← catalogue

Adrift in the Ice-Fields

by Charles Winslow Hall · English · Gutenberg #21607 · 439,756 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Adrift in the Ice-Fields
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Adrift in the Ice-Fields

Author: Charles Winslow Hall


        
Release date: May 25, 2007 [eBook #21607]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21607

Credits: Produced by David Clarke, Marcia Brooks and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
        file was produced from images generously made available
        by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADRIFT IN THE ICE-FIELDS ***




Produced by David Clarke, Marcia Brooks and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)






[Illustration: ADRIFT. Page 162.]

ADRIFT IN THE ICE-FIELDS.

BY

CAPT. CHARLES W. HALL,
AUTHOR OF "THE GREAT BONANZA," ETC.

_ILLUSTRATED._

BOSTON:
LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS.
NEW YORK:
CHARLES T. DILLINGHAM.
1877.




COPYRIGHT:
BY LEE AND SHEPHARD.
1877.




PREFACE.


To open to the youth of America a knowledge of some of the winter sports
of our neighbors of the maritime provinces, with their attendant
pleasures, perils, successes, and reverses, the following tale has been
written.

It does not claim to teach any great moral lesson, or even to be a guide
to the young sportsman; but the habits of all birds and animals treated
of here have been carefully studied, and, with the mode of their
capture, have been truthfully described.

It attempts to chronicle the adventures and misadventures of a party of
English gentlemen, during the early spring, while shooting sea-fowl on
the sea-ice by day, together with the stories with which they whiled
away the long evenings, each of which is intended to illustrate some
peculiar dialect or curious feature of the social life of our colonial
neighbors.

Later in the season the breaking up of the ice carries four hunters into
involuntary wandering, amid the vast ice-pack which in winter fills the
great Gulf of St. Lawrence. Their perils, the shifts to which they are
driven to procure shelter, food, fire, medicine, and other necessaries,
together with their devious drift and final rescue by a sealer, are used
to give interest to what is believed to be a reliable description of the
ice-fields of the Gulf, the habits of the seal, and life on board of a
sealing steamer.

It would seem that the world had been ransacked to provide stories of
adventure for the boys of America; but within the region between the
Straits of Canso and the shores of Hudson's Bay there still lie hundreds
of leagues of land never trodden by the white man's foot; and the
folk-lore and idiosyncrasies of the population of the Lower Provinces
are almost as unknown to us, their near neighbors.

The descendants of emigrants from Bretagne, Picardy, Normandy, and
Poitou, still retaining much of their ancient patois, costume, habits,
and superstitions; the hardy Gael, still ignorant of any but the
language of Ossian and his burr-tongued Lowland neighbors; the people of
each of Ireland's many counties, clinging still to feud, fun, and their
ancient Erse tongue, together with representatives from every English
shire, and the remnants of Indian tribes and Esquimaux hordes,--offer an
opportunity for study of the differences of race, full of picturesque
interest, and scarcely to be met with elsewhere.

The century which has with us almost realized the apostolic
announcement, "Old things are passed away; behold, all things have
become new," with them has witnessed little more than the birth,
existence, and death of so many generations, and the old feuds and
prejudices of race and religion, little softened by the lapse of time,
still remain with their appropriate developments, in the social life of
the scattered peoples of these northern shores.

Regretting that the will to depict those life-pictures has not been
better seconded by more skill in word-painting, the author lays down his
pen, hoping that the pencil of the artist will atone, in some degree,
for his own "many short-comings."




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER                                                   PAGE

I. OUR COMPANY                                               9

II. BUILDING THE ICE-HOUSES.--MATTHEW COLLINS'S
GHOST                                                       19

III. THE SILVER THAW.--A FOX HUNT.--ANTHONY
WORRELL'S DOG                                               55

IV. THE GRAND FLIGHT.--A GOOD STRATAGEM.--THE
PACKET LIGHT                                                75

V. A MAD SPORTSMAN.--SNOW-BLIND.--A NIGHT OF PERIL          95

VI. ADDITIONS TO THE PARTY.--AN INDIAN OUTFIT.--A
CONTESTED ELECTION                                         110

VII. A CHANGE IN THE WEATHER.--BREAKING UP OF
THE ICE.--JIM MOUNTAIN'S FIGHT WITH THE DEVIL              136

VIII. FLOAT-SHOOTING.--A GENERAL FIELD-DAY.--CHANGES
OF THE ICE                                                 148

IX. ADRIFT                                                 158

X. THE COUNCIL.--PASSING THE CAPE                          169

XI. TAKING AN INVENTORY.--SETTING UP THE STOVE             175

XII. DOCTORING UNDER DIFFICULTIES.--AN ANXIOUS
NIGHT.--FROZEN UP                                          187

XIII. THE CHAPEL BELL.--THE FIRST SEAL.--THE
NORTH CAPE.--A SNOW-SQUALL                                 199

XIV. THE PACK OPENS.--MYSTERIOUS MURMURS.--LOVE
SCENES AND SOUNDS                                          207

XV. A SAIL.--THE SEALING GROUNDS.--THE ESQUIMAUX
LAMP.--AN INDIAN LEGEND                                    220

XVI. THE BREEDING-GROUNDS OF THE SEAL.--A
CURIOUS SIGHT.--A SHARP ENCOUNTER.--ICE CHANGES            230

XVII. ENLARGING THE BOAT.--WINGED SCAVENGERS.--NOTICE
TO QUIT                                                    244

XVIII. A CHANGE OF BASE.--BUILDING A SNOW-HUT.--THE
VIEW FROM THE BERG.--A STRANGE MEETING                     254

XIX. THE RING.--THE BURIAL.--A MAUSOLEUM OF ICE            263

XX. A STRANGE LIFE-HISTORY.--AMONG THE RED INDIANS         271

XXI. NORTHWARD AGAIN.--THE STEAMER.--TAKING
TO THE BOAT                                                287

XXII. THE FORECASTLE OF THE SEALER.--A SEALER'S
STORY.--THE LAST HUNT.--ARRIVAL AT ST. JOHN'S              303

XXIII. THE CAPTAIN'S VISIT.--HOMEWARD BOUND.--BROTHER
AND SISTER                                                 313




ILLUSTRATIONS:


Adrift.

Map of Prince Edward Island and the Northumberland Straits.

Adrift in the Ice Fields.

Capt. Lund headed a Party to assist their Friends

Gie me my Guse, Mon, and dinna delay me

Well, George, you're here at last

And the next Second the glittering Teeth were about to close upon his
helpless Victim

On the Top of the Berg they felt repaid for the Fatigue of their Journey
and Ascent

Kneeling beside it, the Lad bowed his Head as if in silent Prayer

In His Hands La Salle Waved the Banner


[Illustration]


[Illustration: (map of Prince Edward Island and the Northumberland
Straits.)]


[Illustration: ADRIFT IN THE ICE FIELDS.]




CHAPTER I.

OUR COMPANY.


Five hundred miles away to the north and east lies the snug little
Island of St. Jean; a beautiful land in summer, with its red cliffs of
red sandstone and ruddy clay, surmounted by green fields, which stretch
away inland to small areas of the primeval forest, which once extended
unbroken from the shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the waters of
the Straits of Northumberland.

Drear and desolate is it in winter, when the straits are filled with
ice, which, in the shape of floe, and berg, and pinnacle, pass in
ghostly procession to and fro, as the wind wafts them, or they feel the
diurnal impetus of the tides they cover, to escape in time from the
narrow limits of the pass, and lose themselves in the vast ice-barrier
that for five long months shuts out the havens of St. Jean from the open
sea.

No ship can enter the deserted ports, over whose icy covering the
farmer carries home his year's firing, and the young gallant presses his
horse to his greatest speed to beat a rival team, or carry his fair
companion to some scene of festivity twenty miles away. Many spend the
whole winter in idleness; and to all engaged in aught but professional
duties, the time hangs heavily for want of enjoyable out-of-door
employment. It is, therefore, a season of rejoicing to the cooped-up
sportsman when the middle of March arrives, attended, as is usually the
case, by the first lasting thaws, and the advent of a few flocks of wild
geese.

Among the wealthier sportsmen great preparations are made for a spring
campaign, which often lasts six or eight weeks. Decoys of wood,
sheet-iron, and canvas, boats for decoy-shooting and stealthy approach,
warm clothes, caps, and mittens of spotless white, powder by the keg,
caps and wads by the thousand, and shot by the bag, boots and moccasons
water and frost proof, and a vast variety of small stores for the inner
man, are among the necessaries provided, sometimes weeks in advance of
the coming of the few scattering flocks which form, as it were, the
skirmish line of the migrating hosts of the Canada goose.

It is usual for a small party to board with some farmer, as near as
possible to the shooting grounds, or rather ice, for not infrequently
the strong-winged foragers, who press so closely on the rearguard of the
retreating frost king, find nothing in the shape of open water; but
after leaving their comrades, dead and dying, amid the fatal decoys on
the frozen channels, sweep hastily southward before cold, fatigue,
hunger, and the wiles and weapons of man, can finish the deadly work so
thoroughly begun.

