TAKING AN INVENTORY.--SETTING UP THE STOVE.
Peter was already picking a dead goose, and Regnar and Waring were about
to follow his example, when La Salle interposed.
"Let us skin the birds, for it may be that we shall be unable to land
for several days, and if so, we shall need all the covering we can get,
for this thaw is sure to be followed by a severe frost or two."
"Sposum tide turn, ice lun down to capes, then get ashore," said Peter,
confidently.
La Salle drew out his watch.
"It was high tide at four o'clock, and it is now nearly seven. Peter,
just climb to the top of the berg, and see how we drift."
Peter dropped his half-picked bird, ascended with eager agility, lined
another projection of the floe with some object on the New Brunswick
shore, seemed puzzled, looked more carefully, and then slowly descended,
apparently sad and disheartened.
"Well, Peter, how is it?" said La Salle, cheerfully.
"No good; ice lun north-west, against tide; no get ashore to-day," was
the reluctant answer.
Regnar seemed little surprised, but Waring turned almost white with
anxiety and disappointment.
"I thought as much," said La Salle, quietly. "With such a gale as this,
the tide, whose rise and fall does not average four feet on this coast,
often seems to run in one direction, and even to remain at flood for a
day or two; but even if it did fall, this floe carries sail enough with
this wind to make from two to three miles an hour against it. We shall
probably have easterly and southerly winds until to-morrow, and must now
be well up to Cape Bauld, and about mid-channel, say twelve miles from
shore."
"Why not try land, then, with the boat? We four could surely make twelve
mile in the course of the day," asked Regnar, somewhat impatiently for
him.
"How deep is the snow and slush now, Regnie?" asked the leader of the
little party, calmly.
"'Bout knee-deep on level ice," said the boy.
"Come up here, all of you," said La Salle, ascending the lookout.
The three followed, and found themselves scarcely able to stand at
times, when a fiercer blast than usual swept up the strait, howling
through the tortuous and intricate ravines and valleys of the
ice-fields.
"Can we cross such a place as that?" asked La Salle, pointing to where
an edge of a large ice-field, suddenly lifted by the wedge-like brink of
another, began a majestic and resistless encroachment, with the
incalculable power communicated by the vast weight pressing behind it.
A body of ice, at least a yard in thickness, ran up a steep ascent of
five or six feet, broke with its own weight, pressed on again up the
steeper incline, broke again, and so continued to ascend and break off
until a ridge a score of feet high, crested with glittering fragments of
broken ice, interrupted the passage between the two floes.
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?"
Turning, he descended under the lee of the shelter, where he was soon
followed by the rest.
"What spose we do, then?" asked Peter. "We stay this place to die of
cold and hunger?"
"Peter, I'm ashamed of you," said La Salle. "Die, do you say, when we
have food, shelter, fire, and covering? We must, indeed, stay here until
the winds and sea give us a better chance to escape to the shore.
Meanwhile let us try to make ourselves comfortable."
Accordingly the birds--six geese and eight brent--were divested of their
skins, which furnished patches of warm covering, of from two to four
square feet. The sinews of the legs were divided into threads, and,
using a small sail-needle which he carried to clean the tube of his gun,
La Salle proceeded to show Waring how to make a large robe, placing the
larger skins in the middle, and forming a border of the smaller ones.
Meanwhile Regnar had cleared the snow from a space about twelve feet
square in front of the door, and, with fragments of ice, cemented with
wet snow, formed a walled enclosure which kept off the wind; and Peter,
splitting two or three of the wooden decoys, soon built a fire, over
which a pair of geese, spitted on sticks, were narrowly watched and
sedulously turned, while La Salle made a cup of his carefully-treasured
coffee.
As they sat eating their rude meal, Regnar broke the silence; for it may
well be believed that no great hilarity pervaded the little party.
"As we not know how long we may be adrift, I think we better take
'count stock. See how much wood, provisions, powder, shot, everyting."
"You are right, Regnie; we will set to work at once. I can tell how much
food we have now. We have a little bread, coffee, sugar, and a tin of
sardines, which I think we had better reserve for possible emergencies,
also six candles, which we must not waste. I have a pound canister of
powder untouched, and nearly half a pound more in my flask, with about
five pounds of shot, and three dozen shot-cartridges of different sizes,
say sixty charges in all. Besides that, my rifle lies in the boat,
loaded, with a small bag of bullets, and a quarter-pound flask of rifle
powder."
