soon men came and brought them aid, and their lives were saved.--Well,
John, I'm coming back in a day or two to see how you are. And I'll
call in on neighbor Martha Dennis, and she'll make you some nice broth
to take the place of the stew the dogs got."
"Thank you, Doctor! I'll be glad to see you when you comes back. I
don't know what us would do, if it wasn't for you, Doctor!"
To the stories that the Doctor and his patient told each other might
be added many more true tales of the intelligence of the "husky" dogs.
Sometimes a man at work in the forest, getting in his winter's supply
of fire-wood, will send the dog home with no message at all.
Then the good wife looks about, to see what the dog's master has
forgotten. It may be an axe-head, or his pipe, or his lunch of bread
and potatoes.
Whatever it is, she ties it to the dog and back he trots to his master
in the woods, a willing express-messenger.
But one of the finest deeds set down to the credit of a "husky" is
what a plain, every-day "mutt" dog did at Martin's Point, on the west
coast of Newfoundland near Bonne Bay, in December 1919.
The steamer _Ethie_, Captain English commanding, was making her last
southward trip of the season. I knew the _Ethie_ well, every inch of
her, for I had made the up trip and the down trip aboard her only a
few weeks before. Through no fault of her gallant captain, she had
been carrying a great many more passengers than she ever was meant to
carry. On a pinch, she had accommodations for fifty. But on one trip,
by standing up the fishermen in the washroom as if they were bunches
of asparagus, she had taken three hundred passengers. From a hundred
to two hundred was a common number. I had been one of about
twenty-five lucky enough to find a "berth" in the small dining-saloon.
The berth was like a parcel-rack in a railway car. The people of the
coast were signing a long petition to have the miserable old tub laid
up and a larger, modern vessel substituted.
When Captain English was nearing Martin's Point on the _Ethie's_ last
voyage, a high sea was running, and she sprang a leak. The water
rushed into the fireroom. Captain English went below and made an
appeal to "his boys" not to desert their fires and not to fail him.
"If you will stick till we get round the Point we can beach her," he
said. The stokers manfully plied their shovels: with the snow
whirling, and the wind blowing half a gale, the vessel struck, several
hundred yards from the beach. In a little while the waves, sweeping
furiously over the deck, would have swept the ninety-two persons
aboard into the sea.
They tried to fire a line ashore to the willing crowd that stood at
the edge of the breakers.
But the line fell short, across an ugly reef of jagged rocks half-way
to the land.
Then volunteers were asked to swim ashore with the rope. But none of
the sailors knew how to swim. It is a rare accomplishment among
sailors, especially in those bitter northern waters. So that plan was
surrendered.
A boat was launched. Before it had fairly hit the tremendous waves, it
was dashed to pieces against the _Ethie's_ side.
The company on shipboard seemed at the end of their resources. But the
people ashore had not been idle.
There was a fisherman of Martin's Point named Reuben Decker, who had a
dog whom he had not taken the trouble to name at all. It was one of
the young dogs in process of being broken to the sled, and in the
meantime it was kicked and stoned and starved--not by the owner, but
by strangers afraid of it, as is the general lot of dogs in this part
of the world, after they have done their best by man.
The dog happened to be down at the shore, forlornly searching for
sculpins and caplin. There was still open water between the shore and
the ship. Reuben Decker pointed to the rocks across which the rope had
fallen. At his word of command, the dog jumped into the sea, swam to
the rocks, and seized the rope in his mouth. Then, with the cries from
the ship and the shore ringing in his ears, he turned and began to
swim with it to the shore. It was not a heavy line. It was meant to be
used to haul a thicker rope. But it was wet, of course, and partly
frozen, and the miracle is how the animal managed to pull it through a
sea where men did not dare to go.
The watchers ashore, standing waist and shoulder deep in the waves,
anxious to launch a boat as soon as the heavy swell would let them,
watched the dog and clapped their hands and yelled to him to come on.
"Look at un!"
"Swimmin' like a swile!"
"Kim alang, b'y, kim alang!"
[Illustration: LET'S GO!]
"Man dear! My, my, my! Ain't dat wunnerful, now!"
"Dat 'm de b'y!"
"By de powers!--Git y'r gaff, b'y! Help un in!"
"We'll have 'm all sove, soon's us lays han's on dat rope. Lord bless
dat dog!"
At one moment his little brown head would rise on the crest of a
streaked, yeasty wave, the rope still in the white teeth--and then as
the wave curled and broke he would be plunged to the bottom of the
trough and they would lose sight of him. Would he come up again?