Such a party of six, in the spring of 186-, took up their quarters with
Captain Lund, a pilot, who held the larger portion of the arable land of
the little Island of St. Pierre, which lies three miles south of the
mouth of the harbor of C., and ends in two long and dangerous shoals,
known as the East and West Bars.

The party was composed of Messrs. Risk, Davies (younger and older),
Kennedy, Creamer, and La Salle. Mr. Henry Risk was an English gentleman,
of about fifty-five years of age, handsome, portly, and genial, a keen
sportsman, and sure shot with the long, single, English ducking-gun, to
which he stuck, despite of the jeers and remonstrances of the owners of
muzzle and breech-loading double barrels.

Davies the elder, an old friend of the foregoing, had for many years
been accustomed to leave his store and landed property to the care of
his partners and family, while, in company with Risk, he found in the
half-savage life and keen air of the ice-fields a bracing tonic, which
prepared them for the enervating cares of the rest of the year. The two
had little in common--Risk being a stanch Episcopalian, and Davies an
uncompromising Methodist. Risk, rather conservative, and his comrade a
ready liberal; but they both possessed the too rare quality of respect
for the opinions of others, and their occasional disputations never
degenerated into quarrels.

Ben Davies, a nephew of the foregoing, and also a merchant, was an
athletic young fellow, of about five feet eight, just entering upon his
twenty-second year. A proficient in all manly exercises, and a keen
sportsman, he entered into this new sport with all the enthusiasm of
youth, and his preparations for the spring campaign were on the most
liberal scale of design and expenditure. In these matters he relied
chiefly on the skill, experience, and judgment of his right-hand man and
shooting companion, Hughie Creamer.

Hughie was of Irish descent, and middle size, but compact, lithe, and
muscular, with a not unkindly face, which, however, showed but too
plainly the marks of habitual dissipation. A rigger by occupation, a
sailor and pilot at need, a skilful fisherman, and ready shot, with a
roving experience, which had given him a smattering of half a score of
the more common handicrafts, Hughie was an invaluable comrade on such a
quest, and as such had been hired by his young employer. It may be
added, that a more plausible liar never mixed the really interesting
facts of a changeable life with well-disguised fiction; and it may be
doubted if he always knew himself which part of some of his favorite
"yarns" were truths, and which were due, as a phrenologist would say,
"to language and imaginativeness large, insufficiently balanced by
conscientiousness."

Kennedy was a wiry little New Brunswicker, born just across the St.
Croix, but a thorough-going Yankee by education, business habits, and
naturalization. "A Brahmin among the Brahmins," he believed in the New
York Tribune, as the purest source of all uninspired wisdom; and
bitterly regretted that the manifold avocations of Horace Greeley had
thus far prevented that truly great man from enlightening his
fellow-countrymen on the habits and proper modes of capture of the
_Anser Canadiensis_. As, despite his attenuated and dry appearance,
there was a deal of real humor in his composition, Kennedy was
considered quite an addition to our little party.

La Salle was--Well, reader, you must judge for yourself of what he was,
by the succeeding chapters of this simple history, for he it is who
recalls from the past these faint pen-pictures of scenes and pleasures
never to be forgotten, although years have passed since their
occurrence, and the grave has already claimed two of the six,--Risk, the
robust English gentlemen, and Hughie, the cheery, ingenious adventurer.
It is not easy to draw a fair picture of one's self, even with the aid
of a mirror, and when one can readily note the ravages of time in
thinning locks and increasing wrinkles, it is hard to speak of the
robust health of youth without exaggeration. At that time, however, he
was about twenty-three, having dark hair and eyes, a medium stature,
and splendid health. Like Hughie, in a humbler sphere, he was a dabbler
in many things,--lawyer, novelist, poet, trader, inventor, what
not?--taking life easily, with no grand aspirations, and no disturbing
fears for the future. In the intervals of business he found a keen
delight in the half-savage life and wholly natural joys of the angler
and sportsman, and ever felt that to wander by river and mere, with rod
and gun, would enable him to draw from the breast of dear old Mother
Earth that rude but joyous physical strength, with the possession of
which it is a constant pleasure even to exist.

It was late at night when, by the light of the winter moon, the boats
and decoys were unloaded from the heavy sleds, and placed in position on
the various bars and feeding-grounds. The ice that season was of unusual
thickness, and gave promise of lasting for many weeks. As under the
guidance of Black Bill, they entered the farm-yard of his master, the
elder Lund, they found the rest of the family just entering the house,
and joining them, attacked, with voracious appetites, a coarse but ample
repast of bacon, potatoes, coarse bread, sweet butter, and strong black
tea. After this guns were prepared, ammunition and lunch got ready for
the coming morning, for, with the earliest gleam of the rising sun, they
were to commence the first short day of watching for the northward
coming hosts of heaven.

The exact manner in which the ingenious Mrs. Lund managed to accommodate
six sportsmen, besides her usual family of four girls, three boys, and a
hired man, within the limits of a low cottage of about nine small
apartments, has always been an unsolved mystery to all except members of
the household. To be sure, Risk and the elder Davies occupied a
luxurious couch of robes and blankets in the little parlor, and a huge
settle before the kitchen stove opened its alluring recesses to Ben and
his man Friday, while one of the elder sons and Black Bill shared with
Kennedy and La Salle the largest of the upper rooms. In later years, the
question of where the eight others slept, has attained a prominent place
among the unsolved mysteries of life; but at that time all were tired
enough to be content with knowing that they could sleep soundly, at all
events.

Few have ever passed from port to port of the great Gulf, without
meeting, or at least hearing, of "Captain Tom Lund," known as the most
skilful pilot on the coast.

  "Alike to him was tide or time,
  Moonless midnight or matin's prime."

And when his skill could not make a desired haven, or tide over a
threatened danger, the mariners of the Gulf deemed the case hopeless
indeed.

Every winter, however, the swift Princess lay in icy bonds, beside the
deserted wharves, and the veteran pilot went home to his farm, his
little house with its brood of children, his shaggy horses, Highland
cows, and long-bodied sheep, and became as earnest a farmer as if he had
never turned a vanishing furrow on the scarless bosom of the ocean.
Always pleasant, anxious to oblige, careful of the safety of his guests,
and with a seaman's love of the wonderful and marvellous, he played the
host to general satisfaction, and in the matter of charges set an
example of moderation such as is seldom imitated in this selfish and
mercenary world.

After supper, however, on this first evening, an unwonted cloud hung
over the brow of the host, which yielded not to the benign influence of
four cups of tea, and eatables in proportion; withstood the sedative
consolations of a meerschaum of the best "Navy," and scarcely gave way
when, with the two eldest of the party, he sat down to a steaming glass
of "something hot," whose "controlling spirit" was "materialized" from a
bottle labeled "Cabinet Brandy." After a sip or two, he hemmed twice, to
attract general attention, and said, solemnly,--

"It is nonsense, of course, to warn you, gents, of danger, when the ice
is so thick everywhere that you couldn't get in if you tried; but mark
my words, that something out of the common is going to happen this
spring, on this here island. I went over to the Pint, just now, after
you came into the yard, to look up one of the cows, and saw two men in
white walking up the track, just below the bank. I thought it must be
some of you coming up from the East Bar, but all of a sudden the men
vanished, and I was alone; and when I came into the yard, you were all
here! Now something of the kind almost always precedes a death among us,
and I shan't feel easy until your trip is safely over, and you are all
well and comfortable at home."

"Now, Lund," said the elder Davies, "you don't believe in any such
nonsense, do you?"

"Nonsense!" said Lund, quietly but gravely; "little Johnnie there, my
youngest boy, will tell you that he has often seen on the East Bar the
warning glare of the Packet Light, which often warns us of the approach
of a heavy storm. It is nearly thirty years since it first glowed from
the cabin windows of the doomed mail packet, but to all who dwell upon
this island its existence is beyond doubt. Few who have sailed the Gulf
as I have, but have seen the Fireship which haunts these waters, and
more than once I have steered to avoid an approaching light, and after
changing my course nearly eight pints, found the spectre light still
dead ahead. No, gentlemen, I shan't slight the warning. If you value
life, be careful; for if we get through the breaking up of the ice
without losing two men, I shall miss my guess."

"Come, Tom," said Risk, quickly, "don't depress the spirits of the
youngsters with such old-world superstitions. As you say, they couldn't
get through the ice now if they would, without cutting a hole; and when
the ice grows weak, will be time enough for you to worry. Take another
ruffle to your night-cap, Tom, and you youngsters had better get to bed,
and prepare to take to the ice at six o'clock, after a cup of hot coffee
and a lunch of sandwiches. Here's luck all round, gentlemen."

