Left on the Labrador Part 4

For a little while Charley, the picture of gloom, watched Skipper Zeb and Toby stowing gear. Presently Skipper Zeb, who had been observing Charley out of the corner of his eye, suggested:

"Come on, lad, and lend a hand. Toby and I needs help to haul the boats up. Work's a wonderful fine medicin' for folks that's feelin' homesick.

Lend Toby and me a hand, and you'll be forgettin' all about this fix you're in. I were thinkin' we'd taken all the kinks out o' that fix, and that we made out 'twere no fix at all."

"I guess I would like to help, if you'll let me," Charley admitted. "It isn't much fun standing around and doing nothing. What can I do?"

"We'll pull this un up first, she's heaviest," and Skipper Zeb indicated one of two boats that were moored at the landing. "You take the port side of un along with Toby, and I'll take the starb'rd side, and when I bawls 'Heave ho!' we'll all heave on her together."

Charley did as he was directed, and while he did not believe that he was lending much a.s.sistance, he did his best with each "heave ho!" boomed by Skipper Zeb, and in due time the two boats were removed to a desirable distance from high tide level. Timbers were now placed under them to elevate them from the ground, and a roofing of heavy planking built over them.

It was all novel and interesting to Charley. He lent a hand here and there, and as they worked Skipper Zeb and Toby talked of the fishing season just ended, and of the winter hunting and trapping, and of journeys on snowshoes and with dogs and sledge, and related many exciting adventures, until Charley quite forgot that he was marooned in a strange land among strangers.

Before candles were lighted that evening, Charley had placed Skipper Zeb and Toby in the category of the heroes of his favourite books of adventure. Here he was in a wilderness as remote as any of which he had ever read, and here he was with folk who were living the life and doing the deeds and meeting the adventures of which he had often read with breathless interest. When he went to sleep that night in a bunk with Toby he would have been glad that the mail boat had not returned for him, had it not been for the regret he felt for the grief he knew that his mother and father would suffer when Mr. Wise would report to them that he had been lost.

They ate breakfast by candle-light the following morning, and daybreak was still two hours away when Charley embarked with Skipper Zeb and the family for the voyage to Double Up Cove.

Skipper Zeb and Toby hoisted leg-o'-mutton sails on the foremast and mainmast under the lee of the land though the sails did not fill to Skipper Zeb's satisfaction, and he and Toby each shipped a big oar and pulled for a little until they were in the open bay and beyond the shelter of the hills. Then they stowed the oars, and Skipper Zeb took the tiller.

A good breeze now bellied the sails, and almost immediately the morning darkness swallowed up the outline of the cabins. No star, no light, no land was to be seen, and Charley was only conscious of the swishing waters that surrounded them. He wondered how Skipper Zeb could know the direction with no landmarks to guide him. How vast and mysterious this new world was! How far away and unreal the land from which he had come!

He tried to visualize home, and the city streets with crowded traffic and jostling people; and crouching down in the boat a thought of the luxury and comfort of his snug bed, in which he would now have been cozily tucked were he there, came to him, and he drew the collar of his ulster more closely around his ears, and thrust his hands into its deep pockets.

For a long time no one spoke, and a sense of great loneliness was stealing upon him, when Skipper Zeb, lighting his pipe, remarked:

"'Tis a good sailin' breeze, and come day 'twill be smarter, with more sea, and I'm thinkin' more snow."

"How long a trip is it?" asked Charley.

"'Tis a short cruise. With a fair wind like we has now we makes un in five or six hours, whatever," explained Skipper Zeb. "We never bides here so late in the year. 'Tis wonderful late for us. We always goes before the end of September month. This year I stays to help Mr.

McClung."

"It's a fine, big boat," said Charley.

"She's a wonderful fine boat!" boasted Skipper Zeb. "Twenty-eight foot over all. I buys she last year from a schooner crew, south bound after the fishin' ends. They wants to sell she bad, because they has no room to stow she on deck, and in the rough sea that were runnin' they couldn't tow she. I buys she for thirty dollars!"

"That was cheap, I should think," said Charley.

"'Twere, now!" and there was pride in Skipper Zeb's voice. "I'll tell you how 'twere. We needs a trap boat wonderful bad for our cruisin', and I says to Mrs. Twig, 'We'll skimp and save till we gets enough saved to buy un.' So each year we saves a bit, sometimes more and sometimes less, goin' without this and that, and not mindin', because when we goes without somethin' we thinks about what a fine boat 'tis goin' to help us get. And so we keeps savin' and savin' and skimpin' and skimpin'. We were savin' for un for four years----"

"Five years, Zeb," Mrs. Twig corrected.

