every minute. There was about a mile to t' bill of t' Cape,
+and after that there'd be no hope whatever.
+
+"Four years before Jim Willis and his brother Joe had been caught just
+t' same way. Joe had perished in his brother's arms next day after
+he'd carried him for some hours, and Jim had drifted ashore on t'
+second day with only a spark of life left in him.
+
+"Every other man had been ashore and gone home for long ago, not
+knowing we was working outside, and only one chance were left for we.
+For t' gap of water was getting wider every minute, and there wasn't a
+loose pan to ferry over on big enough to float a dog. So I shouted to
+Uncle Johnnie to run along t' ice edge back up the bay just as hard as
+he could go, and I'd jump into t' water and swim for t' standing ice
+edge. I never expected to get out again, but t' good Lord arranged it,
+I suppose, that I should strike a low shelf running off level with t'
+water, and by kicking like a swile, I was able to climb up and on to
+the ballicaters.
+
+"There was always a boat hauled up on t' cape for men gunning to get
+birds or swiles, and t' only chance was to get there and launch her
+before t' ice passed out. T' rise and fall of t' tide had piled up t'
+ballicaters at t' foot of t' cliffs like young mountains, and it was
+already dark, too, while my wet clothes froze on me like a box. I
+reckon that saved my legs from being broken more'n once, for I fell
+into holes and slid down precipices, and, anyhow, next day I was black
+and blue from head to toe--though for that matter I'd have been green
+and pink glad enough to have t' chance it gave me.
+
+"Anyhow, I got t' boat in t' water at last, and pulled out toward t'
+floe, but ne'er a sign could I make out of Uncle Johnnie. There
+weren't a moment for waste, for spray was drifting over t' punt, and
+she was icing up that fast that if we lost much time I knew that it
+was good-bye to home for both of us. So I had to risk hauling her up
+on t' ice, while I ran along t' edge, shouting for all I knew. I
+hadn't gone many yards before I stumbled right over t' old man. In t'
+dark he had slipped into a lake of water that had gathered on t' ice,
+and was about half-dead already. For I had been moving and hadn't
+noticed t' time, and Uncle Johnnie had given out quickly, thinking I
+were lost, anyhow. Well, in t' dark it was not an easy job to
+half-carry t' old man back to where I'd left t' boat. But when you
+must 'tis wonderful what you can do; and even dragging him weren't as
+hard as rowing ashore against t' wind.
+
+"T' men thought us would never reach land, for t' ice made so fast on
+t' punt and oars, and us were carried well outside t' bill while I was
+getting Uncle Johnnie. When we did at last make t' standing ice edge,
+it would have been t' end again if Marie hadn't been clever enough to
+go and rouse out t' boys, and come with them right to t' very edge of
+t' ice looking for us. And she hadn't forgotten some hot stuff nor a
+blanket neither. She told us afterwards that she saw Uncle Johnnie
+perishing of cold away out off t' cape before she left t' cottage,
+just as clear as she did when t' boys hauled us out of t' punt.
+
+"Uncle Johnnie pulled round in a day or so, but I pulled round early
+next morning, and those two days gave me t' first chance I'd had to
+get to windward of t' old man, and have Marie for an hour or two by
+herself.
+
+"T' business soon blew over, as I knew it would, and what's more,
+Uncle Johnnie were no more for letting any one get Marie away from him
+than he'd been afore. Indeed, it seemed to me that it made him cling
+closer to she than ever; and I got real down-hearted when it come time
+to fit out t' Saucy Lass for North Labrador once more.
+
+"Lucky for me, I'd made t' most of my time when Uncle Johnnie were
+ill, and talked many times to Marie about how her father might get
+young again if he could go where he could forget the old scenes. So
+when we had had t' schooner painted up and launched, and t' sails bent
+and began getting firewood and things aboard, I got her to talk to he
+about coming along with we.
+
+"I've often noticed how t' very things you thought t' last on earth to
+happen come about just as easy as falling off a log. When I went over
+next morning to pretend to say good-bye, Marie whispered in my ear,
+'He really wants to go. He only wants asking'--and before night we had
+it all arranged. We was to fix up t' hold for him and Marie, and
+they'd come along and make a new home alongside us at Bumble-Bee
+Bight.
+
+"I won't trouble you with t' story of t' voyage down, only to say that
+we found that two could play better than one at hide-and-seek. When at
+last we anchored off t' river mouth, Uncle Johnnie was fair delighted.
+Nothing would satisfy him but he must choose a spot for his new house
+right away. But meanwhile t' cargo had to be stored in t' 'Hive' out
+o' t' weather. Uncle Johnnie was always extra careful about his
+things and wouldn't allow no one but he to handle 'em. So Marie went
+up to get a fire and tidy up, while t' old man handed t' things up to
+we. For my part I found that I had to stay up at t' 'Hive' and help
+arrange t' goods as they came along; and, 'lowing it might be t' last
+chance, for we'd be into t' fishery straight away, I up and asked
+Marie if it wouldn't be as well not to build another house after all.
+All I wanted was her to share t' house we'd built already; and Uncle
+Johnnie would be less lonesome than he'd ever been since his accident,
+because instead of losing one, he'd be getting two. I'm not telling
+you all what was said; as I'd told t' boys not to hurry with t'
+unloading, and Uncle Johnnie didn't get ashore till real late. By that
+time it was all fixed up, but nothing was to be said till the house
+was ready next night.
+
+"When us come in together hand in hand that evening, Uncle Johnnie had
+started his pipe after tea. He guessed right away something was up,
+but maybe he had guessed something before. All he said was, 'Well,
+Ned, all my bridges is burnt behind me, as you know, anyhow, and if
+it hadn't been for you, there'd be no need of asking any one for
+Marie, for I'd have been gone. So I can't well say no; and she might
+go farther and fare worse for sure. So I'll just leave it to Marie
+herself, and if she says so, so it shall be.'
+
+"And that's all there is to tell about it. Sure people often wonders
+how others came to live 'way down on these lonesome shores. But
+Marquette Islands have given me fish and fur and good life, with ne'er
+a cent owing to any man, and there's four fine youngsters to help out
+when we can no longer fend for ourselves."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Seals.
+
+
+
+
+THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE
+
+
+"They brought in a blind man last night," said the house surgeon. "It
+only seemed a case of starvation, so I didn't call you."
+
+"Where is he from?"
+
+"About thirty miles in the country down north somewhere. Apparently he
+has been living at the bottom of a bay 'way out of the line of the
+komatik trail. Formerly he could get firewood easily, and a few bay
+seals and game to live on. He seems too proud to let people know how
+badly off he was."
+
+"What's the history?"
+
+"He has a wife and two girls, who appear to be in almost as poor shape
+as he is himself. He has been gradually growing blind for some time,
+and was up here two years ago to see the eye specialist. His name is
+Emile Moreau."
+
+"A Frenchman! Why, I remember the man perfectly. A slow-growing
+cerebral tumor."
+
+He had been under observation for some weeks, and we had had to decide
+that he would not be benefited by an operation. So he went away,
+promising to return soon. But this is the way he had kept his promise.
+
+A few minutes later I stood by the bedside of the blind Frenchman. The
+poor fellow was a skeleton, with the characteristic sunken face and
+fallen skin with which we are familiar in those living on what we know
+as "dry diet." He had nothing to say for himself except, "Times has
+been none too good, Doctor. It is a bad country when a fellow can't
+see where he is going. 'T is many an odd tumble I've had, too,
+knocking around." Emile had been away from France for many a long day,
+and the only English he had ever heard was the vernacular of our
+Northern Coast.
+
+"How's your wife and the kiddies you told us about when you were here
+last time? It strikes me that they may have had a tumble too."
+
+"Well, I 'lows, Doctor, them has been clemmed up on times. But,
+Jeanie, she never says nothing; she's that busy with t' things I can't
+do. She 'lowed she'd stay and mind t' children till I get better a
+bit. No, that's right. She hasn't much grub. But us uses very little,
+and she never complains."
+
+Two days later our good dogs brought in the rest of the family--the
+babes to the warm welcome and plenty at the Children's Home, while one
+of the pluckiest little women I have ever known, even in a country of
+brave and self-reliant women, was carried into the hospital partially
+paralyzed with beri-beri. She was so close to the gate from which
+there is no returning that it took our nurses six months to wean her
+back to another spell of usefulness.
+
+It was no ordinary conundrum which vexed my mind when the house
+surgeon at last announced, "These Moreau patients are well enough to
+leave hospital," though I had realized that for good or evil the day
+was near.
+
+Neither had said a word about the future. The worst feature of sending
+them out was the personal affection which their lessons in contentment
+had kindled in us. How could this helpless family ever hope to keep
+the wolf from the door. A council of war was called the same evening,
+and some neighbours who well knew the dilemma in which we found
+ourselves asked to be allowed to attend. There was an old shack in the
+compound in which some workmen had once been housed, and which had
+subsequently been used as a small store-house. It was proposed, in the
+absence of funds, for all hands to assault this stronghold, and
+convert it as far as possible into a habitable home.
+
+Thus came into existence what developed later into the general
+headquarters of the "triple entente."
+
+To relieve the situation, one child was adopted by a childless,
+well-to-do neighbour, and the other was left for education and care
+with our little wards in the Home. Emile learned basket-work; Jeanie
+took in washing. The Moreau exchequer once more was in funds. But two
+difficulties soon presented themselves. There was a glut in our basket
+market, and Emile found life without being able to move out of the
+house almost more than a man born to the sea and the trail could
+bear. Small dogs in civilization are wont to fill this gap. But alas,
+"down North" small dogs are taboo--their imperious Eskimo congeners
+having decided against them.
+
+There happened to be at this time also under our care an Eskimo lad
+from the Far North, whom we had picked up suffering with a form of
+lung trouble which only the radical operation of collapsing one side
+of his chest wall could relieve. The ribs had been removed. The boy
+had recovered slowly; but, having only a very limited breathing
+capacity, he had been allowed to remain for the chores he could do.
+Without kith, kin, or even fellow countrymen, he was a veritable
+pelican in the wilderness without any home attachments--and a very
+serious problem to ourselves.
+
+Emile could cut wood, being strong as a horse and an excellent axeman;
+but he could not find it alone. He could carry heavy packages, but he
+could not find his way. He could haul water, but could not
+economically direct his energies. Karlek's eyes were the best part of
+him. So it came about that one morning on the way to the hospital I
+met Emile whistling like a newly arrived robin in spring, his hand on
+Karlek's shoulder, and on his back a heavy sack of potatoes which he
+was bringing up to the hospital kitchen from the frost-proof cellar in
+the cove.
+
+It brought a smile to one's lips to see the nonchalance and almost
+braggadocio of his gait as he stepped out boldly, covering the ground
+at a speed which was itself a luxury to one so long cut off from that
+_joie de vivre_ of a strong man. And more, it brought a smile to one's
+soul to see the joy of victory flashing in the features of the
+upturned face--the triumph of the man over the pitifulness of his
+sightless eyes. The international dual alliance was making its debut
+on the field. The firm of Karlek and Moreau, Eskimo and Frenchman, had
+come to stay.
+
+So time went on, cheerfully and even rapidly for all concerned--the
+Mission developing its labour-saving devices as the work increased,
+and the help of its friends made it possible. A water-supply system
+soon partially obviated the need for hauling barrels in the summer
+from our spring and puncheons on the dog sledges in the winter. A
+roadway and narrow-gauge railway track relieved us of the necessity of
+so much portage on men's backs; and a circular saw, run by a small
+gasoline engine, cut up our firewood with less waste and with more
+satisfactory results.
+
+As with the basket market, so with the chore market, the ground was
+once more falling away from beneath our poor friends' feet. Only the
+indefatigable Jeanie held the household together, for in the heyday of
+the dual alliance's prosperity, the little daughter had been permitted
+to return to her parents from the Children's Home.
+
+With the lapse of years, however, even if Emile could see no better
+with his eyes, his other faculties had developed so largely as to
+surrender to him again the joy of independence of outside help, and
+with characteristic self-reliance and optimism he once more tackled
+his own difficulties.
+
+I was recently visiting a small cottage, built on a tiny ledge under
+the shadow of gloomy, high cliffs. It was far from any pathway and
+only approachable by stumbling over huge rocks--the debris of the
+crags behind. The hut had been built by a lonely old fellow who
+resorted to it in summer because it was right on the fishing-grounds,
+and he was getting unable any longer to face the long row to and from
+his house in the harbour. Nowhere in the world is the old adage
+concerning the birds of a feather truer than on this coast. The poorer
+and lonelier a man is, the greater is the certainty that some other
+poor and lonely person will seek the shelter of their poverty. Thus it
+had been with old man Martin.
+
+One day there had appeared at the cottage door from twenty miles
+farther down the coast one-legged Ike, an irregular, angular youth,
+who, stumbling over the hillside, and magnified into portentous
+proportions by one of our Promethean fogs, had nearly scared the wits
+out of even my trusty dog team. Quite without invitation from old man
+Martin, one-legged Ike had come to stay. The proximity to the
+fishing-grounds suited this seafarer, who shared in every particular
+the limpet-like characteristics of Sinbad's Old Man of the Sea.
+
+Anyhow, old Martin had never shaken him off, and had been heard to
+excuse himself by saying, "After all, he can sit in a boat as well as
+any of them with two legs." "Where there's room for one, there's room
+for two," is almost an axiom of life on these shores. In the lapse of
+time the old man had taken his last voyage, and Ike had come into full
+possession of the estate, living almost like Robinson Crusoe, cut off
+from his fellows by to him impassable barriers.
+
+It was a reported lapse in some other portion of Ike's anatomy that
+had led me to scramble along the landwash to the cottage. The ice
+having broken up and gone out of the harbour, I should have considered
+longer the advisability of the trip,--for the morning frosts left the
+jagged rock masses at the foot of the cliff harbingers of ill omen to
+the traveller,--had it not been that his isolation might possibly
+make even trivial trouble serious. For he had come safely through so
+many scrapes, not a few being of his own making, that I had nicknamed
+him in my mind "indestructible Ike."
+
+At last, congratulating myself that I had arrived without any untoward
+happenings, I rapped loudly on his door, expecting to hear his
+squeaky, perpetually broken voice bid me enter. Much to my surprise,
+therefore, the door opened itself, and smiling in the doorway stood
+our blind friend.
+
+"Good Heavens! Emile, how on earth did you get here? And why did you
+ever want to come, anyhow?"
+
+"Why, I thought it was a good plan for me to go fishing," he replied,
+addressing apparently a huge rock, so accurately poised over the hut
+that it suggested any moment an annihilating assault upon it. "Ike's
+going to be pilot and I'm to do t' rowing. We're to be partners for t'
+summer, and Karlek's going to look after t' family and help out when
+he can. It feels like being young again to be on t' water with a
+fishing-line. And, mind you, Ike knows a few tricks with a line that's
+worth more'n another leg to we, once we be on t' grounds. They all
+'lows he be as good as t' next man for hauling in fish, so be as
+there's any around."
+
+Ike's indisposition, as I had surmised, was not of a serious nature,
+and I learned subsequently that it was the proper ratification of the
+terms of the new triple alliance that had more to do with the sick
+call than any undue foreboding of impending dissolution on Ike's part.
+There had been some hitch in coming to terms, and Emile had put the
+only one point in them to his credit, when he saw through the trick,
+and "plumped for a magistrate," feeling also that he could trust me
+for more than mere legal technicalities.
+
+It was obviously an offensive campaign on which I found them bent. Ike
+had himself carefully repaired the boat's structure, having always a
+keen eye to comfort and safety; while from Emile's hands I could see
+that the task of tarring their warship, owing to Ike's temporary
+indisposition and the need for immediate preparedness, had fallen to
+him. His only method for finding out where he had applied that hot and
+adhesive liquid had left very apparent evidences of both his energy
+and his zeal. To Emile also had fallen the rearrangement of the big
+rocks, so as to form as level a surface as possible on which to dry
+the fish. It was a Sisyphean task, and poor Emile had spent much sweat
+and not a little blood in his efforts. But, as Ike told him, "lifting
+rocks weren't no work for a man with one leg." So he had offset
+against it getting the meals ready, and what he called "tidying things
+up." But as Karlek was, unrewarded, to bring the bread, Ike's
+household labours did not promise to be onerous.