The toasts were drank by the three elderly men, and re-echoed by the
younger ones, who chose not to avail themselves of the proffered
stimulant, and then all sought repose in their allotted quarters.
Fifteen minutes later the house was in utter darkness and silence,
through which the varied breathings of sixteen adults and children would
have given ample opportunities for comparison to any waking auditor, had
such there been; but no one kept awake, and to all intents and purposes
"silence reigned supreme."

[Illustration]




CHAPTER II.

BUILDING THE ICE-HOUSES.--MATTHEW COLLINS'S GHOST.


At daybreak the gunners arose, and without disturbing the members of the
family, took some strong, hot coffee, prepared by the indefatigable
Creamer, and ate a breakfast, or rather lunch, of cold meats and bread
and butter, after which all proceeded to don their shooting costume,
which, being unlike that worn in any other sport, is worthy of
description here.

In ice-shooting, every color but pure white is totally inadmissible; for
the faintest shade of any other color shows black and prominent against
the spotless background of glittering ice-field and snow-covered cliffs.
Risk and his partner wore over their ordinary clothing long frocks of
white flannel, with white "havelocks" over their seal-skin caps, and
their gray, homespun pants were covered to the knee by seal-skin
Esquimaux boots--the best of all water-proof walking-gear for cold
weather. Risk carried the single ducking-piece before mentioned, but
Davies had a Blissett breech-loading double-barrel. They had chosen
their location to the north of the island, near a channel usually
opening early in the season, but now covered with ice that would have
borne the weight of an elephant. With much banter as to who should count
first blood, the party separated at the door; the younger Davies and
Creamer, with Kennedy and La Salle, plunging into the drifted fields to
the eastward, and in Indian file, trampling a track to be daily used
henceforward, until the snows should disappear forever. The two former
relied on over-frocks of strong cotton, and a kind of white night-caps,
while La Salle wore a heavy shooting-coat of white mole-skin, seal-skin
boots reaching to the knee, and armed with "crampets," or small iron
spikes, to prevent slipping, while a white cover slipped over his
Astrachan cap, completed his _outre_ costume. Kennedy, however, outshone
all others in the strangeness of his shooting apparel. Huge "arctics"
were strapped on his feet, from which seemed to spring, as from massive
roots, his small, thin form, clad in a scanty _robe de chambre_ of
cotton flannel, surmounted by a broad sou'wester, carefully covered by a
voluminous white pocket handkerchief. The general effect was that of a
gigantic mushroom carrying a heavy gun, and wearing a huge pair of blue
goggles.

La Salle alone of the four carried a huge single gun of number six
gauge, and carrying a quarter of a pound of heavy shot to tremendous
distances. The others used heavy muzzle-loading double-barrels. A brisk
walk of fifteen minutes brought them to the extremity of the island, and
from a low promontory they saw before them the Bay, and the East Bar,
the scene of their future labors.

Below them the Bar, marked by a low ridge, rising above the level of the
lower shallows,--for the tide was at ebb,--trended away nearly a league
into the spacious bay, covered everywhere with ice, level, smooth, and
glittering in the rising sun, save where, here and there, a huge white
hummock or lofty pinnacle, the fragments of some disintegrated berg,
drifted from Greenland or Labrador, rose along the Bar, where the early
winter gales had stranded them. Leaping down upon the ice-foot, the
party hastened to their respective stands, nearly a mile out on the
Bar--Davies being some four hundred yards from that of La Salle.

The "stand" of the former was a water-tight box of pine, painted white,
and about six feet square by four deep, which was quickly sunk into the
snow-covered ice to about half its depth; the snow and ice removed by
the shovel, being afterwards piled against the sides, beaten hard and
smooth, and finally cemented by the use of water, which in a few moments
froze the whole into the semblance of one of the thousands of hummocks,
which marked the presence of crusted snow-drifts on the level ice.

La Salle, however, had provided better for comfort and the vicissitudes
of sea-fowl shooting; occupying a broad, flat-bottomed boat, furnished
with steel-shod runners, and "half-decked" fore-and-aft, further
defended from the sea and spray by weather-boards, which left open a
small well, capable of seating four persons. Four movable boards,
fastened by metal hooks, raised the sides of the well to a height of
nearly three feet, and a fifth board over the top formed a complete
housing to the whole fabric. La Salle and Kennedy swung the boat until
her bow pointed due east, leaving her broadsides bearing north and
south; and then, excavating a deeper furrow in the hollow between two
hummocks, the boat was slid into her berth, and the broken masses of icy
snow piled against and over her, until nothing but her covering-board
was visible.

A huge pile of decoys stood near, of which about two dozen were of wood,
such as the Micmac Indian whittles out with his curved _waghon_, or
single-handed draw-knife, in the long winter evenings. He has little
cash to spend for paint, and less skill in its use, but scorches the
smooth, rounded blocks to the proper shade of grayish brown, and, with a
little lampblack and white lead, using his fore-finger in lieu of a
brush, manages to imitate the dusky head and neck with its snowy ring,
and the white feathers of breast and tail.

These rude imitations, with some more artistic ones, painted in profile
on sheet-iron shapes, of life-size, and a few cork-and-canvas
"floaters," were quickly placed in a long line heading to the wind,
which was north-west, and tailing down around the boat, the southernmost
"stools" being scarce half a gun-shot from the stands.

By the time these arrangements were completed it was nearly midday, and
the sky, so clear in the morning, had become clouded and threatening.
The chilly north-west breeze, which had made the shelter of their boats
very desirable, had died away, and a calm, broken only by variable puffs
of wind, succeeded.

"We shall have rain or snow to-night," remarked La Salle to Kennedy,
who, after a few moments of watching, had curled himself down in the dry
straw, and begun to peruse a copy of the Daily Tribune, his inseparable
companion.

"Yes, I dare say. Greeley says--"

What Greeley said was never known, for at that moment a distant sound
rung like a trumpet-call on the ear of La Salle, and amid the gathering
vapors of the leaden eastern sky, his quick eye marked the wedge-like
phalanx of the distant geese, whose leader had already marked the long
lines of decoys, which promised so much of needed rest and welcome
companionship, but concealed in their treacherous array nothing but
terror and death.

"There they are, Kennedy! Throw your everlasting paper down, and get
your gun ready. Put your ammunition where you can get at it quick; if
you want to reload. Ah, here comes the wind in good earnest!"

A gust of wind out of the north-east whistled across the floes, and the
next moment a thick snow-squall shut out the distant shores, the
lowering icebergs, the decoys of their friends, in fact, everything a
hundred yards away.

"Where are the geese?" asked Kennedy, as, with their backs to the wind,
the two peered eagerly into the impenetrable _pouderie_ to leeward.

"They were about two miles away, in line of that hummock, when the
squall set in. I'll try a call, and see if we can get an answer."

"Huk! huk!" There was a long silence, unbroken save by the whistle of
the blasts and the metallic rattle of the sleety snow:

"Ah-huk! ah-huk! ah--"

"There they are to windward. Down, close; keep cool, and fire at the
head of the flock, when I say fire!" said La Salle, hurriedly, for
scarce sixty yards to windward, with outstretched necks and widespread
pinions, headed by their huge and wary leader, the weary birds, eager to
alight, but apprehensive of unseen danger, swung round to the
south-west, and then, setting their wings, with confused cries, "scaled"
slowly up against the storm to the hindmost decoy.

"Hu-uk! hu-uk!" called La Salle, slowly and more softly.

"Huk! hu-uk!" answered the huge leader, not a score of yards away, and
scarce ten feet from the ice.

"Let them come until you see their eyes. Keep cool! aim at the leader!
Ready!--fire!"

Bang! bang! roared the heavy double-barrel, as the white snow-cloud was
lit up for an instant with the crimson tongues of levin-fire, and the
huge leader, with a broken wing, fell on the limp body of his dead mate.
Bang! growled the ponderous boat-gun, as it poured a sheet of deadly
flame into the very eyes of the startled rearguard.

A mingled and confused clamor followed, as the demoralized flock
disappeared in the direction of the next ice-house, from which, a few
seconds later, a double volley told that Davies and Creamer had been
passed, at close range, by the scattered and frightened birds.

La Salle reloaded, and then leaped upon the ice, and gave chase to the
gander, which he soon despatched, and returning, picked up Kennedy's
other bird, with three which lay where "the Baby" had hurled her four
ounces of "treble B's." Composing the dead bodies in the attitude of
rest among the other decoys, he returned to the boat, and for the first
time perceived that the geese were not the only bipeds which had
suffered in the late bombardment.

Leaning over the side-boards of the boat, the fastenings of which were
broken or unfastened, appeared Kennedy, apparently engaged in deep
meditation, for his head was bowed until the broad rim of his
preposterous head-covering effectually concealed his face from view.

"Here, Kennedy, both your birds are dead, and noble ones they are."

"I'm glad of it, for I'm nearly dead, too," came in a melancholy snuffle
from the successful shot, at whose feet La Salle for the first time
perceived a huge pool of blood.

