Left on Labrador Part 14

"A few discharges from the howitzer might stir them up," suggested Wade.

"We _could_ do that!" exclaimed Raed.

Powder was brought up, and the gun charged and fired. A thunderous echo came back from the rocky sides of the islands. A second and a third shot were given at intervals of five minutes: but we saw nothing more of the _kayak_; and, after waiting nearly an hour more, the schooner was headed around, and continued on her course at about the same distance from the islands. A gun was fired every hour till midnight. We then turned in for a nap.

From this time till four o'clock the next morning we pa.s.sed three islands: so the sailors reported. The high mainland was distinctly visible four or five miles to the northward.

At five o'clock we were off a small, low islet,--scarcely more than a broad ledge, rising at no point more than ten feet above the sea. It was several miles from the island next above it, however, and girdled by a glittering ice-field, the remains of last winter's frost, not yet broken up. Altogether the islet and the ice-field about it was perhaps two or two miles and a half in diameter. On the west it was separated from the island below it--a high, black dome of sienite--by a narrow channel of a hundred and fifty yards. Hundreds of seals lay basking in the sun along the edges of the ice-field; and, as we were watching them, we saw a bear swim across the channel and climb on to the ice-field. Landing, he gave his s.h.a.ggy sides a shake; then, making a short run, seized upon a seal, off which he was soon breakfasting.

"We'll spoil his fun!" exclaimed Kit. "Bring up one of those solid shots, Wade. We've got two bear-skins; but we shall want one apiece. I propose to have an overcoat next winter out of that fellow's hide."

The howitzer was loaded with the six-pound iron ball. Kit undertook to do the shooting this time. The distance was, we judged, somewhere from three-fourths of a mile to a mile. The rest of us got our gla.s.ses, and went back toward the stern to watch the effect of the shot. Of course it is hap-hazard work, firing at so small an object at so great a distance, with a cannon, from the deck of a vessel in motion.

Nevertheless Kit made quite a show of elevating the gun and getting the range. Presently he touched off. The first we saw of the shot was its striking on the ice-field at a long distance short of the bear.

The bits of ice flew up smartly, and the ball must have ricochetted; for we saw the ice fly up again quite near the bear, and then at another point beyond him. It probably went over him at no great height. The creature paused from his b.l.o.o.d.y feast, looked round, and then ran off a few rods, and stood sniffing for some moments, but soon came back to the seal. Whether it was the report, or the noise of the ball whirring over, which had startled him, was not very evident.

"Not an overcoat!" laughed Raed.

"It's my turn now," said I, uncovering my _smaller_ cannon. "I'll make the next bid for that overcoat."

I put in a little less than half a gill of powder this time, and wrapped a thin patch round the ball to make it fit tightly. It was all we could do to drive it down. The gun was then capped and c.o.c.ked. I moved the screw to elevate it about an inch, and, watching my chance as the schooner heaved, let drive. But the bear kept on eating. There was a general laugh.

"Didn't even notice you!" cried Kit. "I can overbid that!"--taking up the powder to reload the howitzer.

"Not before I bid again," said I.

And at it we went to see who would get loaded first to get the next shot. But, my gun being so much the smaller and more easily handled, I had my ball down before Kit had his powder-wad rammed. The rest stood clapping and cheering us. Hastily priming the tube, I whipped on a cap, then beckoned to old Trull.

"Here," said I, "shoot that bear for me!"

The old salt chuckled, and had his eye to the piece immediately. I s.n.a.t.c.hed up my gla.s.s. Kit paused to see the result. The old man pulled the trigger. There was a moment's hush, then a great "Hurrah!" The bear had jumped up, and, whirling partly round, ran off across the ice-field roaring, _we fancied_; for he had his mouth open, and snapping round to his flanks. He had been grazed, if nothing more.

With the gla.s.s we could detect blood on his white coat.

"He's. .h.i.t!" said I. "Let's bear up into the channel: that'll stop him from getting back to the high islands. We can then hunt him at leisure on the ice-field. He won't care to swim clean up to the"--

"Hark!" exclaimed Raed suddenly. "What's that noise?"

We all listened.

It was a noise not greatly unlike the faint, distant cawing and hawing of a vast flock of crows as they sometimes congregate in autumn.

"It's some sort of water-fowl _clanging_ out there about the high islands," said I.

