Left on Labrador

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"Thought it was a low ledge," said the old man. "I see 'twan't a
moment after. I take that to be a sea-sarpent, sur."

As the object was certainly twenty feet long, and not more than a foot
and a half in diameter, Trull's supposition had the benefit of outside
resemblance. The captain seized one of the pike-poles, and made a jab
at it; but the schooner, under full headway, had passed it too far.

"Get a musket!" shouted Kit.

We all made a rush down stairs for the gun-rack. Only three were
loaded. Catching up one of these, I ran up.

"Off astern there!" cried Weymouth.

We were already fifty yards away; but, getting a glimpse of it, I
fired. There was no movement.

"Missed him!" exclaimed Wade. "I'll bore him!"

He fired. Still there was no apparent motion.

"Miss number two," said I.

Kit then took a careful aim, and banged away. The creature didn't
stir.

"Number three," laughed Wade.

"That fish must either bear a charmed life, or else it's ball-proof!"
Kit exclaimed.

Meanwhile "The Curlew" was being brought round. The captain was
getting interested. Raed brought up one of our long cod-lines with the
grapnel on it,--the same contrivance with which old Trull had drawn in
the boat some days before; and, on getting back within twenty yards,
he threw it off. It struck into the water beyond, and, on being drawn
in, played over the back of the leathern object till one of the hooks
caught fast. Still there was no movement.

"There can't be any life in it," said Wade.

Raed pulled in slowly, the captain assisting him, till they had drawn
it up under the bows. It certainly looked as much like a sea-serpent
as any thing yet. A strong line, with another grapple, was then let
down, and hooked into it with a jerk. Donovan and Hobbs tugged away at
it; one foot--two feet--three feet.

"Humph!" exclaimed the captain. "One of those Husky _kayaks_!"

Four feet--five feet--six feet. Something rose with it, dripping
underneath.

"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Raed, turning away.

"There's an Esquimaux in it, hanging head down!" cried Kit.

The sailors crowded round. It was a ghastly sight. The legs of the
corpse were still fast inside the little hoop around the hole in the
deck in which the man had sat. His arms hung down limp and dripping.
His long black hair streamed with water. He might have been floating
there head down for a week.

"Wal, I shouldn't s'pose the darn'd fool need to have expected any
thing else!" exclaimed Corliss. "To go to sea with his feet fast in
such a little skite of a craft as that! Might ha' known the darned
thing 'ud 'a' capsized an' drownded him."

"What shall we do with _it_?" I asked. "We might sink it with three or
four of those six-pound shot, I suppose."

"No, no!" exclaimed Wade. "We can't afford six-pound shots to bury the
heathen: it's as much as we can do to get enough to kill them with."

"Oh, don't, Wade!" said Raed. "It's a sad sight at best."

"Of course it is. But then we've only got seventeen balls left, and no
knowing how many battles to fight."

This last argument was a clincher.

"Let go!" ordered the captain.

Don and Hobbs shook the line violently, but couldn't tear out the
grapple from the tough seal-skin.

"Well, let go line and all, then!" cried the captain.

With a dull plash the _kayak_ fell back into the sea; and we all
turned away.

At midnight the ice-patches were thickening rapidly; and by two
o'clock all sail had to be taken in, the bumps had grown so frequent
and heavy. On the port side lay a large ice-floe of many acres extent.
The schooner gradually drifted up to it. Raed and Kit had gone on
deck.

"I think we may as well make fast to it," I heard the captain say;
and, a moment later, the order was given to get out the ice-anchors.

