Left on Labrador

C >> Charles Asbury Stephens >> Left on Labrador

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"What does that mean?" exclaimed Capt. Mazard. "Possible they've got
such a breeze as that down there? Why, it doesn't blow enough _here_
to swing the vessel round like that!"

"But only look down the inlet!" said Donovan. "How wild it seems! See
those lines of foam! Hark!"

A rushing noise as of some great river foaming among bowlders began to
be heard.

"It's the tide coming in!" shouted the captain, starting to run down
the rocks.

The schooner had swung back and round the other way. What we had read
of the high and violent tides in these straits flashed into my mind.

The captain was making a bee-line for the vessel: the rest of us
followed as fast as we could run. Just what good we any of us
expected to be able to do was not very clear. But "The Curlew" was our
all: we couldn't see it endangered without rushing to the rescue.
Panting, we arrived on the ledges overlooking the boat and the
schooner. The tide had already risen ten or a dozen feet. The boat had
floated up from the rock, and broken loose from the line. We could see
it tossing and whirling half way out to the schooner. The whole inlet
boiled like a pot, and roared like a mill-race. Huge eddies as large
as a ten-pail kettle came whirling in under the cliffs. The whole bay
was filling up. The waters crept rapidly up the rocks. But our eyes
were riveted on the schooner. She rocked; she wriggled like a
weather-cock; then swung clean round her anchor.

"If it will only hold her!" groaned Capt. Mazard. "But, if it drags,
she'll strike!"

Old Trull, Weymouth, and Bonney were at the windlass, easing out the
cable as the vessel rose on the tide. Corliss was at the wheel,
tugging and turning,--to what purpose was not very evident. But they
were doing their level best to save the vessel: that was plain. Capt.
Mazard stood with clinched hands watching them, every muscle and nerve
tense as wire.

I was hoping the most dangerous crisis had passed, when a tremendous
noise, like a thunder-peal low down to the earth, burst from the
ice-jammed arm of the inlet to the north-east. We turned instantly in
that direction. The whole pack of ice, filling the arm for near a
half-mile, was in motion, grating and grinding together. From where we
stood, the noise more resembled heavy, near thunder than anything else
I can compare it with.

"It's the tide bursting round from the north-east side!" exclaimed
Kit.

"Took it a little longer to come in among the islands on the north
side," said Raed, gazing intently at the fearful spectacle.

The noise nearly deafened us. The whole vast mass of ice--millions of
tons--was heaving and sliding, cake over cake. It had lain piled
fifteen or twenty feet above the water; but the tide surging under it
and through it caused it to mix and churn together. We could see the
water gushing up through crevices, sometimes in fountains of forty or
fifty feet, hurling up large fragments of ice. The phenomenon was
gigantic in all its aspects. To us, who expected every moment to see
it borne forward and crush the schooner, it was appalling. But the sea
filling in on the south, added to the narrowness of the arm, prevented
the jam from rushing through; though a great deal of ice did float
out, and, caught in the swirling currents, bumped pretty hard against
the vessel's sides. The schooner swayed about heavily; but the anchor
held miraculously, as we thought. Once we fancied it had given way,
and held our breath till the cable tightened sharply again. The
grating and thundering of the jam gradually dulled, muffled by the
water. Our thoughts reverted to our own situation. The sea had risen
within five feet of the place where we were standing. To get up here
in the morning we had been obliged to scale a precipice.

"It must have risen fully thirty feet," said Kit. "What a mighty
tide!"

"Why should it rush in here with so much greater violence than it does
down on the coast of Massachusetts or at Long Branch?" questioned
Wade. "How do you explain it, captain?"

"It is because the coasts, both above and below the mouth of the
straits, converge after the manner of a tunnel. The tidal wave from
the Atlantic is thus accumulated, and pours into the straits with much
more than ordinary violence. The same thing occurs in the Bay of
Fundy, where they have very high tides. But I had no idea of such
violence," he added, "or I shouldn't have risked the schooner so near
the rocks. Why, that inlet ran like Niagara rapids!"

