Left on Labrador

C >> Charles Asbury Stephens >> Left on Labrador

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_Bang!_ What a tremendous gun! The large ship was getting off
opposite. The report made the ledge tremble under us.

"Hadn't we better get out of sight?" Donovan said. "They may see us,
and send a boat over here."

"No danger of that, I think," replied Raed. "They want to run the
schooner down, and wouldn't care to leave their boat so far behind.
This strong north-west wind favors them. Still I don't think they are
gaining much. They're not going over ten or eleven knots. 'The Curlew'
will beat that, I hope,--if none of those big shots hit her," taking
out his glass. "How beautiful she looks!"

"But, Raed," remarked Kit soberly, "they will chase her clean out the
straits into the Atlantic, even if they do not capture her."

"They may."

"And she'll be rather short-handed for men," observed Donovan.

"That's too true."

"Then what are the chances of her getting back here for us?" cried
Wade.

_Bang!_ from the great white mass of bulging canvas now fairly
opposite us. The smoke drifted out of her bows. We could hear the
rattle of her blocks, the swash of the sea, and the roar of sails;
and, quite distinct on the fresh breeze, the gruff commands to reload.

"Capt. Mazard won't leave us here if he lives and has his liberty,"
said Raed.

"Oh, he'll come back if he can!" exclaimed Donovan. "He's true blue!"

"But what if he can't," Kit observed quietly. "What a situation for
us! Here we are a thousand miles from a civilized town or a civilized
people, and in a worse than trackless wilderness! The season, too, is
passing. The straits will soon be closed with ice."

"Only think of it!" Wade cried out,--"here on this frozen coast, with
winter coming on! In a month it will be severe weather here. We've
nothing but our cloth clothing!"

Wade turned away; and for many minutes we were all silent.

_Bang!_

"Come, fellows!" Raed exclaimed at length. "This won't do! Wade has
got the gloomiest side out! Come, rally from this! See, they're not
gaining on the schooner! Look how she's bowling away! They haven't hit
her yet. Kit! Wash! I say, fellows, it looks a little bad, I own. But
never say die; or, if you must die,--why, die game. That's the
doctrine you are always preaching, Kit. Isn't it, now? Tell me!"

"But to be frozen or starved to death among these desolate ledges!"
muttered Kit.

"Is not a cheery prospect, I'll admit," Raed finished for him. "Rather
trying to a fellow's philosophy, isn't it?"

_Bang!_

"She isn't hit yet," remarked Donovan, who had taken Raed's glass.
"She slides on gay as a cricket. I can see the cap'n throwing water
with the skeet against the sails to make 'em draw better."

"How, for Heaven's sake, did that ship come to get up so near before
they saw her?" Kit exclaimed suddenly.

We looked off to the west. The dozen straggling islets beyond us
extended off in irregular order toward the north-west.

"I think," said Raed, "that the ship must have come up a little to the
south of those outer islands. Our folks could not have seen her, then,
till she came past."

"I don't call that the same ship that fired on us a week ago,"
Weymouth remarked.

"Oh, no!" said Kit. "That ship, 'The Rosamond,' can't more than have
reached the nearest of the Company's trading-posts by this time."

"She probably spoke this ship coming out, and told them to be on the
lookout for us," said Raed.

"Old Red-face doubtless charged them to give us particular fits," Kit
replied.

"And they've got us in a tight place, no mistake," Wade remarked
gloomily. "We're rusticated up here among the icebergs; sequestered in
a cool spot."

_Bang!_

"Gracious! I believe that one hit 'The Curlew'!" Donovan exclaimed.
"The captain and old Trull--I believe it's Trull--ran aft, and are
looking over the taffrail!"

Kit pulled out his glass and looked. I had not taken mine, nor had
Wade. The schooner was now three or four miles down the straits, and
the ship was a good way past us.

"No great harm done, I guess," Kit said at length. "The captain ran
down into the cabin, but came up a few moments after; and they are
standing about the deck as before."

