"'TIS THE GHOST OF LONG JOHN"
The morning was clear and crisp. Breakfast was eaten by candle-light,
and before sunrise Doctor Joe and the boys, with the tide to help
them, worked the big boat down through The Jug and past the Point into
Eskimo Bay. In the shelter of The Jug, which lay in the lee of the
hills, the sails flapped idly and it was necessary to bring the long
oars into service. But beyond the sheltered harbour a light north-west
breeze caught and filled the sails, the oars were stowed, the rudder
shipped, and with David at the tiller Doctor Joe lighted his pipe and
settled himself for a quiet smoke while Andy and Jamie turned their
attention to their scout handbooks.
It was an inspiring morning. The sky was cloudless. The air was
charged with scent of spruce and balsam fir, wafted down by the
breeze from the forest, lying in dark and solemn silence and spreading
away from the near-by shore until it melted into the blue haze of
rolling hills far to the northward. The huge black back of a grampus
rose a hundred feet from the boat and with a noise like the loud
exhaust of steam sank again beneath the surface of the Bay. Now and
again a seal raised its head and looked curiously at the travellers
and then hastily dived. Gulls and terns soared and circled overhead,
occasionally dipping to the water to capture a choice morsel of food.
A flock of wild geese, honking in flight, turned into a bight and
alighted where a brook coursed down through a marsh to join the sea.
"There's some geese," remarked David, breaking the silence. "They're
comin' up south now. We'll have a hunt when we gets home. They always
feeds in that mesh when they're bidin' about the Bay."
Presently Andy exclaimed:
"I can tie un all! I can tie every knot in the book!"
"I can tie un too!" said Jamie.
"Yes! Yes! There are the scout tests!" broke in Doctor Joe. "Suppose
we all tie the knots and pass the tests."
Andy and Jamie tied them easily enough, and then Doctor Joe tied them
himself to keep pace with the boys, and Andy relieved David at the
tiller that he might try his hand at them; David not only tied all the
knots illustrated in the handbook, but for good measure added a
bowline on a bight, a double carrick bend, a marlin hitch and a
halliard hitch.
"That's wonderful easy to do," David declared as he laid the rope
down. "'Tis strange they calls that a test, 'tis so easy done."
"Easy for us," admitted Doctor Joe, "but for boys who have never had
much to do with boats or ropes it's a hard test, and an important one.
You chaps knew how to tie them, so in doing it you haven't learned
anything new. Let us make up our minds as scouts to learn something
new every day--something we never knew before, no matter how small or
unimportant it may seem. Think what a lot we'll know next year that we
do not know now; everything we learn, too, is sure to be of use to us
sometime in our lives.
"As we go along we'll find there is a great deal to learn in this
handbook, and all of it is worth knowing. We don't look far ahead.
Suppose we begin with the scout law. With your good memories you'll
learn it before we go ashore to-night. I want you to learn the twelve
points of the law in order as they appear in the book, so that you can
repeat them and tell me in your own words what each point means."
Doctor Joe turned to the scout law and explained each point in detail.
When he told them that "A Scout is kind" meant that they must not only
be kind to people, but that they must protect and not kill harmless
birds and animals, David protested:
"If we promises _that_, sir, 'twould stop us huntin' seals and deer
and pa'tridges and plenty o' things."
"Oh, no!" explained Doctor Joe. "It does not mean that. It means that
you must kill nothing _needlessly_. Here in Labrador we must kill
seals and deer and partridges and other game for food and for their
skins. That is the way we make our living. In the same way they have
to kill cows and sheep and goats and pigs for food in the country I
came from and to get skins for boots and gloves. In the same way we
are permitted to kill game when necessary. But we're not to kill
anything that's harmless unless we need it for some purpose. The
Indians and other people about here shoot at loons for sport. I've
seen them chase the loons in canoes and keep shooting at them every
time they came up after a dive, until the loons were too tired to dive
quickly enough to get out of the way of the shot, and then the poor
things were killed. The flesh isn't fit to eat and they're always
thrown away. That is cruel."
"I never thought of un that way. I've killed loons too," David
confessed, "but I'll never shoot at a loon again. 'Tis the same with
gulls and other things we never uses when we kills, and just shoot at
for fun."
"That's the idea," said Doctor Joe enthusiastically. "Now what do you
think about killing hen partridges in summer?"
"We can kill pa'tridges, can't we?" asked David. "We always eats un,
and you said we could kill un."
"But we've got to use our heads about it," Doctor Joe explained. "I'm
talking now about _hen_ partridges in _summer_. They always have
broods of little partridges then. If you kill the mother all the
little ones die, for they're too small to take care of themselves. Do
you think that's right?"
"I never thought of un before," said David. "'Tis wicked to kill un!
I'll never kill a hen pa'tridge in summer again! Not me!"
"We'll have to be tellin' everybody in the Bay about that!" declared
Andy. "Nobody has ever thought about the poor little uns starvin' and
dyin'!"
"That'll be doing good scout work," Doctor Joe commended. "That's one
way you'll be useful as scouts here in Labrador. Not only will you be
showing kindness to the mother and little partridges, but if the
mother is permitted to live and raise her brood, all the little birds
will be full grown by winter, and it will make that many more
partridges that can be used for food when food is needed."
When presently Jamie announced that it was "'most noon" and he was
"fair starvin'," and the others suddenly discovered that they were
hungry too, a fire was lighted in the stove and a cosy lunch of fried
pork and bread, and hot tea sweetened with molasses, was eaten with an
appetite and relish such as only those can enjoy who live in the open.
Then, with growing interest the lads returned to their scout books,
and camping time came almost before they were aware.