"What an evidence this gives one of the strength of the moon's
attraction!" said Raed. "All this great mass of water--thirty feet
high--is drawn in here by the moon. What enormous force!"

"And this vast power is exerted over a distance of two hundred and
thirty-eight thousand miles," remarked Kit.

"I can't understand this attraction of gravitation,--how it is
exerted," said Wade.

"No more can anyone," replied Raed.

"It is said that this attraction of the moon, or at least the friction
of the tides on the ocean-bed which it causes, is exerted in
opposition to the revolution of the earth on its axis, and that it
will thus at some future time stop that motion altogether," Kit
remarked. "That's what Prof. Tyndall thinks."

"Then there would be an end of day and night," said I; "or rather it
would be all day on one side of the earth, and all night on the
other."

"That would be unpleasant," laughed Wade; "worse than they have it up
at the north pole."

"It is some consolation," said Raed, "to know that such a state of
things is not likely to come in our time. According to a careful
calculation, the length of the day is not thus increased more than a
second in a hundred and sixty-eight thousand years."

"But how are we to go aboard, sir?" inquired Hobbs, to whom our
present fix was of more interest than the long days of far-distant
posterity.

The boat had been tossed about here and there, and was now some twenty
or thirty yards astern of the schooner.

"Have to swim for it," said Donovan.

"Not in this icy water, I hope," said Kit. "Can't we devise a plan to
capture it?"

"They might tie a belaying-pin to the end of a line, and throw it into
the boat," said the captain.

"Or, better still, one of those long cod-lines with the heavy sinker
and hook on it," suggested Hobbs.

"Just the thing!" exclaimed Capt. Mazard. "Sing out to them!"

"Unless I'm mistaken, that is just what old Trull is up to now," said
Wade. "He's throwing something! see that!"

As Wade said, old man Trull was throwing a line, with what turned out
to be one of our small grapnels attached. The first throw fell short,
and the line was drawn in; the second and third went aside; but the
fourth landed the grapnel in the boat. It was hauled in. Weymouth and
Corliss then got aboard, and came off to us.

"Well, boys, what sort of a dry storm have you been having here?" said
the captain as they came up under where we stood.

"Never saw such a hole!" exclaimed Weymouth. "You don't know how we
were slat about! We went _right up on it_! Had to pay out six fathoms
of extra cable, anyway. D'ye mind what a thundering noise that ice
made?"

We went off to the schooner. Trull stood awaiting us, grinning grimly.

"I don't gen'ly give advice to my betters," he began, with a hitch at
his trousers; "but"--

"You'd be getting out of this?" finished Raed.

"I wud, sur."

There was a general laugh all round. But the wind had set dead in the
south-east again. There was no room for tacking in the narrow inlet.
To get out we should have to tow the schooner a mile against the
wind,--among ice too. Clearly we must lay here till the wind favored.
We concluded, however, to change our position for one a little lower
down, and nearer the middle of the cove. The anchor was heaved up
preparatory to towing the vessel along. The men had considerable
difficulty in starting it off the bottom; and, on getting it up, one
of the flukes was found to be chipped off,--bits as large as one's
fist, probably from catching among jagged rocks at the bottom. We
thought that this might also account for the tenacity with which the
anchor held against the tide. Doubtless there were crevices and
cracks, with great bowlders, scattered about on the bottom of the
cove. Towing "The Curlew" back not far from a hundred yards from our
first berth, the anchor was again let go in thirty-seven fathoms; and,
for additional security, a second cable was bent to our extra anchor,
which we dropped out of the stern. This matter, with arrangements for
heaving the anchor up with tackle and fall (for we had no windlass in
the stern), took up the time till considerably past noon.

CHAPTER V.