+
+In one sense the entente campaign proved victorious, for they had a
+goodly catch; but in the division of the spoils it apparently turned
+out that it had been so arranged that Emile's share was to catch the
+fish, Karlek's to dry it, and Ike's to exchange it piecemeal for
+tobacco or "things for t' house," as he called them.
+
+Ever since Stevenson wrote of the one-legged rascal Silver, one
+associates with that handicap a tendency to try to outwit others;
+while the dependence of blind men presupposes simplicity and
+trustfulness.
+
+Emile worked like a tiger, with the single-mindedness of the Verdun
+spirit of France, blissfully supposing that Ike did the same in his
+end of the boat. Fishing in sixty fathoms of icy water, Emile would
+haul his lines up and down, re-bait and tend them, till his hands were
+blue with cold, and the skin "fair wore off t' bones." One day,
+however, a harbour trap boat happened to pass close by their rodney
+while they were anchored on the fishing-grounds, and the owner called
+out, "Wake up, Ike! Price of dream fish is down." Ike had somewhat
+loudly and not too politely responded to the salutation, but all the
+same it awoke a first suspicion in Emile's mind. While not slacking
+himself, he "kept an eye" on his partner as best he could.
+
+He knew that a one-legged man must sit down for work, while for his
+part he stood, but he had not realized that Ike considered any more
+restful posture essential. "A blind man sees more'n most folk" is a
+common claim of Emile's. It is tedious pegging away when fish are
+scarce, yet fishing is a trade where "'tis dogged as does it." He
+suspected that Ike took it easy in the stern while he worked in the
+bow; and his doubts were confirmed when one day, from a passing boat,
+some one called out: "'Tain't safe for you to be out alone, Emile.
+You'll be running some one down one of these days." It was obvious
+that Ike was not visible over the gunwale.
+
+From that day on, Emile began to count his catch and to put a
+cross-thwait in the middle of the boat to keep them separate--"Something
+to push my feet against when I rows, I called 'un," he told me. Still
+Ike was almost too much for him, for Karlek remembered seeing him
+sorting out the fish as he landed them, and the big ones, somehow or
+other, all found their way into Ike's yaffles. Ike also discovered that
+it was good economy constantly to change the location of such things as
+the tobacco box, butter tub, and molasses jar, for it often meant that
+the good-natured Emile went without.
+
+The cold weather set in early, and though the contract was not up,
+Ike's hereditary instinct that hardship was bad for his constitution
+made him decide to stop if he could. But Emile went steadily on,
+having learned from Karlek that there were occasional leakages from
+the fish pile. He ventured to remonstrate with his partner, but as
+fish were plentiful, he refused to cancel the contract before the
+proper date.
+
+It was Ike who finally forced the issue. Emile being bowman, it was
+their custom always to come in to the ladder leading to the stage
+platform head on, when Emile, grabbing the cross-bars with one hand
+and holding the painter in the other, climbed up and "made her fast."
+Projecting from the stage head is a long pole used for preventing
+boats that are made fast from bumping against the stage. Coming in a
+day or so later, Ike drove the punt in parallel with the stage head,
+and the pole coming into Emile's hands deceived him into thinking that
+the stage was above him as usual. He promptly stepped off the boat,
+and naturally fell into the water. Naturally also, it shook Emile up a
+good deal, for he was in the water quite a while. After the incident
+Ike's tender heart had made him absolutely refuse the responsibility
+of a blind man in a small boat in fall weather. As we walked up the
+wharf together Emile told me many more such details of the
+transactions of our only "triple alliance." All he wanted me to do was
+to add up his own tally of the fish he had caught, multiplying it by a
+reasonable average fish, and for the sake of the family help him to
+get from his ally a return for his labour which would enable him to
+buy food for the winter for Jeanie and the little girl.
+
+Fortunately it proved to be not too late. You cannot "get the breeks
+off a Highlander," and after a week or two not a cod tail or a cent
+would have been available from Ike. As it was, my coming to the
+assistance of my poor friend happened to save the "entente" from being
+a tragedy, and enabled us to relegate the whole incident to our comedy
+group.
+
+A peremptory order to Ike to wait for me at midday at the room we call
+the court-house would, I knew, impress him with the necessity of
+obedience, far more than a second visit to his cabin. The effort which
+the journey would cost him and the time allowed for reflection would,
+moreover, punctuate the importance of the occasion.
+
+Emile's calculation of the amount of fish caught, corrected by Karlek
+by the simple process of multiplying the sum by two, and with a bit
+more added by myself to be sure not to underestimate it, formed all
+the legal data I needed. The lean, scrawny figure of Ike, twisting and
+squirming with evident uneasiness, awaited my arrival at the appointed
+time. Ike's fear of "t' Law" was the superstition of a child. It was
+to him a great big man waiting to pounce upon you and "lug youse
+away." Indeed, I learned afterwards that he had stayed in bed for fear
+of being carried off surreptitiously. "'T is a lonesome spot I lives
+in," he had explained.
+
+"To steal from a blind man, Ike," I began, "is bad. Moreover, it
+doesn't bring any one any luck ever. Where have you put those sixty
+quintals of fish which belong to Emile?"
+
+"It took more'n half t' voyage, believe me, Doctor, to meet t'
+summer's expenses. There wasn't more'n thirty quintals all told, and
+half of that was mine. Samuels only allowed we four dollars a quintal,
+and his flour was eight, and molasses seventy cents. He said he'd land
+Emile's share when he comes in on his home trip."
+
+"The Law will have to send down and search your house and all around
+it, and carry off things while you wait here, and you won't get any
+credit for it either. I told you there was no luck for those who rob a
+blind man, unless they confess in time. I'll come back in half an hour
+for your decision." And, having an unfair advantage of a one-legged
+man, I locked the door and was well down the road before Ike had made
+a move.
+
+Our little rickety court-house, in order to be in the centre of the
+village, stands on a rocky hill-crest away by itself. When the wind
+blows high, awesome noises with much creaking and groaning help to
+suggest to the guilty conscience that supernatural agencies are at
+work. The half-hour was purposely a long one, and had the desired
+effect. Ike made a full confession of his delinquencies and promised
+reparation. An immediate search while he was in this frame of mind
+revealed that Emile's winter food could only be obtained by leaving
+Ike to a diet of hope and charity. The lesson being necessary,
+however, the whole of his supplies were loaded into the boat, and Ike
+condemned to row it to Emile's house and land it at once. It was late
+and dark, but the fear of what might happen to him alone on his point,
+now that it was known that he had robbed a blind man, held more
+terrors even than hunger for Ike. So the judgment of the court was
+carried out that very night.
+
+Partly moved by curiosity, Christmas found me once again visiting the
+mansion under the cliff. A shortage in the commissariat was, I knew,
+no new experience to the poor fellow, and even the wiles of a
+"one-legger" cannot convert stones into bread. Ike, radiant with
+smiles and fat as a spring seal, was out to meet me on my
+arrival--which circumstance was a little difficult at first to
+understand. Then he explained:
+
+"You'm right, Doctor. It drives away t' bad luck when you pays up a
+blind man. I hasn't wanted ne'er a t'ing since."
+
+It had been a good voyage that year, and, as a matter of fact, every
+one had a warm spot somewhere in his heart for "that rascal Ike." For
+though he was admittedly a rogue, he was always such an amusing,
+hail-fellow-well-met rogue, and not the really mean type which every
+one dislikes. All the shore had heard of his dilemma, and, isolation
+not allowing one man to know what another is doing, indiscriminate
+charity had poured in upon poor Ike, without possibly doing him much
+harm, for he attributed it absolutely to that oftentimes useful mentor
+of the feeble-minded, the great god of good luck.
+
+To my surprise it was Emile who really suffered most, though he would
+not admit it, but by actual computation of the supplies in his very
+give-away storeroom, I learned that he had secretly carried back to
+Ike's beach in the dark just one half of those goods which "t' Law"
+had recovered for him; and which Ike to this day believes were
+deposited for his benefit by the good-luck fairy.
+
+
+
+
+PORTLAND BILL
+
+
+"It must be nigh sixty years ago, but I remembers it as if it was
+yesterday, when a new settler come to live in our harbour," said
+Skipper Life Flynn, at whose house I was spending the night with my
+driver and dogs.
+
+"Life" was short for Eliphoreth--the "given" names being mostly out of
+the Bible down North. "It were a wonderful thing them days, for Father
+were the only Liveyer then--that is, as stayed all the year round. He
+didn't mind being alone, and t' moving in t' schooner every spring and
+fall were bad for Mother. Fish were plenty every season one side or
+t'other of Deadman's Cape, and there was lots of fur and swiles t'
+winter. So he built a house in Sleepy Cove, and there us grew up!
+
+"No, Doctor, I'm not able now to read and write. None of us is, for us
+had no teachers. But we was all big, strong men, and handy at that,
+and there wasn't a thing to be done wi' axe or saw about boats and
+timber us couldn't do. We made a good deal at furring, too, and
+many's and many's t' night in winter I've laid down under t' trees and
+slept--with ne'er a greatcoat neither. An' if us wasn't brought up
+scholars, Father taught us to be honest, and to fear God and nothing
+and nobody else.
+
+"It were our way them days to greet every stranger as a friend, and so
+when Bill started his cabin,--for that was all it ever were,--us lads
+all went in and helped him chop and saw t' logs for studding.
+
+"In winter Father minded t' big French Room; but he were away hunting
+most of t' time, there being no need to watch much, being as there was
+no one besides ourselves anywhere near. But early spring and late fall
+when t' fleets were passing, it were day and night watch, and not
+without a gun neither.
+
+"But it would have paid us better to have watched that winter; for
+when t' Frenchmen come in t' spring there was a number of little
+things missing that Father had to stand to--and, somehow, us never
+suspected t' newcomer.
+
+"It was only long afterwards us learned how t' new settler come by his
+name--which was 'Skipper Bill Portland.' Seems that's where the big
+English convict prison is. So after Bill escaped, he not being good at
+letters, and not wanting exactly to use his own name, he just twisted
+her round, and to this day no one's ever found out really who he was
+before.
+
+"Hundreds of schooners anchored in the Bight in our harbour that
+spring, t' whitecoats having come right in on t' floe, just t' other
+side of t' Deadman's Cape. One day a schooner captain read we a piece
+in t' papers about a man what had been a pirate, what had escaped to
+Newfoundland; and a hundred dollars was being offered for his head.
+Reading about that man made us all think of Skipper Portland. It were
+his build and his kind, too. But us folk never mixed with that kind of
+work; and all us did was to keep a good lookout for t' future. But a
+poor neighbour he proved to be, for he were as cute as a fox, and he
+had no fear o' nothing.
+
+"He weren't no idle man, though, Skipper Bill weren't. That second
+winter he set to and built a ten-tonner all by hisself--that is, t'
+hull. He had galvanized fastenings for her, such as he never bought
+fair in Newfoundland. But o' course he had no gear to fit her out, and
+he couldn't get any more than he'd got already off our room. We lads
+saw to that, and he knew it, too--and that it weren't safe playing no
+games, neither.
+
+"He were away t' following winter, 'furring,' so he told we, but no
+fox could ever get fooled by a trap Skipper Bill set. It weren't in
+his line, getting round animals. Beyond which he had ne'er a trap. He
+'lowed he just set deadfalls--a good name for his work, I'm thinking
+now. Anyhow, he came back with enough gear, stolen off French Rooms to
+t' south, I reckon, to get his boat afloat by t' time t' owners got
+back.
+
+"She were an odd craft, built for a crew of one man only. For Skipper
+Bill hadn't much trust in any man 'cept hisself. Once when he were
+full o' French brandy he told me that when he were working on t'
+cliffs in England, he found out that his mate were going to 'squeal,'
+as he called it, about his leaving, so he'd given him such a kick
+behind when he weren't expecting it that no one had ever heard from
+him since. He meant, we reckoned, that t' poor fellow had fell off t'
+bill into t' sea.
+
+"When he built that boat he were thinking already that he might have
+to leave sudden, and perhaps a crew wouldn't be willing to, even if he
+got one. So he trimmed his teller lanyards to run forrard, so as he
+could steer before t' foremast, and handle t' headsheets hisself going
+to windward, and at t' same time keep a lookout for ice and slob.
+
+"Many's t' time I've seen him sailing along with ne'er a watch on deck
+at all, he being below aft steering by compass from t' locker, with t'
+tiller lines leading down the companion hatch.
+
+"I minds one fall that he brought in a big cask o' rum and a lot o'
+brandy, which he were going to sell to us folk. But Father wouldn't
+stand for that. He said that he'd seen too much of it when he were
+young to want any more lying round. We lads found it only fun to go
+over and knock t' heads in, and hear what old Portland had to say
+about we.
+
+"One day, however, a fellow all dressed in blue came down from St.
+John's to take he along, and before Bill knew it t' boat were
+alongside his craft and t' man calling he to come ashore. Bill knowed
+what he were at once. He'd had experience. 'All right, Officer,' he
+said, 'I'll just get my coat and come along,' But when he come up on
+deck he had a barrel of gunpowder all open and a box of matches in his
+hand. 'Come on, now,' he shouted with an oath, 'let's all go to hell
+together.' But just as soon as ever t' small boat backed off, he runs
+forrard and slips his cable, and was off before t' wind before youse
+could say 'Jack Robinson.'
+
+"He always left his mainsail up, Skipper Bill did. 'Better be sure
+than sorry' was a rule he always told us were his religion.
+
+"T' policeman seemed in two minds about following t' boat, but when
+she rounded Deadman's Cape, he rows back ashore. I minds running up t'
+hill to watch where Skipper Bill would go, but he stood right on
+across for t' Larbadore. T' policeman said that that weren't his beat;
+and he looked glad enough that it weren't neither. Old Portland never
+came back to Sleepy Cove to live. He just left everything
+standing--which were mostly only what he couldn't take away with him
+anyhow.
+
+"That fall one of t' Frenchmen stowed away in t' woods when their ship
+was getting ready for home. His name was Louis Marteau; and his vessel
+had no sooner gone than in he goes and lives in Bill's house across t'
+cove. Things got missing again that winter, and though Father had to
+feed him, seeing that he hadn't been able to steal a diet, we lads
+give him notice to quit in t' spring. As he didn't show no signs of
+moving, us just put a couple of big trees for shoes under t' house,
+and ran it and Louis, too, out onto t' ice as far as t' cape--a matter
+of two miles or more.
+
+"So us thought us had done with both of them, and a good riddance too;
+but when t' spring opened t' Frenchman wrote up to t' English
+man-o'-war captain to come in and find out about t' things what
+they'd lost. So one day in comes t' big ship and anchors right
+alongside in our bay. T' very first man to come rowing across and go
+aboard to see what he could get, I reckon, was Louis Marteau. When t'
+captain asked him what he wanted, he said that he had come over to ask
+him to send a boat to t' cape to search his rooms, as t' neighbours
+blamed he for having taken their things.
+
+"Well, it were a long way to go and there were no motor boats them
+days; and t' captain must have thought if Louis had taken anything he
+had it hid away where no one would find it. So they just didn't take
+t' trouble to send out a crew and look. At the same time Louis had
+stolen fish drying on his flakes, and stolen twine right in his open
+fish stage to go and catch more with.
+
+"Another steamer came in t' fall, and Louis, thinking that t' trouble
+had blown over, went aboard as usual. One of t' officers, thinking
+that the man was just a fisherman, and as simple as most o' we, asked
+him if he didn't know where a man called Louis Marteau was. 'Yes,"
+said Louis, 'I knows he well. He be here to-day, and gone
+to-morrow'--and with that he slips away, and was far enough in the
+woods for safety long before the searching party landed.
+
+"Louis, like old Bill, was as fond o' liquor as a cat is o' milk; and
+when he got French brandy in him, he didn't care what he did. There be
+only one law here which every one keeps, as you knows, Doctor, on this
+coast. Whatever else you does, you must never touch t' property of
+another settler, whether he be good or bad, or whether he be away
+fishing, or whether he be in America. Because any time he may need to
+come back, and that many are away summers fishing, if they can't leave
+their homes locked and feel 'em safe, they can't live at all. So
+everybody minds that law, whether it be written in St. John's or not.
+There are new stages, yes, and houses, too, and plenty of 'em, and
+boats hauled up, that men has left and gone to Canada years ago.
