Left on Labrador Part 34

We had to scurry out in a hurry to avoid being penned there. Guard, like a fool, kept backing in that direction. By the time we had got clear of the shelter, he had got himself backed into it; and, the sea-horse essaying to follow him, the oar that held up the skin in front was knocked away, and down it came, burying the dog, and partially covering the walrus. A fearful uproar of barking, howling, and snorting, followed. Presently Guard got out from under, and ran yelping off, leaving his pursuer floundering about under the hide. Kit rushed up, and thrust his bayonet into the creature's exposed side; when with a mighty squirm it turned itself, knocking down the boat, and sending our stone wall flying in all directions. The battle was now fairly begun. We all closed in round the animal, thrusting at it with our bayonets anywhere we could stab. Yet it fought ferociously, with bellowings enough to make one's blood run chill. It seemed marvellous how a creature so unwieldy could turn itself so rapidly.

Pain and rage made it no mean antagonist. Once Raed's musket was sent flying out of his hands several rods; and Wade, thrusting at its head, had his bayonet wrenched off at a single twist. We afterwards found it bent up and broken. I think Weymouth gave it a mortal wound by firing a bullet into its head; though Kit and I repeatedly ran our bayonets into its sides clean up to the rings. It succ.u.mbed at last, dying hard, with many a finis.h.i.+ng thrust.

The gray morning light was beginning to outline the dreary sh.o.r.e. The chilly rain still poured. The reader can imagine in what a plight we were. The fire had gone out. Our skin-tent lay in a wad; and in the midst of our beds sprawled the dead sea-horse, weltering in its blood; while we ourselves, drenched with rain and bespattered with gore, stood round, steaming from our warlike exertions.

"This is a pretty how-d'y'-do!" Kit exclaimed. "Look at our 'shake downs!'--all blood and mire!"

"Well, we've got another _wood-pile_," said Donovan.

"I wish it had selected a more fitting time to make its appearance,"

Raed muttered. "It has demoralized us completely."

"Nothing to do but re-organize," laughed Kit. "Get the painter-line.

Let's drag him off."

That was a heavy job, and took us nigh half an hour. Then there were the blood-soaked moss and tea-plant shrubs to get up and throw away, the wall to rebuild, the boat to set up, and the skin to repitch on the oars. All this time it continued to rain hard, with mingled flakes of snow. A tough time, we called it. And, after the tent was pitched again, we had no fire; and could only crouch, wet and s.h.i.+vering, on the bare ledge. I never felt more uncomfortable: my bones all ached; my head ached: I was sick. Wade was worse off than myself even.

Throwing himself flat on the rock, he buried his face in his arms, and lay so for more than an hour. Raed and Kit sat blackguarding each other to keep up their spirits. Donovan was trying to dry some pine-splinters to build a fire with by sitting on them. Weymouth was cutting out blubber from the skinned carca.s.s for the fire, so soon as the splinters could be dried. Two matches were burned trying to kindle the pine-shavings. We thought our fire dearly purchased at such a cost.

"Only four more," remarked Donovan gravely.

"We must not let it go out again," Raed said. "We must sit up, some of us, in future, to tend it."

Any thing like the dreary gloom of that morning I hope never to experience again. Sea, sky, and crags seemed all of one color,--lead.

Seven or eight miles to southward, the mountains of the mainland (Labrador) showed their black bases under the fog-clouds. The great island to the south-east seemed to have been dipped in ink, so funereal was its hue.

The rain had frustrated our attempt at salt manufacture. We had to take our breakfast of fried goose in all the _freshness_ of nature.

Our clothes gradually dried on us.

During the forenoon Kit sallied out on a hunting excursion, and, about noon, returned with a fine, plump, canvas-backed duck, which we ate for our dinner.

Toward four o'clock it stopped raining. Donovan and Weymouth improved the chance to skin the sea-horse we had killed during the night, it was rather larger than the first one, and had prodigious stiff, wiry whiskers about its upper lip, some of which we kept for a curiosity.