"Good Heavens! are you hurt? Did your gun burst?" asked La Salle,
anxiously.

"No, I've nothin' but the nose-bleed and a broken shoulder, I reckon.
Braced my back against that board so as to get good aim, and I guess the
pesky gun was overloaded; and when she went off it felt like a horse had
kicked me in the face, and the wheel had run over my shoulder."

"Didn't you know better than to put your shoulder between the butt of a
gun like that and a half ton of ice?" asked La Salle. "Why, you've
broken two brass hooks, and knocked down all the ice-blocks on that
side. Can't I do anything to stop that bleeding? Lay down, face upward,
on the ice. Hold an icicle to the back of your neck."

"No, thank you; I guess it will soon stop of itself. A little while ago
I cut some directions for curing nose-bleed out of the Tribune, and I
guess they're in my pocket-book. Yes, here they are: 'Stuff the nostrils
with pulverized dried beef, or insert a small plug of cotton-wool,
moistened with brandy, and rolled in alum.' I'll carry some brandy and
alum the next time I go goose-shooting."

"Or provide a lunch of dried beef," laughed La Salle; "but you had
better keep your shoulder free after this, and you'll have no trouble.
There, the bleeding has stopped, and you'd better load up, while I clean
away this blood, and cover the boards with clean ice."

In a short time the marks of the disaster were removed, and the hunters
again took shelter from the increasing storm, which had set in harder
than ever. The snow, however, inconvenienced the friends but little, and
as Kennedy could not read, they talked over the cause of his little
accident.

"I had no idea that a gun could kick with such force. I shan't dare to
fire her again, if another flock puts in an appearance," said the
disabled goose-shooter.

"Had your shoulder been free, you would not have felt the recoil, which,
even in a heavy, well-made gun, is equal to the fall of a weight fifty
to sixty pounds from a height of one foot, and in overloaded or
defective guns, exceeds twice and even three times that. It is a wonder
that your shoulder was not broken, and a still greater wonder that you
killed your birds."

At this moment a hail came from the direction of the other boat, which
was answered by La Salle, and in a few moments, after several halloos
and replies, two human forms were seen through the scud, and Ben and
Creamer made their appearance, gun in hand. A brace of geese, held by
the necks, dangled by the side of the latter, and showed that their
shots had not been thrown away.

"This storm will last all night," said Davies, anxiously, "and we're
only an hour to sundown. Creamer, here, started a little while ago to
find out what you had shot. He lost his way, and was going right out to
sea past me, when I called to him, and I thought we had better try to
get ashore before it gets any darker."

"Does any one know in just what direction the Point lies?" asked
Creamer, with that "dazed" expression peculiar to persons who have been
"lost."

"Our boat lies nearly in a direct line east and west, and a line
intersecting her stem and stern will fall a few rods inside of the
island. We are about three quarters of a mile from the house, and by
counting thirteen hundred and twenty paces in that direction, we should
find ourselves near the shore, just below the house, if our course was
correct," said La Salle.

"Yes," said Creamer, "but no man can keep a straight line in a storm
like this, when one hummock looks just like another, and there isn't a
star to lay one's course by."

"I once saw in the Tribune," said Kennedy, eagerly, "a way to lay a
farm-line by poles stuck in the ground. It also recommended 'blazing'
trees in the woods for the same purpose."

"To blazes with yer poles and blazed trees, Mr. Kennedy, saving yer
presence; all the newspapers in Boston can't teach me anything in laying
a straight line where I can have or make marks that can be seen; but
there are no poles here, and we couldn't see them if we had them."

"Creamer, don't get so desperate. Kennedy has furnished the idea, and I
think I can get the party ashore without any trouble. Now let all get
ready to start, and I'll lay the course for the others."

In a few moments the decoys were stacked to prevent drifting, and the
boat covered so that no snow could penetrate. A pair of small oars were
first, however, removed, which were set upright at either extremity of
the boat, and in direct line with the keel.

"There is our proper direction," said La Salle. "Now, Creamer, take your
birds, gun, and one decoy, and align yourself with these oars when you
have counted one hundred paces. When you have done so, face about and
turn the beak of the decoy towards the boat. Now, Ben," continued he,
when this was done, "walk up within twenty yards of Creamer, and let me
align you; Kennedy will go with you, and, counting one hundred paces
beyond Creamer, will be aligned by you. You will then be relieved by me,
and placing yourself behind Kennedy, will direct Creamer to the right
position, when he has paced one hundred yards farther. At every other
hundred yards an iron decoy must be placed, pointing towards the boat."

The plan thus conceived was carried out until thirteen hundred paces had
been counted, when La Salle, begging all to keep their places, hurried
to the front. It was now nearly dark, and nothing but driving snow was
anywhere visible. Creamer was at the lead, but disconsolate and
terrified, having utterly lost his reckoning.

"We're astray, sir, completely," he said, hopelessly. "Mother of
Heaven!" he ejaculated, as a dim radiance shone through the scud a
little to their rear, "there's the 'Packet Light,' and we are lost men."

Buffeted by the heavy gusts and sharp sleet which froze on the face as
it fell, La Salle felt for a moment a thrill of the superstitious fear
which had overcome the usually stout nerves of his companion; but his
cooler nature reasserted itself, although he knew that no house stood in
the direction of the mysterious light, which seemed at times almost to
disappear, and then to shine with renewed radiance.

"There is nothing earthly about that thing, sir. Macquarrie's house is a
long piece from the shore, and Lund's is hidden by the woods. See; look
there, sir, for the love of Heaven!" and the stout sailor trembled like
a child as the light, describing a sharp curve, rose ten or twelve feet
higher into the air, where it seemed to oscillate violently for a few
seconds, and then to be at rest.

"Let us hail it, any way," said La Salle; "perhaps we have made some
house on the opposite shore."

"We haven't gone a mile, sir; and as for hailing _that_, sir, I'd as
soon speak the Flying Dutchman, and ask her captain aboard to dinner."

"Well, I'll try it, anyhow.--'Halloo! Light, ahoy!'" he shouted, placing
his hands so as to aid the sound against the wind, which blew across the
line of direction between them and the mysterious light. Again and again
the hail was repeated, but no answer followed.

"You may call until doomsday, but they who have lit that lamp will never
answer mortal hail again. They died thirty falls ago, amid frost and
falling snow, ay, and foaming breakers, on this very bar, and the men on
shore saw the light shiver, and swing, and disappear, as we saw it just
now."

"Well, I don't believe in that kind of light, and I, for one, am going
to see what it is. Now, don't move from your place, but watch the light,
and if you hear the report, or see the flash, of my gun, answer it once
with both barrels, counting three between the first and second shots. If
I fire a second time, call all hands and come ashore."

"Well, Master Charley, I wouldn't venture it for all on the face of the
earth; but we must do something, and the Lord be between ye and harm.
See, now," he added, in a lower tone, "you're a heretic, I know, the
Virgin pardon ye; but I'll say a Pater and two Aves, and if you never
come back--"

"There, there, Hughie, old fellow, don't go mad with your foolish fears.
Pray for yourself and us, if you please, for it is a terrible night, and
we may well stand in need of prayer; but do your duty like a man. Stand
in your place until I summon you, and then come, if a score of ghosts
stand in the way."

The next second Hughie stood alone, watching the tremulous radiance of
the mysterious beacon, which La Salle rapidly approached, not without
fear, it may be, but with a settled determination superior to the
weakness which he felt, for the danger, exposure, and settled fears of
his companion had almost transmitted their contagion to his own mind. As
he drew nearer, however, the apparition resolved itself into a large
reflecting lantern, suspended from a pole, in the hands of Captain Lund,
who had headed a party to assist their friends to find the shore. The
approach of our hero was not at first noticed, as he came up the bank a
little to the rear of the party.

"I'm sure, gentlemen, I don't know what to advise; and yet we can't let
them perish on the floes. We had better get the guns, and build a
bonfire on the cape below; perhaps they may see it; but it wasn't for
nothing that I saw those men the other night. Poor La Salle laughed at
it, but if he was here now--"

[Illustration: CAPT. LUND HEADED A PARTY TO ASSIST THEIR FRIENDS. Page
32.]

"He is here, captain, thanks to your lantern, although Hughie, who is
out on the ice yonder, shivering with fright and fear, vowed that it was
the 'Packet Light,' and would scarcely let me come to see what it was.
But this is no time to tell long stories; so I'll give the signal at
once."

Creamer, fearfully watching the luminous spot, saw suddenly beside a jet
of red flame, as the heavy gun roared the welcome signal that all was
well; and scarcely a half moment later a still heavier report called the
perplexed and wearied party to the shore, where they found themselves
but about ten minutes' walk from the house.

Half an hour later, the bustling housewife summoned them to the spacious
table, which was crowded with a profusion of smoking-hot viands, among
which two huge geese, roasted to a turn, attracted the attention of all.
Mr. Risk saw the inquiring looks of the others, and "rose to explain."