+They're tumbling down right alongside folk as needs 'em as bad as gold
+just for firewood, but ne'er a stick is touched come year, go
+year--not till they rots or t' sea comes and carries 'em away.
+
+"Well, Louis and a man called Tom Marling got some liquor aboard that
+day, and started scrapping, Marling saying that Louis must be a crook
+or he wouldn't steal another man's house. T' end of that was that
+Louis shot Marling through the shoulder and nearly blew his arm off.
+
+"Next spring a large bully sailed across t' Straits and four men
+landed in my cove. It chanced that old Skipper Sam Brewer caught sight
+of 'em, and he recognized Bill Portland from t' old days. T' other
+three was Tom Marling's brothers. All t' men had guns, and old Skipper
+Sam guessed they was after Louis. So he sent off his lad Mose to run
+out to t' cape and give he warning. Though why he should I can't say.
+Louis just said, 'All right, I'll be ready for 'em, boy,' and started
+right in loading his two big guns and his rifle. Then he fixed up t'
+windows and barred t' door, and when Mose come away he could see Louis
+moving round inside and swearing enough to frighten t' fish off t'
+coast for t' whole summer. Mose waited round out of sight all day to
+see what would happen. But nothing did, only before dark he saw the
+four men making their campfire on the edge of the woods near Louis's
+house. I reckon they knew he'd be ready and wanted to keep him
+waiting. Anyway, they was there all next day.
+
+"T' third morning I caught sight of some men loading a boat at Louis's
+stage, so, being only a hobbledehoy then, I guessed they'd not take
+much notice of me, and no more they did. They told me Louis had tried
+to break away t' second night in t' dark, but they caught him and
+carried his pack back for him, and what else they did to he I don't
+rightly know. Anyhow, they loaded up their own boat and then Louis's
+two boats with fish and twine, and everything else that were worth
+taking and they could stow, not forgetting t' barrel of flour and t'
+keg of molasses.
+
+"Skipper Bill told me that t' Governor offered to make him t' captain
+of a man-o'-war, just to stop t' law-breaking on the coast. But he
+were a policeman instead because he felt ashamed to see t' laws broken
+and villains like Louis go free. 'It's to teach you people on t' coast
+to be good boys what brings us away from our homes so far in t'
+fishing season.'
+
+"They never stopped loading a minute all t' time, and as soon as ever
+they were ready, and that wasn't long after it were light, away they
+goes towing t' two boats behind, and giving it to her straight for t'
+Labrador. 'Skipper Life,' Bill shouted, just after the anchor was up,
+'if you sees Louis be sure and tell him to be good and say his
+prayers, and when he is ready, not to forget his uncles in Labrador
+and come over and settle down peaceful like.'
+
+"No, Doctor, Louis never got so much as a match back, though he wrote
+and wrote about it--and Louis were a good scholar, being well learnt
+in France. All t' Government did was to offer Captain Fordland, who
+fished t' big Jersey rooms across near Isle au Loup on Labrador,
+another hundred dollars to bring back Skipper Bill with him in t'
+fall. T' captain told his men that they could divide t' money if they
+liked to catch old Portland out of hours.
+
+"I 'lows it was more t' fun of hunting than anything else that started
+'em, though two hundred dollars cash meant a nice bit in them times.
+Soon there were half a dozen small crowds keeping an eye out for Bill.
+There were no wires or mail steamers to carry news them days, and it
+so happened that Bill fell right into t' trap. For Captain Fordland
+did a bit o' trade, and Bill, being out of flour, come along to buy a
+barrel. Half a dozen men soon had him and his boat as well. T' trouble
+was where to keep him till they went home in t' fall, which was a full
+two months anyhow.
+
+"The crowd what took him got leave from Skipper Fordland to lock Bill
+up in t' top storey of t' old Jersey brick store on the Island; and
+'em fixed it like sailors so that not even Bill should get away. They
+had to share t' expense of feeding and looking after he between 'em,
+and though they didn't give he none too much it took quite a bit of
+their wages--only a hundred dollars for the whole summer.
+
+"Bill had been there nearly six weeks and all hands were thinking of
+going home, when one day he told t' cook who brought up his food that
+he was fair dying of doing nothing, and couldn't he give him some
+work. Being an old sailor, he set Bill to making bread bags, and for a
+few days he made a whole lot, and t' cook took it easy. All he gave
+Bill was some canvas, a pocket-knife, and some needles and thread.
+Bill, however, saved a lot of canvas out of them bags and made himself
+a long rope of it. Then he just worked on, waiting for a real dark
+night and an offshore wind, when he let hisself down through t'
+window, swam off to t' best fishing bully Captain Fordland had, and
+was out of sight before daylight.
+
+"You may bet they was all mad, more especially t' captain, who swore
+that t' crowd would have to pay for his good boat. What they said and
+did to t' cook be scarcely fit for ears to hear. Anyhow, no one knowed
+where Bill had gone, and none of that crowd ever saw him again. He
+weren't very dear to memory either.
+
+"T' next place us heard of him was on the West Coast. He brought with
+him an Eskimo wife he called Nancy, who was very good at doctoring.
+She could make poultices out of herbs and medicines out of t' woods,
+and she would charm toothache and warts and such like, and could stop
+bleeding by just tying green worsted round your left arm. She had a
+haddock's fin-bone that never touched any boat that she used to lend
+out for rheumatism. She did a lot o' good, they says, Doctor, and she
+made a nice bit of money, too, so that old Bill had an easy time. But
+he spent most of t' cash in liquor, and at last she wouldn't work any
+more for he and he got beating her. One, day he come rowing down right
+into Port Warfield, with she tied up in t' bottom of t' boat, and a
+stone tied round her neck as well! It so happened that big Skipper
+Weymouth came alongside and seed her.
+
+"'What be you going to do wi' she?' he asked, he not being afraid as
+most were. 'Why drown her, to be sure,' said Bill. 'I towed her behind
+t' boat for a mile a week ago come Sunday to drive t' devil out of
+her. But she ain't no good to me now, and so I reckon I'll get
+another.'
+
+"The skipper saw that Bill had liquor in him and was quarrelsome, and
+feared that he'd just as likely as not upset t' boat--and drowned t'
+woman would be sure enough with that stone round her neck. So he says,
+'Drown her! Not on this coast and lobsters just setting in. She'd
+spoil the catch all summer just to spite you.' Bill looked puzzled.
+'You're right, sure enough, Skipper Alf. I'll have to do for she some
+other way'--and round he goes and rows her home again.
+
+"The people, howsomever, was real afraid, and letters went up to the
+Government. No doubt Bill heard about it. But there were no place left
+now for him to go safely, so he just drank and drank where he was, all
+he could lay hands on; and when he couldn't get no more I guess he
+must have gone mad. For he were found dead on t' floor of his house,
+with a great big knife he had for hunting deer in his hand.
+
+"Yes, his wife's alive to this day so far as us knows. Her son Bill
+found a box of old silver dollars, Spanish and French, buried under t'
+house Bill had on Labrador, the time he were trapped by Captain
+Fordland's men. They were mostly about a hundred years old. I saw many
+of them, but where they come from, or how he come by 'em, no one ever
+knew. We heard, however, that they helped poor Nancy to get back to
+her people again all right."
+
+
+
+
+KAIACHOUOUK
+
+
+The brief summer of Northern Labrador had passed, and the Eskimos
+around the Hudson's Bay Post at Katatallik were busy preparing for the
+approaching winter. The season previous, according to the accurate
+notes of the Moravians, kept for over a hundred years, had been the
+worst on record; and now again, as the long, cold, icy grip of winter
+drew near, the prospect of supplies was menacingly poor. So the
+Innuits, that cheerful and resourceful little race of the North who
+wrest their living from so reluctant an environment, were putting
+forth all their energies in a "preparedness" from whose example many a
+civilized community might well have profited.
+
+Their chief Kaiachououk, of upright character, and the courage born of
+simplicity, was a familiar figure at the Hudson's Bay Post where my
+friend Barlow was _facteur_ for so many years. His acquaintance with
+the chieftain dated from an afternoon many years before, when he had
+first seen him, steering his large oomiavik, or flat-bottomed boat, up
+to the station, while his four lusty wives cheerily worked at the
+sweeps with his eldest son--an almost regal procession. It was on that
+same evening that he had told the _facteur_, after watching Mrs.
+Barlow prepare the evening meal, "Ananaudlualakuk" ("She is much too
+good for you"), and the frankness of his speech, far from seeming to
+disparage his host, endeared the speaker all the more to that
+hospitable and discerning person.
+
+Kaiachououk possessed qualities which evoked the respect and
+admiration of all with whom he came in contact. Very noticeable among
+these was his affection for his family. To this day on the coast there
+is a story told of him and his youngest wife. He had been camping on
+their outside walrus-hunting station, and as was customary, he was
+sometimes away two or three days at a time, having to take refuge on
+one of the off-lying islands, if bad weather or the fickleness of
+fortune involved longer distances to travel than he was able to
+accomplish in a short winter's day. It was on his return from one of
+these temporary absences that he was greeted with the news that his
+youngest wife, Kajue, was very ill. One might have supposed that
+having so generous a complement of that nature, the news would not
+have afflicted him in the same degree as one less gifted. But exactly
+the reverse proved to be the case. Kaiachououk was completely
+prostrated; and when the girl died two days later, having failed to
+make any rally in spite of all her husband's generous presents to
+Angelok, he literally went out of his mind.
+
+The Eskimo custom, still observed in the North, is to lay out the dead
+in all their clothing, but with no other covering, on the rocky summit
+of some projecting headland. The body thus placed on the surface of
+the rocks is walled in with tall, flat stones standing on end, long,
+narrow slits being left between them, so that air and light may freely
+circulate, and the spirit of the departed may come and go at will and
+keep watch on passing animals, whose spirits must serve the person in
+the spirit land just as, when embodied, they paid tribute to the
+needs and prowess of the dead. The top of the grave is also covered
+with large, flat slabs; and in a small separate cache of similar
+construction are stored all the personal belongings likely to be of
+use. The spirits of these latter are set free, either by having holes
+bored in them or some part of them broken or removed, so that thus
+being rendered useless to the living, they suffer what in the Eskimo
+mind corresponds to the death of inanimate objects.
+
+Kaiachououk was so convinced of the reality of the spirit world, and
+so heart-broken at his utter inability to bring back to life the one
+he had loved so well, that now nothing would satisfy his mind but that
+in order to continue the communion which had been so sweet to him on
+earth, he should be treated exactly as his lost wife, and be
+immediately buried alongside her on some point of vantage.
+
+At first his followers were inclined to treat his injunctions as mere
+vapourings, but they finally realized that the man was in deadly
+earnest, and were eventually compelled to comply with his wishes. The
+day being set, he was accordingly dressed in his finest garments, and,
+his dead wife being duly caparisoned and walled in in the customary
+manner, Kaiachououk, laid out on the rock beside her, was treated in
+an exactly similar fashion. There was no apparent alteration of the
+chief's attitude of mind as they proceeded with the walling up, and
+the heavy slabs were already being laid over him when two of the
+largest happened to become lodged on his chest. For a short time he
+made no sign and offered no kind of resistance; but it was gradually
+forced upon him that this method of translation into other worlds was
+far from being as easy as he had been inclined to suppose.
+Consequently, before the cortege had broken up and his last friends
+departed, he was loudly appealing to them to return and release him.
+
+He was never known afterwards to refer to the incident; but on the
+whole it had an excellent effect on the Innuits; and they realized, so
+far as their unimpressionable natures are capable of doing, the strong
+domestic affection for his wife which was one of their chief's
+pre-eminent sources of greatness.
+
+On this particular fall, when the last drama in Kaiachououk's life was
+played, when the northern lights sent their many-coloured banners
+floating over the heavens, and the stars looked so large and shining
+that it seemed one must surely touch them from the tops of the high
+hills, he was camping with his family and two or three others on a
+small ledge at the foot of the mighty Kiglapeit (shining top)
+Mountains, hunting walrus. This year the hunt was doubly important to
+them, and they delayed longer than was their wont. Here the great cape
+with which the spur ends marks the division of the whole trend of the
+land north from that which runs more directly south toward Katatallik.
+There the whole force of the south-going polar streams, focused on the
+ice, keeps open water long after all the rest of the coast is locked
+in the grim grip of winter. The walrus herds seem, in the evolution of
+ages, to have got an appreciation of this fact through their
+adamantine skulls. Therefore, from time immemorial, it has been
+chosen as a rendezvous of the Innuits in spring and fall. The chaos of
+ancient walrus bones which strews the stony beach reminds one of
+nothing so forcibly as the stacks of bleaching buffalo bones which
+disgrace the prairies.
+
+On several occasions during the year previous, Kalleligak (the
+Capelin) had been guilty of the worst crime in the Eskimo calendar--on
+several occasions he had failed to extend that hospitality to
+strangers without which life on the coast is scarcely possible. It had
+been brought to Kaiachououk's notice, and he had lost no time in
+seeking out the man and taxing him with his remissness. A mixture of
+traits like the colours in a variegated skein of worsted formed the
+spectrum of Kalleligak's character; and selfishness, which fortunately
+is rarer among the Eskimos than among those in keener competition with
+civilization, was too often the prevailing colour. After the
+interview, at which he had promised to mend his ways, he apparently
+always lived in fear that sooner or later Kaiachououk would have him
+punished, and even deprive him of some of his possessions. The
+obsession haunted him as the thought of the crime does the murderer,
+and at last impelled him to the act which, though it went unpunished
+by men, blasted the remainder of his days.
+
+Among the others who camped around Kaiachououk's igloo this year was
+as usual the sub-chief Kalleligak. He had been more than usually
+successful in his hunt, and was able to face the prospect of the
+oncoming winter with optimism. On the other hand, his supposed enemy,
+Kaiachououk, had been singularly unfortunate, largely owing to the
+fact that his kayak had been left farther to the north. He showed no
+signs of either impatience or jealousy, however, and never by word or
+act gave evidence that he so much as remembered the rebuke he had been
+forced to administer to the sub-chief. Finally he dispatched his
+eldest sons, Bakshuak and Kommak, with a big team of dogs, to hurry
+down north and bring the belated and forgotten boat back with all
+speed.
+
+Kalleligak, obsessed by his jealousy and chagrin, was able from his
+camp to watch every movement of the chief's. He positively brooded so
+much over the incident that he came to believe that his life was in
+danger at Kaiachououk's hands. The next steps were easy, for he was
+favoured both by the innocence of his superior and the weather. Days
+are short in the late fall in the North, and darkness falls before
+work is finished.
+
+In the late afternoon, two days after Bakshuak and Kommak's departure,
+while Kaiachououk was still out of his igloo and the darkness was
+rapidly coming on, Kalleligak stole inside and took the chief's gun.
+This he unloaded and then reloaded with two balls. Early next morning,
+before the dawn, he crept out, carrying his own and the stolen weapon,
+to watch his chance. Kaiachououk, emerging soon after from his snow
+house, turned his back on Kalleligak's igloo while he stooped to make
+a trifling repair on his own. Without a second's hesitation,
+Kalleligak seized Kaiachououk's own gun, and crawling and crouching up
+behind the five-foot snow ramparts which the Eskimos invariably build
+around their winter houses, he fired two bullets through the
+unsuspecting man's back and body. The chief fell head foremost, having
+received two fatal wounds; but Kalleligak, throwing down one gun had
+instantly grabbed the other, in order if necessary to finish the deed
+before the mortally wounded man could tell who was responsible. But
+Kaiachououk never moved, and his enemy slunk inside, believing that he
+had been unobserved.
+
+As fate would have it, Anatalik, another of the hunters, appeared at
+the entrance of his igloo just in time to see the smoking gun-barrel
+over the edge of the snow wall. Running to his fallen chief, he begged
+him to tell him what had occurred. The dying man had only strength
+left to whisper "Kiapevunga?" ("Who has killed me?"), and Anatalik
+could barely discern from his eye that he understood the answer,
+"Kalleligamut" ("It was Kalleligak who did it").
