The Crew of the Water Wagtail Part 17

"You see, lads," observed Grummidge, when discussing this subject, "it's quite plain that we shall have to spend the winter here, an' as I was a short bit to the south of these seas in the late autumn one voyage, I have reason to believe that we had better house ourselves, an' lay in a stock o' provisions if we would escape bein' froze an' starved."

"Troth, it's well to escape that, boys," remarked Squills, "for it's froze I was mesilf wance--all but--on a voyage to the Baltic, an' it's starved to death was me owld grandmother--almost--so I can spake from experience."

"An' we couldn't find a better place for winter-quarters than what we see before us," said Garnet. "It looks like a sort o' paradise."

We cannot say what sort of idea Garnet meant to convey by this comparison, but there could be no question that the scene before them was exceedingly beautiful. The party had held their consultation on the crest of a bluff, and just beyond it lay a magnificent bay, the sh.o.r.es of which were clothed with luxuriant forests, and the waters studded with many islets. At the distant head of the bay the formation or dip of the land clearly indicated the mouth of a large river, while small streams and ponds were seen gleaming amid the foliage nearer at hand.

At the time the sun was blazing in a cloudless sky, and those thick fogs which so frequently enshroud the coasts of Newfoundland had not yet descended from the icy north.

"I say, look yonder. What's Blazer about?" whispered Jim Heron, pointing to his comrade, who had separated from the party, and was seen with a large stone in each hand creeping cautiously round a rocky point below them.

Conjecture was useless and needless, for, while they watched him, Blazer rose up, made a wild rush forward, hurled the stones in advance, and disappeared round the point. A few moments later he reappeared, carrying a large bird in his arms.

The creature which he had thus killed with man's most primitive weapon was a specimen of the great auk--a bird which is now extinct. It was the size of a large goose, with a coal-black head and back, short wings, resembling the flippers of a seal, which a.s.sisted it wonderfully in the water, but were useless for flight, broad webbed feet, and legs set so far back that on land it sat erect like the penguins of the southern seas. At the time of which we write, the great auk was found in myriads on the low rocky islets on the eastern sh.o.r.es of Newfoundland.

Now-a-days there is not a single bird to be found anywhere, and only a few specimens and skeletons remain in the museums of the world to tell that such creatures once existed. Their extermination was the result of man's reckless slaughter of them when the Newfoundland banks became the resort of the world's fishermen. Not only was the great auk slain in vast numbers, for the sake of fresh food, but it was salted by tons for future use and sale. The valuable feathers, or down, also proved a source of temptation, and as the birds could not fly to other breeding-places, they gradually diminished in numbers and finally disappeared.

"Why, Blazer," exclaimed Heron, "that's one o' the sodger-like birds we frightened away from our little island when we first landed."

"Ay, an' there's plenty more where this one came from," said Blazer, throwing the bird down; "an' they are so tame on the rocks round the point that I do believe we could knock 'em on the head with sticks, if we took 'em unawares. What d'ee say to try, lads?"

"Agreed--for I'm gettin' tired o' fish now," said Grummidge. "How should we set about it, think 'ee?"

"Cut cudgels for ourselves, then take to the boat creep round to one o'

the little islands in the bay, and go at 'em!" answered Blazer.

This plan was carried out with as little delay as possible. An islet was boarded, as Squill said, and the clumsy, astonished creatures lost numbers of their companions before making their escape into the sea. A further treasure was found in a large supply of their eggs. Laden almost to the gunwale with fresh provisions, the search-party returned to their camp--some of them, indeed, distressed at having failed to find their banished friends, but most of them elated by their success with the great auks, and the prospect of soon going into pleasant winter-quarters.

So eager were they all to flit into this new region--this paradise of Garnet--that operations were commenced on the very next day at early morn. The boat was launched and manned, and as much of their property as it would hold was put on board.

"You call it paradise, Garnet," said Grummidge, as the two carried a bundle of dried cod slung on a pole between them, "but if you, and the like of ye, don't give up swearin', an' try to mend your manners, the place we pitch on will be more like h.e.l.l than paradise, no matter how comfortable and pretty it may be."

Garnet was not in a humour either to discuss this point or to accept a rebuke, so he only replied to the remark with a surly "Humph!"

Landing on the main island to the northward of the large bay, so as to secure a southern exposure, the boat-party proceeded to pitch their camp on a lovely spot, where cliff and coppice formed a luxuriant background.