"Yes--dere he be! My, my, my! Look at him a-comin' and a-comin'! I
never did see a dog the beat o' un! By the livin' Jarge, he's got more
sense 'n any o' us humans! I tell ye, thet's a miracle, thet's what it
is. Nothin' short o' a gospel miracle!"
So the comment ran--for those who said anything. But many were too
surprised and thrilled to speak--and if they cried out it was when
they all cheered mightily together as the dog, hauled through the surf
by as many as could get their eager hands on him, scrambled out on
the beach and dropped the fag-end of the rope as if it were a stick,
thrown into the water in sport, for him to retrieve.
Now that communication was established, the next thing to do was to
haul a heavier rope to the beach. On this a breeches-buoy was rigged
without delay. In that breeches-buoy the ninety-two were hauled
ashore. One of them was a baby, eighteen months old, who traveled in a
mail-bag, "pleasantly sleeping and unaware." The last to leave was the
captain.
The sea hammered the life out of the boat--but the human life was gone
from it, and nobody cared. As for the dog--you can imagine how Reuben
Decker's cottage door was kept a-swing till it was nearly torn from
its hinges, by friends who dropped in to pat him on the back, and look
with curiosity at the animal which a few hours ago they ignored or
despised. And Reuben did not tire of telling them all what a dog it
was. He could safely say there was no better on the coast. Perhaps in
the world.
The rumbling echoes of the dog's brave deed traveled "over the hills
and far away," to Curling, where lives from hand to mouth a little
paper called _The Western Star_. It has a circulation of 675 in fair
weather and 600 when it storms. The editor is a man named Barrett, who
is a correspondent of the Associated Press. He put a brief dispatch on
the wire for all America. Some people in Philadelphia read it, and
sent the dog a silver collar, almost big enough to go three times
round his neck. Since the dog had no name, the word "Hero" was
engraved on the collar.
The day of the presentation was a general holiday. All the way from
St. John's, people came to see "Hero" rewarded. Father Brennan made a
speech, the sheriff was in his glory, and Reuben Decker and his dog,
dragged blinking into the limelight, were equally dumb with modesty,
surprise and gratitude. The cheer that was raised when the silver
clasp of the magnificent collar clicked round "Hero's" throat drowned
out the loud music of the ocean.
Now "Hero," freed forever from bondage to the sled, may lie by the
fire in his master's house, his head on his paws, his nose twitching,
as he dreams of his great adventure.
VI
HUNTING WITH THE ESKIMO
When Dr. Grenfell first sailed his mission boat to the Eskimo
settlements, the Eskimo swarmed aboard his little schooner, the
_Albert_. They were singing a hymn the Moravian missionaries taught
them.
"What do you know about that?" said Sailor Bill to Sailor Jim. "Them
fellers certainly can sing!"
"Yes, an' they got a brass band," answered Jim. "Just hear 'em a-goin'
it, over there on the shore when the wind sets our way. You'd sure
think the circus was comin' to town! Hey there, where you goin', young
feller?"
The "young feller" was an old Eskimo of about seventy, but Jim
couldn't be expected to know that. For he was all done up like a
figure from fairy-land--in snow-white jumper, peaked fur cap, and
sealskin boots.
The Eskimo only grinned from ear to ear. He seemed ready to laugh at
everything. His little bright eyes missed nothing.
"These husky-maws are so bloomin' curious," said Jim. "Just like them
husky dogs. Hafta take the lid off 'n' look into everything. The cook
says he dasn't turn his back to the stove. Don't you let 'em into the
cabin!"
"There's one of 'em in there now!" cried Bill. Out of a port-hole
issued the notes of a hymn, which one of the Eskimo was pumping out of
a melodeon.
"Come up outa there!" yelled Bill, thrusting his head in at the
doorway.
The Eskimo didn't understand the words, but he knew what the tone
meant, and meekly turned a smiling face toward the sailor.
Then he jumped up from his seat on the top of a keg and put out his
hand. Bill took the pudgy, greasy little fingers. The Eskimo brought
from somewhere in his blouse a piece of ivory carved in the likeness
of a boat with rowers.
"How much d'ye want for that?" asked Bill.
The Eskimo shook his head.
"Are ye deaf?" cried Bill. "How much d'ye want for the boat?"