They were over a foot in length, and as large as a coa.r.s.e darning-needle. The tusks, too, were broken out, and laid aside.

During the night it faired; and the morning was sunny. Wade had become very unwell. He had taken cold from his drenching, and was s.h.i.+vering and feverish by turns. His courage, too, was clean down to zero. He _knew_ we should never see home again, and didn't seem to care whether he lived or not. That is about as bad a way as a fellow can get into ever. I was little better than sick myself; and, while the others went off after eggs and game, I stayed to keep the fire going and take care of Wade. No small stint I had of it too; for he was peevish and touchy as a young badger. I knew he ought to take something hot of the herb-tea sort, and so started off and gathered a dipperful of the tea-plant leaves. Then, getting a lump of ice, I melted it, and made a strong dish of the "tea." Wade was lying under the shelter, face down into his coat-sleeve. Carrying in the steaming dipper, I told him I thought he had better take some of it: it would, I hoped, help his cold, &c.

No: he wouldn't touch it!

I then reasoned a while. This not having any perceptible effect, I next resorted to coaxing.

No: he wouldn't drink the stinking stuff!

Now, no doctor, I take it, likes to have his potions called "stinking stuff." I began to remonstrate; and from that--not being in a very amiable frame of mind--I ere long got mad, and was on the point of pitching into the sufferer, when it occurred to me that for a doctor to be caught thras.h.i.+ng his patient would be a very unbecoming spectacle! So I contented myself with giving him a "setting-up;"

calling him, according to the best of my recollections, supported by the subsequent testimony of the patient, an "ungrateful dog," "peep,"

"nincomp.o.o.p," _et als._: after listening to which for a s.p.a.ce, Wade got up and drank the _tea_. Peace was immediately restored with this act of obedience; and I proceeded to get him to bed. Pulling down the boat, I filled it half up with such of the shrubs and moss as had not been besmirched with the blood of the walrus. Wade then got into it. I made him a pillow of the geese-feathers by piling them into the bow under his head, and spreading over them my pocket-handkerchief. I next had him take off his boots, and set a hot rock from the fire at his feet. What to cover him up with was something of a problem. I managed it by putting on a layer of the moss, and laying the thwarts of the boat over this. Then, feeling somewhat fatigued after my labors, I crept in with him; and, ere long, we both went to sleep. The hunting-party coming back, two or three hours after, laden with eggs and brant geese, awoke me. Wade was sweating profusely beneath the boards and moss. We took care not to wake him till near eight o'clock, evening; when he got up, considerably better.

The next day (July 26) was spent in the manufacture of salt; not the manufacture of it exactly, either, but the extraction of it from sea-water. We were getting perfectly frantic for salt. The fresh food sickened us. I think we should soon have been really ill from the want of it. Filling the hollow in the ledge with the sea-water, we first tried to get fire enough about it to make the water boil. This we found it impossible to do, and so had recourse to a plan suggested by Kit. It was to get eight or ten stones about the size of the tin b.u.mper, and heat them in the fire. When red-hot, these were successively rolled into the water in the hollow, raising great clouds of steam, and soon causing it to boil furiously. Continuing this stone-heating process for three or four hours, we succeeded in boiling away fully half a dozen pailfuls of water. There was then found to be a thin stratum of salt deposited along the bottom of the hollow. How we crowded around it, wetting the ends of our fingers, and licking it up! Eggs were then fried by the dozen, and eaten with a relish that only salt can give. I should add, however, that this appeared to me to be a very poor quality of salt; or else it had other mineral matter mixed with it, giving it a slightly bitter taste.

The quant.i.ty obtained at this our first boiling was so small, that we ate it all that night, and with our breakfast next morning.

The next forenoon was pa.s.sed boiling down a second vatful. Wade and I attended to the salt-making, while the rest of the party went off to the islet next to the west after eggs and game. In the evening we provided ourselves with fresh "shake-downs" of moss and the tea-plant.