A Dead Narwhal.--Snowy Owls.--Two Bears in Sight.--Firing on
them with the Howitzer.--A Bear-Hunt among the Ice.--An Ice
"Jungle."--An Exciting Chase.--The Bear turns.--Palmleaf makes
"a Sure Shot."--"Run, you Black Son!"

About two o'clock a dead narwhal came floating out with the ice from
the north-east arm, and passed quite near the schooner,--so near, that
we could judge pretty accurately as to its length, which we estimated
to be twenty or twenty-two feet; and its horn, or tusk, which was
partly under water, could not have been less than five feet.

"Killed among the ice there, I reckon," said Capt. Mazard. "Crushed
up. I should not wonder if there were a great many large fish killed
so."

It seemed not improbable; for we had seen several snowy owls hovering
over the ice-packs; and, about an hour afterwards, as we were reading
in the cabin, Weymouth came down to say that a couple of bears were
in sight up there among the ice. We went up immediately. None of us
had ever seen a white bear, save at menageries, where they had to keep
the poor brutes dripping with ice-water, they were so near roasting
with our climate. To see a white bear prowling in his native
ice-fastnesses was, therefore, a novel spectacle for us.

They were distant from the schooner, at a rough guess, five hundred
yards, and seemed to have a good deal of business about a hole, or
chasm, among the loose ice at some distance up the arm.

"Seal or a dead finner in there, I'll be bound," said the captain.
"Now, boys, there's a chance for a bear-hunt!"

"Suppose we give 'em a shot from my cannon-rifle," I suggested.

"Better take the howitzer," said Raed. "Load it with a grist of those
bullets."

"That'll be the most likely to fetch 'em," laughed the captain.

Wade ran down after the powder and balls. The rest of us unlashed the
gun, got off the rubber-cloth, and trundled it along to point it over
the starboard rail. Raed then swabbed it out; Kit poured in the
powder; while Wade and I rammed down a wad of old newspaper.

"Now, put in a good dose of these blue-pills," advised the captain,
scooping up both hands full from the bag in which we kept them.

"Ef you war ter jest tie 'em up, or wrop 'em in a bit of canvas,
they'd go straighter, and wouldn't scatter round so bad," remarked old
Trull, who was not an uninterested spectator of the proceedings.

"Make them up sort of grape or canister shot fashion, you mean," said
Raed.

"Yes; that's what I mean,--ter keep 'em frum scatterin'."

"Not a bad idea," said Capt. Mazard. "Weymouth, bring a piece of old
canvas and a bit of manila-yarn."

About a quart of the ounce balls were hastily wrapped in the canvas,
and lashed up with the hempen twine. The bag was then rammed down upon
the powder, and the howitzer pointed.

"Let old Trull do the shooting," whispered Kit. "He will be as likely
to hit as any of us."

"Mr. Trull," Capt. Mazard began, "we must look to you to shoot those
bears for us. Pepper 'em good, now!"

At that we all stood away from the gun. The old fellow grinned,
hesitated a moment, then stepped forward, evidently not a little
flattered by the confidence reposed in him. First he sighted the piece
very methodically. The schooner lay perfectly still. A better chance
for a shot could hardly have been asked for. Palmleaf now came up with
a bit of tarred rope lighted at the stove, and smoking after the
manner of a slow match, with a red coal at the end. Trull took the
rope, and, watching his chance till both the bears were in sight and
near each other, touched the priming,--_Tizz-z-z_-WHANG!

The carriage recoiled almost as smartly as my big rifle had done. Why
is it that a person standing near a gun--especially a heavy gun--can
never see what execution is done during the first second or two? He
may have his eye on the mark at the discharge, but somehow the report
always throws his ocular apparatus out of gear. In a moment I espied
one of the bears scrambling over an ice-cake. The other had already
disappeared; or else was killed, and had fallen down some fissure.

"Man the boat!" exclaimed Raed. "I'm anxious to see the result of that
shot! Bring up those muskets, Wade!"