"Aw shucks!" exclaimed Jim. "Hollerin' so loud don't do no good. He
dunno what you're sayin'. He can't talk English. Show him your
clasp-knife. That'll talk to him better'n you can. He wants to swop
with ye."
Bill brought out the big knife. The little brown man nodded eagerly.
Then he handed over the ivory boat. It was worth a great deal more
than the knife. But not to the Eskimo. That knife would be a precious
thing to help him carve meat and cut things out of sealskin and
perhaps stab a polar bear.
"So everybody's happy?" laughed a clear and pleasant voice at Bill's
shoulder. "You traded about even, did you?"
"Guess so, Doctor. He's got what he wants, and I'm goin' to send the
boat to the kiddies in the old country."
That night as the men sat around the cabin lamp with their pipes and a
big pail of steaming cocoa, Dr. Grenfell told them something about the
strange people they had come among.
He had spent all day ashore among them, in various repairs to their
bodies, and he had promised to come back to them in the morning.
"They're a nice, jolly, friendly lot," he said. "So different from
the old days, before the Moravian missionaries came.
"You know, they always called themselves 'Innuits.' That means 'the
people.' They said God went on making human beings till He made the
Eskimo. When He saw them, He was perfectly satisfied, and didn't make
any more.
"But the early Norsemen came along, about a thousand years after the
time of Christ, and called them 'skrellings.' That means 'weaklings.'
It was the Indians who called them Eskimo. The word means 'eaters of
raw meat.'"
"They've sure got some funny ideas about Hell 'n' the Devil, Doctor!"
put in an old, wise sailor who was sitting deep in the shadows.
"Yes they have!" agreed the Doctor. "Their God, Tongarsuk, is a good
spirit. He rules a lot of lesser spirits, called tongaks, and they run
and tell the priests, who are called angekoks, what to do. The
angekoks are the medicine-men and the weather-prophets. The Devil
isn't he, but she. And she is so dreadful that she hasn't any name,
because you're not supposed to talk about her at all.
"The angekoks are awfully busy fellows. They have to keep making
journeys to the centre of the earth, the Eskimos believe. Because
that's where Tongarsuk the good spirit is, and they have to go and ask
him what to do when the little spirits get lazy and won't tell them.
"Anybody who thinks the angekok has an easy time of it on his voyage
is mistaken. The journey has to be in winter. It must be at midnight.
The angekok's body is standing alone in the hut--his head tied between
his legs, his arms bound behind his back. In the meantime his soul has
left the body, and is on the way to heaven or hell.
"That's what an ordinary, every-day angekok has to do. But if you want
to become an angekok poglit, which is a fat priest (meaning a chief
priest), it hurts a lot more, and takes much more time and trouble.
Then you have to let a white bear take your wandering soul and drag it
down to the sea by one toe. They don't tell you how a soul comes to
have a toe to drag it by.
"When the soul reaches the seaboard, it must be swallowed by a
sea-lion--and of course the soul may have to sit there in the cold for
quite a while waiting for a sea-lion to come along. After the
sea-lion has swallowed it, the same white bear must reappear and
swallow it too. Then the white bear must give up the spirit, and let
it return to the dark house where the body is waiting for it. All this
time the neighbors keep up an infernal racket with a drum and any
other musical instruments they may happen to have.
"The Eskimo know very well that once there was a flood--but they
cannot say exactly when. The trouble was that the world upset into the
sea, and all were drowned except one man who climbed out on a cake of
ice. They are sure of what they say, because although the oldest man
alive only heard about it from the oldest man when he was a baby, they
still find shells in the crannies of the rocks far beyond the maddest
reach of the sea: and somebody once found the remains of a whale at
the very top of a high mountain.
"You do not go up to heaven when you die: you go down,--way, way down,
to the bottom of the sea, where the best of everything is. There it's
summer all the time. To the Eskimo there is no hell in being hot--hell
is terrible cold. Down there where it is summer all the time you
don't have to chase reindeer if you want them to pull you about--they
come running up to you, obliging as taxicabs, and ask you please to
harness them and tell them where you would like to go. And your dinner
is ready for you all the time: the seals are swimming about in a
kettle of boiling water. The women don't have to spend their time
chewing on the sealskins to make them pliable for shoes and garments.
The skins come off, all by themselves, already chewed--as nice and
soft as can be, fit to make a bed for an Eskimo baby.
"His boat and his weapons go with the warrior to his grave, so that
his spirit may have the use of them in the next world.
