Labrador Days Part 13

Another moment and the modern Paul Revere, with dogs for horses and ice and snow for a highway, was flying on his self-imposed journey, carrying his slogan from house to house and village to village along the spa.r.s.ely inhabited coast-line. As Uncle Rube opened his door and peered into the little room, to his infinite joy he saw the golden curls in their proper place on the old settle by the stove, while the regular quiet breathing a.s.sured him that the child had not yet waked from sleep. As he softly tiptoed around, seeking the outfit he needed for his great adventure, the barrenness of the house, the poverty of it, struck him for the first time. G.o.d knows he had never thought of "things," except as he had needed them for himself or others; and now he wished suddenly that he had more of them for the child's sake.

Suppose, now that his "day" had at last arrived, he should not return from the long-looked-for quest. He became strangely conscious that he had nothing laid up for his darling, the child who now filled the whole horizon of his cramped life. Her very clothes were in tatters.

The Indian shawl, that I had seen pressed into the service against his enemy the Frost King, was now only a thing of rags and patches. Were it not for his own big coat, even at this moment his Princess would be s.h.i.+vering with cold. Furtively he glanced round for his rope and gaff, relics of the last time he had gone on the ice. All these years he had kept them ready for "the day," never able to break the spell woven around them on the ill-fated Manxman. There was his nonny-bag, in it already the sugar and oatmeal, the ration of pork, and the small bottle of brandy, that each year he kept ready when the 10th of March came round--the day on which the sealers leave for the ice fields. The new idea that his life was of value for the child's sake sent a half-guilty feeling through him, lest he be caught looking at these implements, where they lay with his old converted flintlock gun on the rack above the still glowing stove. s.h.!.+ The child on the settle muttered something in her sleep, and the old man, rigid as an ice block, stood listening to her breathing, as if he were a burglar robbing a rich man's bedroom, in which the owner himself lay sleeping.

But she quieted down again, and once more he breathed freely.

At last he was ready, all but the big coat. Well, he could do without that. If he were not back before dark the difference it would make would anyhow be negligible. There was no time to delay. He must go now or never; and the indomitable old warrior stooped over to kiss the child good-bye, though he dare only touch with his lips the golden hair, for fear of waking her. Then in his simple way he breathed a wordless prayer, committing her to G.o.d's keeping, and, stealthily letting himself out, made straight for the likeliest part of the headland from which to take the ice.

As one thinks now of that old man setting out alone over that endless ocean of ice, one wonders if one has one's self ever attempted anything heroic. But Uncle Rube thought only of one thing that morning--of foiling his arch enemy on the Red Island Shoals; and though nearly fourscore years had pa.s.sed over him, he felt like a lad of twenty as he strode rapidly along towards the landwash.

Of course he must haul his boat, but that he could easily do. Had he not built her himself expressly, small, and of half-inch planking over the lightest of frames, with two bilge streaks to act as runners, and flat-bottomed that she should drag well over snow? When at length he had launched her over the "ballicater" ice, and had pulled her clear of the cracks by the landwash, he stopped and spent a grudgingly spared moment in lighting his pipe. Then, heigho, and away for the open sea--out on to which he marched with his head erect and his old heart dauntless, like the peaceful Minute-Men of 1776.

Meanwhile an ever-increasing crowd of men, women, and even children were pouring from apparently nowhere out on to the floe. The young men were "copying," as we say, over the ice, that is, jumping from pan to pan as they ventured far out from the land seeking the seals which the running ice, driving out before the wind, had brought down from the Gulf, and then killing them, and hauling them back into safety.

It was from them that I subsequently learned the story of the day.

Before night fell the wind had risen, and blew directly from the land.

Snow began to fall soon after midday, and by sundown a living blizzard howled over the frozen ocean. None of the distant neighbors had seen Uncle Rube set out; none of them even knew that he had left his house; no one before ever heard of his doing such a thing as start out on the ice alone. Nor was it till the next day that a half-frozen little girl, who was heard crying in the snow in front of a neighbor's house, disclosed the secret that Uncle Rube was missing.

How had they known at all that there were seals on the ice that day?

Known? Why, Mark Seaforth had gone all along the coast telling them early in the morning. He had got the news from the lighthouse, and it was the oldest of customs to give all hands a chance whenever the seals were sighted driving alongsh.o.r.e.

It had not been the material ear drum to which the old man had listened for his sailing orders. On that day especially he had heard with other ears, and all the coast freed Mark from any blame for the old sailor's having understood "s.h.i.+ps" instead of "seals."

Late in the sealing season of that same year the good s.h.i.+p Artemis, a stout, steel-sheathed ice hunter, a unit of the modern fleet that have long ago displaced the wooden schooners that once in hundreds followed the seal herds, was steaming north to finish up shooting old harps in the swatches, having lost a number of her pans in bad weather farther south. Seals were scarce on the west side, and the wireless had warned the skipper that a patch of old seals was pa.s.sing eastward through the Straits. Cape Bauld Light had been sighted, and so also had the new light on Belle Isle. The barrelmen were eagerly scanning the ice for any signs of the expected herd.

"Something black on the ice on the port bow!" shouted the man from the foretop.

"Where away?" answered the master of the bridge.

"About four points to the northwest."

"Hard astarboard!" from the bridge.

"Starboard hard!" from the wheel, and the big s.h.i.+p wheeled a course direct for the Red Island Shoals.

"Steady!" from the bridge.

"Steady it is!" And the Artemis wheeled a little more, and leaving the shoals on her right, steamed towards the object that had attracted the attention of the watch. The bridge master, viewing it through his gla.s.ses, suddenly stopped short, fixing his gaze on the spot with far more than his wonted intensity.

"What is it, John?" he said to the watchman. "Seems queer to me. It's no seal, I'll swear."

John took the gla.s.ses, and, putting them to his eyes, made out at once what the object was.

"'T is a small boat upside down--and yes, there's a man's body for certain, stretched out beside it," he announced in a subdued voice.

"Go slow!" to the engine man.

"Slow!" rang back the watchful engineer.

"Stop her!" and over the side went half a dozen men.

"Take that hatch over, and bring in the man off the ice."

All the crew, some three hundred blackened figures, were now leaning over the rail to see the evidence of this latest tragedy. No one knew him, or could even guess where he and his boat had come from, or on what strange quest he had been bound. Those ice pans might have come from anywhere along the hundreds of miles between Anticosti and Cape Chidley. To these men, it was just the body of an old man, a stranger.

Not much loss. He could not have lived many more years, anyhow.

Probably no one would miss him. No need to trouble over it. A prompt burial at sea, thought the captain, would be as good as on the land, where a grave was an impossibility now, anyhow. Besides, he was obviously an old seaman, and what could be more appropriate? Moreover, the crew would rather have it so than to carry the corpse around while they were seal-hunting.

There was no parson aboard, but the skipper was a G.o.d-fearing man. So the flags were hauled to half-mast, the s.h.i.+p hove to the wind, the crew called on deck just as they were, and when the skipper had read a brief prayer, "in sure and certain hope" the body of Uncle Reuben Marston, vanquished by his enemy at last, was committed to the deep within a biscuit toss of the Red Island Shoals.

THE END