Wade and I then went up. "The Curlew" lay broadside against the floe.
The wind, with a current caused perhaps by the tide, held us up to it
so forcibly, that the vessel careened slightly. Weymouth and Hobbs
were getting down on to the ice with the ice-chisels in their hands,
and, going off twenty or thirty yards, began to cut holes. The
ice-anchors were then thrown over on to the floe. To each of them was
bent one of our two-and-a-half-inch hawsers. The anchors themselves
were, as will probably be remembered, simply large, strong grapnels.
Dragging them along to the holes, they were hooked into the ice, and
the hawsers drawn in tight from deck. Planks, secured to the rail by
lines, were then run down to bear the chafe. This was our process of
anchoring to ice. Sometimes three or four grapnels were used when the
tendency to swing off was greater. To-night there was so much floating
ice all about, that the swell was almost entirely broken, and the
schooner lay as quiet as if in a country lake. A watch was set, and we
turned in again.

Breakfast at six. Fog thick and flat on the ice. The breeze in the
night, blowing against the schooner, had turned the ice-field
completely round. Occasionally a cake of ice would bump up against us.
We could hear them grinding together all about; yet the wind was
light, otherwise we might have had heavier thumps. About seven o'clock
we heard a splashing out along the floe.

"Seals!" remarked the captain.

"Bet you, I'll have one of those fellows!" exclaimed Donovan, catching
up a pike-pole, and dropping over the rail.

"Can he get near enough to kill them with a pole, suppose?" Wade
queried.

"That's the way the sealers kill them," replied the captain. "Send
the men out on the ice with nothing but clubs and knives. The seals
can't move very fast: nothing but their flippers to help themselves
with. The men run along the edges of the ice, and get between them and
the water. The seals make for the water; and the men knock them on the
heads with clubs, and then butcher them."

"It's a horribly bloody business, I should think," said Raed.

"Well, not so bad as a Brighton slaughter-pen, quite," rejoined the
captain. "But I never much admired it, I must confess."

Just then Donovan came racing out of the fog, and, jumping for the
rail, drew his legs up as if he believed them in great peril.

"What ails you?" Kit cried out. "What are you running from?"

"Oh! nothing--much," replied Donovan, panting. "Met--a--bear out here:
that's all."

"Met a bear!" exclaimed Raed.

"Yes. I was going along, trying to get by some of the seals. All at
once I was face to face with a mighty great chap, on the same business
with myself, I suppose. Thought I wouldn't wait. He looked pretty big.
I'd nothing but the pole, you know."

"We must have him!" exclaimed Wade.

"Best way will be to let down the boat, and work round the floe to
prevent his taking to the water," advised the captain. "They will swim
like ducks three or four miles at a time."

While the boat was being let down, Kit and I ran to load the muskets.

"I'm going to put the bayonets on our two," said Kit. "They'll be
handy if we should come to close quarters with him."

Raed and Wade, with the captain, were getting ready to go out on the
ice. Weymouth and Hobbs were already in the boat. Kit and I followed.

"Now be very careful about firing in this fog," the captain called
after us. "We are going off to the right, round the edge of the floe
on that side. You keep off on the left to see that he don't escape
that way. Head him up toward the schooner if you can; but look out how
you shoot."

Old Trull and Corliss, each with a gun, had been stationed at the rail
to shoot the bear from the deck if he should come out in sight.

Thus arranged, we pulled away, veering in and out among the
ice-patches, and keeping about twenty yards from the floe. We could
just see the edge of it rising a few feet from the water.

"Guess the bear run from Don after all his fright," said Weymouth
when we had gone a hundred yards or more.

He was not on our side, we felt pretty sure; and, a few minutes later,
Guard barked, and we heard the captain shouting from across the field.

"Here he is over here!" And a moment after, "Gone over towards your
side! Look out for him!"

We _looked out_ as sharply as we could for fog: nevertheless, the
first notice we got of his arrival in our vicinity was a splash into
the water several rods farther on.

"Give way sharp," shouted Kit, "or we shall lose him!"

The boat leaped under the strong stroke; and, a moment after, we saw
the bear climbing out on to a cake, which tipped up as he got on to
it.

"Give him your shot, Wash!" Kit exclaimed.

