Grenfell: Knight-Errant of the North Part 27

"So they fought till they tired of it, and then they pulled out the rum-bottles, and drank themselves into forgetfulness of their fierce battle.

"With the next morning came a hundred honest fishermen who wanted nothing more from the islands than the birds and the eggs they actually needed for their hungry wives and little ones at home.

"They had been eating salt meat for months: scurvy had broken out, and they wanted a change of diet.

"But the pirate eggers were bound they shouldn't have it. The fishermen brought no guns: they weren't looking for trouble: they were taken by surprise when the eggers rushed down on them like tigers roused from their lairs.

"One of the eggers, who had not slept off the effects of the carousal of the night before, shot one of the fishermen. Then the fishermen, who outnumbered the eggers about ten to one, gave the latter the beating of their lives. Fortunately, the fisherman who had been shot was not killed.

"That was the sort of thing that happened again and again in the bad old days.

"No wonder Audubon, as a great lover of birds, was very angry at these men who were making it impossible for birds to make their homes and lay their eggs and raise their families on the Labrador. They could have had all they wanted to eat without exterminating the birds, and never giving a thought to anybody who might come after them.

"The fishermen still, in many places, out of sight and reach of any law, take all the eggs and kill all the birds they can.

"But it's not so bad as it was in Audubon's time, when men from Halifax took about 40,000 eggs which they sold for twenty-five cents a dozen. Near Cape Whittle he found two men gathering murre's eggs. They were proud of the fact that they had collected 800 dozen and they didn't intend to stop till they had taken 2,000 dozen. The broken eggs made such a dreadful smell that it almost made him sick.

"The ivory gull, known as the 'ice partridge,' is sometimes caught by pouring seal's blood on the ice. The birds swoop down to get it, and are shot. Some actually kill themselves by striking the ice too hard when they land, for they are so eager to get the blood.

"Labrador is a good place to study the diving birds, which are of two kinds.

"There are those that use their feet alone under the water--and then there are those that use only their wings.

"The feet-users clap their wings close to their sides when they dive.

"The wing-users spread out their pinions before they strike the water.

The puffin uses its wings under the water, and so do the other members of the auk family.

"In the duck family, there are both wing-swimmers and foot-swimmers.

The ducks of the sorts known as old squaws, scoters and eiders fly under water. But the redheads and canvas-back ducks use only their feet under water. Mergansers dive with their wings against their sides, like a folded umbrella. The cormorants are famous swimmers, and use their feet alone. You know how the Chinese use cormorants as fish-catchers, putting rings about their necks to keep them from swallowing their prey.

"Among the birds cla.s.sed as game-birds, the willow grouse are so easy to kill that a true sportsman doesn't take much pleasure in going after them.

"They are often caught with nooses on the end of a stick, while they roost in the trees, and a group in this position may be killed all at once, if shot from the bottom, so that the falling bird doesn't disturb the others.

"Cartwright, an early explorer, tells how he came upon a covey of six grouse and knocked off all their heads with his rifle.

"In winter, the willow grouse bury themselves in the snow, and the 'c.o.c.k of the roost' is sentinel, keeping his head above the snow to watch for an enemy.

"The Canada goose, breeding about the lakes and ponds, is a gra.s.s-eater, and so tastes better than the fishy, oily gulls and divers. You can tame the goose and use it as a decoy. When a number are shot at a time, those that can't be used right away are hung outside the house. There they freeze, and are kept fresh all winter long.

"There couldn't be a better retriever for a duck-hunt than the Eskimo dog. I've watched them dash into the waves after a bird, only to be thrown back, bruised and winded, high up on the ledges of the rock.

"Then the return wave would drag them off, and pound them against the rocks. But the dogs would hang on for dear life, till their nails were torn away and their paws were bleeding.

"Even that wouldn't make them quit. They would return to the charge, and waiting for their chance they would jump right over the breaking crest and get clear of the surf.

"When they've once got hold of a duck, nothing will make them let go.

