Left on Labrador Part 8

CHAPTER IV.

The Fog lifts.--A Whale in Sight.--Craggy Black Mountains capped with Snow.--A Novel Carriage for the Big Rifle.--Mounting the Howitzer.--A Doubtful Shot.--The Lower Savage Isles.--A Deep Inlet.--"Mazard's Bay."--A Desolate Island.--An Ice-Jam.--A Strange Blood-red Light.--Solution of the Mystery.--Going Ash.o.r.e.--Barren Ledges. Beds of Moss.--A Bald Peak.--An Alarm.--The Schooner in Jeopardy.--The Crash and Thunder of the Ice.--Tremendous Tides.

The rain had now pretty much ceased. Some sudden change took place in the air's density; for the fog, which had all along lain flat on the sea, now rapidly rose up like a curtain, twenty, thirty, fifty feet, leaving all clear below. We looked around us. The dark water was besprinkled with white patches, among which the seals were leaping and frisking about. Half a mile to the left we espied a lazy water-jet playing up at intervals.

"There she blows!" laughed Bonney. "Seems like old times, I declare!"

"What's that, sir?" asked Capt. Mazard, who had been below for the last ten minutes.

"A sperm-whale on the port quarter, sir!"

Two or three miles ahead, another large iceberg was driving grandly down. We could also see our late _consort_ a mile astern,--see and hear it too. Higher and higher rose the fog. The sky brightened through transient rifts in the clouds. Glad enough were we to see it clearing up.

Either the land had fallen off to the north; or else, in our fear of running on the cliffs, we had declined a good deal from our course.

The northern sh.o.r.e was now three or four leagues distant. Fog and darkness hung over it. The bases of the mountains were black; but their tops glistened with snow, the snow-line showing distinct two or three hundred feet above the sh.o.r.e. The sails were trimmed, and the helm put round to bear up nearer.

"What a country!" exclaimed Raed, sweeping it with his gla.s.s. "Is it possible that people live there? What can be the inducements?"

"Seals, probably," said Kit,--"seals and whales. That's the Esquimaux bill of fare, I've heard, varied with an occasional white bear or a sea-horse."

"A true 'Husky' (Esquimau) won't eat a mouthful of cooked victuals,"

said Capt. Mazard; "takes every thing raw."

"Should think so much raw meat would make them fierce and savage,"

remarked Wade: "makes dogs savage to give them raw meat."

"But the Esquimaux are a rather good-natured set, I've heard," replied Kit.

"Not always," said the captain. "The whalers have trouble with them very often; though these whalemen are doubtless anything but angels,"

he added. "In dealing with them, it is well to have a good show of muskets, or a big gun or two showing its muzzle: makes 'em more civil.

Cases have been where they've boarded a scantily-manned vessel; to get the plunder, you see. Hungry for anything of the axe or iron kind."

"It would not be a bad plan to get up our howitzer, and rig a carriage for it," said Wade. "Let's do it."

"And Wash's cannon-rifle," said Kit. "We ought to get that up. I think it's about time to test that rather remarkable _arm_."

"The problem with me is how to mount it," said I.

"I was thinking of that the other day," remarked the captain. "I've got a big chest below,--an old thing I don't use now: we might make the gun fast to the top of it; then put some trucks on the bottom just high enough to point it out over the bulwarks. Here, Hobbs: come below, and help me fetch it on deck."

While they were getting up the chest, Raed and I brought up the cannon-rifle. It was about as much as we could get up the stairs with easily. It was, as the reader will probably remember, set in a light framework of wrought-iron, adjusted to a swivel, and arranged with a screw for raising or lowering the breech at will. The bed-pieces of the framework had been pierced for screws. It was, therefore, but a few minutes' work to bore holes in the top of the chest and drive the screws. Meanwhile the captain, who enjoyed the scheme as well as any of us, split open a couple of old tackle-blocks, and, getting out the trucks, proceeded to set them on the ends of two stout axles cut from an old ice-pole. These axles were then nailed fast to the bottom of the chest. The gun-carriage was then complete, and could be rolled anywhere on deck with ease.

"Decidedly neat!" exclaimed Capt. Mazard, surveying it with a grin of self-approbation.

"What say to that, Trull?" cried Raed.

The old man-of-war's-man had been watching the progress of the invention with an occasional tug at his waistband.

"Yes; how's that in your eye?" exclaimed the captain. "You're a military character. Give us an opinion on that."

"Wal, sur," c.o.c.king his eye at it, "I'm free to confa.s.s I naver saw anything like it;" and that was all we could get out of him.

"Bring some ammunition, and let's give it a trial," said Kit.

I brought up the powder-flask, caps, and a couple of bullets. The bullets we had run for it were of lead, about an inch in diameter, and weighed not far from six ounces apiece. The breech was depressed.

Raed poured in half a gill of the fine powder by measurement; a wad of paper was rammed down; then a bullet was driven home. There only remained to prime and cap it.

"Fire at one of these seals," suggested Wade, pointing to where a group of three or four lay basking on an ice-cake at a distance of eight or ten hundred yards.

"Who'll take the first shot?" said Kit.

n.o.body seemed inclined to seize the honor.

"Come, now, that seal's getting impatient!" cried the captain.

Still no one volunteered to shoot off the big rifle.

"I think Wash had better fire the first shot," remarked Raed. "The honor clearly belongs to him."

Seeing they were a little disposed to rally me on it, I stepped up and c.o.c.ked it. At that everybody hastily stood back. I took as good aim as the motion of the schooner would permit; though I think I should have done better had not Palmleaf just at that moment sang out, "Dinner, sar!" from behind. I pulled the trigger, however. There was a stunning crack; and so smart a recoil, that I was pushed half round sidewise with amazing spitefulness. The old chest rolled back, whirled round, and upset against the bulwarks on the other side. The reader can imagine what a rattle and racket it made.

"Golly!" exclaimed Palmleaf. "Am crazy!"

"Did it hit the seal?" recovering my equilibrium.

Wade was the only one who had watched the seal.

"I saw him flop off into the water," said he.

"Then of course it hit him," said I.

n.o.body disputed it; though I detected an odious wink between the captain and Kit.

The prostrate gun was got up on its legs again; old Trull remarking that we had better trig it behind before we fired, in future: that duty attended to, he thought it might work very well.

We then went to dinner. How to mount the howitzer was the next question.

"We need a regular four-wheeled gun-carriage for that," said Raed.

"I think we can make one out of those planks," remarked Kit.

"The worst trouble will come with the wheels," said Wade.

But Capt. Mazard thought he could saw them out of sections of fifteen-inch plank with the wood-saw.