We were not more than fifty feet away. I aimed for his head, and let
go. The bullet clipped one of his ears merely, and he turned round
with a dreadfully savage growl. Of course it was a bad shot; but some
allowance must be made for the rocking of the boat. As he turned to
us, the ice-cake tipped and rolled under him, nearly throwing him off;
at which he growled and _barked out_ all the louder. Kit hesitated to
fire.

"He might make a break, and get his paws on to the boat before we
could back off, if you shouldn't kill him," said Hobbs.

"Load as quick as you can, Wash," Kit said. "I'll wait till we have a
reserve shot."

Meanwhile we heard voices coming out on the floe. Guard began to bark
again, and came jumping from cake to cake out within a few rods of the
bear, and rather between us and him.

"Be ready, now," said Kit; when some one of the party on the floe
fired on a sudden.

Instantly the bear jumped for the dog; and the dog, turning, leaped
for a little cake between him and the boat. The bear splashed through,
and gained the cake Guard had stood on.

Crack--crack! from the floe.

The bear growled frightfully as he felt the bullets, and plunged after
the dog. We both fired as he went down into the water. Guard's paws
were already on the gunwale, when the bear rose, head and paws, and
swept the dog down with him, _souse_! A howl and a growl mingled. The
water was streaked red with the bear's blood. The captain and Wade and
Donovan came leaping out from one fragment to another. Up popped the
dog's black head. Something bumped the bottom of the boat
simultaneously. The bear had come up under us, and floated out on the
port side, a great mass of dripping, struggling white hair. Everybody
was shouting now. Wade fired. Bits of blazing cartridge-paper flew
into our faces. Kit and I thrust wildly with our bayonets; but the
poor beast had already ceased all offensive warfare. He was dead
enough. But who had killed him it was hard saying. No less than seven
bullets had been fired into him from "a standard weapon," as Wade
calls our muskets. We towed the carcass up to the edge of the floe,
and pulled it up. The captain estimated its gross weight to be from
four hundred and fifty to five hundred pounds. This was the largest
one we had killed. Donovan and Weymouth and Hobbs were occupied the
rest of the forenoon skinning it.

It being a favorable opportunity, we improved it to make soundings.
From where we lay moored to the floe, the nearest island was about
three leagues to the east, and the northern main from ten to twelve
miles. For sounding we had a twenty-four-pound iron weight, with a
staple leaded into it for the line. Dropping it out of the stern, we
ran out a hundred and seventy-three fathoms before it slacked. The
depth of the strait at that place was given at ten hundred and
thirty-eight feet. I should add, that this was considerably deeper
than we had found it below that point.

CHAPTER XI.

"Isle Aktok."--A Sea-Horse and a Sea-Horse Hunt.--In High
Spirits.--Sudden Interruption of the Hunt.--A Heavy Gun.--The
Race to the Ledge-Tops.--Too Late.--A Disheartening
Spectacle.--Surprised by the Company's Ship.--The Schooner in
Peril.--Capt. Hazard bravely waits.--The Flight of "The
Curlew" amid a Shower of Balls.--The Chase.--Left on the
Islet.--A Gloomy Prospect.--"What shall we have for Grub to
_ate_?"--Wild-Geese.--Egging.--"_Boom!_"--A Sea-Horse Fire.

Toward night the wind changed to north, and thinned out the patch-ice,
driving it southward, so that by ten o'clock, evening, we were able to
get in our ice-anchors and make sail, continuing our voyage, and
making about four knots an hour till nine o'clock next morning, when
we were off a small island, the first of a straggling group on the
south side of the strait. South-east of this islet was another large
island, which we at first mistook for the south main, but, after
comparing the chart, concluded that it was "Isle Aktok." To the north
the mainland, with its fringe of ledgy isles, was in sight, distant
not far from thirteen leagues. We had been bearing southward
considerably all night, falling off from the wind, which was
north-west. We were now, as nearly as we could reckon it up, a hundred
and nineteen leagues inside the entrance of the straits at Cape
Resolution. Raed and I were below making a sort of map of the
straits, looking over the charts, etc., when Kit came running down.