"I," said Waring, "have thirty cartridges for my breech-loader, and a
few of the caps for them, in a box in my pocket."
"I have nearly a pound powder, some wads, caps, and 'bout two pounds of
shot left," said Regnar.
"Spose I got half pound powder in old horn, box caps mos' full, an' tree
poun' goose shot," said Peter.
"We have, then, somewhere between one hundred and fifty and two hundred
rounds of ammunition, and provisions for a week, allowing ourselves no
addition to the present stock. Count the decoys, Regnie, while I look up
our tools, &c."
Regnie reported forty wooden decoys, twelve of sheet iron, eight of cork
and canvas, and twelve wooden duck decoys. Besides these, there were
still untouched a dozen bunches of fir and spruce twigs, like those used
in covering the floor of the ice-hut. In addition to these, La Salle
found one large boat, the broken smaller one, a pair of oars, a pair of
rowlocks, a short boat-hook, baler, two lead-lines and leads, two
shovels, and two axes.
"We are well provided for a week of such weather as this, and have only
to fear a sudden change to extreme cold. I therefore think the first
thing for us to do, is to finish our feather quilt, enlarge our hut, and
get up a stove as soon as possible."
A general expression of incredulity showed itself on the faces of the
trio, which La Salle evidently interpreted rightly, and therefore
hastened to explain himself.
"Of course we must first make our stove."
"Why, Charley, what on earth can we make our stove of?" said Waring.
"Sheet iron, of course."
"But where is the sheet iron to come from? We haven't any here--have
we?"
"Ah, I know twelve decoys sheet-iron, only they painted."
"Yes, Regnie, you have guessed it. Those decoys are about as good sheet
iron as is made, and we can burn the paint off, I guess. Five of them
will furnish a cylinder, conical stove, fifteen inches diameter, and as
many high, and five more will give us about seven feet of two and a
half-inch stove-pipe. Bring in the decoys and axes, and we'll get it up
at once."
"Come on, boys," said Waring, whose spirits had risen perceptibly since
breakfast. "We'll have a hotel here yet, and supply passengers by the
mail-boat with hot dinners."
"Sposum me have knife, I help you. Leave _waghon_ home yesterday for
_h_ould woman make baskets," said Peter, ruefully.
"I guess we shall manage with the axes, although we need a knife like
your Indian draw-knife. Reach me a large decoy, and the heaviest of
those cod-leads."
La Salle had already "laid out" with the point of his penknife the shape
of one of the sections of his proposed stove upon one of the decoys from
which Regnar had already removed the iron leg, which was about six
inches long, sharp pointed, and intended to be driven into the ice. Each
section was twenty inches long, eight and a half inches wide at the
lower end, and two and a half at the upper; and luckily the outline of
the goose gave very nearly this shape, with little trimming, which was
effected by laying the iron on the lead, applying the edge of the
smaller axe as a chisel, and striking on its head with the large. The
laps were then "turned" over the edge of an axe with a billet of wood
cut from the old cross-bars of Davies's shooting-box, which were young
ash saplings. Then the pieces were put together, the laps solidly
beaten down, and despite a little irregularity of shape, the job was
not a bad one.
Five other decoys furnished as many parallelograms of seventeen by eight
and a half, which made good two and three quarter inch pipe, and
afforded nearly seven feet in length when affixed to the cylinder.
It was nearly four o'clock when the work was thus far completed.
"If we only had a flat stone to set it on," said Waring.
"I should not despair of that even," said La Salle, "if we dared look
around on some of the older floes; but we shall have to do without one
for a day or two, I think."
"Peter make glate, three, two minutes, only glate burn up every day or
two;" and hastening out, he returned with a very large decoy, which, on
account of its portentous size, had been made the leader of the "set"
when arranged on the ice.
With the axe he broke off the head, and then taking six of the ten iron
legs, he drove them two or three inches deep into the tough spruce log,
until the spikes surrounded it like the points of a crown. La Salle had
re-riveted the four others at equal distances around the base of the
stove, while Regnar had removed a part of the snow on the roof, and,
cutting a large aperture through the bottom of the inverted box, nailed
over it the eleventh decoy, through which a roughly-cut hole gave
admittance to the chimney.
