Theodore Goodridge Roberts

“ Jerry Chalker made his first journey to Harbour Grace, and his first and last trip to the ice, in his eighteenth year; but he was not without experience. Like other strong-limbed lads of the coast, he had learned at an early age to run on the shore ice when it was adrift in the spring; to leap unerringly from pan to pan; to cross patches of "slob," or crushed ice, with flying feet; even to strike some unwary harbour seal with his bat, and deprive it of hide and blubber with his "sculping knife."
All ten men from Fore-and-aft Cove obtained berths with Captain Pike, of the old Walrus. ”

“ Pictures of Captain Pike on the sealer's high bridge sometimes returned to Jerry, and he wondered about that great man. The tragedy of the floe would not touch the great man deeply, he was set so high above the poor fellows who had died, thought Jerry. And he was without fear or pity. Jerry had seen that in the clear, unflinching eyes. And he was rich. The loss of one trip to the ice would mean little to him, even though his share of a full cargo of pelts would have been reckoned in thousands. ”

“ The one hundred and forty men aboard the Walrus were in high spirits. Captain Pike was a great skipper, and the Walrus was a grand ship. Every poor son of distress aboard felt as sure of "making a bill" as of his need of it. Songs were sung. Big-chested stories were told of other trips to the ice, of log-loaded ships, of fabulous bills. Had not Skipper Bill Pike himself once encountered the Greenland floe and the myriads of ice-riding seals just north of the straits, and loaded his ship, to the utter disregard of the Plimsoll marks; in two days and a night? ”

“ To starboard lay the vasts of ocean, the discoloured hulls and black reek of the other sealers, the innumerable grey seas rising and falling and rising again without haste or violence, riding in from a wavering and colourless horizon. ”

“ Vaguely, almost unconsciously, he envied the men around him, who smoked and cursed undismayed in the face of that vast of desolation, merry so long as their bellies were satisfied, unafraid so long as they were not actually struggling against death and disaster. ”

“ He turned his glance to the south and east.
"Not another ship in sight," he said. "It is all ours. There will be dirty weather to-morrow; but we'll be log-loaded and away before it strikes us, at this rate."
"The glass bes fallin' fast, sir," said the second mate.
"I noticed it, Mr. Kelly," replied the skipper ironically. And then, with another voice, he cried: "We'll go home with a deck-load this trip! Aye, Tim, loaded to the stack—log-loaded! We'll show 'em who are the lads who can smell out the ice an' the swile!" ”

“ THE lads of Fore-and-aft Cove are not given to deep-sea faring. They are confirmed home-keepers. Poverty and the perils of the coastwise waters keep the population from increasing to an inconvenient extent. ”