Left on Labrador

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"Hold on, fellows!" exclaimed Wade. "This isn't quite fair, nor
honorable,--making fun of ladies behind their backs."

"Right, sir!" cried Raed. "Spoken like a true son of the South! Ah!
you did always outrank us in gallantry. No discount on it. Had your
heads been as true as your hearts, the result might have been
different. But here come the ladies. We must do our prettiest to
please 'em, or we are no true knights. By the by, we resemble the
wandering knight-errants not a little, I fear."

"Only their object was adventure, while ours is science," added Kit.

"Scientific knights!" laughed Wade. "Well, the world moves!"

The _oomiak_ was now within fifty yards.

"Let's give 'em a salute!" exclaimed Kit. "Roll the ball out of the
howitzer!"

"Oh! I wouldn't; it may scare 'em," said Raed.

"No, it won't. Where's a match?"

_Bang_ went old brassy out of the stern.

It did startle them, I fancy. Something very much like a feminine
screech rose in the _oomiak_. It was quickly hushed up, though, with
no fainting, but any quantity of _heh-heh-ing_ and _yeh-yeh-ing_ from
the fat beauties.

"Now give 'em two more from the muskets--two at a time--when they come
under the side!" shouted Kit. "Hobbs, you and Don first!
Ready!--fire!"

Crack, crack!

"Now Weymouth and Corliss!"

Crack, crack!

"There! I now consider their arrival properly celebrated. And here
they are under the bows! Pipe the side for the ladies, captain!"

"Bless me!" exclaimed Raed; "how are we to get 'em aboard? Can't climb
a line, I don't expect."

"Wouldn't do to give 'em the ratlines!" exclaimed Kit; "might
entangle their pretty feet. What's to be done, captain?"

"I--give--it--up!" groaned Capt. Mazard. "Hold! I have it: the old
companion-stairs,--the ones we had taken out. They are stowed away
down in the hold."

"Just the thing!" cried Raed; "the very essence of gallantry!"

"Corliss, Bonney, and Hobbs," shouted the captain, "bear a hand at
those old stairs,--quick! Don't keep ladies waiting!"

The old stairs were hurried up, and let down from the side. The
captain stood ready with a stout line, which he whipped around the top
rung, and then made fast to the bulwarks. "That'll hold 'em," said he.

The _oomiak_ was then brought up close, and the foot of the stairs set
inside the gunwale. The _oomiak_ was about twenty-seven feet in length
by six in width. Like the _kayaks_, it was covered with seal-skin; or
perhaps it might have been the hide of the walrus. The framework was
composed of both bone and wood tied and lashed together. This was the
women's boat, and was rowed by them. The only man in it was a hideous,
wrinkled old savage, who sat in the stern to steer.

"Two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, and an odd one," counted Raed.
"Invite 'em up, captain."

Capt. Mazard got up on the bulwarks with a line in his hand, and,
holding it down over the stairs, began to bow and make signs to them
to come up. Perhaps they had not intended to actually come on board;
or perhaps, like their fairer sisters in other lands, they wanted to
be coaxed a little. At first they discreetly hesitated, glancing
alternately up at us, then round to their swarthy countrymen in the
_kayaks_. The most of them were seemingly young. There was but one
really ugly face; while four or five were evidently under fifteen. The
women were not quite so swarthy and dark as the men, and wore their
hair longer. Several of them had it pugged up behind. The captain and
Raed now redoubled their gestures of invitation. The Esquimau men on
board also began to jabber to them; at which, first two, then another,
and another, stood up, and with broad smiles essayed to mount the
stairs. Kit was standing close to me.

"Now, which are the prettiest ones?" he whispered. "Which are the
belles? Let's you and I secure the _belles_ away from Raed and Wade.
Those two back in the stern next to old ghoul-face--how do those
strike you? Aren't those the beauties? They've got on the prettiest
fur, anyway. Only look at those white gloves!"