"Davies and I claim 'first blood,' as you see, having killed this pair,
which, early in the morning, flew in from the westward, and were just
lighting among our decoys, when we each dropped our bird. We came in
early, seeing the storm brewing, and, being warned by Indian Peter, we
escaped much inconvenience, if not danger, and were able to supply a
brace of hot geese for supper. We shall expect a similar contribution to
the general comfort from each party in rotation, in accordance with the
ancient usage of professors of our venerable and honorable mystery.

"Well, Lund," he continued, "the omen is not yet verified, although the
party was nearly lost, and would have been altogether, if Hughie here
had had his way, when he took your lantern for a ghost."

"Well, it does seem foolish, now that it is all over; but I have seen
the 'Packet Light' myself too often not to believe in it, and so I was
as simply frightened at the captain's lantern as the people of Loughrea
were at Matthew Collins's ghost."

La Salle noted the look of annoyance which clouded the usually placid
brow of their host, and hastened to allay the threatened storm. Rising
from his seat, he begged the attention of the company.

"As we are to spend our evenings together for some weeks, it seems to me
that it would not be a bad plan to require of each of our company, in
rotation, some tale of wonder or personal adventure. Hughie has just
referred to what must be an interesting and little known local legend of
his mother isle. I move that we adjourn to the kitchen, and pass an hour
in listening to it."

The proposition met with general favor, and rising, the company passed
into the unplastered kitchen, through whose thin walls and poorly
seasoned sashes came occasional little puffs of the furious wind, which
whistled and howled like a demon without. The gunners seated themselves
around the huge fireplace, in which a pile of dried gnarled roots
filled the room with light and warmth, and lighting pipe or cigar, as
fancy dictated, gave a respectful attention to the promised story.

As will be gathered from the preceding conversation, Creamer spoke
excellent English, but as is often the case when excited, he lapsed at
times into a rich brogue. This he did to a considerable degree in
relating what he was pleased to call the story of


MATTHEW COLLINS'S GHOST.

"I was only a babe in arms when my father crossed the ocean to settle
down on the Fane estate as one of the number of settlers, called for by
the terms of the original grant. His father was a _warm_ houlder in
Errigle-Trough, and had my father been patient and industhrious, he
would in a few years have rinted as good an hundhred acres as there was
in that section. But the agent tould of land at a shillin' an acre, with
wood in plenty, and trees that grew sugar, and game and fish for every
one, and my father thought that he was provided for for life, when, with
his lease in his pocket and a free passage, he stepped on board the ould
ship that bore us to this little island.

"He wasn't far wrong, for he died when I was fifteen, worn out with
clearin' woodland, and working all winter in the deep snow at lumbering,
to keep us in bread and herrin'. He was a disappointed, worn-out old man
at forty, and it was only when he told of the good old times of his
youth that I ever seen him smile at all, at all.

"Matthew Collins was a well-to-do farmer of the neighboring parish of
Errigle-Keeran, and had a snug cottage and barn, with a good team of
plough-horses, a cow, two goats, and a pig, beside poulthry enough to
keep him in egg-milk, and even an occasional fowl or two on a birthday,
or holy feast. He married Katty Bane, one of the prettiest girls and
greatest coquettes in the whole parish. She, however, made him a good
wife and careful manager, until the events of my sthory.

"One day, late in the fall, Matthew harnessed his horses in a
hay-riggin', and drove off to the bog, five miles away, to haul in his
winter's firin'. He wrought all day, getting the dried turfs into a
pile, and had just half loaded his team, when a stranger, decently
dressed, came up to him, and asked if his name was Matthew Collins.

"'That, indeed, is the name that's on me,' said Matthew; 'and what might
you be wantin' of me?'

"'I've sorrowful news for you, Mat,' said the stranger. 'Your sister
Rose, that married my poor cousin Tim Mulloy, beyant the mountains, is
dead, and I'm sint to bid ye to the berryin' to-morrow.'

"For a few moments Matthew gave way to a natural feeling of grief at the
loss of his sister; but he soon bethought himself that he was five miles
from home, and that a circuitous road of at least twenty miles lay
between his house and the parish of his sister's husband.

"'I can never do it, that's certain,' said he to the stranger. 'It's
five miles home, and there's changin' my clothes, and a twenty-mile
drive over a road that it's timptin' Providence to attimpt in the dark.'

"'It's a great bother, intirely," said the stranger, reflectively.
'Musha! I have it. Take my clothes, and take the short cut across the
Devil's Nose. In three hours you'll be at the wake, and I'll dhrive the
team home and tell the good woman, and be round with a saddle-horse
before mornin'.'

"'Faith it's yourself that's the dacent thing, any how; and I'm sorry
that I can't be at home to thrate you with a bottle of the rale poteen.
Never mind; tell Nancy it's in the thatch above the dure; and you're
welcome to it all the same as if I were there myself.'

"'We won't part without a glass, any how,' said the stranger,
laughingly. 'I've a pint bottle of the rale stuff, and some boiled eggs,
and we'll soon have a couple of the shells emptied, in the shake of a
lamb's tail, and thin we'll change clothes and dhrink to your safe
journey.'

"Accordingly the two exchanged clothes, and sat for half an hour, while
the stranger described the last illness of the deceased, and the respect
shown her memory by the people of her parish.

"'Divil a whole head will be left in the parish, if they dhrink all the
whiskey; and there's stacks of pipes, and lashin's of tobacky, with tay
and cakes, and the house in a blaze with mould candles. Is the road azy
to find?' continued he. 'For I'm goin', mylone, where I never was
afore.'

"'It's as plain as a pikestaff to the very door. Only take tent of the
bridge at the slough, two miles beyant; for there's a broken balk that
may upset ye.'

"'I'll warrant I'll look out for that. Have one more noggin. _Here's a
safe journey and a dacint berrin' to us both._'

"With this rather Irish toast, the two separated, Matthew seeing the
stranger safe off the moss, and then commencing his short but fatiguing
journey over the narrow mountain path which lay between him and his
destination.

"Long before sunset, the careful Katty had had the delph teapot
simmering among the hot peat ashes; and the well-browned bacon and mealy
potatoes, carefully covered to retain the heat, only awaited the return
of 'the master' from the distant bog. They had no children; but Andy,
Katty's brother (a _gossoon_ of thirteen), eyed the simple supper
anxiously, going from time to time to the door to see if he could see
the well-known gray horses coming by the old buckthorn, where the little
lane joined the main road.

"The sunset, the night, came on, and Katty became hungry and out of
temper.

"'Andy, _alannah_,' said she, 'run to the hill beyant, and try can you
see aught of the masther; for I'm tired wid the day's spinnin', and
hungry, and wake.'

"The boy went, but returned, saying that no team was in sight.

"'Thin, Andy, jewel, we'll have our supper anyhow; for the tay'll be
black wid thrawin', and the bacon and praties spilt intirely.'

"Accordingly the two sat down and finished their evening meal, expecting
every moment to hear the cheery voice of Matthew as he urged his
_garrons_ with their heavy load up the steep lane beside the cottage.

"About nine o'clock, the wife became alarmed, and with Andy went to a
neighbor's. Tim O'Connell, the village blacksmith, had just fallen
asleep after a hard day's work, and woke in no very amiable frame of
mind as Katty rapped at the door.

"'Who's there at all at this time of night?' said he, gruffly.

"'Only meself, Katty Collins, and Andy,' said Katty, rather dolorously,
for she was now thoroughly alarmed.

"'Alice, _colleen_, up and unbar the dure. Come in, neighbor, and tell
us what is the matther at all.'

"'O, Tim! Matthew's been gone all day to the bog, and isn't home yet.
Could ye go wid the lad down the road, and see if anything has happened
to himself or the bastes, the craters?'

"It was not like Tim O'Connell to refuse, and, calling his assistant in
the forge, young Larry Callaghan, he lighted a tallow candle, which he
placed in a battered tin lantern, and hastened out on his neighborly
errand, while Katty was easily persuaded by Mrs. O'Connell to 'stay by
the fire' until the men returned.

"The party saw nothing of the team or its owner until the dangerous road
led into a narrow but deep ravine, at whose bottom an ill-made causeway
led across a dangerous slough.

"'Holy Virgin, boys, but he's been upset! There's the cart across the
road, and one of the bastes in the wather; but where's the masther at
all? Come on, b'ys; we'll thry and save the _garrons_ any way.'

"They found the cart upset as described, and one of the horses exhausted
with struggling under the pole. The other, saved only from drowning by
the fact that its collar had held its head against the bank, had
evidently kicked and splashed until the water was thick with the black
muck stirred up from the bottom.

"It was only the work of a few moments to free the horse in the road,
and then the three proceeded to unloose the other, and draw him to a
less steep part of the embankment, where, making a sudden effort, with a
mighty plunge, he gained the road, and stood trembling and shaking
beside his companion.

