Charles Winslow Hall

“ The rain was falling in gentle and melting showers; the south wind, laden with penetrating warmth, borne [Pg 68] from lands hundreds of leagues distant, cut down drift and ice-hill with its fatal kisses; from the rocky cliff a thousand tiny cascades wept and plashed; and over the icy bonds of every brook and river another stream ran swiftly to the sea. Over the icy levels of harbor and bay rippled another sheet of fresh water, which each moment grew deeper and wider as the warm rain fell more heavily, and the withering south wind came in increasing strength. ”

“ Regnar stood on the brink of the only pool of open water in sight, gazing earnestly at a floating object in the centre, which appeared at first sight like a dead seal, but a second glance at the shape and size of the body revealed the corpse of a man clad in a seal-skin coat, and floating on its face.
"It is some poor fellow who has been drowned in passing from one cake to another," said La Salle, gravely. "Let us examine the body; perhaps there are papers or valuables on it, which will identify it, or be of value to its friends. ”

“ Regnar was silent, and then said, resolutely,—
"We can try, at least."
"Well said, Regnie," cried La Salle; "but look again yonder." He pointed to a small lead of open water bounded with abrupt shores, which were surrounded with rounded balls and water-worn fragments of ice. A berg, losing its balance, fell with a loud splash, sank, and came to the surface with a bound, covering the water with wet snow and the ruins of the shattered pinnacles. "Can we also pass the heavy drags of the drifted snow, the baffling resistance of floating sludge, and such dangers as that?" ”

“ Scarcely had the runners gone a hundred yards before they stopped in dismay. At their feet the ice-field ended abruptly, and scarce a hundred yards away rose a wall of red sandstone, on whose summit stood Lund, peering down into the whirl of snow-flakes. His quick eye espied them, and he shouted his last advice.
"Launch your boat at once; don't wait. Keep under the lee. Don't try to save anything but your lives. Keep the wind at your backs in rowing, and mind the set of the tide eastward."
"Ay, ay! I understand. We're waiting for the boys!" shouted La Salle. ”

“ Now, Regnie," said La Salle, kindly, "you know all that I can tell you. Perhaps you may find in the hilt of yonder antique weapon the clew to much more. But we have other duties to perform; and first, how shall we seal up this cave so that no one can possibly suspect our having entered this place. That Peter has the eyes of a lynx, and should he follow us, would not fail to discover all."
"In an hour hence," said Regnar, "no human being can stand where we are now, and you can walk the stanchest hound over the ledge, without his dreaming of what lies beneath. Come up to the top of the berg." ”

“ On we went before the breeze, darting down into the hollow between two seas, toiling heavily up the next wave, with death apparently close behind on the crests of two or three pursuing breakers, and then, with a puff which made every timber and plank quiver, the gale would almost lift us through a breaking wall of white foam, and, with more or less of the sea aboard, away we would go down the incline, a plaything of a boat, with a frightened little man at the tiller, and a little woman baling incessantly, with nerves that never gave way for a moment in our long struggle for life. ”

“ No man can measure the remorse that burns within me, and yet the world would say that you have let me off too easily."
La Salle rang the bell sharply, and a waiter hastened up from the lower landing.
"Did you ring, sir?"
"Yes. Call a cab at once. Regnar, get my coat and yours. Mr. Randall, we must see you safely home. Where do you board?"
"At the Albion; but you need not take that trouble. Ah, sir, I know your fears; but my head is clear, and you need not be afraid that I shall do anything rash. I shall not despair of the pardon of God, since I have found some merciful pity in man." ”

“ La Salle laughed a low, glad laugh.
"You may sleep soundly," said he; "the coots and ducks have come northward, and the spring is here [Pg 213] at last. To-morrow will bring us sport to repletion, for the sounds you hear are the love-songs of the sea-birds, whose voices, however harsh, grow sweet when the sun brings back again the season of love and flowers."
When the morn came, unheralded by sunbeams, and shrouded by leaden rain-clouds, a veil of mist covered the vast ice-field, of which no two masses retained their former proximity. ”