"As long as they miss the standing rigging, and don't hit the sails,
there's no danger," Raed observed.

"That ship is a mighty fast sailer," Weymouth said.

"Ought to be, I should think," Donovan replied. "Look at the sail
she's got on! They've been getting out studding-sails too. This strong
gale drives her along like thunder!"

"I don't see that she gains," Raed remarked. "We shall see 'The
Curlew' back here for us yet."

"Not very soon, I'm afraid," Wade said.

"Well, not to-night, I dare say," replied Raed.

"How long do you set it?" Kit asked, taking down his glass. "Suppose
the captain is lucky enough to get away from them: how long do you
think it will be before he will get back here for us?"

"That, of course, depends on how far they chase him," said Raed.

"They'll chase him just as far as they can," replied Kit. "Why not?
It's right on their way home. They'll chase the schooner clean out the
straits."

"The captain may turn down into Ungava Bay, on the south side of the
straits," Raed replied.

"No, he won't do that," Kit contended. "That bay is full of islands,
and choked with ice; and our charts ar'n't worth the paper they're
made out on."

"Well, if he has to run out into the Atlantic, he may not be back for
ten days."

"Ten days!" exclaimed Wade. "If we see him in a month, we need to
think we're lucky."

_Bang!_

"That's a pleasant sound for us, isn't it, now?" Kit
demanded,--"expecting every shot will lose us the schooner, and leave
us two thousand miles from home on a more than barren coast!"

"I shall look for 'The Curlew' in ten days," Raed remarked. "And I
don't think we had better leave here, to go off any great distance,
till we feel sure she's not coming back for us. If she's not back in
two weeks, I shall think we have got to shirk for ourselves."

"But how in the world are we to live two weeks here!" Wade exclaimed.

"Live by our wits," Kit observed.

"Looks as if we should have to give up coffee," Raed said, trying to
get a laugh going.

"Why, I'm hungry now!" Wade cried out; "but I don't see anything to
eat but ice and rocks!"

"It's half-past eleven," Kit announced, looking at his watch.
"Seriously, what do you expect we can get hold of for grub, Raed?"

"Well, seals."

"Seals!" exclaimed Wade; "the oily, nasty trash!"

"Hunger may bring you to sing a different tune," Kit muttered. "I'm
not sure that a seal's flipper might not be acceptable by to-morrow
morning."

"There are plenty of kittiwakes and lumne and eiderducks about these
islets," I suggested. "We can shoot some of them."

"And we can fish!" Weymouth exclaimed.

"Where's your hooks?" said Kit.

That question floored the fishing project.

"Well, we've got our muskets," replied Weymouth.

"How many cartridges in all?" Raed asked.

"Let's take account of them. They are like to be precious property."

"I've got eight," said Kit, counting them.

"I have seven," Wade announced.

"Six," said I.

"I took nine," Raed observed.

"You gave me five," reported Weymouth. "I have used one. Here's the
other four."

"Thirty-four in all," said Raed. "Now, boys, these are worth their
weight in gold to us. Not one must be wasted."

"My butcher-knife is like to come into good use." Donovan remarked,
feeling the edge of it.

"Yes; and we've got our jack-knives too," said Kit.

"How about a fire?" Wade asked.

At that there were blank looks for a moment; till, with a queer grin,
Donovan began to fumble in his waistcoat-pocket, and drew out, in
close company with a rounded plug of tobacco, seven or eight grimy
matches.

"Hurrah!" shouted Kit.

"You've allus been dippin' into me pretty strong about smokin'," said
Don, looking around to Raed; "but you can't say that smokin' don't
have its advantages sometimes."

"That's an argument for the weed that we can all appreciate at
present, no mistake," Raed replied. "Don, keep hold of those matches,
and see that they all strike fire, and I'll never preach to you again,
so sure as my name is Warren Raedway."

_Bang!_ A distant _boom_ from the hated ship, now low down on the sea.

"The schooner is almost out of sight," said Kit. "She's a long way
off. Perhaps it's the last time we shall ever set eyes on her pretty
figure!"