"'Well done, our side,' said Tim, exultingly. 'Now for the masther.
They've run away I doubt, and he's.--What's the matter with you, Andy,
at all? What do you see? Mother of Heaven! it's himself, sure enough!'

"Tossed up from the shallows by the convulsive plunge of the steed,
whose heavy hoofs, in his first mad struggles, had beaten the head out
of all shape of humanity, in the narrow lane of light cast through the
door of the open lantern, lay the dead farmer, with his worn frieze coat
torn and blackened, and his black hair knotted with pond weeds, and
clotted with gore.

"It was scarce an hour later that the emptied cart, slowly drawn by its
exhausted span, bore to the little cottage a dead body, amid the wails
of scores of the simple peasants, and the hysterical and passionate
grief of the bereaved wife. It was with the greatest difficulty that she
was induced to refrain from looking at the dead body; although so
terribly was it mangled that the coroner's jury performed their duties
with the greatest reluctance, and the obsequies were ordered for the
very next day.

"The body was accordingly placed in a coffin, above which deals,
supported on trestles, and covered by white sheets, bore candles, plates
of cut tobacco, pipes, and whiskey. Although but little of the night
remained after the coroner had performed his duties, yet so quickly did
the news of the accident spread that hundreds of the neighbors came in
before morning 'to the wake of poor Matthew! God rest his sowl.'

"The following evening, an unusually large procession followed the
remains to their last resting-place. Nothing could have been more
heart-broken than the bearing of the widow. Tears, sobs, and cries
proclaimed her anguish incessantly, notwithstanding the attempts of
friends to assuage her sorrow.

"As they drew near the graveyard, one Lanty Casey, an old flame of
Katty's, tried to comfort her in his rough way.

"'Katty, _avourneen_, don't cry so, _avillish_. There's may be happiness
for you yet, and there's them left that will love ye as well as him
that's gone--if they'd be let.'

"Lanty was a noted lad at fair and pattern, but he got a box on the ear
that made his head ring until the body was safely deposited in the
grave.

"'Who are ye that talks love to a broken-hearted woman at the very
grave? O, Matthew, Matthew, that I should live to see this day! _Ochone,
ochone!_ are you dead? are you dead?'

"On her way home to her solitary hearth, Katty saw ahead of her the
hapless Lanty, and hastened to overtake him.

"'Lanty, _avick_," said she, sweetly, 'what were you saying there
beyant, a while agone?'

"'What I'm not likely to say again. I'm not fond of such ansthers as ye
gev me; an' if ye don't know when you're well off--'

"'There, there, Lanty, dear; I'm sorry for that same, but what wud the
people say, an' my husband not berrid? But I mustn't be seen talkin'
more wid you. I'll be alone to-night when the _gossoon_ is asleep, and
ye can dhrap in, and tell me what ye like, av ye plaze.'

"At about ten o'clock that night, the Rev. Patrick Mulcahy, while
talking over the funeral, and the sad events which had led to it, was
asked for by the young lad, Katty's brother.

"'Well, Andy, lad, what's wanting now? Is your sister feeling better,
_avick_?'

"'Yes, sir; and she sint me, your riverence, to see wud ye come down and
marry her to Lanty Casey the night.'

"'Are your wits gone _ashaughran_, ye _gomeral_? Or is Katty run mad
altogether?'

"'It's just as I say, your riverence; and she says she'll pay you a
pound English for that same.'

"'And I say that if I go down there to-night, that I'll take my whip
with me to the shameless hussy. The Jezabel, and she nearly dyin' with
grief this evening.'

"'An' you won't marry them, sir?'

"A staggering box on the ear with a heavy slipper flung from across the
room sent the unfortunate messenger whimpering out of the door; while
the priest, honest man, stormed up and down the room until the
housekeeper entered with a waiter, on which were arrayed a decanter,
some tumblers, a lemon, and a large tumbler full of loaf sugar.

"'Come, Peter,' said he, more calmly, 'reach the kettle from the hob,
and we'll let the jade go. Perhaps she's out of her head, poor thing!
and will forget all about what she says to-night by to-morrow morning.
What are you grinning at there?'

"'Do you remimber the coult ye won from me whin I bet that ye couldn't
light your pipe wid the sun?'

"'Yis, Pether. Ah, I had ye thin, sharp as you count yourself!'

"'Well, now, I'll bet the very moral of him against himself that
Katty'll send up again--if she don't come herself.'

"'Done! for twice as much if you will. She doesn't dare--'

"'Good evening, your riverence,' said a woman's voice. And in the
doorway stood Lanty Casey and Katty Collins.

"'We've come up, your riverence, to see if you'd plaze to marry us this
night. They tould us you wor angry, sur, and, indade, I don't blame you;
for you don't know all. The man who lies dead beyant was able to give me
a home, and to keep a roof over the heads of my poor father and mother,
and I gave up Lanty here for him. Now, sir, if you'll marry us, I'll
give you the pig down below--and a finer's not in the parish; and if
not--'

"The speaker paused, and, touching the arm of her companion, who
evidently feared to speak, retreated into the kitchen to await the
decision of Father Patrick, who was almost bursting with chagrin at the
loss of his wager, and anger at the boldness of his parishioner.

"Peter laughed, silently enjoying his brother's discomfiture, and then
suddenly broke out,--

"'Now, what's the use, sir, of spitin' yourself? You've lost the coult,
and the woman is bound to have her way. Sure, an' if you don't tie the
knot, all they're to do is to sind over to Father Cahill--'

"'The hedge priest--is it? No, I'll marry them. Let them come in, Mrs.
Hartigan, but no blessin' can come on such a rite as this.'

"Without a word of congratulation, the priest performed the service of
his church, and in silence the pair proceeded to the cottage of the
bride, where they fastened the doors and windows securely, and retired.
The rising moon lighted up the surrounding scenery, and the priest and
his brother sat later than usual over their 'night-caps' of hot Irish
whiskey.

"'Peter,' said Father Mulcahy, 'sind young Costigan down for the pig.
Perhaps to-morrow Katty will rue her bargain, and we won't get the
crathur.'

"Costigan (a tight little lad of fourteen), roused from the settle-bed
by the kitchen fire, soon procured a short cord and a whip, and set off
on his rather untimely errand.

"A few moments before, a man dressed in holyday garb tried the doors
and windows of the cottage, and, finding them securely fastened,
murmured,--

"''Tis frighted she is, an' I away, an' tired, too, wid spinnin', I'll
be bound. Well, I'll not rise her now. There's clane sthraw in the barn,
an' I'll slape there till mornin'.'

"The tired traveller had hardly laid himself down, with his head on a
sheaf of oats, when he saw a youth enter the barn, and, deliberately
taking a cord from his pocket, proceed to affix it to one of the hind
legs of his much-prized pig, which resented the insult with a tremendous
squealing.

"Matthew rose quietly, and lowered himself to the floor, catching a
bridle rein, and getting between the trespasser and the wall.

"'I don't know what thievish crew claims ye, but I'll lay they'll see
the marks of my hand-write under your shirt to-morrow,' said Matthew,
savagely; but to his surprise the lad gave a single shriek, and sank
down as if in a fit. A dash of water from the stable bucket recovered
him somewhat, although his mind seemed to wander.

"'Holy angels be about us!--an' him dead and berrid--his very self--come
back again!' And broken sentences of similar import were hurriedly
murmured with closed eyes, as if to shut out some hideous sight; and the
angry farmer was disarmed completely by the evident terror of the boy,
who at last rose, fearfully opened his eyes, and looked around.

"'Yes, ye little thafe of the world, I've come in time--'

"With a meaningless yell, or rather shriek of terror, the boy rushed out
of the door, fell on the frosty roadway, tearing his clothes and cutting
through the skin of both knees; and heeding nothing but the terror
behind, sprang again to his feet, and rushed down the lane and along the
moonlit road, until, panting, bleeding, and breathless, he rushed into
the priest's dining-room.

"'O, yer riverince, he's come back!' was all that the boy could find
breath to say for a moment; and Peter, who was rather irascible, took up
the discourse at once.

"'It's yourself that's come back in a fine plight, you graceless,
rioting, fighting, thaving young scullion. Whose cottage have ye been
skylarkin' round now? And where's the pig ye was sint for, at all, at
all?'

"'Peace, Pether, and let me discoorse him. Don't ye know that when I
sent ye for the dues of the church, ye was engaged in its sarvice,--in
holy ordhers, as it were? And how comes it, then, that you come back
without the pig, and looking as frighted as if Matthew Collins himself
had come back?'

"'And so he has masther, dear,' said the poor boy. 'O, _wirra_, _wirra_,
but afther this night I'll never be out mylone again. I shall always
think that I see him forninst me, as I met him beyant, the night.'

"'Met Matthew Collins? The gossoon's crazy,' said the priest.

"'The young devil is lying, more likely. The dead don't come back to
frighten honest folk, who want only their own,' said Peter, scornfully.