"You're right, Sophia, 'twere five years, and we has thirty dollars saved. Then along comes the schooner with the boat, and the skipper says to me, 'Skipper Zeb, you wants a trap boat. I'll sell you this un.' 'How much does you want for un?' says I. 'You can have she for fifty dollars,' says he, 'and that's givin' she to you.' 'All I has is thirty dollars,' says I. 'Give me the thirty dollars and take un,' says he.

'I'd have to leave un behind whatever.' And so I gets un."

"You _were_ lucky!" said Charley.

"Lucky! Not that!" objected Skipper Zeb. "'Twere the Lard's doin's. He knows how bad I wants un, and how we skimps to get un, and He says to that skipper, 'You just sell that trap boat to Skipper Zeb Twig for thirty dollars,' and the skipper just ups and sells un to me. _I_ says the Lard were good, and I thanks _He_ for un, and not luck."

The northeast wind was rising. Charley huddled down in the bottom of the boat, where he found some protection. A gray dawn was breaking, and this is the coldest and bleakest hour of the day. With dawn both wind and cold increased, until by mid-forenoon half a gale was blowing.

"We're makin' fine headway," said Toby. "We'll be getting to Double Up Cove by twelve o'clock, _what_ever."

"I'm wishin' 'twere a bit calmer," observed Skipper Zeb, looking critically at the sky, "but there's no signs of un."

"Can't we make a landin' somewhere, and wait for un to calm down?" asked Mrs. Twig solicitously. "I fears cruisin' when 'tis so rough."

"They's no fair sh.o.r.e to land on this side o' the Duck's Head," answers Skipper Zeb.

White horses were chasing each other over the surrounding sea. A half hour later the wind had developed into a gale. Skipper Zeb reefed the mainsail. Then taking a long oar from the boat, he dropped it between two pegs astern, and while he used this as a sculling oar to steer the boat, Toby unshipped the rudder and dragged it aboard.

"She's makin' leeway," Skipper Zeb explained, "and I can hold she up to the wind better with the oar than the tiller."

A roller broke over the boat, and left a foot of water in the bottom.

Toby seized a bucket, and began to bail it out. Charley was now thoroughly frightened, but with a bucket thrust into his hand by Mrs.

Twig, he a.s.sisted Toby.

The boat was on her beam ends, even with shortened sail. The air was filled with flying spray, and now came the snow that Skipper Zeb had predicted.

"We'll make a landin' in the lee of the Duck's Head," shouted Skipper Zeb, his voice booming above the tumult of sea and wind.

Violet was crying, and clinging to her mother.

"Don't be scared, now!" Skipper Zeb rea.s.sured, though he was plainly anxious. "There'll be a fine lee above the Duck's Head!"

"There's the Duck's Head!" Toby's voice suddenly came in warning.

"I sees un!" Skipper Zeb shouted back in confirmation.

"Take care the reef! She's straight ahead!" yelled Toby.

"She's makin' leeway the best I can do," came back from Skipper Zeb.

"Lend me a hand, Toby!"

Toby sprang to his a.s.sistance. The long oar bent under the superhuman effort that the two put forth, but the boat was coming up. Charley saw, in dim outline through the snow, a high, black ma.s.s of rock jutting out in a long point. It bore a strong resemblance to a duck's neck and head, and as though to form the duck's bill a reef extended for several yards beyond into the water and over this the sea with boom and roar heaved in mighty breakers, sending the spray a hundred feet into the air. If they failed to pa.s.s that awful boiling caldron they would be lost. It was a terrifying spectacle, and Charley's heart stood still.

They were close upon the reef. Skipper Zeb's face was tense. He was working like a giant, and Toby, too, was putting all the strength he possessed upon the sculling oar. With a scant margin to spare, they were at last shooting past the outer rocks, when the oar snapped with a report that was heard above the boom of the breakers.

An instant later came a crash, Violet screamed in terror, and Charley felt the bottom of the boat rise beneath his feet.

VI

THE CAMP AT THE DUCK'S HEAD

When Skipper Zeb's oar broke, the boat, now at the mercy of the wind, was driven upon a submerged rock at the tip end of the reef extending some twenty yards out from the cliff known as the Duck's Head. Here it stuck for what seemed to Charley a long time, reeling in the surf until he was quite certain it would roll over and they would all be drowned.

Mrs. Twig, clinging with Violet to the mainmast, gave a shrill cry of despair, and Violet screamed in terror. Then a mighty sea lifted them like a chip from the rock, and swept the boat onward and beyond the reef.