The two Kit had pointed out were, as well as we could judge, the
fairest of the bevy.

"I believe Wade's got his eye on one of them!" muttered Kit. "We'll
oust him, though. Crowd along sharp when those two come up. Elbow Wade
out of the way. I'll push against you, and we'll squeeze him up
against the rail."

The others followed the first two, coming up the steps, taking the
captain's hand, and jumping off the rail to the deck. Our two came
last.

"Now's our time!" exclaimed Kit; and, making a bold push, we got in
ahead of the unsuspecting Wade, who immediately saw the sell, and
turned away in great disgust.

"I'll pay you for that!" muttered he.

But, having got face to face with the fur-clad damsels, we were not a
little perplexed how to make their acquaintance; for they were staring
at us with their small black eyes very round and wondering.

"Try a great long smile," said Kit.

We smiled very hard and persistently for some seconds. It seemed to
mollify their wonder somewhat.

"Keep it up," Kit advised: "that'll bring 'em."

We kept it up, smiling and bowing and nodding as gayly as we could;
and were presently rewarded by seeing faint reflections of our grins
on their dusky faces, which rapidly deepened into as broad a smile as
I ever beheld. They had very tolerably wide mouths, with large white
teeth. Having got up a smile, we next essayed to shake hands with them
according to good old New-England custom. Their white gloves were of
some sort of bird-skin, I think, and fitted--well, I've seen kid
gloves worn that didn't fit a whit better. How to commence a
conversation was not so easy; since we knew not more than a dozen
words of their language, and could not frame these into sentences. So
we began by making them each a present of a jack-knife. These were
accepted with a great deal of broad smiling. Kit then showed them how
to open the knives. At that one of the girls reached down to her boot;
and, thrusting her hand into the leg of it (for their boots had
remarkably large legs, coming up to the knee, and even higher), she
fished out a little bone implement about four inches long, and
resembling a harpoon. Near the centre of it was a tiny hole, in which
there was knotted a bit of fine leathern string. It was plain that she
meant to give it to one or the other of us. Kit held out his hand for
it with a bow.

"_Kina?_" he asked, taking it. ("What is it?")

"_Tar-suk_," said the girl. "_Tar-suk-apak-pee-o-mee-wanga_;" which
was plain, to be sure.

Meanwhile the other was industriously fumbling in her boot, and pretty
quick drew out a bone image representing a fox, as I have always
supposed. This was for me.

"_Kina?_" I asked.

"_Bossuit_," was the reply.

This was also pierced with a hole through the neck; and, on my hooking
it to my watch-guard, the other girl fell to laughing at her
companion, who also laughed a little confusedly, and with a look,
which, in a less dusky maiden, might have been a blush. Just what
importance they attach to these trinkets and to the wearing of them we
could merely guess at.

"I wonder what their names are," said Kit. "How can we find out? Would
they understand by our using the word _kina_, do you suppose?"

"Try it."

Kit then pointed to the one who was talking with me, and said "_kina_"
to the other. She did not seem to understand at first: but, on a
repetition of the question, replied, "_We-we_;" at which her companion
looked suddenly around. Then they talked with each other a moment.
_We-we_, as I afterwards learned, meant _white goose_. I then put the
same question to _We-we_, pointing to the other.

"_Caubvick_," she replied.

Just then Wade passed us; and, lo! he had a white-gloved damsel on his
arm, promenading along the deck as big as life.

"What's her name?" cried Kit.

"_Ikewna_," he replied over his shoulder.

How he had found out he would never tell us; perhaps in the same
manner we had done.

"I declare, Wade's outdoing us!" exclaimed Kit. "But we can promenade
too."

I then pointed to Wade and _Ikewna_, and then to _We-we_ and myself,
offering my arm.

"_Abb_," she said; and we started off.

