OUR REVENGE SCHEMED.
We came to anchor, handed our topsails, but merely hauled up our
courses, so as to be ready for sea at a moment's notice. We were in
a little sheltered cove, abreast of a small village of wooden huts,
surrounded by fences that were buried deep in the frozen snow.
These huts, like all others in this wild terra nova, were built of
fir-poles with the bark on, braced or pegged closely together, and
having chimneys of rough stone built without mortar. Bark and sods
formed the roofs, and all the crevices were carefully caulked with
moss and mud.
There, in a wretched and dreary region, dwelt--and, I presume, still
dwell--a little Irish colony of fifty or sixty poor souls, who fished
for cod in summer and seals in winter, each family herding together
for warmth in the same apartment with their pigs, fowls, and the
shaggy dogs which dragged in harness the stunted trees that formed
their fuel, and which were cut in the adjacent bush--the desolate
place which once formed the summer hunting-grounds of the extinct Red
men of the island.
Our anchoring in the cove was a great event--the entire population
came forth to gaze and their dogs to bark at us.
Though Newfoundland is larger than England and Wales together, it is
indented by broad bays of deep water, which run for forty or fifty
miles into the interior, and are but little known. On some of these
solitary shores are little stations of Europeans, such as this we
visited, so remote from all intercourse, and so secluded, that their
reckoning of time has become confused as to days, months, and even
years; thus Sunday is frequently held by them in the _middle_ of a
week.
To the care of these pioneers, or squatters, we consigned our wounded
man. By the intensity of the frost mortification had commenced, so
the poor fellow died a few days after being landed.
We had scarcely conveyed him ashore, when a man arrived from the bush
with a large tree, which he had cut down, and which his dogs had
dragged easily over the snow (after it was denuded of its bark and
branches) in the usual manner, by having their traces secured to his
hatchet, which was wedged in the broad end of the log. He informed
us that a schooner--by his description, our identical _Black
Schooner_--was then at anchor under the lee of the Gull Island, about
five miles distant; and added that the poor French people at La Scie
complained bitterly of the rifling they had undergone at the hands of
her crew, which consisted of forty well-armed desperadoes, of all
nations, but principally English and Frenchmen.
Here was startling intelligence!
"Only five miles distant, say you?" reiterated Hartly.
"Yes, sir; and you may see Gull Island from the mouth of our cove
here."
"You are sure she is a schooner?"
"Yes, with masts raking well aft."
"All black in the hull, with slender spars and double topsails?"
"Sure as I now spake to yer honour," replied our informant, who was
an Irish fisherman and squatter; "her crew have let go both anchors
to make all snug, and gone in a gang to enjoy themselves, or
rob--which you plaze--I suppose it's all one to them, at La Scie; bad
luck to them, and may the devil fly away with them all!"
"Are they all gone?"
"All except six rapparees, whom I could count from the bush where I
was hiding."
"Six--left as a deck-watch, I suppose?"
"Just so; yer honour's right again."
"How long have you lived here?" I inquired, for his brogue was as
strong as if he had only left his native Kerry yesterday.
"I have lived here, plaze yer honor, five-and-forty years this last
St. Patrick's Day, and have niver had an hour's illness, glory be to
God!"
"Five-and-forty years!" I reiterated, with a shudder, while surveying
the snow-clad wilderness amid which the wigwams stood.
"How far is La Scie from the Gull Island?" said Hartly, after a pause.
"Six miles, capthin."
"Then by Heaven I'll burn her to the water-edge, or sink her at her
anchors!" exclaimed Hartly, who, with all the rapidity of his nature,
at once conceived and prepared to execute a very daring scheme.
While the quarter-boat was got ready, and four oars, with as many
rifles loaded and capped, and a case of ammunition, were put into
her, Hartly, with Paul Reeves, proceeded in the most simple and
methodical manner to prepare their apparatus for burning the
piratical schooner.
He took a common ship-bucket, and secured an iron ring to the iron
handle, for a purpose to be afterwards explained. He filled this
bucket with pieces of rope and spun-yarn, well steeped in tar and
grease, mixing them with rosin and gunpowder. They were nearly three
hours in getting these combustibles prepared to their complete
satisfaction; and so impatient were they to put their scheme in
execution, that they would scarcely wait until dusk to make the
attempt. But the moment the sun set, Hartly issued orders to Paul
Reeves and Hans Peterkin to heave short on the anchor to get it
apeak, to cast loose the topsails, and prepare the jib for hoisting;
and while he started along the coast in the quarter-boat, to follow
him under easy sail, keeping pretty well to windward of Gull Island,
and out of sight of the schooner. If the night became obscure, on
hearing the report of a rifle a blue light was to be burned on board
the _Leda_, to indicate her whereabouts.
While Paul Reeves got the brig under weigh, and, favoured by a very
light breeze, crept slowly out of the cove, Bob Hartly, with Hammer
the carpenter, Cuffy Snowball, and I, started in the sharp little
quarter-boat, and aided by a current which there runs north to Cape
St. John, pulled swiftly along the shore towards Gull Island, which
lies beyond the extremity of the headland.