Left on Labrador Part 20

"We might increase the distance another quarter of a mile," remarked Kit, "by standing off from the ice and making the circle a little larger."

"We'll do so," said the captain. "Port the helm, Bonney!"

During the next half-hour the schooner veered off two or three cables'

lengths. We watched the boat pulling back to the s.h.i.+p. It was nearly an hour getting around the ice-island. Finally it ran in alongside, and was taken up. With our gla.s.ses we could see that there was a good deal of running and hurrying about the deck.

"Some tall swearing going on there!" laughed Kit.

"Now look out for your heads!" said Raed. "They are pointing a gun! I can see the muzzle of it! It has an ugly look!"

Some five minutes more pa.s.sed, when _puff_ came a little cloud of smoke. We held our breaths. It gives a fellow a queer sensation to know that a deadly projectile is coming for him. It might have been four seconds, though it seemed longer, when we saw the ice fly up rapidly in three or four places half a mile from the schooner as the ball came skipping along, and, bounding off the edge of the ice-field, plunged into the sea with a sullen _sudge_, throwing up a white fountain ten or a dozen feet high, which fell splas.h.i.+ng back. We all felt immensely relieved.

"That didn't come within three hundred yards of us," said Kit.

"They'll give her more elevation next time," said Wade. "I don't believe that was an Armstrong slug, though: it acted too sort of lazy."

"Look out, now!" exclaimed Raed. "They are going to give us another!"

_Puff_--one--two--three--four! The ball struck near the edge of the ice-field, rose with a mighty bound twenty or thirty feet, and, describing a fine curve, struck spat upon the water; and again, rose, to plunge heavily down into the ocean two hundred feet off the port quarter.

"That was better," said Raed. "They are creeping up to us! The next one may come aboard!"

"But that's nothing more than an ordinary old twenty-four-pounder,"

said Wade. "Bet they haven't got a rifled gun. Lucky for us!"

"I wish we had a good Dahlgren fifty-pound rifle!" exclaimed Kit: "we would just make them get out of that quick! Wouldn't it be fun to chase them off through the straits here, with our big gun barking at their heels!"

"There they go again!" shouted the captain. "Look out!"

We caught a momentary glimpse of the shot high in air, and held our breaths again as it came whirling down with a quick _thud_ into the sea a few hundred feet astern, and a little beyond us.

"Gracious!" cried Kit. "If that had struck on the deck, it would have gone down, clean down through, I do believe!"

"Not so bad as that, I guess," said the captain. "That heap of sand-ballast in the hold would stop it, I reckon."

"Think so?"

"Oh, yes!"

There was real comfort in that thought. It was therefore with diminished apprehension that we saw a fourth shot come roaring down a cable's length forward, and beyond the bows, and, a few seconds after, heard the dull boom following the shot. The report was always two or three seconds behind the ball.

They fired three more of the "high ones," as Kit called them. None of these came any nearer than the fourth had done. Then they tried another at a less elevation, which struck on the ice-field, and came skipping along as the first had done; but it fell short.

"Old Red-face will have to give it up, I guess."' said Kit. "He wants to hit us awfully, though! If he hadn't a loaded s.h.i.+p, bet you, we should see him coming up the channel between the islands there, swearing like a piper."

"In that case we would just 'bout s.h.i.+p, and lead him on a chase round this ice-island till he got sick of it," remarked the captain. "'The Curlew' can give him points, and outsail that great hulk anywhere."

"He's euchred, and may as well go about his business," laughed Weymouth.

"And that's just what he's concluding to do, I guess," said Donovan, who had borrowed my gla.s.s for a moment. "The s.h.i.+p's going round to the wind."

"Yes, there she goes!" exclaimed Wade.

"Possibly they may bear up through the channel to the west of the ice-island," said Raed.

"Hope he will, if he wants to," remarked Capt. Mazard. "Nothing would suit me better than to race with him."

In fifteen or twenty minutes the s.h.i.+p was off the entrance of the channel; but she held on her course, and had soon pa.s.sed it.

"Now that old fellow feels bad!" laughed Kit. "How savage he will be for the next twenty-four hours! I pity the sailors! He will have two or three of them 'spread-eagled' by sunset to pay for this, the old wretch! He looked just like that sort of a man."