"'Now, Costigan, go back at wanst, and fetch the pig,' said Father
Mulcahy, firmly, but kindly. 'Ye'll be ready enough to ate him this
winther.'

"'O, masther, don't send me again! Ate that pig? An' if the pope himself
said grace, I'd sooner starve than ate a collop of the crater. Why,
either his sperit, or the devil in his shape, kapes watch over it; and
all the money in Dublin wouldn't timpt me there agin after dark.'

"'Well, sir,' said Peter, savagely, 'the boy's frikened at somethin',
that's certin'; and we shan't get the crather up here the night at all,
unless it's done soon. It's only a stip just, and I'll go and get the
pig, and find out what frighted the lad--a loose horse or cow, I'll be
bound.'

"Accordingly, Peter set off on his errand, accompanied by Costigan, who
went only on condition that he should not enter the barn, and only
consented to go at all under threat of a tremendous thrashing if he
refused.

"Scarcely an hour, therefore, had elapsed before Matthew was again
awakened from sleep by the intrusion of a second midnight visitor.

"'Where is the baste, any way?' asked the man, in gruff, angry tones.

"'He's right at the ind of the haggard, in the right hand corner,'
tremulously answered a boyish voice from the distance of a few rods.

"'Faith, but the villains is intent on my pig, any how,' muttered the
perplexed but angry Matthew, as he saw the struggles of his favorite
when the robber attempted to secure a cord to her hind leg, which he
seemed to find a difficult task.

"'The curse of Crom'll upon ye for an unaisy brute, any how, Ned! Ned
Costigan, I say, come, ye little divil, and help me tie the knot, ye
frikened _omadhaun_. There's nothing here to be afraid of, barrin' the
gray horses an' the ould cow. Come, I say.--The Vargin and St. Pather
presarve me! Are ye come back?'

"'Yes, I've come back, and ye'll go back to whoever sint ye, with my
mark on yer shoulthers,' said Matthew, grimly, as, suiting the action to
the word, he drew a stout stick from his sleeping-place, and brought it
down with emphasis upon the head and shoulders of the priest's brother,
who, though ordinarily considered 'as good a man' as there was in the
parish, could scarcely persuade himself that he was not the victim of a
terrible dream. Although he mechanically grappled and strove with his
fearful antagonist, he felt the fierce breath of a demon, as his breast
pressed against that of the dead, and the fierce eyes of a fiend, or an
avenging ghost, glared into his, as they fought and wrestled, now in
the dark shadows, and now in the narrow lane of moonlight, which peered
through the open door. It was no wonder that even the instinct of
self-preservation failed to nerve him to meet such a foe, and that
Matthew found it a surprisingly easy matter to give him a terrible
beating.

"Fifteen minutes later, Peter, wan and covered with cuts and bruises,
entered the priest's house, and swooned on the threshold. It was nearly
daylight before he recovered himself sufficiently to corroborate the
story of the lad, that the ghost of Matthew Collins jealously watched
over his favorite pig.

"'An' why didn't he watch his wife too, Peter?' asked the priest,
archly.

"'Faix! an' I dunno. But the same man set great store by that same
baste--bad scran to her! I wish you had been wid us to discoorse the
shpirit, and sind him back to _his place_.'

"'Faith, and only that it's daylight now, an' near time for matins, I'd
just step over, and show ye the powers that are delegated to the clargy,
avick. I'd like to see if Matthew Collins would dare to face me afther
I've buried him dacently.'

"'An' married his wife again,' said Peter, with a feeble attempt at
pleasantry.

"'I've doubts if I did wisely there, Peter. Sure and if the
ungratefulness of those they love is enough to keep the dead from
resting quietly, Matthew Collins should be one of the first to come
back and haunt his dishonored homestead.'

"'But if all the dead min that lave wifes aisily consoled for their
loss, were to come back, there'd be plinty of haunted houses,' said
Peter, pithily.

"'Well, we'll watch there the night, and try to find out the mysthery,'
said the priest. 'But I'm off to matins. Be sure and see that Mrs.
Hartigan has the breakfast ready when I return.'

"The bell calling the peasantry to their morning service awoke Matthew,
who hastened to his cottage, which he found as closely barred and bolted
as the night before.

"'She's gone to chapel long before this. Well, I'll have a wash at the
spring, and away to church.' Saying which, he carefully picked the straw
from his coat, cleaned his dusty shoes with a wisp of dry grass, and
after a thorough washing of face and hands, he took up the worn felt hat
of the stranger, and set off down the lane.

"As he got nearly to the main road, a group of neighbors passed along;
but instead of answering his cheerful greeting, they crossed themselves,
and hastened on with longer strides, turning from time to time, and
looking at him in a most puzzling manner.

"'Sure, the folks are mad,' muttered poor Matthew, 'or else 'tis late we
are--that must be it. Well, we can run, any way.' And suiting the action
to the word, he began to run after his neighbors, who, terribly
frightened, strove with all their might to preserve undiminished the
distance between them.

"'Faix, half the people is late--or is it a fire is ragin'? Well, I
dunno, but I'll be on hand any how.' And Matthew, taking a long breath,
pressed on after the flying crowd, which grew larger each moment, as
group after group of staid and devout worshipers recognized the features
of their dead neighbor, and joined the panting crowd, which, crossing
and blessing themselves, and shrieking and praying with terror, sought
the protection of the church, and having, as they deemed, found a refuge
from the apparition, sank exhausted into their seats, to thank God for a
place of safety.

"But they had reckoned without their host, for the next moment the dead
man strode through the arched door, and deliberately glided towards his
accustomed seat. In speechless horror the people, with one accord, arose
and rushed to the altar for protection, while many rushed out through
the rear entrances, to carry the terrible news far and wide.

"Pale, but resolute, attended by two trembling altar boys with bell and
censer, Father Mulcahy advanced in front of the astonished cause of this
unwonted disturbance.

"'In the name of the Blessed Thrinity, I command you to retire from this
blissid an' sacred church to the place from whence you came.'

"'An' why wud I go back, your riverince? Shure, the body's buried, an'
I've no call there now.'

"'Why, then, can you find no rest in the grave?'

"This last question 'broke the camel's back.'

"'H---- to my--There, the Lord forgive me for cursin', and in this
blessed an' howly place. But are all the people mad--prastes and clarks,
payrents and childher? Or am I losin' my sinses, or enchanted by the
fairies?'

"'Matthew,' said the priest, solemnly, 'are you alive an' well?'

"'Yis, your riverence, if I know meself I am.'

"'Will you go to the font an' thrink a taste of the holy wather?'

"'Yes, your riverince, an it's plasin' to ye.'

"It was with much doubt that Father Mulcahy awaited the result of his
test; but Matthew drank about a pint of the consecrated water, and a
short conversation made all plain to the priest, and to poor Matthew, to
whom the various events were far from being a matter of mirth.

"Accompanied by the priest, he went home, to the unutterable horror of
the newly-married pair, which was little lessened when they found that
their unwelcome visitor was not from another world.

"'I am dead to you, Katty,' said he, with a gentle sadness, so different
from the burst of passion which the priest had feared, that he knew that
his heart was broken. 'All the happiness I had was in your love, and
that was false. Go with your new love where I may see you no more.'

"Matthew died years after, a soured and misanthropic man; but few
legends are better known in his native district than the story of
Matthew Collins's ghost."

       *       *       *       *       *

As the story ended, Risk thanked the narrator in behalf of the auditory,
adding, "The storm will probably change to a thaw before morning, and if
it does we must be on hand bright and early, for it will bring the main
body of 'the first flight.'"

As the company rose to retire, Ben approached La Salle. "Will you tell
me why you made us leave decoys at every hundred yards?"

"To help us find the way back, should we fail to reach the shore. We
could have lived out a night like this in my ice-boat, but we should
long since have been sleeping our last sleep beneath the snow-wreaths,
had we lost our way upon the floes."

At daybreak La Salle awoke, but turned again to his pillow, as he noted
the snow-flakes form in tiny drifts against the lower window panes; and
it was nine o'clock before the tired sportsmen completed their hasty
toilet, and seated themselves around the breakfast table.




CHAPTER III.

THE SILVER THAW.--A FOX HUNT.--ANTHONY WORRELL'S DOG.


The snow at nine o'clock had ceased to fall, but had given place to a
thick hail, which rattled merrily on roof and window pane, but soon
became softer, and mingled with rain as the wind veered more to the east
and south.

"We are in for a heavy thaw," said the elder Davies, "and to-morrow we
shall have good sport. It is hardly worth while to get wet to the skin,
however, for what few birds we shall get to-day."

"Charley," said the younger Davies, "let us go down to the bar and look
up our decoys, for if we have a heavy thaw they may all be washed away
and lost."

