Part 10 (2/2)
Creamer, after a cursory glance at a diminutive prayer-book, spent most of the day in a comparison of sea-going experiences and apocryphal adventures with Captain Lund, in much the same manner as two redoubtable masters of fence employ their leisure in launching at each other's impregnable defence, such blows as would prove mortal against less skilled antagonists.
By the middle of the afternoon Lund had related his sixth story, being the veracious history of how one Louis McGraw, a famous fis.h.i.+ng-skipper of Mingan, rode out a tremendous gale on the Orphan Bank, with both cables out, the storm-sail set, her helm lashed amids.h.i.+ps, and the crew fastened below as tightly as possible. It is hardly worth while to detail how the crew were bruised and battered by the terrible rolling of the schooner; it may be left to the imagination of the intelligent reader when he learns that, when the storm abated, the skipper found, besides innumerable ”kinks” in the cables, and sea-weed in the rigging, _both topmasts broken short off_, indubitable proof, to the nautical mind, that the Rechabite had been rolled over and over again, like an empty barrel, in that terrible sea.
Creamer had just begun, by way of retaliation, his favorite ”yarn” of the ingenious diplomacy of one Jem Jarvis, his father's uncle, who, being wrecked ”amongst the cannibals of Rarertonger,” with a baker's dozen of his s.h.i.+pmates, escaped the fate of his less accomplished comrades by his skill on the jewsharp, and an especial talent for dancing the double-shuffle, so that they gave him a hut to himself, two wives, and all he could eat, until he broke his jewsharp, and got fat and lazy, and then there was nothing to do but to run for it.
How Creamer's paternal relative extricated himself from his precarious position will never be known, as, at this juncture, Ben and La Salle, respectively, weary of playing a limited _repertoire_ of psalm-tunes on the concertina, and reading the musty records of a long-forgotten ”_Sederunt_ of the quarterly Synod,” as detailed in an old number of the Presbyterian Witness, interrupted the prolonged pa.s.sage at arms by an invitation, to all so disposed, ”to take a walk around the island.”
Lund, who had misgivings as to his ability to give Creamer ”a Roland for his Oliver,” rose at once, and Creamer acceding more reluctantly, the four set off, through a narrow wood-path, to a cleared field near the western extremity of the island.
At the verge of this field, a cliff of red sandstone, ribbed and seamed by centuries of weather-wear and beat of sea, overlooked the ample bay which opens into the Straits of Northumberland at their widest point.
Before them it lay covered with huge level ice-fields, broken only where tide and storm had caused an upheaval of their edges, or a berg, degraded and lessened of its once lordly majesty, it is true, but still grand even in its decay, rose like a Gothic ruin amid a snow-covered and desolate plain.
The sun was declining in the west, but his crimson rays gave warmth to the picture, and the still air had, as it were, a foretaste of the balmy revivifying warmth of spring. In the woods, close at hand, were heard the harsh cawing of the crow, the shrill scream of the blue-jay, and the garrulous chatter of many a little family of warm-furred, pine-cone-eating little red squirrels.
Neither was animal life wanting elsewhere to complete the picture. On the ice could be counted, in different directions, no less than seventeen flocks of Canada geese, some of them apparently on the watch, but the major part lying down, and evidently sleeping after their long and wearisome migration. In a single diminutive water-hole below the cliff, which probably marked the issue of one of the many subterranean springs of the islet, a half-dozen tiny ouac-a-wees, or Moniac ducks, swam and dove in conscious security.
”I can't see any open water yet,” said Creamer, ”although it looks to me a little like a water-belt, alongsh.o.r.e, inside Point Prime.”
”There's no more water-belt there,” said Lund, ”than there was music in your great-uncle's jewsharp; but there's a spot off to the sou'-west that looks to me a little like blue water.”
”Blue water, indeed!” retorted Creamer; ”who ever saw blue water on soundings! I'll lay a plug of navy tobacco there isn't open water enough there away to float La Salle's gunning-float comfortably.”
”Well, Hughie,” slowly replied the practiced pilot, who was really little disposed to vaunt his knowledge of coast and weather, ”the tide will soon decide whether you or I, or both of us, are right. It is just full flood now, and the ice is pressed in so against the land, that I know there can be no openings along the Point, and but very small ones where I think it looks like one. It seems to me that a water-vapor is rising out there, by yonder high pinnacle just in range of the pool below the ice-foot; but the tide will soon let us know if there are any large leads open within a dozen miles.”
”There's a sign in your favor,” cried La Salle, pointing in the direction of the supposed 'lead.' ”There's a flock of Brent geese, and they can't live away from open water. See, Ben, they are heading right in for the East Bar, and if we were only there we might depend upon a shot.”
La Salle was right; the flock of birds, identified plainly by their smaller size, their tumultuous order of flying, and especially by their harsh, rolling call, like a pack of hounds in cry, swept in from sea, wheeled around one of the resting flocks of Canada geese, alighted near them, took flight again, and, sweeping in an irregular course over and among the higher points of the icy labyrinth, disappeared behind the eastern promontory, as if in search of the open water, which winter had so securely locked up in icy bonds.
As the sun sank behind the neighboring firs, his reddening light fell on a bright blue streak, which seemed to glow like a stream of quicksilver between two heavy bodies of ”piled ice.” With the ebb, the narrow, glittering ca.n.a.l began to widen, piercing nearer to the islet, until, heading towards the westward, it lay little more than four miles from the interested spectators. The shadowy pinions of many flocks of water-fowl were seen exploring its course, and the neighboring geese, one by one, took flight, and, with clamorous calls, winged their way to its borders.
”I give it up,” said Creamer.
”Never mind, Hughie,” said Ben, ”I'll pay the wager; for, with open water so close to us, the first good storm will soon sweep the bay clear to the bar.”
”Yes, a sharp north-easter would soon do that for you; but all the heavy winds may be northerly and westerly for three weeks to come yet,” said Lund; ”I've known the ice to hold here until the first week of May.”
”Well,” returned La Salle, ”I'm sure I hope it won't be so late this year, for the stock of flour on the island is very small, and many of the poor folks can't afford to buy any, and are living on potatoes almost altogether. They say, too, that there is much suffering among the farmers at the North Point.”
”Yes,” said Ben; ”I saw a man from Lot Ten last week, and he said that the French were eating their seed-grain, and feeding their cattle, or such as were left alive, on birch and beech tops.”
”That has happened often, since I can remember,” said Lund, ”and I suppose is likely to after I am gone; but it seems to me that those stupids might learn something by this time.”
”It will occur to a greater or less degree, just as long as the island is shut out from the rest of the world for nearly half the year. There are few men who have any just estimate of the amount of provisions and fodder necessary for the sustenance of a family and its cattle for so long a period as a half year, and when accident, or the unwonted backwardness of the season, increases the number of mouths, or the length of the cold term, it is hard for the farmer to decide on sacrificing the life of even a superannuated horse, or weakly yearling, in time to benefit the more valuable survivors.”
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