Left on Labrador Part 28

"Get back among the rocks, and watch for him!" exclaimed Kit. "Only thing we can do now."

"I suppose so," said Raed.

We secreted ourselves a little back from the water behind different rocks and in little hollows, and, with guns rested ready to fire, waited for the re-appearance of the big seal. Five, ten, fifteen minutes pa.s.sed; but he didn't re-appear much.

"I say," Wade whispered: "this is getting a little played!"

We were all beginning to think so, when a horrible noise--a sound as much like the sudden bellow of a mad bull as anything I can compare it with--resounded from the other side of the island.

"What, for Heaven's sake, is that?" Kit exclaimed.

"Must be another of these sea-horses calling to the one over here,"

said Raed, after listening a moment.

"Let's work round there, then," I said.

The noise seemed to have been four or five hundred yards off. Keeping the dog behind us, we hurried round by the east sh.o.r.e to avoid climbing the higher ledges, which rose sixty or seventy feet along the middle of the islet. These bare, flinty ledges, when not enc.u.mbered by bowlders, are grand things to run on. One can get over them at an astonishing pace. Once, as we ran on, we heard the bellow repeated, and, on coming within twenty or thirty rods of where it had seemed to be, stopped to reconnoitre.

"Bet you, he's right under that high ledge that juts out over the water there," said Kit.

"Wait a moment," whispered Wade: "we may hear him again." And, in fact, before his words were well out, the same deep, harsh sound grumbled up from the sh.o.r.e.

"Under that ledge, as I guessed!" exclaimed Kit.

"Sounds like an enormous bull-frog intensified," Raed muttered.

We crept down toward the brink of the ledge, Kit and Wade a little ahead. Arriving at the crest, they peered over cautiously, and with muskets c.o.c.ked.

"Here he is!" Kit whispered back of his hand.

We stole up. There, on a little bunch of ice not yet thawed off the sh.o.r.e, lay the unsuspecting monster,--a great brown-black, unwieldy body. There is no living creature to which I can easily compare it. I should judge it would have weighed a ton,--more perhaps; for it was immensely thick and broad: though the head struck me as very small for its bulk otherwise.

"Now, all together!" whispered Raed. "Aim at its body above and back of its forward flippers. Ready! Fire!"

We let drive. The great creature gave a hoa.r.s.e grunt, and, raising itself on its finlike legs, floundered over into the sea.

"Round the ledge!" shouted Kit. "He won't get far, I don't believe!"

Guard was tearing down, barking loudly; and we had started to run, when, above the shouting and barking, the sudden boom of a cannon was heard.

"Hark!" cried Weymouth.

"Hold on, hold on, fellows!" Raed exclaimed.

"Wasn't that our howitzer?" Donovan asked. "Sounded like it."

"It's the cap'n firing, for a joke, to let us know he heard us,"

Weymouth suggested.

"Oh! he wouldn't do that," replied Raed.

"Of course he wouldn't!" exclaimed Donovan. "He ain't that sort of a man!"

"That's a summons!" said Wade, coming hurriedly back up the rocks; for he and Kit were a little ahead. "Put for the top of the ledges up here! We can see from there!"

We had got twenty yards, perhaps, when a second loud report made the rocks rattle to it.

"There's trouble!" exclaimed Wade at my heels, as we climbed up the steep side.

An undefinable fear had blanched all our faces. Scarcely had the echoes of the gun died out among the crags when another heavier report made the islet jar under our feet.

"Oh, there!" exclaimed Raed despairingly.

Donovan was a step ahead; but Kit and I sprang past him now. Another shelving incline of forty or fifty yards, and the blue sea burst into view over the rocks. My eyes burned in their sockets from the violent exertion. At first I saw only "The Curlew" with her great white sails both broadside to us, and our bright gay flag streaming out. A glance showed that she had been brought round, and that the sails were flapping wildly. A jet of flame streamed out from her side; and, like a warning-call, the sharp report crashed on our ears, infinitely louder now we had gained the top. All this in a second.

"Why! what is it?" I exclaimed. Turning, I saw them all staring off to the west.

Heavens! there, under full sail, was a large ship not two miles off!

How like the shadow of doom she loomed up! and how suddenly white the faces of Kit and Wade just beyond me looked! We had thought we were on the lookout for this very thing; and yet it seemed to us now a complete surprise. We were stunned.

_Bang!_ A heavy cannon; and the water flew up in a long white streak far past "The Curlew" as the big shot went driving by. The ship was within a mile and a half of her, and we here on the islet three-fourths of a mile away! Yet there stood "The Curlew" motionless on the waves; and there stood Capt. Mazard, waving his hat for us, his gla.s.s glittering in his other hand.

"To the boat!" yelled Weymouth, leaping down the rocks. "He wouldn't go without us!"

"Stop!" shouted Raed. "It's no use! Don't you see how the ship's closing in?"

Then, catching off his cap, he waved it slowly toward the east. We saw the captain's gla.s.s go up to his eye. Again Raed motioned him to go.

_Bang!_ A higher shot. It strikes a quarter of a mile ahead of the schooner, and goes skipping on. But the captain is still looking off to us, as if loath to desert us. A third time Raed waves his cap. He turns. Round go the booms. "The Curlew" starts off with a bound. The flag streams out wildly in the strong north-west wind.

_Bang!_ That ball hits the sea a long way ahead of its mark. Even in these brief seconds the great shadowy ship has come perceptibly nearer. How she bowls along! We can see the white ma.s.s of foam at the bows as she rides up the swells.

A queer, lost feeling had come over me. In an instant it all seemed to have gone on at a far-past date. Looking back to that time now, I see, as in a picture, our forlorn little party standing there on the black, weathered ledges, gazing off,--Weymouth half a dozen rods down the rocks, where he had stopped when Raed called to him; Donovan a few rods to the right, shading his eyes with his hand; Raed with his arms folded tightly; Kit staring hard at the ship; Wade dancing about, swearing a little, with the tears coming into his eyes; myself leaning weakly on a musket, limp as a shoe-string; and poor old Guard whining dismally, with an occasional howl,--all gazing off at the rapidly-moving vessels.

"It was no use," Raed said, his voice seeming to break the spell. "We couldn't have got off to the schooner. See how swiftly the ship comes on! If the captain had waited for us to pull off, or even started up and let us go off diagonally, the ship would have come so near, that there would have been no escaping her guns. I don't know as there is now. If any of those shot should strike the masts, or tear through the sails, there would be no getting away.

"I want you to look at it just as I do," Raed continued; for we none of us had said a word. "If we had tried to get on board, 'The Curlew'

would certainly have been captured, and we with her. Now she stands a chance of getting off."

_Bang!_ What a tremendous gun! The large ship was getting off opposite. The report made the ledge tremble under us.

"Hadn't we better get out of sight?" Donovan said. "They may see us, and send a boat over here."

"No danger of that, I think," replied Raed. "They want to run the schooner down, and wouldn't care to leave their boat so far behind.

This strong north-west wind favors them. Still I don't think they are gaining much. They're not going over ten or eleven knots. 'The Curlew'

will beat that, I hope,--if none of those big shots. .h.i.t her," taking out his gla.s.s. "How beautiful she looks!"

"But, Raed," remarked Kit soberly, "they will chase her clean out the straits into the Atlantic, even if they do not capture her."