"Oh, not so bad as that, I hope!" cried Raed. "Don't go to getting
poetical, Kit. How about dinner? That's of more consequence just now
than poetry. Time enough to make verses on this rather awkward episode
when we're safe in Boston. Make a proposal for dinner, somebody.
Wade's starving."

"What say for the sea-horse!" exclaimed Donovan.

"Yes; how about that walrus?" Kit demanded.

"That sea-horse has got us into a fine scrape," muttered Wade. "It
would have been better if we had left him undisturbed on his island."

"That's neither this nor there, now," said Kit. "Question arises, Can
we eat him? Is it fit to eat? Did ever anybody hear of their being
eaten?"

"The Huskies eat them, I believe," said Raed.

"The Huskies! Well, I mean civilized folks; ship's crews?"

Nobody knew.

"The best way will be to try it for ourselves," remarked Donovan. "But
we don't know that we killed him yet. We didn't stop to find out, you
know."

"Then that is clearly the next thing to do," said Raed. "Let's go
down to the boat, and take that round to the place where we fired at
the second one."

"But how about the birds, the eider-ducks and kittiwakes?" said I. "We
should find them more palatable than sea-horse--to begin with."

"Very well: you and Weymouth might go round the island to the left. It
can't be more than a mile and a half or two miles. But do be prudent
of your cartridges."

_Boom!_

Raed and Kit, with Wade and Donovan, then got into the boat, and
pulled off round the islet to the right; while Weymouth and I,
reloading our muskets, set off on our bird-hunt.

The west end of the island was considerably higher than the eastern
portion. As we went on, we espied scores of little auks sitting upon
the low cliffs.

"No use to waste powder on them," said Weymouth.

"But see there!" suddenly halting. "If those ain't geese, I'm
mistaken,--out there on that gravel-flat, waddling along. Ain't those
geese?"

Wild-geese they were, or, as some call them, Canada geese; nearly as
large as our domestic geese, and of a gray slate-color. They did not
seem to fear our approach much. We walked quietly up to fifty yards.

"I'll take that big gander," I said.

"All right," quoth Weymouth. "I'll take a goose."

We fired at them with a careful aim. Over went the gander and a goose.
The rest flew with loud squallings, save one with a broken wing, which
Weymouth rushed after, and pelted to death with stones.

"A pretty good haul!" he exclaimed, holding them up. "Weigh eight or
ten pounds apiece. But I didn't expect to see wild-geese up here," he
added.

We saw several flocks of them after that.

Half a mile farther round, we came upon a flock of razor-bills perched
on the cliffs overhanging the water. They rose, and went croaking off
toward the next islet, distant about three hundred yards, too quick
for us to fire with caution.

"The sealers often get their eggs," Weymouth observed. "They're good
fried, they say."

It then occurred to me that these eggs might be a very good and
cheaply--as regarded ammunition--obtained article of food for us.
Laying down our guns, we climbed up among the rocks, and spent nearly
an hour searching for their nests. At length Weymouth found one with
three eggs; and, a few moments after, two more. I had some doubt about
the eggs being good so late in the season. There were plenty of empty
nests about, looking as if there had been a brood raised already.
These were doubtless second nests of pairs that had lost their first
nests from the depredations of falcons, ravens, or perhaps foxes. To
settle the point, we broke an egg: it looked sound. Weymouth then
filled his cap with them.

_Boom!_

While climbing down to our muskets, I startled a canvas-backed duck
sitting on a nest of eleven eggs. These I appropriated; and, before
getting round to where we had fired on the sea-horse, Weymouth espied
an eider-duck sitting on a shelf of the shore crags. From her we got
five eggs of a beautiful pale-green color.

"No need of starving here, I should say," Weymouth remarked as we made
our way along the ledges, pretty well laden with muskets, geese, and
our caps full of eggs. "There won't be much bread, to be sure; but
then a fellow can live on eggs and birds, can't he?"

"I hope so, Weymouth. Hard case for us if we can't."