Kit and _Caubvick_ followed. After all, walking with an Esquimau belle
is not so very different from walking with a Yankee girl: only I fancy
it must have looked a little odd; for, as I have already stated, they
wore long-legged boots with very broad tops coming above the knee,
silver-furred seal-skin breeches, and a jacket of white hare-skin (the
polar hare) edged with the down of the eider-duck. These jackets had
at least one very peculiar feature: that was nothing less than a tail
about four inches broad, and reaching within a foot of the ground. I
have no doubt they were in _style_: still they did look a little
singular, to say the least.

Meanwhile the others were not idle spectators, judging from the loud
talking, _yeh-yeh-ing_, and unintelligible lingo, that resounded all
about. We saw Raed paying the most polite attentions to a very chubby,
fat girl with a black fur jacket and yellow gloves.

"What name?" demanded Kit as we promenaded past.

"_Pussay_," replied Raed, trying to look very sober.

The word _pussay_ means a seal; and in this case the name was not much
misplaced. _We-we_ (white goose) was, to my eye, decidedly the
prettiest of the lot; _Caubvick_ came next; and, as we promenaded past
Wade, we kept boasting of their superior charms as compared with
_Ikewna_. Our two both wore white jackets; while Wade's wore a yellow
one, of fox-skin.

"How about refreshments!" cried Wade at length. "We ought to treat
them, hadn't we?"

"That's so," said Raed. "Captain, have the goodness to call Palmleaf,
and bid him bring up a box of that candy."

The captain came along.

"Didn't you see the rumpus?" he asked.

"Rumpus?"

"Yes; when Palmleaf came on deck just after the women came on board.
They were afraid of him. He came poking his black head up out of the
forecastle, and rolling his eyes about. If he had been the Devil
himself, they couldn't have acted more scared. I had to send him below
out of sight, or there would have been a general stampede. The men are
afraid of him. I don't understand exactly why they should be."

None of us did at the time; but we learned subsequently that the
Esquimaux attribute all their ill-luck to a certain fiend, or demon,
in the form of a huge black man. We have, therefore, accounted for
their strange fear and aversion to the negro on that ground. They
thought he was the Devil,--their devil. So Hobbs brought up the candy.
Raed passed it round, giving each of our visitors two sticks apiece.
This was plainly a new sort of treat. They stood, each holding the
candy in their hands, as if uncertain to what use it was to be put.
Raed then set them an example by biting off a chunk. At that they each
took a bite. We expected they would be delighted. It was therefore
with no little chagrin that we beheld our guests making up the worst
possible faces, and spitting it out anywhere, everywhere,--on deck,
against the bulwarks, overboard, just as it happened. The most of them
immediately threw away the candy; though _We-we_ and _Caubvick_, out
of consideration for our feelings perhaps, quietly tucked theirs into
their boot-legs. There was an awkward pause in the hospitalities.
Clearly, candy wouldn't pass for a delicacy with them.

"Try 'em with cold boiled beef!" exclaimed the captain.

Luckily, as it occurred, Palmleaf had lately boiled up quite a
quantity. It was cut up in small pieces, and distributed among them;
and, at the captain's suggestion, raw fat pork was given the men. This
latter, however, was much too salt for them: so that, on the whole,
our refreshments were a failure. It is doubtful if they liked the
cooked meat half so well as they did the raw, reeking flesh of the
bear.

By way of making up for the candy failure, we gave them each two
common tenpenny nails, and two sticks of hardwood the size we burned
in the stove. With these presents they seemed very well pleased,
particularly with the wood. But, on finding we were disposed to give,
the most of them were not at all modest about asking for more. A
general cry of "_Pillitay_" ("Give me something") arose. We gave them
another stick of wood all round; at which their cries were redoubled.
In short, they treated us very much as some earnest Christians do the
Lord,--asked for everything they could think of. Old Trull was
especially pestered by one woman, who stuck to him with a continuous
whine of "_Pillitay, pillitay!_" He had already given her his
jack-knife, and now borrowed it to cut off several of the brass
buttons on his jacket. But so far was she from being satisfied with
this sacrifice, that she instantly began _pillitaying_ for the rest of
them. The old man thought that this was carrying the thing a little
too far.