I've often been tempted to jump in and give the brave fellows a hand, when it seemed as if they couldn't keep up the struggle any longer.

"They'd sink out of sight in a bigger wave than usual--and then, sure enough, you'd see the duck again, and the dog's head after it, still true to duty even in the jaws of death. For sometimes, in spite of all his pluck and cleverness, the dog is drowned."

XIV

BEASTS BIG AND LITTLE

Both on sea and land, Labrador animals have to be as tough as Labrador people to stand the hard life they must lead.

Dr. Grenfell tells of a seal family he saw killed on an ice-pan about half the size of a tennis-court.

They were surprised by four sealers, with wooden bats. Before they gave up their lives they put up a tremendous struggle. The father seal actually caught a club in his mouth and swung it from side to side with such violence that the sealers had to get off the pan.

But at last he was dealt such a blow on the head that it was supposed he was killed.

Instead of stripping off the pelt as the fallen monster lay on the pan, the sealers hoisted him aboard the steamer "unscalped." As he was being lifted over the rail--two thousand pounds of him--the strap broke, and back into the sea the huge carca.s.s splashed.

The cold water revived him.

He swam back to the pan, which was marked by the blood stains of his slaughtered family--the mate with her young which he had fought so desperately to protect.

The pan stood about six feet out of the water. Yet the great animal managed to fling himself upon it.

The men, who had bread and tea to win for their families, could not afford to let him go.

They went back after him, and this time they did not trust to their wooden bats. They used a few of their precious cartridges and shot him. And then they "scalped" him on the spot, and hauled the skin over the rail.

It is painful to think of such a fate for the brave old warrior.

Just as the cod-traps are put out from the sh.o.r.e, frame nets are set for the seals along the beach where they are fairly sure to pa.s.s at certain times of the year. There is a capstan from which the doorway of the seal-trap may be closed with a few turns. The Doctor tells of one "liveyere" family that took nine hundred seals in this way: and three to four hundred is nothing unusual. One trapper named Jones was so successful at this business of trapping seals with the net that he became "purse-proud." From his land where there are no roads, he sent to Quebec for a carriage and horses, and then he had a road built on which he might parade them up and down to show his neighbors how rich he was. Then, for his dances o' winter nights, no local fiddler would serve, sc.r.a.ping and patting his foot on the floor. He hired a real musician from Canada, who remained all winter playing jigs and reels to a continuous round of feasts and merry-making. But, as the familiar saying goes, it is often only one generation from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves. In his case, the grandchildren finally found themselves with less than the shirt-sleeves. They appealed to Dr. Grenfell, and he found some old clothes on the boat to save them from freezing.

The whale is really a land animal, which finally found the sea more amusing, and so took to "a roving, nautical life."

Since the legs were no longer useful, in the course of time they became wee things, and were enclosed in the thick, tough skin.

The "arms" were left outside, but they are nothing to boast of. They are not useful for swimming, but they help to balance the huge bulk, and mother whale seizes her baby with them when she takes alarm.

The eyes are tiny, for when a whale eats he is not particular.

It takes so many millions of little bits of creatures to give a whale a square meal, that if he misses a hundred thousand or so out of the side of his huge jaws, at the top of his narrow gullet, he need not worry. The whale never starves until he is stranded. Out of water he may continue to breathe for an hour or two--but he cannot eat.

"On a fine morning on the Labrador Coast," Dr. Grenfell tells us, "I have counted a dozen whales in a single school. Now and again a huge tail would emerge from the water and lash the surface with its full breadth, making a sound like the firing of a cannon, while the silence was otherwise broken only by the noise of their blowing, as they rolled lazily along on the surface."

The thresher whale is only about twenty feet long, but he is a fierce fellow--the pirate of the whale family, terrorizing the rest, and ready to tackle anything in sight.

He has a fin which shows where he is as he cruises along close to the surface. He readily eats other whales. Three threshers went after a big cow sperm whale and her enormous infant, in shallow water. First they killed the "calf." Then they chased the mother away, and came back and ate the young one.