"Who goes on the bear-hunt, and who stays?" cried the captain.

"I'll stand by the vassel," said old Trull. "Guard and I will look out
for things on board."

"Den I'll take his place, sar!" exclaimed Palmleaf, catching the
enthusiasm of the thing.

Wade appeared with the muskets. Five of them were already loaded.
Cartridges were soon clapped into six more. Wade handed us each one,
including Palmleaf.

"See that you don't shoot any of us with it, you lubber!" he said.

"Neber fear, sar," replied the negro with a grin. "I'se called a berry
good shot at Petersburg, sar. Fit there, sar,--on the Linkum side."

"You did?"

"Yes, sar. Called a berry sure shot, sar."

Kit and Raed began to laugh.

"Come, tumble in, boys!" shouted the captain, who didn't see the point
quite so clearly as we did.

We got into the boat,--eleven of us; about as many as could find room.
Hobbs and Bonney lay back at the oars. Kit steered us up to the low
ledges of the small island on the west side of the ice-packed arm,
where the bears had been seen. We landed, and pulled the boat up after
us. No danger from the tide at this time of day. The captain and Raed
led off, climbing over the rocks, and following along the jam of ice,
which was piled considerably higher than the shore of the arm.
Palmleaf, jolly as a darky need be, kept close behind them. The rest
followed as best they might, clambering from ledge to ledge. Wade and
I brought up the rear.

"Only look at that nigger!" muttered my kinsman of Southern blood.
"Impudent dog! I would like to crack his head with the butt of this
musket! Hear how he wagged his tongue to me?"

"Well, you called him a lubber."

"What of that?"

"What of that? Why, you must expect him to talk back: that's all. He's
a free man, now, you know."

"The more's the pity!"

"I don't see it."

"I'd like to have the handling of that nigger a while!"

"No doubt. But you might just as well get over those longings first as
last," I said; for I was beginning to get sick of his foolish spirit.
"You had better forget the war, bury your old-time prejudices, and
start new in the world, resolved to live and let live; to be a good
fellow, and treat everybody alike and well. That's the way we do in
the North,--or ought to."

Wade said not a word. I rather pity the fellow. He has got some mighty
hard, painful lessons to learn before he will be able to start right
in life.

Raed and the captain had stopped.

"They were right opposite here, over among the ice," Raed was saying.
"I marked the spot by that high cake sticking up above the rest."

"We need scaling-ladders to get up among it," laughed Kit. "Talk of
impenetrable jungles! here is a jungle of ice!"

Imagine, reader, a thousand ice-cakes from six to thirty feet square,
and of every grade of thickness, piled sidewise, edgewise, slantwise,
cross-wise, and flatwise on top of that, and you may, perhaps, gain
some idea of the vast jam which filled the arm and lay heaped up
twenty and thirty feet above us. For a moment we were at a loss how to
surmount it; then all began looking along for some available cranny or
rift which might offer a foothold.

"Here's a breach!" Weymouth shouted.

He had gone along a dozen rods farther. We followed to see him
mounting by the jagged edge of a vast cake five or six feet thick
which projected out over the ledges. Kit followed; and they stood at
the top, stretching down helping hands. In five minutes we were all
up, standing, clinging, and balancing on the glassy edges of ice, and
hopping and leaping from cake to cake. Cracks, crevices, and jagged
holes opened ten, fifteen, and twenty feet sheer down all about us. A
single misstep would send us head-foremost into them.

"I say," exclaimed Capt. Mazard, barely saving himself from a tumble,
"this is a devil of a funny place for a bear-hunt! No chance for rapid
retreats! It will be fight bear, or die!"

The place where the bears had stood when old Trull had fired was back
fifteen or twenty rods to the right. We worked off in that direction,
getting occasional glimpses of the water down in the deep holes, and
stopping once to pull Corliss out of a wedge-shaped crevice into which
he had slipped. Arriving on a big broad cake,--which, for a wonder,
lay flat side up,--we paused to reconnoitre.