+
+It was probably this, to us, unimportant item which caused a
+confession ever to be made. Kalleligak, now convinced that the spirit
+of his dead chief knew he was the murderer, believed it would haunt
+him without mercy, and that his own life might be immediately forfeit
+unless he could appease it. He therefore at once set about
+preparations for a funeral befitting the dignity of the deceased;
+which, in the absence of Kaiachououk's eldest son, he himself
+personally supervised. When all was over he went to the igloo carrying
+gifts, and offered to support the entire family till the sons should
+be of an age to assume it. His overtures were as unwelcome as they
+were importunate; but the poor women were forced to listen in silence.
+Helpless as they were, with their young men away, they dared not anger
+the man, whose character was only too well known. Kalleligak, in order
+further to allay the anger of the spirit, with all speed set out on
+the trail to meet the dead man's returning sons, and apprize them
+personally of his version of the story.
+
+Bakshuak, the eldest, listened in silence while Kalleligak first
+recounted the long list of imaginary wrongs which he had suffered at
+the hands of his father, then made his plea of self-defence, and
+lastly recited the hateful overtures which he had made to the helpless
+family, who were now, in spite of themselves, under very definite
+obligations to the murderer.
+
+Angrily the lad repudiated any parleying. The family would far rather
+starve than be beholden to such infamy as was suggested. He was only a
+boy now, he declared, but he said fearlessly that if no one else
+killed him, he would do the deed himself as soon as he was big enough;
+and he raced on with his dogs, to reach home and comfort his poor
+mother. Had he but known it, he was really indebted for his life to
+the supposed wrath of his father's spirit and the restraining effect
+which it had on Kalleligak.
+
+Eskimos never refer to painful events if they can help it. They go
+even farther than certain modern "scientists," for if a person who
+dies happens to have had the same name as one still living in the
+vicinity, the latter incontinently changes his. As a result, confusion
+not infrequently arises, for a man whom you have known all his life
+as "John" is "William" the next time you meet him. Thus they avoid the
+mention of the word the memory of which might bring pain to the
+relatives. Much less would they bring bad news to a white man.
+
+They took good care, however, that the local Innuits should know that
+Kaiachououk was dead, hoping that they might give the great white man
+at the post the sad news of the loss of his friend. Barlow, as soon as
+he was certain of the main facts, at once dispatched messengers to
+summon to him Kalleligak, and Anatalik, who had seen the deed. The
+murderer had already expressed his willingness to surrender to the
+white man, and he at once packed up and accompanied the couriers back
+to Katatallik.
+
+Meanwhile the news had also reached Ekkoulak, the sister of
+Kaiachououk, and her husband, Semijak, immediately summoned his
+council to discuss matters. All were agreed that the tribal custom
+must be observed. "A life for a life" was the only law they
+recognized, and the two elder sons of Semijak were selected to carry
+the sentence into effect. Well armed and equipped, they started the
+very next morning for the North. The following day they walked into
+the Hudson's Bay Post to apprize the white man of their errand, so
+that there might be no suspicion of their blood-guiltiness, not
+knowing that by a strange whim of fortune Kalleligak and Anatalik were
+already there and were seated in one room while they were being
+received in another.
+
+In the room with Kalleligak and Anatalik was Mr. Barlow's daughter, a
+little child of six, who was amusing herself with a picture book of
+the life of Christ. The little girl began to show the pictures to the
+two men, telling them the story in their own tongue as she went along.
+She at last came to the picture of Christ upon the Cross between the
+two thieves. Mr. Barlow in the adjoining room heard Kalleligak ask the
+child if she thought Jesus would forgive any one who had killed
+another man, to which the little one replied, "Why, yes, if he were
+really sorry and tried to be better."
+
+The house of friends is neutral ground, and to start a quarrel in the
+great white man's house would be about as likely as that we should
+begin one on the steps of the altar. Thus, when Kalleligak and
+Anatalik were summoned to dinner, both parties proceeded as if nothing
+unusual were in the air and all refreshed themselves at the same
+board.
+
+Bidding them to keep the peace, Mr. Barlow made an effort to get to
+the bottom of the affair; but he found it very hard to know what to
+advise. The sister of Kaiachououk had begged and prayed her sons, now
+chosen as avengers, to have nothing to do with the slaying, saying,
+"It will only make more trouble. It will be Kalleligak's family who
+will suffer. They will surely starve to death." She had even sent a
+special messenger to the agent with an earnest plea that he would use
+all his influence to save her lads from the shedding of blood.
+
+Having decided that the matter should be settled in open court and to
+abide by the decision of the great white man, all concerned now
+adjourned to the kitchen, and not for the first time that humble room
+was transformed into a court of justice. Kalleligak first gave his
+version of the story without the slightest attempt to conceal
+anything. He said he had lived in constant terror of what Kaiachououk
+might inflict upon him; and then, turning to the two men, who were
+fully armed with loaded guns, he said:--
+
+"I know you have come to kill me. I shall never know good fortune
+again, anyhow. I have many skins and goods. With those I will pay for
+Kaiachououk. I can say no more."
+
+As he ceased speaking, Semijak's eldest son burst out angrily:--
+
+"Yes, we have come to kill you. Our law is a life for a life. We will
+not take any bribe."
+
+But Oggak, the second avenger, thought differently:--
+
+"We will hurt those who are not guilty. It would be different if he
+had no family. What offer does he make?"
+
+"You know that Kalleligak is the second best hunter in the North," the
+agent spoke up. "And your mother, the wife of Semijak, has also sent
+me a letter. She says nothing but evil will come from killing the head
+of another family. Cannot the spirit be satisfied in some other way?"
+
+Mr. Barlow said he would go out and return when they had talked over
+the matter among themselves. He always felt great pity for these
+far-off outcasts of humanity. To kill another could only make matters
+worse. It was quite probable that even a blood feud would be started
+and more valuable lives be sacrificed. The struggle for existence was
+hard enough in any case, and if he suggested their taking the law into
+their own hands, there was no telling where it would end.
+
+So it turned out that the matter was settled by simple word of mouth.
+That was absolutely sufficient for Kalleligak. If the avengers
+appointed by the tribe were satisfied, not only would the spirit of
+the murdered chief rest quietly, but the guilty one's life would be
+safe.
+
+The agreement, duly drawn up by the agent, read as follows:--
+
+    "We will not kill you.
+     You are to pay--
+     Two white bears.
+     Twelve white foxes.
+     Three live dogs."
+
+That was the value set on a really great man's life. It makes one
+wonder at what rate ours would be appraised in Eskimo land.
+
+
+
+
+TWO CHRISTMASES
+
+
+It was Christmas Eve, and Malcolm McCrea, just back from the woods,
+was throwing down some frozen seal meat from the scaffold for his
+hungry dogs after their long day's hauling. Malcolm was only eighteen,
+and in winter still lived with his father in their home below the
+falls of Pike's River. However, now that he had been away for two
+summers in his uncle's schooner fishing "down North," his eyes were
+already turned to some long-untenanted fjords in the mouths of which
+the craft had anchored.
+
+Pike's Falls was a lonely place, and the sound of a human voice
+calling to a dog team kept Malcolm standing with a fine forkful of
+meat in his hands long enough so greatly to tantalize the team below
+as to start a serious fight. This woke him from his reverie. "Ah, Ah!"
+he shouted, and, jumping down right into the middle of the fracas,
+soon had his dogs busy again with the frozen blocks which constituted
+their food for the day.
+
+"Is that you, Mr. Norman?" he exclaimed heartily. "Why, who would ever
+have thought of seeing you here, and alone, this evening of all days
+in t' year?"--as a middle-aged man jumped from an empty sledge and
+began unharnessing a half-starved-looking team. "Shall I give you a
+hand? They seem spun out."
+
+"Better not touch 'em, I reckon," was the gruff answer. "They're a bit
+surly with strangers." And indeed already the animals were snarling
+and showing their teeth at the other dogs finishing their meal near
+by.
+
+Malcolm, who at once proceeded to throw down a liberal allowance of
+seal meat for the newcomers' suppers, attributed the savage way in
+which their master whipped off his host's team from trying to get a
+second helping, to the weariness of a long journey. For to beat
+another man's dogs, especially with the long and heavy lash of our
+Northern whips, is a breach of the unwritten law of the Labrador.
+
+It was not until he had shared the steaming supper prepared for
+Malcolm that the strings of the visitor's tongue began to be unloosed.
+For it is not etiquette to ask a stranger's reasons for visiting a
+well-stocked house, in a country where the komatik trail is the only
+resource for the destitute.
+
+"It's to t' post I'm bound. We be short of grub south. T' fishery have
+been bad this three years, and there's six of us now," he began.
+"There wasn't more than a couple of bakings of flour in t' barrel when
+I left. I couldn't get no credit south at Deep-Water Creek; and so I
+just had to try north or starve."
+
+"'T is a long bit yet to t' post," replied Malcolm. "There is t'
+Monkey to cross if you goes inside; and us allows it a good hundred
+miles to go round t' cape. It'll take you a week to haul a barrel of
+flour from there here."
+
+Roderick, sitting back in his chair, was dejectedly surveying the
+comfortable-looking room. Malcolm caught his gaze, and realized what
+was passing in the poor fellow's mind.
+
+"Draw up, draw up, and light your pipe, Mr. Norman," he interposed.
+"'Tis only Home Rule tobacco, but it serves us down here."
+
+Eagerly enough Norman accepted the proffered plug, and then relapsed
+into a silence which Malcolm found it hard to break. So, excusing
+himself for a minute, he beckoned the old folk to come into their
+bedroom that they might talk over the situation in private.
+
+"He has four youngsters, and I knows they be hard up," he began. "They
+hasn't a chance where they are. T' neighbours blames Roderick for
+several little troubles which happened to t' southard, and t' traders
+won't advance more'n he can pay for. If it was any one else, and
+to-morrow wasn't Christmas, it would be just good fun to go down North
+with him and help haul back a barrel or so--that is, if they lets him
+have it."
+
+"That's not like you, Malcolm. You can't make a man good that way, any
+more'n you can a dog by beatin' him," chimed in his old mother. "I
+guess you'll go along with him, even to-morrow, if so be he wishes
+it."
+
+"S'pose I will, Mother, but--"
+
+"Course you would," said his father proudly. "They've never known a
+McCrea yet on this coast that would let even a dog starve. But
+there's a barrel of flour in our cellar which we can live without.
+Maybe it's t' kind of Christmas greeting t' poor fellow needs."
+
+"If you says so, it's all right, Father," said Malcolm, "and, seeing
+it's a good hundred miles to Mr. Norman's house, I guess I'll go
+along, anyhow, in t' morning and let my beauties help them half-fed
+pups of his, or it'll be Old Christmas Day before his kids get a bite
+out of it."
+
+Only the joy of the first tobacco for weeks was keeping the worn-out
+man from being fast asleep when Malcolm again took a chair beside him.
+
+"I've got to make a round south to-morrow, Mr. Norman," he began, "and
+it would be a pity if you had to be going t' other way. Father says he
+has a barrel of flour in t' cellar you can have and pay for it when
+youse can. So if that'll suit, I'd like to give you a hand some part
+of t' way, especially as there'll be a few gallons of molasses to
+carry also if you'll take 'em."
+
+Gratitude is a rare grace. The lack of it was one of the costly
+defects in Roderick's character. No longer hungry, sitting before a
+good fire with a well-filled pipe, even the cunning which usually
+supplies the vacancy failed him; and Malcolm had to force himself to
+put down to exhaustion the ungracious way in which his real sacrifice
+was accepted.
+
+In spite of hard work, they had only made thirty miles by sunset the
+next day, and, there being no shelter, they were obliged to camp early
+as light snow was falling. Yet it was a good Christmas night around
+the blazing fire with the special cheer the old mother had packed into
+the bread-boxes on their komatik. The following morning they did
+better, reaching the landwash of a big inlet forty miles farther south
+by noon. Here Malcolm had decided to turn back, for the remainder of
+the trail to Long Point lay practically over level ice. Just as they
+were saying good-bye, however, his quick eye detected something black
+moving out on the bay.
+
+"A fox, Mr. Norman. Look! A fox! And a black one too. You may be able
+to pay for that barrel of flour before t' day's out."
+
+They were both good furriers, and their plans were soon laid. The dogs
+were quickly hitched up to stumps, and, glad of a rest, were easily
+made to lie down. Alas, the men had only Malcolm's gun; but it was
+arranged that he should go out and turn the fox, and Norman, hiding at
+the third corner of the triangle, should try and shoot it passing or
+lure it in range down wind.
+
+Things went admirably. Malcolm by a long detour was able to turn the
+fox from far out without frightening it. Roderick, well hidden, and
+squeaking like a mouse, tolled it into easy range; and within an hour
+the two men held in their hands a skin worth at least four hundred
+dollars. It was agreed, at Roderick's suggestion, that he should carry
+it home, as he was nearer the fur-buyers, take the first offer over
+that sum, and then send the half due by the law of the woods to
+Malcolm north by the earliest mail-carrier.
+
+Malcolm added as he said good-bye, "I reckon maybe Father will want
+to let t' barrel go as good luck on t' bargain."
+
+Summer came, and open water with it, but the half value of that skin
+never arrived. Later, in reply to Malcolm's enquiry by letter, a note
+came to say that it was being held for a better price in the fall; and
+with that he had to be content.
+
+Winter followed summer, and when once again the "going was good,"
+Malcolm, "running light" with his dogs, made the journey to Long Point
+easily in two days. Yes, the skin was sold, but the agent had not yet
+sent the cash. It had brought $430 and the half would come along as
+soon as ever Monsieur Baillot forwarded the notes. But the winter
+again went by and no notes, no letters, or other news ever reached
+Malcolm McCrea. Six years passed, and still they never came, and the
+McCreas supposed the debt was time-barred. Indeed, they had almost
+forgotten the whole incident.
+
+Malcolm was still nominally at his father's house, but for three
+winters he had trapped on the Grand River, which flowed out into one
+of the bays he had discovered "down North." Here with the help of a
+hired man he had built up quite a fine little house, and made every
+preparation for that momentous life experience which usually comes
+early in life to every Labrador man. With characteristic caution he
+had waited for a good winter hunt to buy furnishings and traps. This
+had also given Nancy Grahame, who lived close to his home, time to get
+ready the needed linen and other requisites. "Clewing up" his salmon
+fishery in good time, Malcolm had cruised North in his own small
+sailboat, and till the first ice made had been very busy cutting wood,
+hauling food into the country for the winter tilts along his fur-path
+on the Grand River, completing his cellar, and safely storing his
+winter house supplies.
+
+His first hunt being mostly for foxes along the landwash of the bay,
+he had waited until the snow came to tail his traps, judging that
+although it would take a week with his dogs to fetch his wife to their
+new home, he might safely chance that length of time away without
+losing anything which might be snared in the meanwhile. This was the
+third winter he had furred this path without interruption, and by all
+the custom of the coast no one would now interfere with his claim. So
+Malcolm started south at a stretch gallop with a light heart.
+
+The two hundred and odd miles to the rendezvous at his father-in-law's
+winter home in the woods were covered with only two nights out, and
+that when the trails were as yet hardly broken and the young ice on
+the rivers would surely have delayed any man with less determination.
+
+The wedding was in real Labrador style. Every one from far and near
+was present, quite without the formality of an invitation. It would,
+indeed, be an ill omen for the future if any one were omitted through
+the miscarriage of an invitation. So the danger is averted by the
+grapevine telegraph, which simply signals the event in sufficient time
+to make it a man's own fault if he is not present. Malcolm had many
+friends and there had been great preparations in Capelin Bay. Every
+scrap of room was needed to accommodate the guests, and at night
+hardly an inch of floor space but lodged some sleeping form wrapped in
+a four-point blanket, while the hardier ones with sleeping-bags
+contentedly crawled into them out in the snow, as their fashion is
+when nothing better offers.
+
+The cooking had to be done in two large net-barking cauldrons over
+open fires under the trees; and as the fall deer hunt had been
+successful, and pork had not in those days assumed the present
+impossible prices, there were all kinds of joints, and no limit to
+proteids and carbohydrates. The great plum puddings which served for
+wedding cakes were pulled out of the same boiling froth, tightly
+wrapped in their cloth jackets, with long fish "pews" or forks.
+Unlimited spruce beer, brewed with molasses and fortified with "Old
+Jamaica," flowed from a large barrel during the two days that the
+celebration lasted.
+
+At twenty below zero a slight increase in the calories consumed or
+even in the excess of alcohol over the normal two per cent of spruce
+beer leaves little trace on hardy folk; and when on the third morning,
+McCrea and his bride fared forth behind their splendid dog-team, every
+guest was gathered at the starting-point to "whoop up" the departing
+couple.