“ There was quite a pleasurable excitement among the stay-at-homes at the tea table, when the incipient breaking up of the ice was declared; for on the proximity of narrow feeding-grounds to the ice-houses depended the hopes of good sport of our adventurers. To be sure they had thus far had nothing to complain of; but the geese killed had been merely "flight" geese, weary with long migration, thin with want of food, and seeking among the treacherous lures only a rest from their long wandering in the safe companionship of their own kind. ”

“ The seal, a monstrous one, a veteran male, had attempted to scale the higher mounds, but surrounded by his more agile enemies, halted and showed fight. In vain Waring and Peter showered tremendous blows upon his head with their beechen clubs, and even the heavy axe of Orloff fell upon his natural helmet of air-distended skin, with a violence whose only effect was to increase the anger of the enraged amphibia, and fill the scene of the strife with hollow sounds, like the hoarse booming of a big drum. ”

“ Regnar gave no answer, but stood motionless as if turned into stone.
"Come, Regnar! wake up, man! Surely you are not afraid of a poor lifeless body. Bear a hand with that boat-hook, or, if you don't care to touch it, hand it to me."
Starting as if from a trance, Regnar extended the long boat-hook and gently drew the body to the shore, where La Salle, making a loop of the rope they carried, dropped it over the head and shoulders, and drawing it tightly under the arm-pits, gave one end to Regnar. ”

“ Orloff slid down the berg, caught the firmly fastened cord, swung himself over the ice-foot, skipped lightly over the yielding fragments, seized his gun, and returned in almost less time than it takes to describe his movements. The seal, a huge male, had come to the surface among the floating fragments at the farther side of the pool, some fifty yards away, and now lay with his round head, protruding eyes, and stiff bristles, strikingly expressing anger, fear, and curiosity—the last predominating. Regnar threw his gun to his shoulder. ”

“ Below them the Bar, marked by a low ridge, rising above the level of the lower shallows,—for the tide was at ebb,—trended away nearly a league into the spacious bay, covered everywhere with ice, level, smooth, and glittering in the rising sun, save where, here and there, a huge white hummock or lofty pinnacle, the fragments of some disintegrated berg, drifted from Greenland or Labrador, rose along the Bar, where the early winter gales had stranded them. ”

“ The snow-squall gathered fury, and La Salle, waving his hand, pointed heavenward, while Peter, knowing but too well the danger of their position, sank on his knees, and began the simple prayers of his faith. Lund saw them fade from view into the sleety veil that hid the waste of waters, and groaning in spirit, turned homeward.
"In half an hour no boat on the island can reach them, even if men could be found to face certain death in a snow-storm out on the open Gulf." ”

“ Like Hughie, in a humbler sphere, he was a dabbler in many things,—lawyer, novelist, poet, trader, inventor, what not?—taking life easily, with no grand aspirations, and no disturbing fears for the future. In the intervals of business he found a keen delight in the half-savage life and wholly natural joys of the angler and sportsman, and ever felt that to wander by river and mere, with rod and gun, would enable him to draw from the breast of dear old Mother Earth that rude but joyous physical strength, with the possession of which it is a constant pleasure even to exist. ”

“ A gust of wind out of the north-east whistled across the floes, and the next moment a thick snow-squall shut out the distant shores, the lowering icebergs, the decoys of their friends, in fact, everything a hundred yards away.
"Where are the geese?" asked Kennedy, as, with their backs to the wind, the two peered eagerly into the impenetrable pouderie to leeward.
"They were about two miles away, in line of that hummock, when the squall set in. I'll try a call, and see if we can get an answer." ”

“ Leaping aboard, they soon crossed the narrow lead, and running under the lee of the ice-hills, drew their boat to the hut.
"If you have anything you want to be sure to keep, stow it in the boat," was La Salle's first order, as he saw the sea begin to dash across the windward end of the floe, while, whining with fear, the young seals were shoved and pushed, by the flippers of their dams, farther and farther up on the higher ice, until, tamed by fear, they surrounded the little hollow containing the hut. ”

“ He had not floated two hundred yards, before a change of the ice revealed a small flock of seven geese, quietly feeding along the border of a low piece of field ice. Cocking his gun and laying it ready to hand, La Salle drifted nearer and nearer, keeping barely enough headway to steer her, bow on. The gander, a noble bird, suddenly raised his head to gaze at the advancing boat. All the rest instantly raised theirs ready for immediate flight. The anxious sportsman lay motionless, ceasing the play of his scull, and the birds, gradually relaxing their necks, turned and swam rapidly away. ”

