Part 8 (1/2)
”It hurts so wonderful!” they would cry, braveto stop it? 'Twere better dead than this!”
It was hard to get down into the hold at all, for the ladders were gone, and as the vessel rocked the seals and the coal were sloshi+ng about below-decks where thethem
”Is anybody here?” the Doctor would call, as he poked into a dark angle
No answer
He would try again ”Any one in here?” There ht be a fitful wail from a far corner Then the Doctor would have to clamber over and round the casks and throw aside potato sacks and boxes Sometimes his patients, in a sodden stupor, hidden away at the botto, could not be found at all
In these filthy, reeking holds, enduring all discomforts for the sake of perhaps a hundred dollars payable weeks hence, the rew fat on pork and seal meat, fried with onions Whenever the rats were especially noisy, the wise ones said it ale: but so It was no place for a -steao out on the ice, though the seals tantalizingly frolicked all about them The seals seemed to kno the pious Newfoundlander observes the Lord's Day The animals stared at the shi+p and the shi+p stared back at thelee the seals took to their perpetual water-sports, in which they are as adept as the penguins of the Antarctic
”I have reatly,” Grenfell says, ”how it is possible for any hot-blooded creature to enjoy so immensely this terribly cold water as do these old seals They paddle about, throw themselves on their backs, float and puff out their breasts, flapping their flippers like paws over their chests”
While they lay off Fogo Island, watching the seals, the great pans of ice, rising and falling with the heaving of the sea, beat on the stout sides of the _Neptune_ as on a dru the _Neptune_ would steam a little ahead, very much as a swimmer dives into a breaker to cleave it before it combs over and carries hiht eyes of danger,” left the shi+p and went out on the ice and tried to clis, stranded in theto fight its way out--so hiives to the wind, the berg was rocked to and fro--eight feet or so with every wave that struck it It fell on the pans like a great trip-hah it were a living creature in ony As pieces fell off into the sea the waves leapt up, the olvescaribou In such a battle of the ice with the ice, a htiest natural forces
The _Neptune_ escaped a rahbor, the _Wolf_, was not so lucky The _Wolf_ had rounded Fogo Island in an offshore wind that treacherously offered her a clear channel close to the land As soon as she got round, the north wind, as though a de back and pinned her fast An i in upon the dooher above the bulwarks
”Get the boats onto the pans!” Captain Kean shouted to his men It is just what they have had to do on many an Arctic expedition when the ice has nipped them
They took their food and clothes--but Captain Kean, the last to leave the shi+p, of course--saved nothing of his own except his life And it was the closest possible call for him Just after he ju for the hosts of Pharaoh Doent the _Wolf_ like a stone, and as she tossed and heaved and gurgled in her death-throes the ends of her spars caught on the edges of the ice and were broken off as if they were match-wood The sea seeeance
It was the old, sad story for the captain and his men They would have to walk ashore, three hundred of them, over the miles of cruel ice At ho for a grand success and a good ti perhaps three hundred , father or brother would stagger in, his little pack of poor belongings on his sore shoulders, and throw it down, and say with a great sob: ”'Tis all I've brought ye!”
It is a pitiful thing indeed for a man to have traveled hundreds of miles to board a shi+p, in the hope of a few dollars for the risk of his life, and then to have the sea s up his chance, and turn him loose to the ice and snow, a ruined man When a captain loses his shi+p, whatever the reason, it is alain
IV
HAULED BY THE HUSKIES
There was great excitee of St Anthony, on the far northern tip of Newfoundland
Tos Jih to give a slice of the fat to every e fa but a little roasted seal un down frole-barrel ood shot, and had often wandered out alone over the frozen sea and come back with a nice fat bird or even a seal to show for it
”Where be you goin', Tom?” asked his anxious wife
”Out yonder” He jerked his thumb toward the hite space of the ice-locked ocean
She ran to get his warm cap and et a seal Us has got to have somethin' to eat, an' have it soon”
She found an old flour-bag, and tied up in it a few crusts of bread
”You'd ought to keep this here,” said Tom