"That's so. But don't you be down in the mouth about this scrape. I
don't believe they'll catch 'The Curlew,' sir. Capt. Mazard will be
back here, I think."

"I hope so."

Truly, I thought to myself, if this young sailor doesn't complain, and
even tries to offer consolation to us who have got him in this
predicament, it isn't for me to look glum about it; though I am bound
to own that some of the most cheerless moments of my life were passed
during the twenty-four hours succeeding the ominous appearance of the
"_Honorable Company's_" ship.

A great shouting and heave-ho-ing told us of our near approach to
where the rest of our party were; and, turning a bend of the crags, we
discovered them all four tugging at a line.

"What are they dragging, I wonder?" Weymouth said to me. "Oh! I see.
It's the sea-horse."

They were trying to pull the walrus up out of the water, where they
had found him floundering about, fatally wounded with the slugs we had
fired through his back. The sea about the rocks was discolored with
his blood, and turbid with the dirt he had torn up. Donovan had
slaughtered him with the butcher-knife; and, with the boat's painter
noosed over the head of the carcass, they were now trying to draw it
up on the ledge. Weymouth and I at once bore a hand; and it took all
six of us, tugging hard, to get it up.

"What a mass of fat and flesh!" Kit exclaimed, puffing.

"I don't believe I could ever stomach it!" Wade groaned.

"We can offer you something better!" exclaimed Weymouth, holding up
the geese. "What think of those fellows? Wild-geese! And look at
these!" holding up his cap. "Nice fresh eggs!--to be had by the dozen!
and nothing to pay, either!"

"Why, fellows, this is a sort of northern paradise!" cried Raed. "But
what sticks me is how to cook those eggs and geese. I never could suck
eggs."

"Just build a fire, and I'll show you how to cook 'em," Weymouth said.

"But what shall we have for fuel?" Kit demanded.

That was a staggerer.

_Boom!_ It seemed as if those far-borne echoes would never die with
the distance. A low, dismal, sullen sound! They gave us queer
sensations. As each came rolling on the sea, our hearts would bound.
Up to that moment, "The Curlew" had not been taken; but perhaps that
shot had struck down her sails.

It was now half-past two. The vessels could hardly be less than twenty
or twenty-five miles off. But there is nothing to absorb or deaden
sound along those straits.

"Yes; where's your fuel?" demanded Wade.

We looked around: plenty of rocks, ice, and water, with a little
coarse dirt, or gravel.

"Might burn the boat," Kit suggested.

"That seems too bad," said Raed. "Besides, how are we to get off the
island here, supposing 'The Curlew' should not come back? or even
suppose she should? She has no other boat."

"And we may want to go off to the other islands," I said.

"Well, if anybody can suggest anything better, I should like to hear
it," replied Kit. "I don't want to burn the boat, I'm sure; but I
can't see anything else that looks inflammable."

Neither could any of us, though we looked all around us very
earnestly; till Donovan suddenly cried out,--

"Why not burn the old sea-horse?"

"Why, that's our victuals!" laughed Kit.

"I know it; but fire comes before victuals, unless you eat 'em raw
like the Huskies."

"Will it burn?" Raed asked.

"Burn? yes. Why, on a sealer, they do all their trying-out the oil
with a fire of seal-refuse. Why shouldn't it burn as well as a
candle?"

"There's our wood-pile, then!" cried Raed, giving the carcass a kick.
"Let's have a fire forthwith. Don, you slash out a hundred-weight or
so."

"Don't cut the hide to pieces," Kit interposed: "we may want that to
make a tent of."

Donovan whipped out his butcher-knife, and, stripping back the tough
skin, cut out a pile of huge slices. Kit, meanwhile, got a piece of
old thwart from the boat, and whittled up a heap of pine slivers. Two
of the fat slices were then slit up into thin strips, and laid on the
slivers. With great caution, Donovan struck a match on his
jacket-sleeve. We all hovered around to keep off the wicked puffings
of the wind. The slivers were lighted; they kindled: the fat meat
began to sizzle; then caught fire from the pine; and soon a ruddy,
spluttering flame was blazing with marvellous fierceness.