Ramparts of rock protected them from the nor'-west gales, and purling rivulets hummed their lullaby. Here they pitched their tents, and in a short s.p.a.ce of time ran up several log huts, the material for which was supplied in abundance by the surrounding forest.

When the little settlement was sufficiently established, and all the goods and stores were removed from what now was known as Wreck Island, they once more launched the boat, and turned their attention to fishing--not on the Great Bank, about which at the time they were ignorant, but on the smaller banks nearer sh.o.r.e, where cod-fish were found in incredible numbers. Some of the party, however, had more of the hunter's than the fisher's spirit in them, and prepared to make raids on the homes of the great auk, or to ramble in the forests.

Squill was among the latter. One day, while rambling on the sea-sh.o.r.e looking for sh.e.l.lfish, he discovered a creature which not only caused him to fire off all the exclamations of his rich Irish vocabulary, but induced him to run back to camp with heaving chest and distended eyes-- almost bursting from excitement.

"What is it, boy?" chorused his comrades.

"Och! musha! I've found it at long last!--the great say--sur--no, not exactly that, but the--the great, sprawlin', long-legged--och! what shall I say? The great-grandfather of all the--the--words is wantin', boys. Come an' see for yourselves!"

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

A GIANT DISCOVERED--NEW HOME AT WAGTAIL BAY--A STRANGE ADDITION TO THE SETTLEMENT.

The creature which had so powerfully affected the feelings of the Irishman was dead; but dead and harmless though it was, it drew forth from his comrades a shout of intense surprise when they saw it, for it was no less than a cuttlefish of proportions so gigantic that they felt themselves in the presence of one of those terrible monsters of the deep, about which fabulous tales have been told, and exaggerated descriptions given since the beginning of historical time.

"Av he's not the say-sarpint himself, boys," panted Squill, as he pointed to him with looks of unmitigated admiration, "sure he must be his first cousin."

And Squill was not far wrong, for it was found that the monstrous fish measured fifty-two feet between the extremities of its outspread arms.

Its body was about eight feet long and four feet broad. Its great arms, of which it had ten radiating from its body, varied in length and thickness--the longest being about twenty-four feet, and the shortest about eight. The under sides of these arms were supplied with innumerable suckers, while from the body there projected a h.o.r.n.y beak, like the beak of a parrot.

"It's wishin', I am, that I might see wan o' yer family alive," said Squill, as he turned over the dead arms; "but I'd rather not be embraced by ye. Och! what a hug ye could give--an' as to howldin' on--a thousand limpets would be nothin' to ye."

"A miser grippin' his gold would be more like it," suggested Grummidge.

"I don't expect ever to see one alive," said Little Stubbs, "an' yet there must surely be more where that came from."

The very next day Squill had his wish gratified, and Stubbs his unbelief rebuked, for, while they were out in the boat rowing towards one of the fishing-banks with several of their comrades, they discovered a living giant-cuttlefish.

"What's that, boys?" cried the Irishman, pointing to the object which was floating in the water not far ahead of them.

"Seaweed," growled Blazer.

Blazer always growled. His voice was naturally low and harsh--so was his spirit. Sometimes a grunt supplanted the growl, suggesting that he was porcine in nature--as not a few men are.

But it was not seaweed. The thing showed signs of life as the boat drew near.

"Starboard! starboard hard!" shouted Little Stubbs, starting up.

But the warning came too late. Next moment the boat ran with a thud into a monster cuttlefish. Grummidge seized a boat-hook, shouted, "Stern all!" and hit the creature with all his might, while Stubbs made a wild grasp at a hatchet which lay under one of the thwarts.

Instantly the h.o.r.n.y parrot-like beak, the size of a man's fist, reared itself from among the folds of the body and struck the boat a violent blow, while a pair of saucer-like eyes, fully four inches in diameter, opened and glared ferociously. This was terrifying enough, but when, a moment later, two tremendous arms shot out from the body near the eyes, flung themselves around the boat and held on tight, a yell of fear escaped from several of the men, and with good reason, for if the innumerable suckers on those slimy arms once fairly attached themselves to the boat there seemed to be no chance of escape from the deadly embrace. In that moment of danger Little Stubbs proved himself equal to the occasion. With the hatchet he deftly severed the two limbs as they lay over the gunwale of the boat, and the monster, without cry or sign of pain, fell back into the sea, and moved off, ejecting such a quant.i.ty of inky fluid, as it went, that the water was darkened for two or three hundred yards around.