"Ye old jade!" he exclaimed, out of all patience. "Ye'd beg me stark
naked, I du believe!"

But still the woman with outstretched hand cried "_Pillitay!_" Finally
the old chap in pure desperation caught out his tobacco to take a
chew. Eying her a moment, he bit it off, and put the rest in her hand
with a grim smile. The woman, following his example, forthwith bit off
a piece, and chewed at it for a few seconds, swallowing the saliva;
then turned away sick and vomiting. She didn't _pillitay_ him any
more.

To the honor of maidenhood, I may add that _We-we_, _Caubvick_,
_Ikewna_, and _Pussay_ were exceptions to the general rule of beggary.
They asked us for nothing. Something seemed to restrain them: perhaps
the attentions we had shown them. Be that as it may, they fared the
better for it. Wade led off by giving _Ikewna_ a broad, highly-colored
worsted scarf, which he wrapped in folds about her fox-jacket,
covering it entirely, and giving her a very _distingue_ look. Not to
be behind, Kit and I gave to _We-we_ and _Caubvick_ three yards of
bright-red flannel apiece; also a red-and-black silk handkerchief each
to wear over their shoulders, and two massive (pinchbeck) breast-pins.
These latter articles did make their little piercing black eyes
sparkle amazingly.

How long they would have stayed on board, Heaven only knows,--all
summer, perhaps,--had not the captain given orders to have the
schooner brought round. The moment the vessel began to move, they were
seized with a panic, lest they should be carried off from home. The
men were over into their _kayaks_ instantly. Having got rid of them,
"The Curlew" was again hove to, while the _oomiak_ was brought under
the stairs. We bade a hasty farewell to the Husky belles, and handed
them into their barge. On the whole, we were not much sorry to be rid
of them; for though they were human beings, and some of the young
girls not without their attractions, yet it was humanity in a very
crude, raw state. In a word, they were savages, destitute to a
lamentable extent of all those finer feelings and sentiments which
characterize a civilized race. The roughest of our Gloucester lads
were immeasurably in advance of them; and Palmleaf, but recently a
lash-fearing slave, seemed of a higher order of beings.

They were gone; but they had left an odor behind. We had to keep
Palmleaf burning coffee on a shovel all the rest of the evening; and,
for more than a month after, we could smell it at times,--a "sweet
_souvenir_ of our Husky beauties," as Wade used to put it.

There is something at once hopeless and pitiful about this people.
There is no possibility of permanently bettering their condition. Born
and living under a climate, which, from the gradual shifting of the
pole, must every year grow more and more severe, they can but sink
lower and lower as the struggle for existence grows sharper. There is
no hope for them. Their absurd love of home precludes the possibility
of their emigrating to a warmer latitude. Pitiful! because, where-ever
the human life-spark is enkindled, his must be a hard heart that can
see it suffering, dying, without pity.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Husky Chief.--Palmleaf Indignant.--A Gun.--Sudden
Apparition of the Company's Ship.--We hold a Hasty
Council.--In the Jaws of the British Lion.--An Armed
Boat.--Repel Boarders!--Red-Face waxes wrathful.--Fired on,
but no Bones Broken.

By the time we had fairly parted from our Esquimau friends it was near
eleven o'clock, P.M.,--after sunset. Instead of standing out into the
straits, we beat up for about a mile along the ice-field, and anchored
in thirteen fathoms, at about a cable's length from the island, to the
east of the ice-island. The weather had held fine. The roadstead
between the island and the main was not at present much choked with
ice. It was safe, to all appearance. We wanted rest. Turning out at
three and half-past three in the morning, and not getting to bunk
till eleven and twelve, made an unconscionable long day. Once asleep,
I don't think one of us boys waked or turned over till the captain
stirred us up to breakfast.

