Adrift in the Ice-Fields Part 10

"A NIGHT OF PERIL.

"I am but a short man, and, as my time is short, you must not complain if my story is short, too.

"I am not so imaginative as the captain; I haven't pestered all the old men and women of the island to death for legends and stories, like my friend Charley here, who will surely bore you to death when his turn comes; I am sure I cannot make you laugh as Hughie and Mr. Risk have done with their very interesting narratives, and I can only detail a little adventure which I unexpectedly got into on this coast last summer, and which I as unexpectedly got out of alive."

"You mean your crossing the straits in a sixteen-foot boat?" said Captain Lund. "I want to hear about that myself."

"Well, in the early part of last August, my wife and I decided to visit some friends, who reside a few miles up the River Jean, on the opposite side of the straits, I suppose about twenty miles from here. We could reach no port by steamer that was nearer our destination than Pictou, and there remained a long, tedious stage ride when we got there. I concluded to take a boat, and procured of Frank Stanley a little row-boat, with a spritsail for running before the wind; for I intended to choose my own time for crossing. We set out from C. early one morning, and arrived in the afternoon after a very pleasant pa.s.sage, and we enjoyed our visit to that section very much.

"After waiting a day or two for a fair wind down the river, we set sail, but, owing to the lightness of the breeze, were nearly all the afternoon in getting down. Still, on reaching the harbor, I determined to proceed, as the lights on both sh.o.r.es could be plainly seen, and I did not like to lose a favorable wind.

"Accordingly I put boldly out, heading for Point Prime Light, although my mind misgave me a little as I got clear of the lee of the land; for the sea rose rapidly, and a tremendous breeze, each moment growing stronger, carried us on with frightful rapidity. When we were about half way across, the wind was blowing a gale, and it was only for a moment, while on the crest of the waves, that I could see the light for which I was steering.

"The spray was breaking over us so that my wife had to bale continually to keep our craft free, and I dared not leave the helm to lessen sail, although I expected that each slat of the canvas, as we took the wind on the crest of a wave, would run us under, or carry away the mast, and leave us at the mercy of the waves.

"On we went before the breeze, darting down into the hollow between two seas, toiling heavily up the next wave, with death apparently close behind on the crests of two or three pursuing breakers, and then, with a puff which made every timber and plank quiver, the gale would almost lift us through a breaking wall of white foam, and, with more or less of the sea aboard, away we would go down the incline, a plaything of a boat, with a frightened little man at the tiller, and a little woman baling incessantly, with nerves that never gave way for a moment in our long struggle for life.

"I felt that if I could get that sprit down we were safe; but my wife dared not attempt it, and she would not trust herself at the tiller.

Fortunately the boat steered 'very small,' and seizing my opportunity, I set the tiller amidships, darted forward, cleared the end of the sprit from its becket, and got back just in time to meet her as she began to broach to, on the crest of a wave, which nearly half filled us with water.

"I felt now as if we were safe; for no longer c.u.mbered with a press of sail, we shipped less water, and had a better chance to lay out our course. Keeping Point Prime Light, as I supposed, well to starboard, I headed up the bay, seeking to make the Blockhouse Light, when suddenly I saw the coast dead ahead, and a bar, which must have been the West Bar, which I dared not attempt to cross.

"I therefore bore away until I made a harbor, and running in, got aboard a vessel, from whose captain I learned that we had mistaken the Blockhouse Light for that on Point Prime, and had at last made c.r.a.paud River."

"Leaving the boat to be brought around by the next steamer, we drove up to town the next day, and found, to our surprise, that we had crossed close on the heels of that hurricane, which unroofed so many buildings, and uprooted so many trees. I consider that pa.s.sage as the most stirring incident in my short life, gentlemen, and in the language of an old story, 'my wife thinks so, too.'"

"And you may well think so, Mr. Kennedy," said Lund. "For all the money in the banks of C. wouldn't tempt me to run the risk, the almost certainty, of death, I mean, that you two did. Your wife is a brave woman, sir, and there are very few men who would have borne themselves as she did."

"Well, gentlemen, I see Pat is ready, and I must bid you good night.

Charley, I'll give the boys the list of things you want them to bring out Monday. I suppose you'll get through in a couple of weeks, and come back to civilized life. Good night."

Followed by a dozen expressions of adieu and goodwill, the travellers entered the sleigh, and drove merrily off on the ice. Charley stood still a moment alone in the moonlight, listening to the last tinkle of the bells as they died away in the distance.

"What nonsense to stand here bareheaded, and getting cold! and yet it seems as if something urged me to go back to the city. Yet, why should I dread anything here? or rather, why should I fear anything with such a prospect as I have before me?"

He turned, and entered the house; a dainty letter from his betrothed, brought that night from the city, lay upon his breast; but honey and gall mingled strangely in its offerings, and many a bitter word bore heavy on his heart. No one of all that merry party was readier for song, or jest, or manly sport, than he; and yet he, too, had his share of that bitter cup which mortals call sorrow.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER VI.

ADDITIONS TO THE PARTY.--AN INDIAN OUTFIT.--A CONTESTED ELECTION.

The following day was Sunday, and was spent as most Sabbaths are spent by similar parties in such out-of-the-way places. A few members of the household drove off across the ice of the Western Bar to a little country church; but the goose-shooters cared not to display their half savage dress, and tanned and blistered faces, to the over-close inspection of the church-going farmers and their curious "_women folks_."

Accordingly, Risk pa.s.sed most of the day luxuriously stretched out on the sofa, reading the Church Magazine, while Davies, on the opposite side of the fire, in the recesses of an arm-chair covered with a buffalo robe, devoted the larger portion of his time to the Weekly Wesleyan.

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 fishing-skipper of Mingan, rode out a tremendous gale on the Orphan Bank, with both cables out, the storm-sail set, her helm lashed amidships, 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 shipmates, 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."