"I wonder what our Husky friends thought of this little bombardment!"

exclaimed Wade, looking off toward the mainland. "Don't see anything of them."

"Presume we sha'n't get that old 'sachem' that saw Palmleaf to visit us again in a hurry," said Kit.

We watched the s.h.i.+p going off to the south-west for several hours, till she gradually sank from view.

"Well, captain," said Raed, "you are not going to let this adventure frighten you, I hope."

"Oh, no! I guess we can take care of ourselves. Only, in future, I think we had better keep a sharper lookout, not to let another s.h.i.+p come up within three miles without our knowing it."

It was now after four o'clock, P.M. Not caring to follow too closely after the company's s.h.i.+p, we beat back to our anchorage of the previous evening, and anch.o.r.ed for the night.

Saw nothing more of the Esquimaux; and, early the next morning, sailed out into the straits, and continued on during the whole day, keeping the mountains of the mainland to the northward well in sight at a distance of eight or ten miles, and occasionally sighting high islands to the south of the straits.

By five o'clock, afternoon, we were off a third group of islands on the north side, known as the "Upper Savage Isles." During the evening and night we pa.s.sed them a few miles to the south,--a score of black, craggy islets. Even the bright light of the waning sun could not enliven their utter desolation. Drear, oh, how drear! with their thunder-battered peaks rising abruptly from the ocean, casting long black shadows to the eastward. Many of them were mere tide-washed ledges, environed by ice-fields.

About nine o'clock, evening, the ice-patches began to thicken ahead.

By ten we were battering heavily among it, with considerable danger of staving in the bows. The foresail was accordingly taken in, and double reefs put in the mainsail. The weather had changed, with heavy lowering clouds and a rapidly-falling thermometer. Nevertheless we boys turned in, and went to sleep. Experience was beginning to teach us to sleep when we could. The heavy rumble of thunder roused us.

Bright, sudden flashes gleamed through the bull's-eyes. The motion of the schooner had changed.

"What's up, I wonder?" asked Kit, sitting up on the side of his mattress.

Another heavy thunder-peal burst, rattling overhead. Hastily putting on our coats and caps, we went on deck, where a scene of such wild and terrible grandeur presented itself, that I speak of it, even at this lapse of time, with a shudder; knowing, too, that I can give no adequate idea of it in words. I will not say that I am not glad to have witnessed it; but I should not want to see it again. To the lovers of the awfully sublime, it would have been worth a journey around the earth. It seemed as if all the vast antagonistic forces of Nature had been suddenly confronted with each other. The schooner had been hove to in the lee of an ice-field engirdling one of the smaller islets, with all sail taken in save the jib. Weymouth was at the wheel; the captain stood near him; Hobbs and Donovan were in the bow; Bonney stood by the jib-halliards. On the port side the ice-field showed like a pavement of alabaster on a sea of ink, contrasting wildly with the black, rolling clouds, which, like the folds of a huge shroud, draped the heavens in darkness. On the starboard, the heaving waters, black as night, were covered with pure white ice-cakes, striking and battering together with heavy grindings. The lightnings played against the inky clouds, forked, zigzag, and dazzling to the eye. The thunder-echoes, unm.u.f.fled by vegetation, were reverberated from bare granitic mountains and naked ice-fields with a hollow rattle that deafened and appalled us; and, in the intervals of thunder, the hoa.r.s.e bark of bears, and their affrighted growlings, were borne to our ears with savage distinctness. Mingled with these noises came the screams and cries of scores of sea-birds, wheeling and darting about.

It was half-past two, morning.

"What a fearfully grand scene!" exclaimed Wade.

And I recollect that we all laughed in his face, the words seemed so utterly inadequate to express what, by common consent, was accorded unutterable. An hour later, the blackness of the heavens had rolled away to the westward, a fog began to rise, and morning light effaced the awful panorama of night.

By six o'clock the fog was so dense that nothing could be seen a half cable's length, and continued thus till afternoon, during which time we lay hove to under the lee of the ice. But by two o'clock a smart breeze from the north lifted it. The schooner was put about, and, under close-reefed sails, went b.u.mping through the interminable ice-patches which seem ever to choke these straits. The mountains to the northward showed white after the squalls of last night; and the seals were leaping as briskly amid the ice-cakes as if the terrific scenery of the previous evening had but given zest to their unwieldy antics.

CHAPTER IX.