"Six o'clock, boys!" cried he. "Sun's been up these four hours!"

"Don't talk about the sun in this latitude," yawned Raed. "I can sit
up with him at Boston; but he's too much for me here."

While we were at breakfast, Weymouth came down to report a _kayak_
coming off.

"Shall we let him come aboard, sir?"

"Oh, yes!" said the captain.

"Let's have him down to breakfast with us for the nonce!" cried Kit.
"Here, Palmleaf, set an extra plate, and bring another cup of coffee."

"And see that you keep out of sight," laughed the captain: "the
Huskies don't much like the looks of you."

"I tink I'se look as well as dey do, sar!" exclaimed the indignant
cook.

"So do I, Palmleaf," said Raed; "but then opinions differ, you know.
These Esquimaux are nothing but savages."

"Dey're berry ill-mannered fellars, sar, to make de best of dem. I
wouldn't hev 'em roun', sar, stinkin' up de ship."

"I don't see that they smell much worse than a pack of niggers,"
remarked Wade provokingly; at which the darky went back to the galley
muttering.

"Wade, some of these big negroes will pop you over one of these days,"
said Kit.

"Well, I expect it; and who'll be to blame for that? We had them under
good control: you marched your hired Canadians down among us, and set
them 'free,' as you say; which means that you've turned loose a class
of beings in no way fit to be free. The idea of letting those ignorant
niggers vote!--why, they are no more fit to have a voice in the making
of the laws than so many hogs! You have done us a great wrong in
setting them free: you've turned loose among us a horde of the most
indolent, insolent, lustful _beasts_ that ever made a hell of earth.
You can't look for social harmony at the South! Why, we are obliged to
go armed to protect our lives! No lady is safe to walk half a mile
unattended. I state a fact when I say that my mother and my sisters do
not dare to walk about our plantation even, for fear of those brutish
negroes."

"I think you take a rather one-sided view, Wade," said Raed.

"It's the only side I can see."

"Perhaps; but there is another side, nevertheless."

Here a tramping on the stairs was heard, and Weymouth came down,
followed by a large Esquimau.

"He's been trying to make out to us that he's the chief, boss, sachem,
or whatever they call it, of the crowd that was aboard yesterday,"
said Weymouth.

"What does he want?" the captain asked.

"Wants to _chymo_."

Raed made signs for him to sit down in the chair at the table and eat
with us; which, after some hesitation, he did rather awkwardly, and
with a great knocking of his feet against the chairs. He had on a
gorgeous bearskin jacket, with the hood drawn over his head. His face
was large; his nose small, and nearly lost between the fat billows of
his cheeks; his eyes were much drawn up at the corners, and very far
apart; and his mouth, a very wide one, was fringed about with stiff,
straggling black bristles. The cast of his countenance was decidedly
repulsive. Kit made signs for him to drink his coffee; but he merely
eyed it suspiciously. I then helped him to a heavy spoonful of mashed
potatoes. He looked at it a while; then, seeing us eating of it,
plunged in his fingers, and, taking up a wad, thrust it into his
mouth, but immediately spat it out, with a broad laugh, all over his
plate and over the other dishes, and kept spitting at random.

"De nasty dog!" ejaculated Palmleaf, rushing forward from the galley:
"spit all ober de clean plates!"

The savage turned his eye upon the black, and, with a horrible shout,
sprang up from his chair, nearly upsetting the table-shelf, and made a
bolt for the stairway. We called to him, and followed as quickly as we
could: but, before we were fairly on deck, he was over into his
_kayak_, plying his paddle as if for dear life; and the more we
called, the faster he _dug to it_.

Suddenly, as we were looking after him and laughing, the heavy report
of cannon sounded from the southward. Looking around, we saw a large
ship coming to below the islands, at a distance of about three miles.
A thrill of apprehension stole over us. Without a word, we went for
our glasses. It was a large, staunch-looking ship, well manned, from
the appearance of her deck. As we were looking, the English flag went
up. We had expected as much.