"There's a sea-horse off here on the island!" said he.

"A sea-horse!" exclaimed Raed.

"A walrus!" I cried; for we had not, thus far, got sight of one of
these creatures, though we had expected to find them in numbers
throughout the straits. But, so far as our observation goes, they are
very rare there.

Taking our glasses, we ran hastily up. Wade was looking off.

"Out there where the ice is jammed in against this lower end of the
island," directed Kit.

The distance was about a mile.

"Don't you see that great black _bunch_ lying among the ice there?"
continued he. "See his white tusks!"

Bringing our keen little telescopes to bear, we soon had him _up under
our noses_,--a great, dark-hided, clumsy beast, with a hideous
countenance and white tusks; not so big as an elephant's, to be sure,
but big enough to give their possessor a very formidable appearance.

"Seems to be taking his ease there," said Wade. "Same creature that
the old writers call a _morse_, isn't it?"

"I believe so," replied Raed.

"Wonder if our proper name, _Morse_, is from that?" said I.

"Shouldn't wonder," said Kit. "Many of our best family names are from
a humbler origin than that. But we must improve this chance to hunt
that old chap: may not get another. And it won't do, nohow, to come
clean up here to Hudson Bay and not go sea-horse-hunting once."

"Right, my boy!" cried Raed. "Captain, we want to go on a walrus-hunt.
Can the schooner be brought round, and the boat manned for that
purpose?"

"Certainly, sir. 'The Curlew' is at your service, as also her boat."

"Then let me invite you to participate in the exercise," said Raed,
laughing.

"Nothing would suit me better. But as the wind is fresh, and the
schooner liable to drift, I doubt if it will be prudent for me to
leave her so long. You have my best wishes for your success, however.
I shall watch the chase with interest through my glass; and, better
still, I will see that Palmleaf has dinner ready at your
return.--Here, Weymouth and Donovan, let down the boat, and row these
youthful huntsmen to yonder ice-bound shore!"

Ah! if we had foreseen the results of that hunt, we should scarcely
have been so jocose, I fancy. Well, coming events are wisely hidden
from us, they say; but, by jolly! a fellow could afford to pay well
for a glimpse at the future once in a while.

Each of us boys took a musket and eight or ten cartridges. I'm not
likely to forget what we took with us, in a hurry.

"We'll put the bayonets on, I guess," Kit remarked. "It's a big lump
of a beast. These are just the things for giving long-range stabs
with."

"Don't forget the caps!" cried Raed, already half way up the
companion-way.

The wind was rather raw that morning: we put on our thick pea-jackets.
Weymouth and Don were already down in the boat, which they had brought
alongside.

"Here, Don, stick that in your waistband!" exclaimed Kit, who had come
up last, tossing him one of our new butcher-knives.

"All right, sir!"

"Wish you would give me a musket," said Weymouth.

"You shall have one!" cried Wade, running back for it.

"Come, Guard!" shouted Kit. "Here, sir!" and the shaggy Newfoundland
came bouncing down into the boat.

We got in and pulled off.

"Make for that little cove up above the ice where the sea-horse lies,"
directed Raed. "We'll land there, and then creep over the rocks
toward him."

Kit caught up the extra paddle, and began to scull. We shot over the
waves; we joked and laughed. Somehow, we were all as merry as grigs
that morning.

Running into the cove, the boat was pulled up from the water, and
securely fastened. Up at this end of the straits the tide did not rise
nearly so high,--not more than eight or ten feet during the springs.

"Now whisht!" said Raed, taking up his musket. "Back, Guard! Still, or
we shall frighten the old gentleman!"

"He was lying there all sedate when we slid into the cove," said Kit.
"Asleep, I guess."

"We'll wake him shortly," said Wade. "But you say they are a large
species of seal. Won't he take to the water, and stay under any length
of time?"