+
+"'T is early I'll be starting in t' morning, Nancy, for it's nigh a
+fortnight since I tailed my traps, and there were good signs, too, by
+t' boiling brooks," said Malcolm the first evening they arrived home.
+"A fox following t' landwash from t' rattle must surely take t' path
+there, for t' cliff fair shoulders him off t' land, and t' ice isn't
+fast more'n a foot or so from t' bluff. 'T would be a pity to lose a
+good skin, and us just starting in housekeeping."
+
+"What's right's right, Malcolm," answered his wife, pouting just
+perceptibly. "Us must end our honeymoon with the journey down. I'll
+not be lonely, I reckon, getting t' house to rights." And she laughed
+gayly as she noticed the results of Malcolm's sincere but unique
+attempts at furnishing.
+
+"It'll be a ration of pork I'll be needing boiled, and a bun or two
+for my nonny-bag. I can cover t' path in two days so be t' going's
+good; but there's nothing like being prepared."
+
+"Get a few more splits, then, boy," she replied, "and I'll be cutting
+t' pork t' while." For she knew that Malcolm's estimate of the supply
+necessary for a possible delay was not the preparedness which would
+satisfy her ideas.
+
+Days are short in November in the North, and the moon was still up to
+see Malcolm picking his way along the unmade trail which led to the
+spot where the sea ice joined the "ballicaters" or heaped-up shore
+ice. In the late fall this is the happy hunting-ground of foxes, for a
+much-needed dinner is often to be picked up in the shape of some
+enfeebled auk or other sea-bird, while even a dead shark or smaller
+fish may be discovered.
+
+This was only a brief fall hunt. Malcolm had some fifty traps over ten
+miles of country, all of which he would take up the following month
+when the sea ice froze on permanently to the shore, re-tailing them
+along his real fur-path up the Grand River along the bank of which he
+had no less than three small shacks some thirty miles apart. Here he
+made his long winter hunt for sables, otters, and lynxes, using nearly
+three hundred traps.
+
+It was with keen expectation and brisk step that he now strode along
+over the open; only the unwritten law of silence for a trapper on his
+path prevented his whistling as he went. When passing through the long
+belt of woods which marks the edge of the river delta, he found
+numerous windfalls blocking his narrow trail; but, keyed up as he was,
+he managed to get by them without so much as rustling a twig. "I'm
+fending for two now," he said to himself, and the very thought was
+sweet, lending zest to the matching of his capacities against those of
+the wild.
+
+There was nothing in his first two traps. He hadn't expected anything.
+They were only a sort of outliers in case something went wrong with
+those in the sure places. But now he was nearing the Narrows, and
+already his fence running from the steep bluff to the river edge was
+visible. But there was no fox in number three. The trap had not been
+sprung. The bait was as he had left it. "Maybe there'll be more to t'
+eastward," he thought, "though there were signs on this side of t'
+river." And, resetting the trap, he plodded along farther on his
+round.
+
+Midday came. He had passed no less than fifteen of his best traps, and
+not only had no fox been found, but not one trap was sprung or one
+bait taken.
+
+Malcolm stood meditatively scratching his head by trap twenty.
+"Something's wrong," he said to himself,--"but what? Better boil t'
+kettle and think it over. Perhaps better luck after lunch."
+
+Unstringing his tomahawk, he started to find some dry wood with which
+to kindle a fire. None being close to the beach, he walked a few yards
+into the forest, and had just commenced on a tree when he noticed by
+the white scar that a branch had been broken quite recently from the
+very same trunk. "Wind and t' weight of t' silver thaw," he supposed,
+for there was no one living within fifty miles, and no other fur-path
+at that time, anyhow, in the bay. The northern komatik trail crossed
+twenty miles seaward, where the calm, wide expanse made the ice much
+safer in the early winter than near the swift current at the river
+mouth. But as he stooped to clear the trunk for his own axe, he
+noticed that, though disguised as a break, a cut had been first made
+to weaken the bough. "Some one's been here, that's sure," he said to
+himself. "Who can it be?" So much snow had fallen since Malcolm had
+gone after his wife that it was no easy matter to guess an
+answer--much less to read it from the trails around.
+
+His frugal meal finished, he sat meditatively smoking his pipe by the
+glowing embers of his generous fire. But no light came to him.
+Practically no one lived near. The few who did were as honest as
+daylight. He had not an enemy on earth so far as he knew; and yet he
+realized now that the good condition of his traps, and especially his
+baits, after a fortnight of the blusterous Labrador fall weather
+needed accounting for. Well, anyhow, there was only one thing to
+do--go and finish his round, and when he got back he could talk the
+trouble over with his wife.
+
+Slipping on his snow racquets and once more shouldering his nonny-bag,
+he strode off toward his next trap. It was new to him to suspect men.
+It was his business as a trapper to suspect Nature. It was, however,
+from this new viewpoint that he must approach his next task. For
+therein lies the intense interest of the trapper's life--every moment
+affords a keen problem. The gambler has the excitement of a possible
+big return, a sudden acquisition of gain. The trapper has all that,
+and the added satisfaction of knowing that it is his ability and not
+merely his luck which has won out.
+
+At first sight there seemed nothing amiss with trap twenty-one. It had
+been tailed on the top of a specially felled tree. There it was
+still--a little mound of snow above the great expanse of whiteness,
+only recognizable because a trapper knows every inch of his path as a
+priest does his breviary. True, as the surface snow was only two days
+old, many marks could not be expected upon it. All the same, it struck
+Malcolm as odd that not a single fox-footing had he sighted since
+leaving home. "Something must have been cleaning 'em up," he reasoned.
+"There were two broods on Whale Island and one at least on t' Isle of
+Hope. That's some twenty all told--and ne'er a wolf or lynx track out
+to t' landward t' year." Musing to himself, he knelt down by the trap
+to examine it more closely. Lifting it up, he blew off the loose snow
+and inspected the stump carefully. No, nothing to indicate that it had
+been moved. If it had been, it must have been replaced with consummate
+care; for the rain had fallen once since Malcolm had tailed it, and
+the trap lay exactly in the icy trough, its handle and chain lying in
+the same groove. But the very fact suggested an idea. Possibly, if he
+cleared the snow there might be a frozen footmark in the hard surface
+beneath. Carefully, handful by handful, he removed over a foot of snow
+from around the bottom of the old tree, till he felt with his fingers
+the frozen crust. It took him over an hour's cold, tedious work, for
+he feared to use a mitten to protect his hand lest he should destroy
+the very traces of which he was in search. Though it froze his fingers
+and meant a long delay, it was well worth while, for he had undeniable
+evidence of a man's footmark, without any racquet, made since the rain
+previous to the last snowfall. It was probably at least a week old.
+
+Again he examined the trap carefully. Not a hair, not a blood mark,
+not a sign to show that any fox had been in it. If it had been robbed,
+an expert had done it. There was another chance, however. Using his
+racquet as a spade, Malcolm was soon at work clearing the snow away
+right around the roots. The chain was a long one, and driven into one
+of the leaders was a steel fastener. It was as he expected. Not only
+had the chain been obviously gnawed, but there was considerable
+chafing of the bark as well. "He's been in it, sure enough, but the
+question is, Who's got t' skin?" Dark was coming on. There was no use
+going back; so, cutting down a few boughs and making a small lean-to
+under a big spruce, Malcolm kindled a blazing fire, "cooked the
+kettle," and turned in for the night.
+
+Nancy had seen her husband as soon as he crossed the shoulder of the
+hill on his home-coming the third morning. To tell the truth, it was
+her first experience of being quite alone in the forest, and she had
+been doing but little "furnishing" after the first night. Now she was
+sure he had made a fine haul, and hurried out to meet him and hear the
+news. Malcolm, with the canniness of his kind, at once told her he had
+had no luck.
+
+Now the actual amount of money lost may not have been great, but it
+had the irritating feature of being an unknown quantity and the
+additional vague risk of making all his winter work fruitless. It is
+useless to set traps if some one else is to follow around and rob
+them. So that night he told his wife the whole story. Discuss it as
+they would, there was no clue of any kind to follow; so like wise folk
+they decided to go on their way as if nothing had happened, keeping
+their mouths shut and their eyes and ears open.
+
+No one visited their bay before Malcolm went on his first long fur
+round, which he did earlier than was his wont in order to be back in
+time for the first of the two winter mails. This trip he made a much
+better hunt, setting his traps as he went into the country. He took
+good care to make long marches, and even one day to double back on his
+tracks, making a long detour to see if he might not possibly pick up
+some unexpected signs of another man on _his_ path. His, because,
+although there is no law on the subject, custom is law on Labrador,
+and the man who first finds a new trail for trapping has a conceded
+right of at least a mile in width for just as far as he cares to go.
+
+The whole round was made in ten days, and, coming back with six
+sables, two otter, and a few mink and ermine, he was fortunate enough
+to reach home some hours before the southern mail team.
+
+"What's t' news, Pat?" he asked, when at last supper was over, and
+the final pipe was being discussed by the fire.
+
+"Nothing to boast of," was the answer. "T' same old story, with some a
+feast and with some a famine. They do say Roderick Norman's luck seems
+to have turned at last. T' Company gave he over four hundred dollars
+for a dark silver he got, and as much more, some say, for a batch o'
+reds and patches. 'T is more than good luck that half-breed must have
+had, for he hasn't had a dozen traps to his name this five years."
+
+Before he had finished speaking, Malcolm was watching him narrowly,
+wondering if some sprite had whispered abroad the robbing of his
+traps. But Pat was evidently unconscious of any possible connection
+between his news and his audience. As absolute silence was the only
+possible road ever to learning the truth, Pat left the next day on his
+journey north, not a whit the wiser for his night at the new
+homestead.
+
+"It do sound strange, Nancy, don't it?" said her husband, after their
+guest had gone. "Roderick Norman can't have any grudge against me.
+Why, sure, it should be all t' other way." And he got up, stretched
+his splendid muscular limbs, and, picking up his axe, took out any
+excess of feeling there might be in his heart by a good two hours'
+work at the woodpile.
+
+Meanwhile his mind had not been idle. Whoever it was that robbed his
+traps could not have come along the usual trail. The ice outside had
+not been safe for travelling. He certainly must have come out from the
+country. It had never occurred to Malcolm to spend time exploring the
+land which lay south of his fur-path. But now it seemed to him that he
+must at all costs set out the following morning and verify his
+suspicions if he were to retain his hope of a livelihood in that
+locality.
+
+"I'm minded to try it right away, Nancy," said Malcolm. "If I could
+only get a good view from one of t' hilltops, I'd have no trouble, for
+there is still plenty of food in my tilts."
+
+"But, Malcolm, 't is only two days till Christmas and this is our
+first together. Surely no one ever goes on the fur-path
+Christmastime."
+
+"That's just it, lass. No one is on t' path as ought to be, and I
+reckon for that very reason there be more chance of seeing those as
+ought not."
+
+There was no escaping the logic of the Scotchman, and his wife
+acquiesced without further argument. He was well into the country
+before daylight next day.
+
+It was a glorious morning, as away there in utter solitude the
+evergreen trees, the red-faced cliffs, the startling whiteness of the
+snow, and exquisite blue overhead fading into the purple distance of
+the winding valley met his keen view from a mountain-top. It was
+Labrador at its best--clear, dry, cold, and not a sound to break the
+absolute silence, even the trickling of the rapids and the splashing
+of distant falls being muffled by then-heavy cloaks of ice.
+
+Suddenly Malcolm's face grew rigid and his eyes unconsciously fixed
+themselves on a moving object--a tiny whiff of blue smoke was curling
+up from the woods on the other side of the valley. Gentle though he
+was, his big muscles set and his jaw tightened as the idea of revenge
+flashed across his mind.
+
+A man does not learn to outwit successfully the keen senses of the
+denizens of the woods without finding it easy to solve a problem such
+as the one which Malcolm now faced. For all that, he decided not to
+approach too close till dark what he was now sure was a hut, for the
+way the smoke rose was quite unlike that from an open fire. Having,
+therefore, plenty of time, he made a long and cautious detour till he
+had at last completely encircled the spot. There were the marks of one
+pair of snow racquets only on the snow. The trail was possibly three
+days old. No snow had fallen for several days. "Reckon he is taking a
+good spell with that catch of his."
+
+This much he knew. He knew the stranger was in or close to the tilt.
+He was not trapping, though he had been inside the circle for several
+days, and he had no dogs.
+
+As it fell dark, Malcolm fully expected to see a light in the hut,
+but not a twinkle showed through the single-pane window light, which
+he had located from his hiding-place.
+
+Now he was crawling nearer. There was no chance of his being seen, as
+the moon had not yet risen and it was very dark among the trees. A
+light wind had risen, rustling the firs and spruces above his head.
+The fire worried him. Why had it almost died out? Heaven knows it was
+cold enough to need one, for with all his warm blood Malcolm himself
+was shivering. What could it mean?
+
+Suddenly he heard some one move inside. Then came the noise of sticks
+hitting a tin camp-stove and a sudden blaze flared up, burnt for a
+minute or two, and apparently went out again. Whoever it was must be
+ill, or hurt. He had no big billets or he wouldn't be firing with
+twigs.
+
+It could not do any harm now to enter, and Malcolm strode noisily to
+the door and peered inside.
+
+A man's weak voice greeted him. "Who's there? For God's sake, come
+in."
+
+"My name's Malcolm McCrea. Where's your light?"
+
+"Haven't got one. I've no candle either," came the answer. "Had an
+accident three days ago with my gun, and nearly blew my foot off. My
+leg's swelled up something wonderful."
+
+The voice, feeble almost to a whisper, conveyed no information as to
+the man's identity, except that the Scotchman's quick ear detected
+that there was resentment somehow mixed with satisfaction that a
+rescuer had come.
+
+"I've a drop of kerosene in my nonny-bag," was all Malcolm said, "but
+it's scarce, and I 'low I'll cut up some wood and get t' fire going
+before lighting up. You lie quiet for a minute or two and I'll get you
+a drop of tea."
+
+"Lie quiet!" snarled the other. "I've lain quiet for three days, and
+expected to stay till doomsday. It's no virtue keeps me lying quiet. I
+had no business to be here, anyhow, seeing there was no need of it."
+
+"Well, do as you please," answered McCrea. And without much delay he
+soon had a roaring fire in the camp-stove which turned the chimney
+red-hot and made it possible to see dimly stretched out on a bed of
+fir boughs the long, thin form of a man whose drawn, unshaven face
+showed that he was suffering much pain. His right foot was swaddled in
+an ominously stained bundle of rags--evidently some torn-up garment.
+
+Methodically lighting the bit of wick which he had placed in the
+kerosene bottle, Malcolm knelt down by the side of the injured man
+and, peering into the semi-darkness of the gloomy corner, found
+himself looking right into the eyes of Roderick Norman.
+
+Having made some hot tea and shared it with the sick man, he offered
+him part of the pork and hard biscuit, all that he had with him for
+his own supper. But Roderick was too feeble to touch more than a bit
+of it soaked in hot tea, and that seemed a small strength-giver for
+such a time of need.
+
+"If you'd a bit o' wire or line, I'd tail a snare for a rabbit when
+the moon rises and try if we couldn't get a drop o' hot stew to help
+out. But I haven't a bit in my bag."
+
+"There's a couple o' traps," growled the sick man, and then stopped
+suddenly, shutting his jaws with a snap.
+
+Malcolm looked around, but was unable to see any signs of them. "Where
+did you say they were?" he enquired; but no response came from the
+bunk.
+
+McCrea finished his supper, lit his pipe, and suggested trying to wash
+the wounded foot. But fearing to start the bleeding again, they
+decided to leave it till morning.
+
+"Where are those traps you spoke of, sir? The moon is beginning to
+show and I'll be needing to get 'em put out, if we're to have any
+chance." But still the other man made no answer. Malcolm went up close
+to the bed and knelt down by him again. "Mr. Norman," he said, "we're
+in a bad hole here. We're fifty miles from help, anyhow. We've no dogs
+and only one of us can walk. Moreover, there's almost no food. If
+you've got any traps, why not tell me where they are. I'm not going to
+steal 'em."