"It's one of the Hudson-bay Company's ships," remarked Raed.

"Of course," said Kit.

"Not likely to be anything else," said the captain.

"I suppose you're aware that those fellows may take a notion to have
us accompany them to London," remarked Raed.

"If they can catch us," Kit added.

"Persons caught trading with the natives within the limits of the
Hudson-bay Company's chartered territory are liable to be seized, and
carried to London for trial," continued Raed. "It's best to keep that
point well in view. Nobody would suppose that, in this age, the old
beef-heads would have the cheek to try to enforce such a _right_
against Americans, citizens of the United States, who ought to have
the inside track of everything on this continent. Still they may."

"It will depend somewhat on the captain of the vessel--what sort of a
man he is," said Kit. "He may be one of the high and mighty sort, full
of overgrown notions of the company's authority."

Another jet of white smoke puffed out from the side of the ship,
followed in a few seconds by another dull _bang_.

"We'll stand by our colors in any case," remarked Capt. Mazard,
attaching our flag to the signal halliards.

Raed and Kit ran to hoist it. Up it went to the peak of the
bright-yellow mast,--the bonny bright stars and stripes.

"All hands weigh anchor!" ordered Capt. Mazard.

"Load the howitzer!" cried Kit. "Let's answer their gun in coin!"

While we were loading, the schooner was brought round.

Wade must have got in a pretty heavy charge; for the report was a
stunner.

"Load again," said Kit; "and put in a ball this time. Let's load the
rifle too."

The captain turned and regarded us doubtfully, then looked off toward
the ship. "The Curlew" was driving lazily forward, and, crossing the
channel between the island under which we had been lying and the
ice-field, passed slowly along the latter at a distance of a hundred
and fifty or two hundred yards. We thus had the ice-island between us
and the possibly hostile ship. With our glasses we now watched her
movements attentively. A number of officers were on the quarter-deck.

"You don't call that a ship-of-war?" Wade said at length.

"Oh, no!" replied the captain; "though it is probably an armed ship.
All the company's ships go armed, I've heard."

"There!" exclaimed Kit. "They're letting down a boat!"

"That's so!" cried Wade. "They're going to pay us a visit sure!"

"They probably don't want to trust their heavy-laden ship up here
among the islands," said the captain.

"It's their long-boat, I think," said Kit. "One, two, three, four,
five!--why, there are not less than fifteen or twenty men in it! And
_see there!_--weapons!"

As the boat pulled away from the side, the sun flashed brightly from a
dozen gleaming blades.

"Cutlasses!" exclaimed Raed, turning a little pale.

I am ready to confess, that, for a moment, I felt as weak as a rag.
The vengeful gleam of the light on hostile steel is apt, I think, to
give one such a feeling the first time he sees it. The captain stood
leaning on the rail, with the glass to his eye, evidently at his wits'
end, and in no little trepidation. Very likely at that moment he
wished our expedition had gone to Jericho before he had undertaken it.
Raed, I think, was the first to rally his courage. I presume he had
thought more on the subject previously than the rest of us had done.
The sudden appearance of the ship had therefore taken him less by
surprise than it did us.

"It looks as if they were going to board us--if we let them," he said
quietly. "That's the way it looks; isn't it, captain?"

"I should say that it did, decidedly," Capt. Mazard replied.

"Boys!" exclaimed Raed, looking round to us, and to the sailors, who
had gathered about us in some anxiety,--"boys! if we let those
fellows yonder board us, in an hour we shall all be close prisoners,
in irons perhaps, and down in the hold of that ship. We shall be
carried out to Fort York, kept there a month in a dungeon likely as
any way, then sent to England to be tried--for daring to sail into
Hudson Bay and trade with the Esquimaux! What say, boys?--shall we let
them come aboard and take us?"

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