"Don't see any thing of 'em," said the captain.

"Gone, I'll bet my musket!" said Kit disappointedly. "More'n a league
away by this time, I'll warrant you."

"Doubt if the old man touched 'em!" said Hobbs.

"Guess he suspected as much!" laughed the captain. "Perhaps that was
why he wouldn't come."

"But we haven't half searched yet!" exclaimed Wade, pushing out along
the edge of a tilted-up fragment, and jumping across to another.

As he jumped the ticklish cake tipped, slid back, and toppled over
into a great chasm to the right with a tremendous crash and
spattering,--for there was water at the bottom,--Wade barely saving
himself. Almost at the same instant, I thought I heard a low growl not
far off.

"Hark!" exclaimed Kit. "Wasn't that the bear?"

"Sounded like one!" muttered the captain. "Down among the ice!"

"May be wounded down there," said Kit. "Crawled in under the ice."

"Spread out round here, boys," cried the captain, "and peep sharp into
the holes!"

I knew we were near where the bullets from the howitzer had hit; for I
saw several of them lying down in the cracks, flattened by striking
against the ice: and, a few rods farther on, Weymouth and I came to a
large irregular hole sixteen or seventeen feet deep, along the bottom
of which we saw the bones of some fish.

"This is the very place where they were when we first saw them," said
Weymouth. "Ten to one they've crawled into some of those big cracks."

We pitched down a loose junk of ice, and again heard a growl: though
just where it issued from was hard telling; for the broad faces of the
cakes, set at all angles, echoed the sound in a most bewildering
manner. Kit and the captain came along; and we rolled down another
fragment. Another growl.

"He's in behind this great cake that sets upright against the side of
the hole!" exclaimed Weymouth.

"Think so?" said Kit. "Then let's tip this large piece off on to it.
May scare him out."

We managed to turn it over the edge; when it fell down _smash_ upon
the cake below, splitting it in two. Instantly the bear, a great
shaggy, white fellow, sprang out, and ran round at the bottom of the
hole, growling, and trying to scratch up the sides. He had several
bloody streaks on him. Kit took a rapid aim, and fired a bullet into
his fore-shoulder; which only made him growl the louder, however. Then
the captain gave him a shot in the head; at which the creature tumbled
down, and kicked his last very quietly.

But meanwhile we had heard a great uproar and shouting off to the
left.

"They've started the other, I guess!" exclaimed Kit. "Come on!"

Just then a shot was fired, followed by a noise of falling ice-cakes.
We could see a head bob up occasionally, and made for the _melee_ as
fast as we could hop. The jam in this direction was not so high. The
ice-cakes lay flatter, and were less heaped one above the other. Cries
of "There he is! there he goes!" burst out on a sudden; then another
musket-shot.

Leaping on, we soon caught sight of the chase. The bear was jumping
from cake to cake. Raed, Corliss, and Hobbs were following after him
at a reckless pace; Bonney was trying to cut him off on the right;
while Wade and Donovan, with Palmleaf a few rods behind them, were
heading him on the left. Such a shouting and hallooing! They were all
mad with excitement. We, who had killed our bear, kept after them as
fast as we could run, but couldn't begin to catch up.

Bang! Somebody tired at him then.

'Twas Hobbs.

"Cut him off!"

"Head him!" was the cry.

"He's hit!"

"Head him off there!"

Wade and Donovan were actually outstripping the bear, and getting
ahead; seeing which, the frightened, maddened beast tacked sharp to
the left to escape behind them on that side,--going straight for
Palmleaf, who was now considerably behind Wade and Don. Instantly a
yell arose from all hands.

"Look out, Palmleaf!"

"Shoot him, Palmleaf!"

"Let him have it!"

"Aim low!"

"Now's your time!"