The fir-branches were then removed to the yard, and covered from the
still falling rain with the rubber blanket, while all hands joined in
enlarging their quarters. The ice was singularly hard and clear, and
contained no cracks or other sources of weakness. By sunset the lower
part of the hut was enlarged from eight feet square to twelve feet
diameter, a circular shape being given to the excavation, so that a
continuous berth, about two feet wide and a yard high, ran completely
around the floor of the hut, or rather to within about four feet of the
door on either side. The fir-twigs were replaced in the berths and
around the floor, leaving a bare space of nearly four feet diameter in
the centre. Here a slight hollow was made, to contain the novel grate,
and the stove was placed in position over it.
Waring brought in a shovelful of embers from the dying fire outside,
under whose ashes a goose, swathed in sea-weed, was preparing for
supper, and Peter followed him with some small chunks of wood. The stove
"drew" beautifully, and but one drawback could be discovered--it made
the atmosphere within too warm for comfort, at the then temperature. "No
matter that," said Peter, prophetically; "we glad see plenty fire here
to-morrow night."
It was nearly midnight when the four ate supper and gave the fragments
to their faithful dog. Before sleeping, La Salle stepped outside the
hut. The wind had lessened greatly, but still blew mildly warm from a
southerly direction. "We must now be somewhere off Shediac, but I see no
open water, and the pack is as close as ever. We shan't get down to the
capes with this wind, and to-morrow at this time, if the wind holds, we
shall be up to Point Escumenac. I don't care to think what next; but if,
as Peter says, we are to have cold, westerly weather, we must move off
into the open Gulf and then--Well, we shall endure what it pleases God
to send us."
Notwithstanding their fatigue, all were awake at daylight the next
morning, and immediately the whole party ascended their lookout. The
wind still blew in very nearly the same direction, but with little
force, and at noon, as the party sat down to their first meal for the
day, no land could be plainly determined, and for an hour the utmost
calm prevailed, with an unclouded sun. The pack was still closed,
however, with the exception of two or three small openings, in which
were seen a seal and several flocks of moniac ducks, known on the
Atlantic coast as "South-Southerlies." The former could not be
approached, but Peter got two shots at the ducks as they gyrated over
the berg, and killed three at one time and four at another, which were
duly skinned, and the bodies consigned to the "meat-safe," a hole in the
ice near the door.
This meal tasted a little better than the former ones, the birds being
seasoned with salt procured from sea-water by boiling--a slow process,
which La Salle promised to make easier when the next frost set in. The
bird-skins had been carefully cleaned from fat, and sewed into two
blankets about seven feet by five each, and stretched on the ice with
the flesh side uppermost, were rubbed with salt and ashes, and then
exposed to the sun, receiving considerable benefit thereby.
For supper, a soup of fowls thickened with grated biscuit was eaten with
hearty relish by all but Waring, who claimed to have eaten too much at
dinnertime, although La Salle fancied that he looked flushed and pale by
turns.
"Do you feel sick, George?" said La Salle, anxiously, when the others
were temporarily absent from the hut.
"O, no, Charley; don't fuss about me. I'm all right, only I've eaten a
little too much of that fat meat, and taken scarcely any exercise," was
the reply.
"Well, George, don't fail to let me know at once if you do feel sick,
for my stock of medicines is limited, and I must do my doctoring during
the first stages of the disease," said La Salle, gravely.
"Yes, I should judge so, doctor," laughed Waring; and, turning to the
fire, he placed another stick under the cylinder, as if suffering from a
chill.
At an hour before sunset they saw on their left hand, and, as nearly as
they could judge, about twelve miles away, the high headland of
Escumenac. The pack opened a little, for the wind had now been blowing
for about three hours from the west, the air was very perceptibly
colder, and the standing pools on the ice began to freeze. Under Le
Salle's direction, Regnar cut a hole in the ice, which would hold about
four pailsful of salt water, and filled it to overflowing, while Peter
cut up a dozen of the decoys into junks three inches square, and piled
them near the door.
As they entered the hut, they found Waring shivering over the fire. "I
am afraid, Charley," stammered he, "that I am going to be very sick, for
I can't keep warm to save my life."
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