+
+Roderick Norman opened his eyes and looked at him. The dim rays of
+the little wick in the kerosene bottle gave scarcely enough light to
+show the ordinary eye where the lamp itself was. But when their
+glances met, it was enough to show Roderick that it was no longer a
+child with whom he was dealing. For a second neither spoke, then
+Malcolm, putting his hand on the man's shoulder, gripped it perhaps
+more roughly than he intended. "The traps," he repeated.
+
+Roderick winced. He saw that his secret was out. He was at the
+Scotchman's mercy, and he knew it. "They're stowed in t' hollow of t'
+old trunk, fifty yards back of t' tilt, damn you," he snarled, and
+tried to roll over, groaning bitterly with pain of both body and soul.
+
+The pity of it appealed straight to Malcolm's generous heart, and his
+grip relaxed instantly. He strove to make the other more comfortable,
+moving him gently in his great arms.
+
+"Forget it, Mr. Norman," he said. "No one shall ever know unless you
+tell 'em. I'll give you my word for that." The sick man said nothing.
+His deep breathing, painfully drawn, was, however, enough in that
+dead silence to warn Malcolm of the struggle going on so close to
+him--a struggle so much more momentous than one of tooth and claw. He
+slipped his hand into that of the other and held it gently.
+
+"You're very hot, sir," he remarked, just for something to say. "Shall
+I get you some cold water?"
+
+But still there was no answer. Evidently the man's mind was engrossed
+with other thoughts. A long pause followed.
+
+"Mr. Norman, for God's sake, forget it. No one's been hurt but
+yourself. If there's been any wrong, it's all forgiven and forgotten
+long ago. Let's just begin again. Remember 't is Christmas Eve night."
+
+Still there was no reply, but McCrea's intuition saved him from the
+mistake of saying more. The stillness became uncanny. Then an almost
+imperceptible pressure of the sick man's hand sent a thrill vibrating
+through the Scotchman's soul. Yes, and he had himself returned the
+pressure before he knew it. A shiver passed over the sick man's frame
+and the silence was broken by a sob.
+
+With an innate sense of fellow-feeling, Malcolm laid down the other's
+hand, rose, and went out without a word. The night was perfect with
+the glorious light of the waning moon. His mind was at once made up.
+He would be home by daylight and back again with his dogs by midday,
+with stimulants and blankets, and could have Roderick in Nancy's
+skilled hands before night.
+
+Noiselessly opening the door, he filled the stove once more, piled up
+spare billets close to the bedside, laid out what food was left,
+placed his kettle full of water on the ground within reach of the sick
+man, and, just whispering, "I'll be back soon, sir," disappeared into
+the night.
+
+How fast he sped only the stars and moon shall say. But joy lent him
+wings which brought him home before daylight. His faithful dogs,
+keeping their watch and ward out in the snow around his house, first
+brought the news to Nancy that her man was back so soon.
+
+A few minutes served to explain how matters stood, and in a few more
+everything was ready. The coach-box was strapped on the komatik. The
+bearskin rug and a feather bed were lashed inside it, with all the
+restoratives loving care could think of, and with the music of the
+wild barking of the dogs echoing from the mountain and valley, the
+sledge went whirling back over the crisp snow--the team no less
+excited than Malcolm himself at this unexpected call for their
+services.
+
+Everything was silent as once more they approached the scene of
+trouble. The dogs, panting and tired, having had no spell since they
+started, no longer broke the stillness with their barking. Malcolm
+hitched them up a hundred yards or so from the tilt, preferring to
+approach it on foot. He had long ago noticed that no smoke was coming
+from the funnel and it made his heart sink, for even in the woods the
+cold was intense.
+
+Malcolm always says that he knew the meaning of it before he opened
+the door. Roderick Norman had gone to spend his first Christmas in
+happier hunting-grounds.
+
+
+
+
+THE LEADING LIGHT
+
+
+It was getting late in the year. The steep cliffs that everywhere
+flank the sides of the great bay were already hoary with snow. The big
+ponds were all "fast," and the fall deer hunt which follows the
+fishery was over. Most of the boats were hauled up, well out of reach
+of the "ballicater" ice. The stage fronts had been taken down till the
+next spring, to save them from being torn to pieces by the rising and
+falling floe. Everywhere "young slob," as we call the endless round
+pans growing from the centre and covering the sea like the scales of a
+salmon, was making. But the people at the head of the bay were still
+waiting for those necessities of life, such as flour, molasses, and
+pork, which have to be imported as they are unable to provide them for
+themselves, and for which they must wait till the summer's voyage has
+been sent to market and sold to pay for them.
+
+The responsibility of getting these supplies to them rested heavily on
+the shoulders of my good friend John Bourne, the only trader in the
+district. Women, children, whole families, were looking to him for
+those "things" which if he failed to furnish would mean such woeful
+consequences that he could not face the winter without at least a
+serious attempt to provide them.
+
+In the harbour lay his schooner, a saucy little craft which he had
+purchased only a short while before. He knew her sea qualities; and as
+the ship tugged at her chains, moving to and fro on the swell, she
+kept a fine "swatch" of open water round her. Like some tethered
+animal, she seemed to be begging him to give her another run before
+Jack Frost gripped her in his chilly arms for months to come. The fact
+that he was a married man with hostages to fortune round his knees
+might have justified his conscience in not tempting the open sea at a
+time when frozen sheets and blocks choked with ice made it an open
+question if even a youngster ought to take the chances. But it
+happened that his "better half," like himself, had that "right stuff"
+in her which thinks of itself last, and her permission for the venture
+was never in question.
+
+So Trader Bourne, being, like all our men, a sailor first and a
+landsman after, with his crew of the mate and a boy, and the handicap
+of a passenger, put to sea one fine afternoon in late November, his
+vessel loaded with good things for his necessitous friends "up along."
+He was encouraged by a light breeze which, though blowing out of the
+bay and there ahead for him, gave smooth water and a clear sky.
+
+To those who would have persuaded him to linger for a fair wind he had
+cheerfully countered that the schooner had "two sides," meaning that
+she could hold her own in adversity, and could claw well to windward;
+besides, "'t will help to hold the Northern slob back"--that
+threatening spectre of our winters.
+
+When darkness fell, however, very little progress had been made. The
+wind kept shifting against the schooner, and all hands could still
+make out the distant lights of home twinkling like tiny stars,
+apparently not more than a couple of miles under their lee.
+
+"Shall us 'hard up,' and try it again at day light?" suggested the
+mate. "If anything happens 't is a poor time of year to be out all
+night in a small craft."
+
+But the skipper only shrugged his shoulders, aware that the mate was
+never a "snapper" seaman, being too much interested in gardens for his
+liking.
+
+"It's only a mile or two to Beach Rock Cove. We'll make it on the next
+tack if the wind holds. 'T is a long leg and a short one, and we'll
+have a good chance then to make the Boiling Brooks to-morrow."
+
+"Lee oh!" and, putting the helm up, the Leading Light was soon racing
+off into the increasing darkness towards the cliffs away on the
+opposite side of the bay.
+
+The wind freshened as the evening advanced--the usual experience of
+our late fall nights. An hour went by, and as the wind was still
+rising, the flying jib was taken in. After this the captain sent the
+crew below for a "mug o' tea" while he took the first trick at the
+wheel.
+
+Still the wind rose. The sea too was beginning to make, and the little
+craft started to fall to leeward too much to please the skipper. The
+men were again called, and together they reset all the head canvas.
+The Leading Light now answered better to her helm, and, heading up a
+point, reached well into the bay.
+
+"Smooth water again before dawn," said the skipper in his endeavour to
+cheer the despondent mate, when once more they had gone aft. "Looks
+like clearing overhead. I reckon she'll be well along by daylight."
+
+But the mate seemed "stun," and only grunted in return.
+
+"You go down and finish supper, and then you can give me a spell at
+the wheel while I get my pipe lighted," continued the captain.
+Thereupon the other, nothing loath to have something to keep his mind
+diverted, was soon below, searching for consolation in a steaming mug,
+but failing to find it, in spite of the welcome contrast between the
+cosy warm cabin, and the darkness and driving spume on deck, lacking
+as he did, alas, the sea genius of our race.
+
+"Watch on deck!" at length called Bourne; and a few minutes later,
+having entrusted the helm to the mate, he was lighting his pipe at the
+cabin fire. All of a sudden down, down, down went the lee floor of the
+cabin, and up, up, up went the weather, till it felt as if the little
+ship were really going over.
+
+"What's up?" the skipper fairly yelled through the companion, as
+clinging and struggling his utmost he forced his way on deck, as soon
+as the vessel righted herself enough to make it possible. "Hard down!
+Hard down! Let her come up! Ease her! Ease her!"--and whether the puff
+of wind slackened or the mate lost hold of the wheel, he never has
+been able to tell, but she righted enough for a moment to let him get
+on the deck and rush forward to slack up the fore-sheet, bawling
+meanwhile through the darkness to the mate to keep her head up, as he
+himself tore and tugged at the rope.
+
+The schooner, evidently well off the wind, yet with all her sheets
+hauled tight and clewed down, was literally flying ahead, but trying
+to dive right through the ponderous seas, instead of skimming over and
+laughing at them, as the captain well knew she ought to do. There
+wasn't a second to lose pondering the problem as to why she would not
+come up and save herself. Difficult and dangerous as it was in the
+pitch dark with the deck slippery with ice, and the dizzy angle at
+which it stood, the only certain way to save the situation was to let
+go that sheet. Frantically he struggled with the rope, firmly clinched
+though it was round its cleats with the ice that had made upon it.
+Knowing how sensitive the vessel was and that she would answer to a
+half-spoke turn of the wheel, and utterly at a loss to understand her
+present stubbornness, he still kept calling to the helmsman, "Hard
+down! Hard down!"--only to receive again the growling answer, "Hard
+down it is. She's been hard down this long time."
+
+It was all no good. Up, up came the weather rail under the terrific
+pressure of the wind. The fore-sheet was now already well under water,
+cleat and all, and the captain had just time to dash for the bulwark
+and hold on for dear life, when over went the stout little craft,
+sails, masts, and rigging, all disappearing beneath the waves. It
+seemed as if a minute more and she must surely vanish altogether, and
+all hands be lost almost within sight of their own homes.
+
+Tumultuous thoughts flooded the captain's mind as for one second he
+clung to the rail. Vain regrets were followed like lightning by a
+momentary resignation to fate. In the minds of most men hope would
+undoubtedly have perished right there. But Captain Bourne was made of
+better stuff. "Nil desperandum" is the Englishman's soul; and soon he
+found himself crawling carefully hand over hand towards the after end
+of the vessel. Suddenly in the darkness he bumped into something soft
+and warm lying out on the quarter. It proved to be his passenger,
+resigned and mute, with no suggestion to offer and no spirit to do
+more than lie and perish miserably.
+
+Still climbing along he could not help marking the absence of the mate
+and the boy from the rail, which standing out alone against the
+sky-line was occasionally visible. Doubtless they must have been
+washed overboard when the vessel turned turtle. There was some heavy
+ballast in the schooner besides the barrels of flour and other
+supplies in her hold. Her deck also was loaded with freight, and alas,
+the ship's boat was lashed down to the deck with strong gripes beneath
+a lot of it. Moreover, it was on the starboard side, and away down
+under water anyhow. Though every moment he was expecting the Leading
+Light to make her last long dive, his courage never for a second
+deserted him.
+
+He remembered that there was a new boat on the counter aft which he
+was carrying with him for one of his dealers. She was not lashed
+either, except that her painter was fast to a stanchion. It was just
+possible that she might still be afloat, riding to the schooner as a
+sea anchor. Still clinging to the rail he peered and peered through
+the darkness, only to see the great white mainsail now and again
+gleam ghostlike in the dim light when the super-incumbent water foamed
+over it, as the Leading Light wallowed in the sullen seas. Then
+something dark rose against the sky away out beyond the peak end of
+the gaff--something black looming up on the crest of a mighty comber.
+An uncanny feeling crept over him. Yet what else could it be but the
+boat? But what could that boat be doing out there? Fascinated, he kept
+glaring out in that direction. Yes, surely, there it flashed again
+across the sky-line. This time he was satisfied that it was the boat,
+and that she was afloat and partly protected by the breakwater formed
+by the schooner's hull. She was riding splendidly. In an instant he
+recalled that he had given her a new long painter; and that somehow
+she must have been thrown clear when the ship turned over. Anyhow, she
+was his only chance for life. Get her he must, and get her at once.
+Every second spelt less chance of success. Any moment she might break
+adrift or be dragged down by the sinking schooner. And then came the
+horrible memory that she too had been stowed on the lee side, and her
+painter also was under the mainsail and fastened now several feet
+below the surface. Even the sail itself was under water, and the sea
+breaking in big rushes over it with every comber that came along.
+
+To get the boat was surely impossible. It only added to the horror of
+the plight to perish there miserably of cold, thinking of home and of
+the loved ones peacefully asleep so near, while the way to them and
+safety lay only a few fathoms distant--torturing him by its very
+nearness. For every now and then driving hard to the end of her tether
+she would rush forward on a sea and appear to be coming within his
+reach, only to mock him by drifting away once more, like some
+relentless lady-love playing with his very heartstrings. The rope
+under the sunken mainsail prevented her from quite reaching him, and
+each time that she seemed coming to his arms, she again darted beyond
+his grasp.
+
+Whatever could be done must be done at once. Even now he realized
+that the cold and wet were robbing him of his store of strength. Could
+he possibly get out to where the boat was? There might be one way, but
+there could be only one, and even that appeared a desperate and
+utterly futile venture. It was to find a footing somehow, to let go
+his vise-like grip of the rail, and leap out into the darkness across
+the black and fathomless gulf of water surging up between the hull and
+the vessel's main boom in the hope of landing in the belly of the
+sail; to be able to keep his balance and walk out breast high through
+the rushing water into the blackness beyond till he should reach the
+gaff; and so, clinging there, perchance catch the boat's painter as
+she ran in on a rebounding sea. There would be nothing to hold on to.
+The ever swirling water would upset a man walking in daylight on a
+level quayside. He would have nothing but a sunken, bellying piece of
+canvas to support him--a piece only, for the little leach rope leading
+from the clew to the peak marked a sharp edge which would spell the
+dividing line between life and death.
+
+He had known men of courage; he had read of what Englishmen had done.
+But he had never suspected that in his own English blood could lie
+dormant that which makes heroes at all times. A hastily breathed
+prayer--his mind made up, letting go of the weather rail he commenced
+to lower himself to the wheel, hoping to get a footing there for the
+momentous spring that would in all probability land him in eternity.
+But even as he climbed a little farther aft to reach down to it, he
+found himself actually straddling the bodies of the missing mate and
+boy, who were cowering under the rail, supported by their feet against
+the steering-gear boxing.
+
+Like a thunderclap the whole cause of the disaster burst upon his
+mind. The mate's feet planked against the spokes of the wheel
+suggested it. The helm was not hard down at all, and never had been.
+It was hard up all the time. He remembered, now that it was too late,
+that the mate had always steered hitherto with a tiller; that a wheel
+turns exactly the opposite way to the tiller; and that with every
+sail hauled tight, and the helm held hard over, the loyal little craft
+had been as literally murdered as if she had been torpedoed, and also
+their lives jeopardized through this man's folly. What was the good of
+him even now? There he lay like a log, as dumb as the man whom he had
+left clinging to the taffrail.
+
+"What's to be done now?" he shouted, trying in vain to rouse the
+prostrate figure with his foot. "Rouse up! Rouse up, you fool!" he
+roared. "Are you going to die like a coward?" And letting himself
+down, he put his face close to that of the man who by his stupidity
+had brought them all to this terrible plight. But both the mate and
+boy seemed paralyzed. Not a word, not a moan could he get out of them.
+The help which they would have been was denied him. Once more he
+realized that if any one was to be saved, he and he alone must
+accomplish it. A momentary rest between two waves decided him. There
+was one half-second of trying to get his balance as he stood up, then
+came the plunge into the wild abyss, and he found himself floundering
+in the belly of the sail, struggling to keep his footing, but up to
+his waist in water. With a fierce sense of triumph that he was safely
+past the first danger, the yawning gulf between the rail and boom, he
+threw every grain of his remaining strength into the desperate task
+before him, and pushed out for the gaff that was lying on the surface
+of the sea, thirty feet away in the darkness. Even as he started a
+surging wave washed him off his feet, and again he found himself
+hopelessly wallowing in the water, but still in the great cauldron
+formed by the canvas.