The 28th was devoted by Raed, Kit, and Donovan to a trip down to the mainland on the south. Raed wanted to see what sort of a country it was, with a view to our attempt at going down to Nain in case "The Curlew" should not come back. They did not get back till nine in the evening. They had found the hills and mountains along the coast to be mere barren ridges of lichen-clad rock, with moss-beds in the hollows. But from the summit of the high ridge, about two miles in from the sh.o.r.e, they had seen with the gla.s.s, to the southward, what seemed to be low thickets of stunted evergreen,--fir or spruce. From this Raed argued that fuel might be obtained by a party travelling through the country; and, from that, went on to picture these thickets to abound with deer and hares.

CHAPTER XIII.

More Salt.--Some Big Hailstones.--A Bright Aurora.--The Lookout.--An _Oomiak_ heaves in Sight.--The Huskies land on a Neighboring Island.--Shall we join them?--A Bold, Singular, not to say Infamous, Proposition from Kit.--Some Sharp Talk.--Kit's Project carried by Vote.

During the 29th, 30th, and 31st (Sunday) of the month, we were employed much as upon the 27th; viz., boiling for salt, and egging along the cliffs. We wanted to get as much salt on hand as possible; and, by untiring industry, succeeded in getting about a quart ahead.

But to do this we had been obliged to keep up a smart fire, which had consumed nearly all the walrus-blubber from both carca.s.ses. Where to get the next supply of fuel was an open question. No more sea-horses had showed themselves. We concluded that this pair were all that had been in the vicinity.

On the night of the 31st, a terrible storm of wind, thunder, and hail, swept across the straits from the north-west. Raed picked up hailstones in front of our shelter, after the cloud had pa.s.sed, which were two inches and a half in diameter. They struck down upon the rocks with almost incredible violence. Any ordinary canvas-tent would have been riddled by them: but our tough walrus-skin bore the brunt, and sheltered us completely. The sea, during the hail-fall, seemed to boil with a loud peculiar roar, and was white with bubbles and foam.

There was a very bright aurora the following night. The next morning was fair; but a ghastly greenish haze gave the sky an aspect of strange pallor. Somehow we felt uneasy under it. After breakfast, Kit and I went up to the top of the ledges overlooking the straits to the north, east, and west, to see if we could discover any vessels. Some of us used generally to make our way up here every four or five hours to take a long look. For an hour we sat gazing off on the heaving expanse, flecked white with ice-patch, and bounded far to the north by a low line of black mountains. The breadth of the straits here was not far from seventeen leagues.

"Seven days since we were _retired_ here," Kit remarked at length.

Seven days! It seemed seven ages.

"Kit, what do you think of the chance of our getting off from here?"

"Wash, I don't know: I don't dare to think."

"Do you really believe Capt. Mazard will come back?"

"Why, if he's not captured, nor wrecked in a gale, nor jammed up in the ice, he will come back."

"You have no doubt he will come back if he can?"

"Why, no: I know he will come if he can. He wouldn't leave us here.

Besides, you know, Wash, that we owe him and all the crew for his and their services. I don't say that they would come back any quicker on that account: still they would be likely to want their pay, you know."

"That's true."

"But, Kit, if 'The Curlew' shouldn't make its appearance, do you believe we could get down to Nain, or any of those Esquimau coast-villages?"

"I don't know, Wash: we could try."

"Seven hundred miles through such a country as this! Would it be possible?"

"It would be no use to stay here, you know, if we found the schooner wasn't coming back. We must, of course, make an effort to get away. It would be foolish to stay here till winter came on. I don't suppose it would be possible for us to winter here: we should freeze to death in spite of every thing we could do. The cold is awfully intense through the winter months. Not even the Esquimaux try to winter on the straits here. Besides, it's about time for the sea-fowl to fly southward. We can't live after they're gone."

"But only think of a sixty-days' tramp over these barren mountains!

Our boots wouldn't last a hundred miles! Our socks are worn through now!"

"Have to make moccasons."