"That's it, exactly," replied Kit. "We mustn't let him take to the
water--before we riddle him."

"But they're said to have a precious tough hide," said I. "Perhaps we
can't riddle so easy."

"Should like to see anything in the shape of hide that one of these
rifle slugs won't go through," replied Kit.

"Sh-h-h!" from Raed, holding back a warning hand: he was a little
ahead of us. "Creep up still! Peep by me! See him! By Jove! he's
wiggling off the ice! Jump up and shoot him!"

We sprang up, cocking our muskets, just in time to get a glimpse and
hear the great seal splash heavily into the sea. Wade and Kit fired as
the waters buried him; Guard rushed past, and Donovan bounded down the
rocks, butcher-knife in hand.

"Too late!" exclaimed Raed.

We ran down to the spot. The water went off deep from the ice on which
it had lain. It was nowhere in sight. Dirt and gravel had been
scattered out on to the ice, and its ordure lay about. Evidently this
was one of its permanent sunning-places.

"Get back among the rocks, and watch for him!" exclaimed Kit. "Only
thing we can do now."

"I suppose so," said Raed.

We secreted ourselves a little back from the water behind different
rocks and in little hollows, and, with guns rested ready to fire,
waited for the re-appearance of the big seal. Five, ten, fifteen
minutes passed; but he didn't re-appear much.

"I say," Wade whispered: "this is getting a little played!"

We were all beginning to think so, when a horrible noise--a sound as
much like the sudden bellow of a mad bull as anything I can compare it
with--resounded from the other side of the island.

"What, for Heaven's sake, is that?" Kit exclaimed.

"Must be another of these sea-horses calling to the one over here,"
said Raed, after listening a moment.

"Let's work round there, then," I said.

The noise seemed to have been four or five hundred yards off. Keeping
the dog behind us, we hurried round by the east shore to avoid
climbing the higher ledges, which rose sixty or seventy feet along the
middle of the islet. These bare, flinty ledges, when not encumbered by
bowlders, are grand things to run on. One can get over them at an
astonishing pace. Once, as we ran on, we heard the bellow repeated,
and, on coming within twenty or thirty rods of where it had seemed to
be, stopped to reconnoitre.

"Bet you, he's right under that high ledge that juts out over the
water there," said Kit.

"Wait a moment," whispered Wade: "we may hear him again." And, in
fact, before his words were well out, the same deep, harsh sound
grumbled up from the shore.

"Under that ledge, as I guessed!" exclaimed Kit.

"Sounds like an enormous bull-frog intensified," Raed muttered.

We crept down toward the brink of the ledge, Kit and Wade a little
ahead. Arriving at the crest, they peered over cautiously, and with
muskets cocked.

"Here he is!" Kit whispered back of his hand.

We stole up. There, on a little bunch of ice not yet thawed off the
shore, lay the unsuspecting monster,--a great brown-black, unwieldy
body. There is no living creature to which I can easily compare it. I
should judge it would have weighed a ton,--more perhaps; for it was
immensely thick and broad: though the head struck me as very small for
its bulk otherwise.

"Now, all together!" whispered Raed. "Aim at its body above and back
of its forward flippers. Ready! Fire!"

We let drive. The great creature gave a hoarse grunt, and, raising
itself on its finlike legs, floundered over into the sea.

"Round the ledge!" shouted Kit. "He won't get far, I don't believe!"

Guard was tearing down, barking loudly; and we had started to run,
when, above the shouting and barking, the sudden boom of a cannon was
heard.

"Hark!" cried Weymouth.

"Hold on, hold on, fellows!" Raed exclaimed.

"Wasn't that our howitzer?" Donovan asked. "Sounded like it."

"It's the cap'n firing, for a joke, to let us know he heard us,"
Weymouth suggested.

"Oh! he wouldn't do that," replied Raed.

