Left on Labrador Part 26

"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 b.a.l.l.s 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 b.u.mps 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 b.u.mp 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 splas.h.i.+ng 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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, Was.h.!.+" 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 b.u.mped the bottom of the boat simultaneously. The bear had come up under us, and floated out on the port side, a great ma.s.s 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 carca.s.s 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.