“ It was only an added virtue, even if complete; for noble old Carlo had already excellences enough to canonize a dozen individual canines. He was strong, sagacious, peaceably inclined, but a terrible foe when aroused; could eat anything, carry a man in the water, watch any place, team, or article, hold a horse, beat for snipe or woodcock, lie motionless anywhere you might designate, retrieve anywhere on land, water, or ice, and loved a gun as well as his young master, La Salle. ”

“ I mind myself how you told them at Shediac, that the Alabama was down among the fishermen in the bay, like a hawk among a flock of pigeons. Faith, you had twenty of them taken and burned before you stopped that time, and the telegraph operator at Point de Chêne was hopping all the evening between the boat and the office, like a pea in a hot skillet," retorted La Salle, laughing. "Ah, Lund! you mustn't plead innocent with us, who have been humbugged by you too many times already. ”

“ I may not regret this if I escape with life, for well I know we are like to come back as men from the dead."
"Why do you speak of death, La Salle?" said a voice in good and even polished French; and La Salle, turning, found that Regnar stood beside him. An air of education which he had never noticed before seemed to pervade this youth, who spoke English almost execrably, and had shown little more than a passable knowledge of the coast of Labrador, and a keen insight into all the varied craft of hunter and fisherman. ”

“ Safe from the rage of the elements, but cold, wet, and hungry, the adventurers sought the shelter of their hut, which still stood unhurt; but the fir branches of the floor were soaked with water, for a wave or two had risen above the ledge of the door. After much difficulty, with the aid of a candle, the Esquimaux lamp was lighted, and after much sputtering, the six wicks diffused their cheering light and grateful warmth through the hut. Then Peter, with his axe, cut a gutter through the doorway, letting off the standing water, and in the course of an hour the boughs were comparatively dry. ”

“ The icy cliffs echoed the crashing volley, as both barrels poured forth their deadly hail almost in unison, and the huge animal settled down amid incarnadined waters and ice crimsoned with his life-blood, shot to death through the brain so skilfully that scarce a struggle or a tremor bore witness that the principle of life had departed. ”

“ Still nothing could be seen which could warrant a well-founded suspicion; and one or two of the younger birds, impatient of restraint, and anxious for rest and food, set their broad pinions, and, with outstretched wings, scaled down to the decoys, alighting on the ice not twenty feet from the muzzles of the concealed guns. Their apparent safety decided the rest, and in twenty seconds as many geese, with clamorous cries, were hovering over the heads of La Salle and his companions. ”

“ Each missile, fired point-blank, did its work, and the huge monsters, unable to seize the agile hunters, as they eluded their ponderous charge, received the fatal shot at such close range that the fur around the wound was often scorched by the burning powder.
Every barrel had been discharged, nine hooded seals had fallen, and the survivors had already reached the open water; but frightened by the unwonted sights and sounds, many of the smaller seals still remained at the upper end of the valley, or with awkward speed were climbing the sloping ice-hills which sheltered it. ”

“ No one believed him, of course; but, for Heaven's sake, when you express incredulity again, wait until the lie is finished, if I am in the party!" grumbled La Salle.
"Well, never mind; he got through with the best part of it; and the great wonder is, how a distempered brain could imagine all that impossible but well-connected delusion."
"Kennedy," said La Salle, with unusual gravity, "how can we decide that it is all a delusion? Few men, indeed, have claimed to see the devil, to whom they sell themselves daily for trifles lighter than the hunter's meed of unrivaled success ”

“ Well, if we have a heavy blow from the north-west, we shall be jammed between the ice now resting on the Magdalens and those Greenland monsters yonder, and if there is a weak spot in our berg—"
"Well, what then, Regnie?"
"We shall be ground to powder, or, at least, our berg will; and in such a break-up, we shall have little chance to save anything except our lives."
"What, then, ought we to do?"
"We must be ready to move as soon as we crush in through this thin ice," said Regnar, pointing to the new ice and broken fragments over which they had crossed at dark. ”