"Once, one of the sailors from Newfoundland took something from a
grave and hid it in his bunk.
"That night the dead Eskimo came looking for his property.
"It was pitch dark--but one of the crew saw and felt the ghost
prowling about in the cabin!
"He yelled, and they lit the lamp.
"The ghost went out at the hatchway instantly.
"They put out the light, and the ghost came back. Then shouts were
heard, 'There he is! He's a Eskimo! He's huntin' in Tom's bunk!'
"After that, they kept the lamp lit all night long: and the next day,
Tom went back and with trembling fingers restored what he had stolen
to the grave.
"There are wide chinks in the rocky roof of every properly made Eskimo
grave. This is not so that prowling sailor-men may reach in: it is so
the spirits will have no trouble going in and out.
"You may still find lying in a grave a modern high-powered rifle ready
for business, and good steel knives ready to carve those cooked seals
down there in Heaven. I've even found pipes all ready filled with
tobacco, to save the spirits the trouble of using their fingers to
cram the bowl.
"Nowadays sealskins are exchanged for European goods, especially guns,
and the Labrador Eskimo have lost much of the art of using their
kayaks, the canoes into which they used to bind themselves securely,
so that when they turned over in the water it did no harm. They would
'bob up serenely' and go right on, and in contests one man would pass
his boat right over that of a rival without risk of accident.
"The Eskimo and the Indians were bitter enemies. The story of the last
fight is, that the Eskimo had their fishing-huts on an island off the
mouth of a river.
"Down-stream by night crept the Indians in their war-canoes. These
they dragged ashore and hid in the rocks. Next morning the Eskimo came
upon their enemies and at once attacked them.
"The Eskimo are little people as compared with the Indians. The
Indians, their squaws fighting like bears beside them, drove the
Eskimo back and back toward the sea.
"Stubbornly the 'huskies' contested every inch of the ground. Now and
again they would crawl into holes among the rocks--but the Indians
would find them there and cut them down without mercy, like animals
trapped in their burrows.
"The Eskimo had their choice between the Indians and the sea. They
would carry their children and even their wives down to the boats on
their backs, and sometimes the frail skin-boats would turn over, and
all the people in them would be drowned. If they succeeded in putting
out to sea, they had no place to go: the Indians waiting ashore would
get them whenever and wherever they landed.
"At last--there were only the Indians in their war-paint, dancing and
howling on the beach--not an Eskimo was left to tell the tale."
A few days later, Dr. Grenfell came to Hopedale.
There, he found, the Eskimo believed that Queen Victoria, away off
there on the other side of the ocean, was sitting on a rock waiting
for the _Harmony_ (the Moravian mission ship from Labrador) to come in
sight.
They loaded him down with all sorts of messages they wanted him to
give her.
Especially, they wanted him to say to her that they were very, very
grateful to her for sending him over the seas to help them.
When they learned that England was at war in Egypt, and a brave
general was holding the upper Nile against a crowd of savages,
although they hadn't the slightest notion as to where Egypt was or who
the Egyptians were, they got out everything they had in the way of
firearms and began to drill up and down on the rocky beach.
One old fellow had a policeman's coat split up the back and much too
big for him, and he dragged the tail of it along the ground like a
bedraggled water-fowl. He also had a single epaulet that had come in a
box of cast-off clothing.
On the strength of that uniform they made him captain of the company.
Then they all marched up to the missionaries and said:
"We want to go to war and help the English!"
"It won't be any use," said the missionaries. "Egypt is a long, long
way off--and the war will be over before you could get there!"
"Never mind!" insisted the "huskies." "We want to go!"
They kept on drilling and making warlike noises with their mouths till
the ice melted and the cod came in. And after that, in the struggle
with the cold sea and the barren land for a living they forgot all
about war and the rumors of war.
There were seals and bears and foxes to be hunted, instead of men.
Dr. Grenfell found one man who was lucky enough to catch a black fox
in a trap of stones.
He was so happy over the catch that tears of joy ran down his face as
he carried the precious skin to the store. He said God had heard his
prayers and made his family suddenly rich.
The storekeeper paid him forty-five dollars. That seemed like a
fortune. The price was not paid in cash, however, but in food.
Staggering under the load he came back to his hut, and when the stuff
was put on the shelves it looked like such a lot he began to think he
and his family never would be able to get it eaten before the end of
the world came.
So he sent out for his friends and neighbors.
Be sure they came. An Eskimo can smell food cooking (or even merely
rotting) for miles beyond the power of sight to detect it.