The sun was drooping low in the west when David, indicating a low,
wooded point, said:
"That's Flat P'int. There's good water there and 'tis a fine camping
place."
"Then we'll camp there," Doctor Joe agreed.
"Look! Look!" exclaimed Andy, as the boat approached the shore.
"There's a porcupine!"
Following the direction in which Andy pointed, a fat porcupine was
discovered high up in a spruce tree feeding upon the tender branches
and bark.
"Shall we have un for supper?" Andy asked excitedly.
"Aye," said David, "let's have un for supper. Fresh meat'll go fine."
A shot from the rifle, when they had landed, brought the unfortunate
porcupine tumbling to the ground, and Andy proceeded at once to skin
and dress his game for supper.
"I'll be cook and Andy cookee," Doctor Joe announced. "We'll get wood
for the fire, David, and you and Jamie pitch the tent and get it
ready."
Flat Point was well wooded, and the floor of the forest thickly
carpeted with grey caribou moss. David selected a level spot between
two trees on a little rise near the shore. The ridge rope was quickly
stretched between the trees and the tent securely pegged down. Then
David and Jamie broke a quantity of low-hanging spruce boughs, which
they snapped from the trees with a dexterous upward bend of the wrist.
When a liberal pile of these had been accumulated at the entrance of
the tent, David proceeded to lay the bed.
The rear of the tent was to be the head. Here he laid a row of the
boughs, three deep, with the convex side uppermost, then he began
"shingling" the boughs in rows toward the foot. This was done by
placing the butt end of the bough firmly against the ground with half
the bough, the convex side uppermost, overlapping the bough above it,
as shingles are lapped on a roof. Thus continuing until the floor of
the tent was covered he had a soft, fragrant springy bed, quite as
soft and comfortable as a mattress, and upon this he and Jamie spread
the sleeping-bags.
In the meantime Doctor Joe and Andy had collected an ample supply of
dry wood for the evening, and when, presently, David and Jamie joined
them, a cheerful fire was blazing and already an appetizing odour was
rising from the stew kettle.
When the stew and some tender dumplings were done Doctor Joe lifted
the kettle from the fire, and while he filled each plate with a
liberal portion, and Andy poured tea, David put fresh wood upon the
fire, for the evening had grown cold and frosty with the setting sun.
The blazing fire was cheerful indeed as they settled themselves upon
the seat of boughs and proceeded to enjoy their supper.
"Um-m-m!" exclaimed Andy. "You knows how to cook wonderful fine,
Doctor!"
"'Tis _wonderful_ fine stew!" seconded David.
"Not half bad," admitted Doctor Joe, "but Andy had as much to do with
it as I, and the porcupine had a good deal to do with it. It was young
and fat, and it's tender."
There is no pleasanter hour for the camper or voyageur than the
evening hour by a blazing camp fire. There is no sweeter odour than
that of the damp forest mingled with the smell of burning wood. Beyond
the narrow circle of light a black wall rises, and behind the wall
lies the wilderness with its unfathomed mysteries. Out in the darkness
wild creatures move, silent, stealthy and unseen, behind a veil that
human eyes cannot penetrate. But we know they are there going about
the strange business of their life, and our imagination is awakened
and our sensibilities quickened.
The camp fire is a shrine of comradeship and friendship. Here it was
that the primordial ancestors of every living man and woman and child
gathered at night with their families, in those far-off dark ages
before history was written. The fire was their home. Here they found
rest and comfort and protection from the savage wild beasts that
roamed the forests. It was a place of veneration. The primitive
instinct, perchance inherited from those far-off ancestors of ours,
slumbering in our souls, is sometimes awakened, and then we are called
to the woods and the wild places that God made beautiful for us, and
at night we gather around our camp fire as our ancient ancestors
gathered around theirs, and we love it just as they loved it.
And so it was with the little camp fire on Flat Point and with Doctor
Joe and the boys. With darkness the uncanny light of the Aurora
Borealis flashed up in the north, its long, weird fingers of changing
colours moving restlessly across the heavens. The forest and the
wide, dark waters of Eskimo Bay sank behind a black wall.
There was absolute silence, save for the ripple of waves upon the
shore, each busy with his own thoughts, until presently Jamie asked:
"Did you ever see a ghost, Doctor?"
"A ghost? No, lad, and I fancy no one else ever saw one except in
imagination. What made you think of ghosts?"
"'Tis so--still--and dark out there," said Jamie, pointing toward the
darkness beyond the fire-glow. "And--I were thinkin' I heard
something."
"But there _is_ ghosts, sir, plenty of un," broke in Andy. "Pop's seen
ghosts and so has Zeke Hodge and Uncle Billy and plenty of folks. They
says the ghost of Long John, the old Injun that used to be at the Post
and was drowned, goes paddlin' and paddlin' about in a canoe o'
nights."
"Yes," said David, "I'm thinkin' I saw Long John's ghost myself one
evenin'. I weren't certain of un, but it must have been he."
"Nonsense!" Doctor Joe had no patience with the belief popular among
Labradormen that ghosts of men who have been drowned or killed return
to haunt the scene of their death. "There's no such thing as a ghost."
"What's that now?" Jamie held up his hand for silence, and spoke in a
subdued voice.
Out of the darkness came the rhythmic dipping of a paddle. They all
heard it now. Doctor Joe arose, and closely followed by the boys,
stepped down beyond the fire glow. In dim outline they could see the
silhouette of a canoe containing the lone figure of a man paddling
with the short, quick stroke of the Indian.
"'Tis the ghost of Long John!" breathed Jamie. "'Tis sure he!"