Left on Labrador Part 32

"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 sh.o.r.e, 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 a.s.sortment 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 fres.h.!.+" 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 b.u.mperfuls 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 appet.i.tes; and, had the morsels been flavored with salt, it would not have tasted bad. Wade tried dipping his in the b.u.mper 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 sh.o.r.e, among the rocks."

Kit started off, and presently came back with a large lump. Bits of it were broken off and put in the b.u.mper, 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, s.h.i.+vering 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 carca.s.s on one side. The hide was then skinned off underneath; when, on rolling the carca.s.s 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.

"Now let it storm, if it wants to!" cried Weymouth: "we've got a water-proof seal-skin at least!"

An arch of stones, with our spider set in the top, was then built over the fire to protect it from the weather.

"How long will this walrus last for firewood, suppose?" I asked.

"Oh! two or three days, for a guess," Donovan thought.

"After that, what?" said Wade.

"It's no use to trouble ourselves about that now," said Kit: "the Bible expressly forbids it. Besides, we've had trouble enough for one day. I'm for turning in and having a nap."

"Not much fun in turning in on a bare ledge, I fancy," Wade replied.

"We shall miss our mattresses."

"A bare rock is a rather hard thing to bunk on, I do think," Raed remarked, peeping under the walrus-skin. "If we were in Maine, now, we should qualify that with a 'shake-down' of spruce-boughs. Didn't see any thing of the evergreen sort among the rocks, did you, Wash?"

We had not. It then occurred to me that we had observed several little shrubs common to the mountains of Labrador, and known to naturalists as the Labrador tea-plant.

"Any thing is better than the bare rock," Raed remarked, when I spoke of this shrub; and we all sallied out to glean an armful.

While thus engaged, Wade and Kit espied a bed of moss in a hollow between the crags, a portion of which was dry enough for our purpose.

After bringing an armful of the tea-plant, we made a trip to the moss-patch. What we could all bring at once piled upon the coa.r.s.e shrubs made a bed by no means to be despised by--cast-aways.

"I presume there's no need of mounting guard or setting a watch here,"

Donovan said.

"How do we know that some party of Huskies or Indians has not been watching our movements all day?" Weymouth suggested.