"Hurrah!" Kit shouted. "The first fire these grim old ledges have seen
since they cooled their glowing, molten billows into flinty granite!"

CHAPTER XII.

The "Spider."--Fried Eggs.--The "Plates."--"Awful Fresh!"--No
Salt.--Plans for getting Salt from
Sea-Water.--Ice-Water.--Fried Goose.--Plans to escape.--A
Gloomy Night.--Fight with a Walrus.--Another
"_Wood-Pile._"--Wade Sick.--A Peevish Patient and a Fractious
Doctor.--The Manufacture of Salt.

We stood and warmed our hands. It felt comfortable,--decidedly so; for
though the sun was high and bright, yet the north-west wind drove
smartly across the rocks above us. Currents of air fresh from the lair
of icebergs can't be very warm ever. There was plenty of ice all
about.

"Ready to cook those eggs, Weymouth?" Raed exclaimed. "You were going
to furnish spider, kettle, or something of that sort, you know."

"Yes, sir; and all I'll ask is that some of you will be dressing a
couple of those geese while I am gone. I've a mind to dine off goose
to-day."

"Well, that's reasonable," said Donovan. "Go ahead, matey! Bring on
your spider! We'll have the geese ready for it!"

"If you will go with me," Weymouth said, nodding over to where I was
enjoying the fire. "Two may perhaps find what I want sooner than one."

I followed him.

"My idea is," said he, turning when we were off a few rods, "to get a
flat, _hollowing_ stone,--'bout as big over as a milk-pan, say; kind
of hollowed out on the top side, just so grease won't run off it. We
can set that up on small rocks, and let the fire run under. It'll soon
get hot: then grease it, and break the eggs into it just as they do
into a spider. You see?"

I saw it,--a very reasonable project. The only difficulty was to find
such a stone. To do that we separated. Weymouth followed out along
the shore, while I climbed up among the crags. There were plenty of
flat rocks; but to find one sufficiently spider-shaped for our purpose
was not so easy. At length I came upon one--a flake of felspar of a
dull cream-color--hollowed enough on one side to hold a pint or
upwards. But it was heavy: must have weighed fully a hundred pounds. I
called to Weymouth: he was out of hearing. Nothing to do but carry it.
So, after some mustering of my spare muscle, I picked it up, and,
going along to a favorable spot, succeeded in getting down to the
beach with it, whence I toiled along to our camp-fire. Weymouth had
got there a little ahead of me with a flat stone worn smooth by the
waves. It was not so thick as mine, nor so heavy: it was a sort of
dark slate-stone. Forthwith a discussion arose as to the merits of the
two _spiders_; which was finally decided in favor of the one I had
found, from its being the whitest and cleanest-looking. Meanwhile
Donovan had been feeding the fire so profusely, that all hands had
been obliged to get back from it. Animal fat, like this of the walrus,
makes an exceedingly hot flame. Three flat stones were set up
edgewise, and the spider set on them. The flaming meat was then thrust
under it so as to heat the spider. From its thickness, it took some
minutes for it to become heated through; but, in the course of a
quarter of an hour, Kit pronounced it ready. Weymouth cut out a chunk
of walrus-blubber, with which he basted it, the melted fat collecting
in a little puddle at the bottom.

"Now for the eggs!" he exclaimed.

Raed handed them to him, one by one; while he broke them on the edge
of the butcher-knife, and dropped a half-dozen into the novel
frying-pan.

"Better be getting your plates ready!" he shouted, turning them over
with the knife to the tune of a mighty frizzling.

We all took the hint, and scattered to find flat stones for platters.
'Twas a singular assortment of kitchenware that we re-appeared with a
few minutes later. Taking up the fried eggs with his knife, Weymouth
tossed us each one, which we caught on our _plates_. Another batch was
then broke into the spider, fried, and distributed like the first.

