Part 16 (2/2)
Peter dropped his half-picked bird, ascended with eager agility, lined another projection of the floe with some object on the New Brunswick sh.o.r.e, seemed puzzled, looked more carefully, and then slowly descended, apparently sad and disheartened.
”Well, Peter, how is it?” said La Salle, cheerfully.
”No good; ice lun north-west, against tide; no get ash.o.r.e to-day,” was the reluctant answer.
Regnar seemed little surprised, but Waring turned almost white with anxiety and disappointment.
”I thought as much,” said La Salle, quietly. ”With such a gale as this, the tide, whose rise and fall does not average four feet on this coast, often seems to run in one direction, and even to remain at flood for a day or two; but even if it did fall, this floe carries sail enough with this wind to make from two to three miles an hour against it. We shall probably have easterly and southerly winds until to-morrow, and must now be well up to Cape Bauld, and about mid-channel, say twelve miles from sh.o.r.e.”
”Why not try land, then, with the boat? We four could surely make twelve mile in the course of the day,” asked Regnar, somewhat impatiently for him.
”How deep is the snow and slush now, Regnie?” asked the leader of the little party, calmly.
”'Bout knee-deep on level ice,” said the boy.
”Come up here, all of you,” said La Salle, ascending the lookout.
The three followed, and found themselves scarcely able to stand at times, when a fiercer blast than usual swept up the strait, howling through the tortuous and intricate ravines and valleys of the ice-fields.
”Can we cross such a place as that?” asked La Salle, pointing to where an edge of a large ice-field, suddenly lifted by the wedge-like brink of another, began a majestic and resistless encroachment, with the incalculable power communicated by the vast weight pressing behind it.
A body of ice, at least a yard in thickness, ran up a steep ascent of five or six feet, broke with its own weight, pressed on again up the steeper incline, broke again, and so continued to ascend and break off until a ridge a score of feet high, crested with glittering fragments of broken ice, interrupted the pa.s.sage between the two floes.
Regnar was silent, and then said, resolutely,--
”We can try, at least.”
”Well said, Regnie,” cried La Salle; ”but look again yonder.” He pointed to a small lead of open water bounded with abrupt sh.o.r.es, which were surrounded with rounded b.a.l.l.s and water-worn fragments of ice. A berg, losing its balance, fell with a loud splash, sank, and came to the surface with a bound, covering the water with wet snow and the ruins of the shattered pinnacles. ”Can we also pa.s.s the heavy drags of the drifted snow, the baffling resistance of floating sludge, and such dangers as that?”
Turning, he descended under the lee of the shelter, where he was soon followed by the rest.
”What spose we do, then?” asked Peter. ”We stay this place to die of cold and hunger?”
”Peter, I'm ashamed of you,” said La Salle. ”Die, do you say, when we have food, shelter, fire, and covering? We must, indeed, stay here until the winds and sea give us a better chance to escape to the sh.o.r.e.
Meanwhile let us try to make ourselves comfortable.”
Accordingly the birds--six geese and eight brent--were divested of their skins, which furnished patches of warm covering, of from two to four square feet. The sinews of the legs were divided into threads, and, using a small sail-needle which he carried to clean the tube of his gun, La Salle proceeded to show Waring how to make a large robe, placing the larger skins in the middle, and forming a border of the smaller ones.
Meanwhile Regnar had cleared the snow from a s.p.a.ce about twelve feet square in front of the door, and, with fragments of ice, cemented with wet snow, formed a walled enclosure which kept off the wind; and Peter, splitting two or three of the wooden decoys, soon built a fire, over which a pair of geese, spitted on sticks, were narrowly watched and sedulously turned, while La Salle made a cup of his carefully-treasured coffee.
As they sat eating their rude meal, Regnar broke the silence; for it may well be believed that no great hilarity pervaded the little party.
”As we not know how long we may be adrift, I think we better take 'count stock. See how much wood, provisions, powder, shot, everyting.”
”You are right, Regnie; we will set to work at once. I can tell how much food we have now. We have a little bread, coffee, sugar, and a tin of sardines, which I think we had better reserve for possible emergencies, also six candles, which we must not waste. I have a pound canister of powder untouched, and nearly half a pound more in my flask, with about five pounds of shot, and three dozen shot-cartridges of different sizes, say sixty charges in all. Besides that, my rifle lies in the boat, loaded, with a small bag of bullets, and a quarter-pound flask of rifle powder.”
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