The invitation ran: "Come and eat and stay with me." And then the
Eskimo ran too, the big ones tumbling over the little ones, and the
dogs outstripping their masters, and all making loud noises according
to their kind.
Alas! in two days they had literally eaten their generous host out of
house and home, and along with the dogs of the quarreling packs there
was the wolf of hunger gnawing at the door.
One of the Newfoundland fishermen left an Eskimo in charge of his
supplies for the winter. Of these provisions he had set aside plenty
for the Eskimo--for he knew how much a "husky" can eat. The Eskimo
seems to have a "bread-basket" quite as extensible as any dog he
drives.
Then all the other Eskimo came swarming: and he fed them all, so that
in two days the whole crowd were starving together.
Grenfell found that the white man, green to the business of
dog-driving or whale-hunting, had to win the respect of the Eskimo.
The Eskimo knows that most of his paleface brethren from the south are
wholly unable to paddle their own canoes.
The white man, as a rule, cannot slay the seal, nor catch the cod, nor
catch anything else except a cold.
He cannot stand up to a polar bear with a knife in fair fight.
He cannot sit out on a rock in a rain-storm all day without an
umbrella and seem to enjoy it.
He cannot stand hunger, thirst and frost, and he chokes when the fumes
and the black smoke of oil lamps get into his throat.
Then he is so funny about food! He doesn't care for stinking fish: he
doesn't like his meat crawling with maggots after it has been buried
in the ground; he doesn't know how much better molasses tastes when
mice have fallen into it and expired.
The white man washes. How silly! He takes a brush made of little white
bristles and rubs his teeth with it. Well, if the white man's mouth,
which is full of water, isn't clean, then what part of him can be
clean? And why does he turn up his nose at the Eskimo for being dirty?
As for smells, what is a bad smell? The Eskimo doesn't seem to know.
In Kipling's wonderful address on "Travel," before the Royal
Geographical Society, he had much to say about smells, and how they
suggest places. Eskimo taken to the World's Fair in Chicago were
homesick for the smell of decaying blubber, rancid whale-meat,
steaming bodies in the igloo, the rich perfume of the dogs, and all
the other aromatic comforts of home. As smells are their special
delight, so dirt is their peculiar glory. A bath in warm water would
make them as unhappy as it makes a cat.
Fond of eating as they are, they like a change of food, and if
bear-meat is all they find to eat in a certain spot, they hitch up and
hike on to a better meal at a distance. They always want to be on the
go. They rarely stay in one place more than a year or two.
Even the rifle does not seem, in the long run, to be helping them
much. When the sealer used a harpoon, he hardly ever missed the seal,
for he always struck at close range. But with the rifle, shooting from
afar, the sea often swallows up his prey ere he can reach it. The
walrus has gone to the farthest North and the seal is becoming gun-shy
very fast.
As a hunter, the Eskimo is not wanting in nerve. A mighty hunter north
of Nain was out gunning for big birds--ptarmigan, guillemot and
divers,--when he came on a robust and fierce polar bear, a monstrous
specimen.
The Eskimo had a shotgun, not a rifle. It takes a ball cartridge of
large calibre to do for Mr. Bruin ordinarily--and he can "make his
getaway" with a good deal of lead in him. But the "husky" calmly
walked up close to the bear, and discharged his shotgun pointblank in
the face of the astonished animal. If the hunter had been at a
distance, the bear would have minded the dose about as much as a pinch
of pepper. As it was, the animal was blinded, and turned in fury on
the hunter.
The Eskimo tore off his sealskin tunic and threw it over the bear's
head, the way a bull-fighter confuses a charging bull with a mantilla.
The bear stopped to tear the garment in pieces before proceeding to
kill and devour the owner.
But the delay was fatal to Mr. Bear. In jig-time the hunter had
reloaded the gun. He put the second charge into the bear's head
through the eye,--and the monster expired at his feet.
The boys have bows and arrows; they begin by practising on small birds
and later become proficient with a gun, so that by the time they are
twelve years old they are veteran hunters.
The greatest joy in the life of the Eskimo is to spend a day in a
seal-hunt.
Hours before dawn, the hunter climbs a rock and looks out to sea,
anxious to learn if it will be a good day for his watery business.
Then he gets his breakfast. In the old days, it was a drink of water.
Nowadays, if the Eskimo has learned to like the white man's hot drink,
it may be a cup of coffee.