"Now then!" cried Kit. "Draw jack-knives, and dine!"

Several mouthfuls were eaten in silence.

"What think of 'em?" Weymouth asked, casting a sly glance around. "How
do they go?"

"Rather oily!" grumbled Wade.

"Awful fresh!" Kit complained.

"Not a dust of salt in this camp!" Raed exclaimed.

"We never can live without any salt," said I. "Nothing will relish so
fresh as these eggs."

"But where's your salt coming from?" Kit demanded.

"Plenty of it in the sea," said Donovan. "Might boil down some of the
salt water."

"If we only had a kettle to boil it in," Raed added.

"Well, there's the old tin dipper in the boat that we used to bail out
the rain-water with," replied Don. "We could keep that boiling. Might
boil away six or seven quarts by morning. That would give quite a
pinch of salt."

"That's the idea!" said Kit. "Let's get it going as soon as we can.
Wash it out, and dip it up two-thirds full of water, Don. I'll fix a
way to set it over the fire."

Meanwhile Weymouth was frying another dozen of eggs.

"I think I can suggest a better way of evaporating the sea-water,"
remarked Raed as Donovan came up with the two-quart dipper of water.
"You see that little hollow in the ledge just the other side of the
fire: that will hold several pailfuls, probably. The fire on the rocks
must make that warm: you see if it isn't, Wash."

I was on that side. The ledge for several yards from the blaze was
beginning to get warmed up.

"We might brush that out clean," Raed continued, "and fill it with
water. It will evaporate fast there, and leave its salt on the bottom
of the hollow. We can move the fire along a little nearer to make the
rocks hotter. I'm not sure that we could not make the water boil in
there."

The place was brushed, and a dozen bumperfuls turned into the hollow,
where it soon began to steam.

"That'll do it!" exclaimed Kit. "Never mind: we shall have salt by
to-morrow!"

After eating the eggs, one of the geese, which Donovan and Raed had
dressed, was cut up raw, and fried on the spider. We had sharpened
appetites; and, had the morsels been flavored with salt, it would not
have tasted bad. Wade tried dipping his in the bumper of
sea-water,--with no great satisfaction to his palate, I inferred; for
he did not repeat the experiment.

"How about drink?" Kit observed at length. "I don't suppose there's a
spring on the island. I'm getting thirsty. What's to be done for
water?"

"Have to melt ice," Raed replied. "There's ice along the shore, among
the rocks."

Kit started off, and presently came back with a large lump. Bits of it
were broken off and put in the bumper, and held over the fire. The
water thus obtained and cooled with ice was not salt exactly. Still it
was not, as has sometimes been affirmed, pure fresh water, by any
means: it had a brackish taste.

The weather, which had been clear during the day thus far, began to
foul toward evening. It was now after six. The wind had veered to the
south-west. Wild, straggling fogs, with black clouds higher up, were
running into the north-east. Damp, cold gusts blew in from the water.

"We shall have a chilly night," Wade said, shivering a little. "Rain
and sleet before morning, likely as not."

We set about preparing for it. A little back from the fire a wall of
rough stones was hastily thrown up to the height of three feet or
over, and continued for ten or twelve feet, with both ends brought
round toward the fire. We then got the boat up out of the water, and,
by hard lifting, raised it bottom-up, and laid it on our semicircular
wall. It thus formed a kind of shed large enough to creep under. But,
not satisfied with this, Donovan fell to work with his butcher-knife,
and, in the course of an hour, had cleaved the skin off both sides of
the walrus down to where it rested on the rock. Then, using the hafts
of the oars as levers, we rolled the carcass on one side. The hide was
then skinned off underneath; when, on rolling the carcass clean over,
we had the hide off in one broad, immensely-heavy sheet. Raed
estimated it to contain twenty square yards, reckoning the average
girth of the walrus at twelve feet, and its length at fifteen feet. By
means of the oars and thwarts as supports, the skin was then raised
with the raw side up in tent form over the wall and boat, making
shelter sufficient for us all to get under with comfort.

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