The negro, who had been running hard, stopped short, and, seeing the
bear bounding toward him, made a feint to raise his musket, when it
went off, either from accident or terror, in the air. We heard the
bullet _zip_ fifty feet overhead. The bear gave a vicious growl, and
made directly at him.

"He'll have the darky!"

"He'll have you, Palmleaf!"

"Run, fool!"

"Run, you black son!"

Palmleaf turned to run; but, seeing a high rand of ice sticking up a
few yards to his left, he leaped for it, and, jumping up, caught his
hands at the top, and tried to draw himself up on to it. The bear was
within six feet of him, snarling like a fury.

_Bang!_

_Bang!_

_Bang!_

Raed and Corliss and Bonney had fired within twenty yards. But the
bear reared, and struck with his forepaws at the darky's legs,
stripping his trousers clean off the first pull. Such a howl as came
from his terrified throat!

_Crack!_

That was a better shot. The bear turned, or set out to, but fell down
in a heap, then scrambled up, but immediately tumbled over again, and
lay kicking.

By this time we had all got near. The negro, scared nearly into fits,
still hung on to the edge of the ice, looking as if "spread-eagled" to
it.

"Come, sir," said Wade. "Better get down and put on your
trousers,--what there is left of them."

The darky turned an agonized, appealing visage over his shoulder, but,
seeing only friends instead of bears, let go his hold, and dropped to
his feet.

"That's what you call a 'sure shot,' is it," sneered Wade,--"that one
you fired at the bear? Guess you didn't hurt _us_ much at Petersburg."

"He need to be pretty thankful that somebody fired a _sure shot_ about
the time the bear was paying his compliments to him," laughed the
captain.

"Yes: who fired that last shot?" I asked of Donovan, who stood near.

"Wade did."

We had to send back to the schooner for the butcher-knives, and also
for a line to hoist the bear we had first killed out of the hole.

The bears were skinned: we wanted to save their hides for trophies. As
nearly as we could make out, they had been both wounded by the bullets
from the howitzer, one of them--the one killed first--pretty severely.
They did not, however, appear to me, in this our first encounter with
them, to be nearly so fierce nor so formidable as I had expected, from
accounts I had read. Hobbs cut out a piece of the haunch for steaks.
Palmleaf afterwards cooked it: but we didn't much relish it, save
Guard; and he ate the most of it.

CHAPTER VI.

The Middle Savage Isles.--Glimpse of an Esquimau
Canoe.--Firing at a Bear with the Cannon-Rifle.--A Strange
Sound.--The Esquimaux.--Their Kayaks.--They come on board.--An
Unintelligible Tongue.--"Chymo."

During the night following our bear-hunt a storm came on,--wind, rain,
and snow, as before,--and continued all the next day. The tremendous
tides, however, effectually prevented any thing like dullness from
"creeping over our spirits;" since we were sure of a sensation at
least twice in twenty-four hours. But during the next night it cleared
up, with the wind north; and, quite early on the morning of the 11th
of July, we dropped out of "Mazard's Bay," and stood away up the
straits.

At one o'clock we sighted another group of mountainous isles,--the
same figured on the chart as the "Middle Savage Isles;" and by five
o'clock we were passing the easternmost a couple of miles to the
southward. Between it and the next island, which lay a little back to
the north, there was a sort of bay filled with floating ice. Raed was
leaning on the bulwarks with his glass, scanning the islands as we
bowled along under a full spread of canvas. Suddenly he turned, and
called to Kit.

"Get your glass," he said. "Or never mind: take mine. Now look right
up there between those islands. What do you see?"

"Seals," replied Kit slowly, with the glass to his eye. "Any quantity
of seals on the ice there; and--there's something larger scooting
along. That's a narwhal: no, 'tain't, either. By jolly! see the seals
flop off into the water as it shoots along! afraid of it. There!
something flashed then in the sun! Raed, I believe that's a
_kayak_,--an Esquimau canoe! An Esquimau catching seals!"

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