+
+How any human being could walk even the length of the sail under such
+circumstances he does not know any more than I do. But the impossible
+was accomplished, and somehow he was clinging at last like a limpet to
+the very end of the gaff, his legs already dangling over the fatal
+edge, and with nothing to keep him from the clutch of death beyond it
+but his grip of the floating spar. To this he must cling until the
+mocking boat should again come taut on the line and possibly run
+within his reach. The next second out of the darkness what seemed to
+the man in the sail a mountain of blackness rushed hissing at him from
+the chaos beyond, actually swept across him into the belly of the
+sail, and tore him from his rapidly weakening hold of the spar. With
+the energy of despair his hands went up and caught something, probably
+a bight in the now slackened painter. In a trice he was gripping the
+rail, and a second later he was safely inside the boat, and standing
+shaking himself like some great Newfoundland dog.
+
+Even now a seemingly insuperable difficulty loomed ahead. He had no
+knife and was unable to let go the rope. Would he be able to take his
+comrades aboard, and would the schooner keep afloat and form a
+breastwork against the sea, or would it sink and, after all his
+battle, drag the boat and him down with it to perdition?
+
+Philosophizing is no help at such a time. He would try for the other
+men. To leave them was unthinkable. Once more fortune was on his side.
+The oars were still in the boat, lashed firmly to the thwarts--a plan
+upon which he had always insisted. Watching his chance, and skilfully
+manoeuvring, he succeeded in approaching the schooner stern first,
+when the cable just allowed him to touch the perpendicular deck. His
+shouts to the others had now quite a different ring. His words were
+commands, leaving no initiative to them. They realized also that their
+one and only chance for life lay in that boat; and returning hope lent
+them the courage which they had hitherto lacked. After a delay which
+seemed hours to the anxious captain at such a time, with skilful
+handling he had got all three aboard.
+
+Once more he was face to face with the problem of the relentless rope,
+but again fortune proved to be on his side. It was the passenger, the
+useless, burdensome passenger, who now held the key to the situation.
+He had sensed the danger in a moment, and instantly handed the skipper
+a large clasp-knife. With it to free the boat from the wreck was but
+the work of a moment.
+
+True, their position in a small open "rodney" in the middle of a dark,
+rough night in the North Atlantic was not exactly enviable, especially
+as the biting winter wind was freezing their clothing solid, and
+steadily sapping their small stock of remaining vitality.
+
+Yet these men felt that they had crossed a gulf almost as wide as that
+between Dives and Lazarus. If they could live, they knew that the boat
+could, for the ice would not clog her enough to sink her before
+daylight, and as for the sea--well, as with the schooner, it was only
+a matter of handling their craft till the light came.
+
+Meanwhile, though they did not then know it, they had drifted a very
+considerable way towards their own homes, so that, rowing in turn and
+constantly bailing out their boat they at length made the shore at the
+little village of Wild Bight, only a few miles away from their own.
+The good folk at once kindled fires, and bathed and chafed the
+half-frozen limbs and chilled bodies of the exhausted crew.
+
+Now the one anxiety of all hands was to get home as quickly as
+possible for fear that some rumor of the disaster in the form of
+wreckage from the schooner might carry to their loved ones news of the
+accident, and lead them to be terrified over their apparent deaths. As
+soon as possible after dawn of day, the skipper started for home,
+having borrowed a small rodney, and the wind still keeping in the same
+quarter. To his intense surprise a large trap-boat manned by several
+men, seeing his little boat, hailed him loudly, and when on drawing
+near it was discovered who they were, proceeded to congratulate him
+heartily on his escape. Already the very thing that he had dreaded
+might happen must surely have occurred.
+
+"How on earth did you know so soon?" he enquired, annoyed.
+
+"As we came along before t' wind we saw what us took to be a dead
+whale. But her turned out to be a schooner upside down. We made out
+she were t' Leading Light, and feared you must all have been drowned,
+as there was no sign of any one on her upturned keel. So we were
+hurrying to your house to find out t' truth."
+
+"Don't say a word about it, boys," said the skipper. "One of you take
+this skiff and row her back to Wild Bight, while I go with the others
+and try and tow in the wreck before the wind shifts. But be sure not
+to say anything about the business at home."
+
+The wind still held fair, and by the aid of a stout line they were
+able, after again finding the vessel, to tow her into their own
+harbour and away to the very bottom of the Bight, where they stranded
+her at high water on the tiny beach under the high crags which
+shoulder out the ocean. By a clever system of pulleys and blocks from
+the trunks of trees in the clefts of the cliff she was hauled upright,
+and held while the water fell. Then the Leading Light was pumped out
+and refloated on the following tide. On examination, she was
+pronounced uninjured by her untimely adventure.
+
+I owe it to John Bourne to say that the messenger forbidden to tell of
+the terrible experience told it to his own wife, and she told
+it--well, anyhow, the skipper's wife had heard of it before the
+Leading Light once more lay at anchor at her owner's wharf. Courage in
+a moment of danger, or to preserve life, is one thing. The courage
+that faces odds when the circumstances are prosaic and the decision
+deferred is a rarer quality. It was a real piece of courage which gave
+the little schooner another chance that fall to retrieve her
+reputation. She was permitted to deliver the goods against all odds,
+and what is more the captain's wife kissed him good-bye with a brave
+face when once again he let the foresail draw, and the Leading Light
+stood out to sea on her second and successful venture.
+
+There is no doubt that when she went to bed in the ice that winter,
+she carried with her the good wishes and grateful thanks of many poor
+and lonely souls; and some have said that when they were walking round
+the head of the cove in which it was the habit of the little craft to
+hibernate, strange sounds like that of a purring cat were ofttimes
+wafted shoreward. "It is only the wind in her rigging," the skeptical
+explained; but a suspicion still lurks in some of our minds that the
+Eskimo are not so far from the truth in conceding souls to inanimate
+objects.
+
+
+
+
+THE RED ISLAND SHOALS
+
+
+The house was fairly shaking in the gale, and any one but Uncle Rube,
+who had lived in it since he put it there forty years before, would
+have been expecting things to happen. But the old man sat dozing in
+his chair beside the crackling stove, and the circling rings of smoke
+rising over his snow-white head were the only signs of life about him.
+The only other occupant of the house was a little girl whom Uncle Rube
+had taken for "company," the year that his wife left him. The coast
+knew that his only lad had been lost aboard some sealer many years
+ago. The little girl was lying stretched out on the wooden settle
+close beside him. Twice already in the dim light of the tiny window,
+now well covered with snow outside and frost within, I had mistaken
+her towsly golden curls for a hearth-brush, she lay so still.
+
+At length, as the cottage gave a more violent lurch than usual, even
+my book failed to keep my mind at rest.
+
+"Aren't you afraid the house is going to blow away, Uncle Rube? You
+remember that our church blew into the harbor, pews and floor as well
+as walls and roof. You could see the pews at low water till the ice
+took them away."
+
+Crack! Crack! Crack!
+
+"No fear of she, Doctor. She's held on this forty years, and I reckon
+she won't bring her anchors home till I does myself."
+
+"Never to go again till the old man died," I hummed.
+
+Something, however, seemed to have roused up Uncle Rube. For,
+carefully laying his pipe in its place on the shelf, he went to the
+door, opening it enough to allow him to peer out through the crack.
+Unfortunately another eddying gust struck the house at that very
+moment, tore the door from his grasp, and by sweeping in and taking
+the fortress from within, very nearly gave it its _coup de grace_. In
+the momentary lull that followed we managed to shut the door, and to
+barricade it from inside.
+
+The child was astir before we got back to the genial warmth of the
+stove. Crack! Crack! Crack! went the little dwelling again, as a more
+than usually fierce blast of the hurricane, strengthened by the
+furiously driving snow, hit it like another hammer of Thor. Crack!
+Crack! The house seemed to swing like a pendulum before it came to
+rest again. I could see that the old man was uneasy.
+
+"What is it, Uncle Rube? What is it?" the little girl cried out
+petulantly.
+
+"Why, nothing, little one, nothing. Only 'tis as well to take a peek
+out on times. There's no knowing when there might be some one astray
+through this kind of weather. 'Tis no hurt to make sure, is it?"
+
+She was a pale-faced little thing, with the lustrous eyes and delicate
+skin that often so pathetically array the prospective victims of the
+White Man's Curse. She had been a tiny, unwanted item in a large
+family of twelve with which "Providence had blessed" a struggling
+friend and neighbor. The arrival of the last had robbed him of his
+only help. "Daddy gived me to Uncle Rube," was her only explanation of
+her being there.
+
+"'T is cold, though," she answered. "It made me dream that you were on
+the old island again, and I was with you, and then the house shook so
+that it woke me up."
+
+For answer he went to an old and well-worn seaman's chest which served
+ordinarily for an additional seat. The reverent care with which he
+turned over the contents would have honored a priest before the
+sanctuary. But eventually he returned with a really beautiful shawl
+which he tenderly wrapped around the child, and sitting down laid her
+head upon his shoulder. In this position she was almost immediately
+asleep again, and, fearing to wake her, I had forborne to break the
+silence. Indeed, I was far enough away from ice and snow and blizzards
+for the moment--the Indian shawl having carried me home to England,
+and the old camphor trunk which my own mother, herself born in India,
+had taught us boys to reverence as the old man did his, filled as
+ours was with specimens of weird patterns and exquisite workmanship.
+
+Uncle Rube had been watching my eyes fixed on the rich mantle that
+contrasted so strangely with every other surrounding.
+
+"I brought it from India when I used to go overseas. I keeps it
+because my Mary loved it so, though she 'lowed it was too rich for t'
+likes o' her to wear it much. But I guess it'll last now. 'T is t'
+last bit o' finery left," he smiled, "and 't is most time to be
+hauling that down. For I reckons Nellie won't last out to need it
+long. Eh, Doctor?" And for a moment a tear sparkled in his merry old
+eyes, as he peered from under his heavy white eyebrows.
+
+"You can always trust me to find a good home for Nellie, Uncle Rube,"
+I answered. "I've forty like her now, and one more won't sink the
+ship. But you know that better than I can tell you." And suddenly it
+flashed over me that Uncle Rube's unexpected visit to our Children's
+Home must had have some relation to the curly head on his shoulder.
+The tear fell on his tanned cheek, and he looked away and coughed. But
+he said nothing.
+
+"What was the old island that Nellie was talking about?" I broke in to
+relieve the situation. "It sounded as if you had been playing Robinson
+Crusoe some time," I added, "and have spun her yarns that you won't
+tell me." For the hope that here might be something which would fill
+in the time during which it was plain that Jack Frost intended to keep
+me prisoner in this bookless cabin, suddenly dawned upon me.
+
+"Island?" he smiled, after a brief pause. "Island? Oh! that was forty
+years ago, when us lost t' old Manxman on t' Red Island Shoals." And
+the _wanderlust_ of Uncle Rube's British blood, stirred by this leap
+back over the passing years, made him once more a bouncing,
+devil-may-care sailor lad. The sign of tears had vanished from his
+cheeks as he rose, and, gently laying the little figure in her old
+corner on the settle, leisurely lit his pipe. Like that of Nathaniel
+Hawthorne's Feather-top it seemed to send renewed youth through his
+veins with every puff he drew. Knowing that he was trying to think,
+and fearing to distract his mind, I again kept a discreet silence. At
+last, just as if he saw the scene again, his eyes closed and his
+splendid shock of long white hair was once more thrown back into its
+accustomed place in the rocking-chair.
+
+"It wasn't a fair deal, Doctor. Not a fair deal. We was sailors in
+those days, just as much as them is in they old tin kettles that
+rattles up and down t' Straits now, for all they big size and they
+gold braid. T' Manxman wouldn't have come by her end as she did if
+stout arms and good seamen could 'a' saved her. Murdered she was,
+Doctor, murdered by this same Jack Frost what's trying to blow us out
+o' house and home right now. But don't you have no uneasiness, Doctor,
+I've got him beat this time, and she'll not drag. No, sir, not till I
+do"--and a fierce spirit gleamed out through his eyes.
+
+We had often wondered why Uncle Rube, the genial, gentle, hospitable
+old man that the coast knew him to be, had come to put down his
+anchors in this wild and almost desolate gorge. Here was a possible
+explanation. The loss of his only lad must have been from this very
+Manxman, and by some strange twist of mentality the father had
+determined to plant himself just as near the scene and circumstance as
+human strength permitted, end there, single-handed if need be, fight
+out the battle of life, with the daily sense of flaunting the enemy
+that had robbed him of his joy in life--his one and only child. For
+with Chestertonian paradox this lonely man's passion was children.
+
+"No. No, he can't move her, Doctor," he repeated, as if he were
+reading my thoughts, as I truly believe that he was. For our minds in
+the North are not crusted like tender feet with horny coverings from
+the chafe of boots, or as are minds beset with telephones, special
+deliveries, and editions of the yellow press.
+
+"No, Uncle Rube, you don't think I'd sit here if I wasn't certain of
+it. You've got him beaten to a frazzle this time."
+
+I was right then, for Uncle Rube "slacked away" as he put it, and took
+up the thread of his story again without further comment, but not
+before apologizing for any undue familiarity into which the
+excitement, of which he was well aware, might have betrayed him.
+
+"Us found t' seals early that year, and panned a voyage of as fine
+young fat as ever a 'swiler' wished for, but t' weather was dirty from
+t' day us struck t' patch, as if Jack Frost was determined us
+shouldn't have 'em. Anyhow, afore we could pick up more'n half what
+us'd killed, a dozen o' our lads got adrift on t' floe, and though
+they got aboard another vessel, us thought 'em was lost. While us
+sailed about looking for 'em, us lost most o' t' pans. So round t'
+beginning of April t' skipper, in company with a score of other
+schooners, put her for the Norrard, in hopes of cutting off some of t'
+old seals in t' swatches. T' slob being very heavy outside, us lay for
+inside Belle Isle, and carried open water most across t' Straits.
+Well, sir, t' wind veered round all of a sudden, just as us was abeam
+of t' Devil's Table, and t' Gulf ice came out of t' Straits fair
+roaring"--and Uncle Rube took another contemplative puff at his pipe.
+
+"It would have been all right if only t' big field had gone off t'
+same time before t' wind. But somehow there were a big block held up
+by t' Islands, and t' western ice just came and hit it clip! It must
+have been all up with us right there but for t' northeast current, and
+that took our vessel like a nutshell and whisked her away in t' heavy
+slob as if to carry her along the Labrador coast. But it proved us was
+not far enough off t' land, for just about midday t' Red Islands come
+up like dark specks out o' t' ice--right ahead t' way we was being
+driven. T' other schooners was caught in t' jam too and drifting with
+us, little black dots scattered over t' surface of t' ice field like
+t' currants in slices of sweet white loaf.
+
+"I believe our skipper knowed it were no good, just as soon as t'
+watch called him to see for hisself. But he made out as if there was
+nothing to it, and ordered all hands to be ready to take t' ice, as
+though 't was a patch o' swiles instead of rocks ahead. But when he
+started getting up grub, and canvas, and all sorts of things, and had
+us put 'em in t' boats, us knew it were no old harps he was thinking
+of.
+
+"Well, sir, it seemed as if it had to be. The old Manxman went as fair
+for them reefs as if she was being hauled there with a capstan. It was
+fair uncanny, and I believes there be more in some one driving her
+there than most people 'lows. Anyhow, tied up as us was in t' heavy
+jam, right fair towards 'em she had to go, and then on to 'em, and up
+over t' reef as if us 'd laid t' course express for 'em, while every
+other vessel round us went clear. T' reef's about five feet out o'
+water at high springs, and about ten feet over surface on t' neaps.
+Springs it was that day, t' moon being nearly full, and t' first crack
+ripped t' bottom clean out o' t' old ship. Us all hustled out on to t'
+ice, taking with us all us could carry, working as quick as ever us
+could, for t' pressure o' wind was rafting t' pans on to t' rocks, and
+almost before us knew it, what remained of her above t' ice had gone
+right on over t' shoals; and long before dusk, I reckons, had gone
+down through it. At any rate, us saw no more of her. Us tried to make
+a bit of shelter for t' night out o' some of t' canvas, but t' wind
+never slacked a peck, and t' rafting ice soon carried away even t' few
+things us had saved.