Again it rose, borne on the wind,--"_Ta-yar-r-r! ta-yar-r-r!

ta-yar-r-r!_" Had we been at home, I should have taken it for a distant ma.s.s-meeting cheering the result of the presidential election, or perhaps the presidential nomination at the convention. It had a peculiarly barbarous, reckless sound, which was not wholly unfamiliar.

But up here in Hudson Straits we were at a loss how to account for it.

"I believe it's the Huskies," said the captain. "Take a good look all around with your gla.s.ses."

We ran our eyes over the islands. They looked bare of any thing like an Esquimau convention. Presently Kit uttered an exclamation.

"Why, just turn your gla.s.s off to the main, beyond the islands; right over the ice-field; on that lofty brown headland that juts out from the main! There they are!"

There they were, sure enough,--a grimy, bare-headed crowd, swinging their arms, and gesticulating wildly. It could not have been less than five miles; but the faint "_Ta-yar-r-r!_" still came to our ears.

"Suppose they are calling to us?" cried Raed.

"Yes; looks like that," replied the captain.

"Heard the guns, you see," said Kit; "those we fired at the bear."

"Port the helm!" ordered the captain. "We'll beat up through this channel to the north side of the ice-field."

"Perhaps we had best not go up too near them at first," remarked Raed, "till we find out what sort of _folks_ they are."

"No: two miles will be near enough. They will come off to us,--as many of them as we shall want on board at one time, I dare say."

The schooner bore up through the channel, and wore along the ice-field on the north side at a distance of a few hundred yards from it. We saw the bear running off round to the south-east side to keep away from us; though, as may readily be supposed, our attention was mainly directed to the strange people on the headland, whose discordant cries and shouts could now be plainly heard. We could see them running down to the sh.o.r.e; and immediately a score of canoes shot out, and came paddling towards us.

"You don't doubt that their coming off is from friendly motives, captain?" Kit asked.

"Oh, no!"

"Still forty or fifty stout fellows might give us our hands full, if they were ill-disposed," remarked Wade.

"That's a fact," admitted the captain; "though I don't believe they would attempt any thing of the sort."

"Well, there is no harm in being well armed," said Raed. "Kit, you and Wash get up half a dozen of the muskets, and load them. Fix the bayonets on them too. Wade and I will load the howitzer and the mighty rifle. And, captain, I don't believe we had better have more than a dozen of them on board at one time till we know them better."

"That may be as well," replied Capt. Mazard. "It will be unpleasant having too many of them aboard at once, anyway. And, in order to have the deck under our thumb a little more, I am going to station two of the sailors with muskets, as a guard, near the man at the wheel, another amidships, and two more forward."

Meanwhile the _kayaks_ were approaching, a whole school of them, shouting and racing with each other. Such a barbaric din! The crowd on the sh.o.r.e added their distant shouts.

"There's another thing we must look out for," remarked the captain.

"These folks are said to be a little thievish. It will be well enough to put loose small articles out of sight."

Hastily perfecting our arrangements, we provided ourselves each with a musket, and were ready for our strange visitors. They came paddling up, one to a canoe. Their paddles had blades at each end, and were used on either side alternately, with a queer windmill sort of movement.

"Twenty-seven of them," said Kit.

"Bareheaded, every mother's son of them!" exclaimed Weymouth.

"Only look at the long-haired mokes!" laughed Donovan.

"Why, they're black as Palmleaf!" cried Hobbs.

"Oh, no! not nearly so black," said Bonney. "Just a good square dirt-color."

This last comparison was not far from correct. The Esquimaux are, as a matter of fact, considerably darker than the red Indians of the United States. They are not reddish: they are brown, to which grease and dinginess add not a little. On they came till within fifty yards; when all drew up on a sudden, and sat regarding us in something like silence. Perhaps our bayonets, with the sunlight flashing on them, may have filled them with a momentary suspicion of danger. Seeing this, we waved our arms to them, beckoning them to approach. While examining the relics of a past age,--the stone axes, arrow-heads, and maces,--I have often pictured in fancy the barbarous habits, the wild visages, and harsh accents, of prehistoric races,--races living away back at the time when men were just rising above the brute. In the wild semi-brutish shouts and gesticulations which followed our own gesture of friendliness I seemed to hear and see these wild fancies verified,--verified in a manner I had not supposed it possible to be observed in this age. And yet here were primitive savages apparently, not fifteen hundred miles in a direct course from our own enlightened city of Boston, where, as we honestly believe, we have the cream (some of it, at least) of the world's civilization. Reflect on this fact, ye who think the whole earth almost ready for the reign of scientific righteousness!