"Well done, Little Stubbs!" cried Grummidge, as he watched the creature disappearing. "You've often worried our lives in time past, but this time you've saved 'em. Coil away the limbs, boys. We'll measure 'em and enter 'em in the log when we go ash.o.r.e."

It may interest the reader to know that the measurements were as follows:--

The longer and thinner arm was nineteen feet in length; about three and a half inches in circ.u.mference; of a pale pinkish colour, and exceedingly strong and tough. As all the men agreed that more than ten feet of the arm were left attached to the monster's body, the total length must have been little short of thirty feet. Towards the extremity it broadened out like an oar, and then tapered to a fine tongue-like point. This part was covered with about two hundred suckers, having h.o.r.n.y-toothed edges, the largest of the suckers being more than an inch in diameter, the smallest about the size of a pea.

The short arm was eleven feet long, and ten inches in circ.u.mference. It was covered on the under side throughout its entire length with a double row of suckers. Grummidge, who was p.r.o.ne to observe closely, counted them that night with minute care, and came to the conclusion that the creature must have possessed about eleven hundred suckers altogether.

There was also a tail to the fish--which Squill called a "divil-fish"-- shaped like a fin. It was two feet in width.

Lest any reader should imagine that we are romancing here, we turn aside to refer him to a volume ent.i.tled _Newfoundland, the oldest British Colony_, written by Joseph Hatton and the Reverend M. Harvey, in which (pages 238 to 242) he will find an account of a giant-cuttlefish, devil-fish, or squid, very similar to that which we have now described, and in which it is also stated that Mr Harvey, in 1873, obtained possession of one cuttlefish arm nineteen feet long, which he measured and photographed, and described in various newspapers and periodicals, and, finally, sent to the Geological Museum in St. John's, where it now lies. The same gentleman afterwards obtained an uninjured specimen of the fish, and it is well known that complete specimens, as well as fragments, of the giant cephalopod now exist in several other museums.

Can any one wonder that marvellous tales of the sea were told that night round the fires at supper-time? that Little Stubbs became eloquently fabulous, and that Squill, drawing on his imagination, described with graphic power a monster before whose bristling horrors the great sea-serpent himself would hide his diminished head, and went into particulars so minute and complex that his comrades set him down as "one o' the biggest liars" that ever lived, until he explained that the monster in question had only appeared to him "wance in wan of his owld grandmother's dreams!"

In fishing, and hunting with bows and arrows made by themselves, as well as with ingenious traps and weirs and snares of their own invention, the crew spent their time pleasantly, and the summer pa.s.sed rapidly away.

During this period the rude tents of spars and sailcloth were supplanted by ruder huts of round logs, caulked with hay and plastered with mud.

Holes in the walls thereof did service as windows during the day, and bits of old sails or bundles of hay stuffed into them formed shutters at night. Sheds were also put up to guard provisions and stores from the weather, and stages were erected on which to dry the cod-fish after being split and cleaned; so that our shipwrecked crew, in their new home, which they named Wagtail Bay, had thus unwittingly begun that great industry for which Newfoundland has since become celebrated all the world over.

It is not to be supposed that among such men in such circ.u.mstances everything went harmoniously. At first, indeed, what with having plenty to do in fishing, hunting, building, splitting and drying fish, etcetera, all day, and being pretty well tired out at nights, the peace was kept pretty easily; all the more that Big Swinton had been quelled and apparently quite subdued. But as the stores became full of food and the days shortened, while the nights proportionately lengthened, time began to hang heavy on their hands, and gradually the camp became resolved into the two cla.s.ses which are to be found everywhere--the energetically industrious and the lazily idle. Perhaps we should say that those two extreme phases of human nature began to show themselves, for between them there existed all shades and degrees, so that it was difficult to tell, in some cases, to which cla.s.s the men belonged.

The proverbial mischief, of course, was soon found, for the latter cla.s.s to do, and Grummidge began to discover that the ruling of his subjects, which sat lightly enough on his shoulders during the summer, became a matter of some trouble and anxiety in autumn. He also found, somewhat to his surprise, that legislation was by no means the easy--we might say free-and-easy--business which he had supposed it to be. In short, the camp presented the interesting spectacle of a human society undergoing the process of mushroom growth from a condition of chaotic irresponsibility to that of civilised order.

The chaotic condition had been growing worse and worse for some time before Grummidge was forced to take action, for Grummidge was a man of long-suffering patience. One night, however, he lost all patience, and, like most patient people when forced out of their natural groove, he exploded with surprising violence and vigour.