+
+"Had us known in time us had better have stuck to t' boats, for they
+might have given us a chance. But t' wind being offshore, and t' ice
+running out to sea, made it seem safer to keep to t' rocks. For t' Red
+Island Shoal is only three or four miles from t' land, and there be
+liveyers, as us knew, almost opposite. If t' wind had held in t' same
+direction even then us might have escaped, but it dropped suddenly
+about day dawn, and there were huge swatches o' water between us and
+t' mainland before it came light enough to try and get across. Then
+just as suddenly t' wind clipped round, and t' sea began to make, and
+t' water started breaking right over them rocks.
+
+"Us had managed to build a fire out o' some of t' wreckage saved, and
+had thrown in bits o' canvas and some tarry oakum to make smoke. They
+had seen it too on t' land, and had lit three smoke fires in a line to
+let us know that they would send help if they could. But the veering
+of the wind had made that impossible, for they could only launch small
+skiffs, and they would not have lived more'n a few minutes for t' ice
+making on 'em.
+
+"T' breaking seas and driving spray soon wet all our men through.
+There were forty of us all told. But by night several were either dead
+or beyond help. T' ice had taken our boats, and now t' seas took all
+that was left. T' fire went out just before midday, and our bit o'
+grub got wet and frozen. Next morning t' sea was higher than ever, and
+t' bodies of t' men mostly washed away as they died. All that day t'
+rest of us just held on, some twenty or so; but it was a bare six of
+us that were living t' second night. There was no sleep, and not even
+any lying down if you wanted to live. None of them that slept ever
+woke again. I might have nodded standing up. Guess I must have. But
+t' third morning I was t' only man moving; and though it was as fine a
+shining morning as ever broke, and t' hot sun from t' ice soon put a
+little life in me, I never expected to see another night. Then I must
+have forgotten everything, even t' people on t' shore. For I never saw
+any boat coming, or any one land. Everything had been washed away but
+myself. I had been alone, I reckon, many hours. It seemed ages since I
+'d heard a human voice; but I still remembers some one putting his
+hand on my shoulder. They had been calling, so they told me, but
+somehow I heard nothing. They kept me a good many days before I knowed
+anything--doing for me like a mother would for her boy. But more'n a
+week had gone by before I could tell 'em who I was.
+
+"And then it all came back to me--t' cruel suffering of my shipmates,
+and most of all of Willy, t' only chick or child I ever had. He had my
+coat over his oil frock, and he were so brave, so young, and so
+strong. And he lived till morning--long after great strong men had
+perished--and me able to do nothing. Then his poor frozen body was
+washed to and fro in that terrible surf, as if my boy wouldn't leave
+me even if he was dead. Why I lived on, and why it pleased God to
+spare my poor life I never knowed, or shall know, Doctor, till he
+tells me himself."
+
+He was sitting bolt upright now, looking me straight in the face. But
+the fire died suddenly from Uncle Rube's eyes, and, exhausted by the
+effort and the memories the story brought back to him, he fell back in
+the chair as if he had been struck by some knock-out blow. The thud of
+the fall once more woke the child, and, seeing me jump to the old
+man's help, she began to sob piteously. It was only for a moment,
+however. The splendid vitality of the man, toughened by his hard life
+and simple fare, soon made him master of himself again, and,
+apologizing for giving me trouble, he took up the child, crooning over
+her to get her quiet.
+
+"Forty years I've been living here, Doctor," he went on. "Forty
+years--and t' last ten I've been all alone. Not a living soul have I
+had t' chance to save all these long years, though God knows I've kept
+as good a lookout as one watch could. Then Neighbor Blake lost his
+helpmate like I had mine, and he let me share up with him, and have
+Nellie. He wanted his boys to help him get food and things for t'
+rest, so a girl was what he gave me. And I couldn't have had a boy,
+Doctor, anyhow. Willy's place will never be filled for me, till he
+comes himself and fills it, and that won't be long now either." He
+looked at his pipe, which had gone out, and then continued: "No, I'm
+not one o' them as can take a new wife almost as soon as t' first
+one's gone"--and then suddenly: "But it's time to boil t' kettle.
+You'se getting hungry, I 'lows, and me chattering like a fool, and not
+thinking of anything beyond my own troubles. I'm forgetting you must
+be worriting over being kept so long in this bit of a tilt, but you'll
+not get away till morning, so just make yourself as miserable as you
+can!"
+
+As he bustled around filling the kettle with ice for water, and
+struggling to heat up a small molasses barrel in order to let out
+some "sweetness" for our tea, I had made a bird, a boat, and a couple
+of darts out of paper, as overtures to the lady of the house. Before
+the humble meal was spread she had the room ringing with her laughter,
+as she darted now here, now there, and at last succeeded in hitting
+the old man himself almost in the eye. Many times that meal has come
+back to my memory. The rough bare boards of the walls, naked but for
+one old picture of a horse cut from a magazine, carefully pasted
+upside down, and probably designed chiefly to cover some defective
+spot that was admitting too much coldness; the crazy table shaking
+with every gust and causing a tiny kerosene lamp to flare up and
+menace the dim religious darkness by depositing even more lamp-black
+than was its wont on its already negrine globe; the meagre board of
+dark bread, "oleo," and molasses; the weird minstrelsy of the
+hurricane--the whole a harmony of poverty and war. Yet the memory
+brings deeper pleasure to my mind than that of many costly
+banquets--and even I have eaten from plates of silver with implements
+of gold. For in the flickering light of the crackling logs I can still
+see the joy of the old man's kindly face over the boisterous happiness
+of his quaint ward, the dance in the eyes of the merry child as some
+colored candies placed in my nonny-bag by my wife fell somehow from
+the sky right on to the table before her. The telling of his story,
+never before mentioned to any one but his wife and foster child, but
+kept like some vendetta wrong waiting for revenge in his rebellious
+heart these many years, seemed to have renewed his youth. A merrier,
+happier party it has never been my lot to share in; and now that I
+know the pathos of the last chapter written in this strange life, I
+rejoice more than ever that for that night, anyhow, the enemy that
+haunted him overreached, and the very blizzard proved the key for one
+evening at least of freedom from his obsession.
+
+We were away before daylight, and I never saw Uncle Rube again. Life,
+it seems, went along tranquilly with him the following winter. As
+usual he kept his watch and ward on the cliffs by the Red Island
+Shoals. Then the fatal 10th of April came round. Once again it broke
+upon the solitary figure of the old man straining his eyes from his
+coign of vantage on the dread shoals of the Red Islands.
+Unquestionably he saw again reenacted there the weird tragedy that
+nearly half a century before had broken his life, bringing home with a
+strange fascination the moving picture to his very heart. But with it
+this spring he witnessed also a scene that for many years every man on
+the coast had prayed for, but no man had been privileged to take part
+in. The wind had come out of the Straits and the Gulf ice was driving
+swiftly towards the great Atlantic, exactly as it had done on the
+memorable day now forty years before. Once again there was ice in huge
+sheets jammed against the great cliffs of Belle Isle, and clear water
+between. Suddenly the straining eyes of the old sailor shone with a
+totally new light. He jumped to his feet, and with hands shading his
+starting eyes, stood motionless like a statue on the pedestal of his
+lookout, now white as the purest marble in its winter mantle.
+
+Was it age? Or the final break-up of his mind? No, neither--he was
+certain of it. There were black things moving on the white ice, and
+driving with it once more, just as the Manxman had, straight for the
+shoals of the Red Islands. Nearer and nearer they came. There could be
+no doubt now. They moved. They could be no land debris, no shadows
+from the rafted ice sheets. So quickly was the floe running that just
+as he remembered it, before anything could be done, clip! and the
+advancing edge had again struck the standing ice, and woe betide
+anything that was in or on it, anywhere near the line of contact. As a
+dazed mouse watches the cat that is toying with it, the rigid figure
+on the hilltop gazed at the impending tragedy--too far off for his
+material brain correctly to interpret the image on his actual retina.
+He was seeing, though he failed to realize it, the same impress that
+emotion had recorded on the tablets of his very soul.
+
+The realism of it was too much for human nature, and Uncle Rube, his
+hands covering his face, started running homewards over the familiar
+pathway he had trodden so often. Even as he reached the cottage in the
+gulch he was aware of loud shouting, and of a team of huskies
+literally tearing over the snow. They were making as if to pass his
+house without stopping, as no man ever did that lonely spot, if only
+for the cup of tea and the moment's "spell," and the kindly stimulus
+of the old man's company. Yes, the driver was shouting, shouting to
+him. "Ships, Uncle Rube!"--"What is it?"--"Ships on the ice!" the old
+man heard. Didn't he know it only too well?
+
+Another moment and the modern Paul Revere, with dogs for horses and
+ice and snow for a highway, was flying on his self-imposed journey,
+carrying his slogan from house to house and village to village along
+the sparsely inhabited coast-line. As Uncle Rube opened his door and
+peered into the little room, to his infinite joy he saw the golden
+curls in their proper place on the old settle by the stove, while the
+regular quiet breathing assured him that the child had not yet waked
+from sleep. As he softly tiptoed around, seeking the outfit he needed
+for his great adventure, the barrenness of the house, the poverty of
+it, struck him for the first time. God knows he had never thought of
+"things," except as he had needed them for himself or others; and now
+he wished suddenly that he had more of them for the child's sake.
+Suppose, now that his "day" had at last arrived, he should not return
+from the long-looked-for quest. He became strangely conscious that he
+had nothing laid up for his darling, the child who now filled the
+whole horizon of his cramped life. Her very clothes were in tatters.
+The Indian shawl, that I had seen pressed into the service against his
+enemy the Frost King, was now only a thing of rags and patches. Were
+it not for his own big coat, even at this moment his Princess would be
+shivering with cold. Furtively he glanced round for his rope and gaff,
+relics of the last time he had gone on the ice. All these years he had
+kept them ready for "the day," never able to break the spell woven
+around them on the ill-fated Manxman. There was his nonny-bag, in it
+already the sugar and oatmeal, the ration of pork, and the small
+bottle of brandy, that each year he kept ready when the 10th of March
+came round--the day on which the sealers leave for the ice fields. The
+new idea that his life was of value for the child's sake sent a
+half-guilty feeling through him, lest he be caught looking at these
+implements, where they lay with his old converted flintlock gun on the
+rack above the still glowing stove. Sh! The child on the settle
+muttered something in her sleep, and the old man, rigid as an ice
+block, stood listening to her breathing, as if he were a burglar
+robbing a rich man's bedroom, in which the owner himself lay sleeping.
+But she quieted down again, and once more he breathed freely.
+
+At last he was ready, all but the big coat. Well, he could do without
+that. If he were not back before dark the difference it would make
+would anyhow be negligible. There was no time to delay. He must go now
+or never; and the indomitable old warrior stooped over to kiss the
+child good-bye, though he dare only touch with his lips the golden
+hair, for fear of waking her. Then in his simple way he breathed a
+wordless prayer, committing her to God's keeping, and, stealthily
+letting himself out, made straight for the likeliest part of the
+headland from which to take the ice.
+
+As one thinks now of that old man setting out alone over that endless
+ocean of ice, one wonders if one has one's self ever attempted
+anything heroic. But Uncle Rube thought only of one thing that
+morning--of foiling his arch enemy on the Red Island Shoals; and
+though nearly fourscore years had passed over him, he felt like a lad
+of twenty as he strode rapidly along towards the landwash.
+
+Of course he must haul his boat, but that he could easily do. Had he
+not built her himself expressly, small, and of half-inch planking over
+the lightest of frames, with two bilge streaks to act as runners, and
+flat-bottomed that she should drag well over snow? When at length he
+had launched her over the "ballicater" ice, and had pulled her clear
+of the cracks by the landwash, he stopped and spent a grudgingly
+spared moment in lighting his pipe. Then, heigho, and away for the
+open sea--out on to which he marched with his head erect and his old
+heart dauntless, like the peaceful Minute-Men of 1776.
+
+Meanwhile an ever-increasing crowd of men, women, and even children
+were pouring from apparently nowhere out on to the floe. The young men
+were "copying," as we say, over the ice, that is, jumping from pan to
+pan as they ventured far out from the land seeking the seals which the
+running ice, driving out before the wind, had brought down from the
+Gulf, and then killing them, and hauling them back into safety.
+
+It was from them that I subsequently learned the story of the day.
+Before night fell the wind had risen, and blew directly from the land.
+Snow began to fall soon after midday, and by sundown a living blizzard
+howled over the frozen ocean. None of the distant neighbors had seen
+Uncle Rube set out; none of them even knew that he had left his
+house; no one before ever heard of his doing such a thing as start
+out on the ice alone. Nor was it till the next day that a half-frozen
+little girl, who was heard crying in the snow in front of a neighbor's
+house, disclosed the secret that Uncle Rube was missing.
+
+How had they known at all that there were seals on the ice that day?
+Known? Why, Mark Seaforth had gone all along the coast telling them
+early in the morning. He had got the news from the lighthouse, and it
+was the oldest of customs to give all hands a chance whenever the
+seals were sighted driving alongshore.
+
+It had not been the material ear drum to which the old man had
+listened for his sailing orders. On that day especially he had heard
+with other ears, and all the coast freed Mark from any blame for the
+old sailor's having understood "ships" instead of "seals."
+
+Late in the sealing season of that same year the good ship Artemis, a
+stout, steel-sheathed ice hunter, a unit of the modern fleet that have
+long ago displaced the wooden schooners that once in hundreds followed
+the seal herds, was steaming north to finish up shooting old harps in
+the swatches, having lost a number of her pans in bad weather farther
+south. Seals were scarce on the west side, and the wireless had warned
+the skipper that a patch of old seals was passing eastward through the
+Straits. Cape Bauld Light had been sighted, and so also had the new
+light on Belle Isle. The barrelmen were eagerly scanning the ice for
+any signs of the expected herd.
+
+"Something black on the ice on the port bow!" shouted the man from the
+foretop.
+
+"Where away?" answered the master of the bridge.
+
+"About four points to the northwest."
+
+"Hard astarboard!" from the bridge.
+
+"Starboard hard!" from the wheel, and the big ship wheeled a course
+direct for the Red Island Shoals.
+
+"Steady!" from the bridge.
+
+"Steady it is!" And the Artemis wheeled a little more, and leaving the
+shoals on her right, steamed towards the object that had attracted the
+attention of the watch. The bridge master, viewing it through his
+glasses, suddenly stopped short, fixing his gaze on the spot with far
+more than his wonted intensity.
+
+"What is it, John?" he said to the watchman. "Seems queer to me. It's
+no seal, I'll swear."
+
+John took the glasses, and, putting them to his eyes, made out at once
+what the object was.
+
+"'T is a small boat upside down--and yes, there's a man's body for
+certain, stretched out beside it," he announced in a subdued voice.
+
+"Go slow!" to the engine man.
+
+"Slow!" rang back the watchful engineer.
+
+"Stop her!" and over the side went half a dozen men.
+
+"Take that hatch over, and bring in the man off the ice."
+
+All the crew, some three hundred blackened figures, were now leaning
+over the rail to see the evidence of this latest tragedy. No one knew
+him, or could even guess where he and his boat had come from, or on
+what strange quest he had been bound. Those ice pans might have come
+from anywhere along the hundreds of miles between Anticosti and Cape
+Chidley. To these men, it was just the body of an old man, a stranger.
+Not much loss. He could not have lived many more years, anyhow.
+Probably no one would miss him. No need to trouble over it. A prompt
+burial at sea, thought the captain, would be as good as on the land,
+where a grave was an impossibility now, anyhow. Besides, he was
+obviously an old seaman, and what could be more appropriate? Moreover,
+the crew would rather have it so than to carry the corpse around while
+they were seal-hunting.
+
+There was no parson aboard, but the skipper was a God-fearing man. So
+the flags were hauled to half-mast, the ship hove to the wind, the
+crew called on deck just as they were, and when the skipper had read a
+brief prayer, "in sure and certain hope" the body of Uncle Reuben
+Marston, vanquished by his enemy at last, was committed to the deep
+within a biscuit toss of the Red Island Shoals.
+
+
+THE END
+
+The Riverside Press
+CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
+U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Labrador Days, by Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
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