"Of course he wouldn't!" exclaimed Donovan. "He ain't that sort of a
man!"

"That's a summons!" said Wade, coming hurriedly back up the rocks; for
he and Kit were a little ahead. "Put for the top of the ledges up
here! We can see from there!"

We had got twenty yards, perhaps, when a second loud report made the
rocks rattle to it.

"There's trouble!" exclaimed Wade at my heels, as we climbed up the
steep side.

An undefinable fear had blanched all our faces. Scarcely had the
echoes of the gun died out among the crags when another heavier report
made the islet jar under our feet.

"Oh, there!" exclaimed Raed despairingly.

Donovan was a step ahead; but Kit and I sprang past him now. Another
shelving incline of forty or fifty yards, and the blue sea burst into
view over the rocks. My eyes burned in their sockets from the violent
exertion. At first I saw only "The Curlew" with her great white sails
both broadside to us, and our bright gay flag streaming out. A glance
showed that she had been brought round, and that the sails were
flapping wildly. A jet of flame streamed out from her side; and, like
a warning-call, the sharp report crashed on our ears, infinitely
louder now we had gained the top. All this in a second.

"Why! what is it?" I exclaimed. Turning, I saw them all staring off to
the west.

Heavens! there, under full sail, was a large ship not two miles off!
How like the shadow of doom she loomed up! and how suddenly white the
faces of Kit and Wade just beyond me looked! We had thought we were on
the lookout for this very thing; and yet it seemed to us now a
complete surprise. We were stunned.

_Bang!_ A heavy cannon; and the water flew up in a long white streak
far past "The Curlew" as the big shot went driving by. The ship was
within a mile and a half of her, and we here on the islet
three-fourths of a mile away! Yet there stood "The Curlew" motionless
on the waves; and there stood Capt. Mazard, waving his hat for us, his
glass glittering in his other hand.

"To the boat!" yelled Weymouth, leaping down the rocks. "He wouldn't
go without us!"

"Stop!" shouted Raed. "It's no use! Don't you see how the ship's
closing in?"

Then, catching off his cap, he waved it slowly toward the east. We saw
the captain's glass go up to his eye. Again Raed motioned him to go.

_Bang!_ A higher shot. It strikes a quarter of a mile ahead of the
schooner, and goes skipping on. But the captain is still looking off
to us, as if loath to desert us. A third time Raed waves his cap. He
turns. Round go the booms. "The Curlew" starts off with a bound. The
flag streams out wildly in the strong north-west wind.

_Bang!_ That ball hits the sea a long way ahead of its mark. Even in
these brief seconds the great shadowy ship has come perceptibly
nearer. How she bowls along! We can see the white mass of foam at the
bows as she rides up the swells.

A queer, lost feeling had come over me. In an instant it all seemed to
have gone on at a far-past date. Looking back to that time now, I see,
as in a picture, our forlorn little party standing there on the black,
weathered ledges, gazing off,--Weymouth half a dozen rods down the
rocks, where he had stopped when Raed called to him; Donovan a few
rods to the right, shading his eyes with his hand; Raed with his arms
folded tightly; Kit staring hard at the ship; Wade dancing about,
swearing a little, with the tears coming into his eyes; myself leaning
weakly on a musket, limp as a shoe-string; and poor old Guard whining
dismally, with an occasional howl,--all gazing off at the
rapidly-moving vessels.

"It was no use," Raed said, his voice seeming to break the spell. "We
couldn't have got off to the schooner. See how swiftly the ship comes
on! If the captain had waited for us to pull off, or even started up
and let us go off diagonally, the ship would have come so near, that
there would have been no escaping her guns. I don't know as there is
now. If any of those shot should strike the masts, or tear through the
sails, there would be no getting away.

"I want you to look at it just as I do," Raed continued; for we none
of us had said a word. "If we had tried to get on board, 'The Curlew'
would certainly have been captured, and we with her. Now she stands a
chance of getting off."

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