Putting on their water-proof coats, boots, and sou'westers, the young
men took their guns and started for the eastern end of the island. The
drifts were very heavy along the fences and under the steep banks which
overhung the eastern and northern shores of the island, and huge
hummocks, white, smooth, and unbroken, showed where the snow had
entombed huge bergs and fantastic pinnacles. Facing the storm with some
difficulty, they got out as far as the ice-boat of La Salle, which they
found completely covered to the depth of two or three feet.

"We should have been smothered if we had taken refuge there last night,"
said Ben, as he proceeded to search for the buried decoys.

"I think not; for men can breathe below a great depth of snow, and I
have heard of sheep being taken alive from a heavy drift after an
entombment of twenty or thirty days."

The decoys were soon gathered, and they proceeded to the farther stand,
where they took the same precaution against the expected flooding of the
floes, piling the decoys into the box until a pyramid of clumsy wooden
birds rose several feet above the level of the ice, which was fast
becoming soft, and covered with dirty pools of snow water and nasty
"sludge."


A FOX HUNT.

"Here is the track of a fox," cried Davies, "and here is where he has
killed a goose this morning;" and La Salle, on hastening to the spot,
found a fresh trail leading from the main land, and beside the last
decoy a slight depression around which loose feathers and clots of blood
told in unmistakable terms that a single bird, and not improbably a
wounded one, had alighted amid the decoys, and trusting to the vigilance
of his supposed companions, had fallen an easy prey to his soft-footed
assailant.

"Here comes one-armed Peter on his track," said La Salle; and in a few
moments a tall, finely-built, middle-aged Micmac came noiselessly up,
bearing in his only remaining hand, not a gun, but an axe.

"Where's your gun, Peter?" said Ben, carelessly; "you don't expect to
kill a fox with an axe--do you?"

The Indian's brow contracted a little, and instantly relaxed, as he
answered, "That not fox track at all; that Indian dog, I guess. Martin
Mitchell have dog; lun alound like that. No good dog that. Sposum mine,
kill um."

"Yes, Peter, I've no doubt you'd like to kill that dog very well. See,
he finds his own living for himself. He killed a goose here last night,
I see. I s'pose your Indian dogs will eat geese raw, but mine never
would. He sat down here a moment after he had killed his bird, and left
the marks of a very bushy tail. Here's some of the hair, too. By
thunder! 'tis the hair of a black fox."

The Indian laughed silently, with no little admiration of the close
observation of the other visible in his countenance. "Yes, that black
fox. I see his track last night; trail him two tree mile dis morning. No
use try to fool you; fool other white man over back there; you know
trail well as Indian. No use carry gun, I think; fox in wet weather get
in hollow tlee, or under big loot. I cut down tlee and knock on head
with axe. But if fox on island, I lose him; no tlee there at all big
enough."

"Well, Peter, his trail is straight for the end of the point, and he
must be in the swamp at the other end of the island. We'll go with you
and surround the swamp while you enter it. If you fail to tree him,
we'll shoot him when he breaks cover, and we'll divide equally whether
one or two help to kill him." And La Salle, resting the butt of his
heavy gun on his boot, drew his load of loose shot, and substituted an
Eley's cartridge, containing two ounces of large "swan-drops."

A cloud settled upon the smiling face of the Indian, and he broke forth
vehemently, "I no want you to help me. I need _all_ that money; you got
plenty. I been sick, had sick boy, sick old woman,--bery sick. I see
that fox two time. No got gun; borrow money on him to pay doctor, and
get blead. I borrow gun one day; sit all day, no get nothing; go home,
nothing to eat. Next day, man use his own gun, kill plenty. I know fox
in wet day find hollow tlee; no like to wet his tail. I say to-day I
kill him, get good gun, get cloes, get plenty blead and tee. I _know_ I
kill that fox."

"Well, Peter, we won't trouble you. We'll go to see you kill him, and
watch out to see that he don't get clear," said Davies; and the Indian,
rather hesitatingly, assented.

There was little woodcraft in following the "sign," for the tracks were
deeply impressed in the soft snow, and the heavy body and long neck of
his prey had left numerous impressions where the fox had rested for a
moment. In the course of half an hour the party had gained the shore,
and, passing through several fields, found themselves in a heavy growth
of beech and maple.

The fox, however, had not halted here, but emerging into a small meadow,
had crossed into a close copse of young firs and elders, in whose midst
a huge stump, whitened and splintered, rose some twenty-five feet into
the air.

Peter groaned audibly. "That old fox mean as debbil. Know that place no
good. No hollow tlee, only brush and thick branch. Fox get under loot,
and eat, watch twenty way at once: well, I try, any way."

Ben and La Salle hastily passed around the woods surrounding the glade,
until they reached the opposite side of the motte to that which Peter
was now entering. Noticing that only a narrow space of open ground
intervened at one point, Davies crept noiselessly down to the very edge
of the underbrush, about sixty yards from La Salle.

He had scarcely drawn himself up from his crouching position, when a
magnificent black fox crossed the opening almost at his very feet,
followed by the light axe of the Indian, which, thrown with astonishing
force and precision, passed just above the animal, and was buried almost
to the helve in a small tree not a yard from Davies's head.

Flurried out of his usual good judgment, Ben drew both triggers, with
uncertain aim, and the fox, swerving a little, passed him like a shot.
La Salle, springing forward through the narrow belt of woods, saw the
frightened animal a score of rods off, making across the fields for the
Western Bar. A fence bounded the field some six score yards away, under
which the fox must pass, and whose top rail, scarce three feet above the
level, marked the necessary elevation to allow for the "drop" of the
tiny missiles used. La Salle felt that all depended on his aim, and that
his nerves were at the utmost tension of excited interest; but he forced
himself to act with deliberate promptitude at a moment when the most
feverish haste would have seemed interminable dallying. Steadily the
ponderous tube was levelled in line of the fleeing beast, until the
beaded sight rested on the top rail above him. An instant the heavy
weapon seemed absolutely without motion; then the report crashed through
the forest, and the snow-crust was dashed into impalpable powder by a
hundred riddling pellets.

The shot was fired just as the fox sprang up the slight embankment on
which, as is usual, the line of fence was placed. For an instant he
seemed to falter, then leaped the top rail, and disappeared beyond the
enclosure.

Peter and Davies had seen the shot, and with La Salle rushed forward to
note its effect, although neither hoped for more than a wound whose
bleeding would ultimately disable him, when patient tracking would
secure his much-prized fur. As they ran to the fence they noted the
deeply-cut scores in the icy crust which marked the first dropping shot,
and Peter became loud in his praises of the weapon.

"I never see gun like that; at hundred yards you kill him, sure; but no
gun ever kill so far as you fire. See there, shot strike dis stump. Hah!
there spot of blood on bank. Damn! here fox dead, sure enough."

"Hurrah! the Baby forever for a long shot. Charley, old boy, shake hands
on it. Peter, don't you wish you hadn't been so sure of killing him
without our help?"

The thoughtless triumph of the young Englishman recalled the memory of
his obstinate refusal to accept the proffered aid of the sportsmen to
the mind of the poor Indian. Such a look of utter disappointment took
the place of his joy at the successful shot, that La Salle could
scarcely contain his sympathy.

"So it is always. White man win, Indian lose; white man get food, Indian
starve; white man live, Indian die. Once, all this Indian land. No white
people were here, and many Indians hunt and find enough. Now, the Indian
must buy the wood which he makes into baskets. He cannot spear a salmon
in the rivers. The woods are cut down, and the many ships and guns
frighten off the game."

He looked a moment at the dead fox, smoothed its glossy fur with a hand
that trembled with suppressed emotion, and then, with a curt "good
evening," turned to go.

"I wish, Peter, you would come down to the house and skin this beast for
me," said La Salle. "If you will do so carefully, and stretch it for
drying in good style, I'll give you a pair of boots."

Without a word the Indian seized the dead animal and strode ahead of
them, like one who seeks in bodily fatigue a refuge from anguish of
spirit.

"What will you give for such a skin, Davies?" asked La Salle.

"I will give you one hundred and fifty dollars for that one. It is the
largest, finest, and blackest that I ever saw."

"You have another gun like your own in your store at C.--have you not?"

"Yes, exactly like my own. I can only tell them apart by this curl in
the wood of the stock."

"What is she worth?"

"I will sell her to you for fifteen pounds."

"That would be fifty dollars. Well, Ben, I'll tell you what, we must
give Peter one half of the fox. I should never forgive myself if we
didn't. I know he has been sick all summer, and his disappointment must
be very hard to bear. Are you willing to give him half?"

"Do just as you please, Charley," said the warmhearted hunter. "I don't
claim any share, for we are all on our own hook, unless by special
agreement; but I shall be very glad if you are kind enough to share
with him, poor fellow!"

"Well, Ben, you are to take the fox at your own price, giving Peter an
order on your partner for the gun, and credit to the amount of
twenty-five dollars more. The other seventy-five we divide. You have
only to give me credit for my moiety, as I owe you nearly that amount."

"I'm satisfied if you are; so let us hurry up, and see Peter prepare the
skin, and send him home happy."

"The finest skin I ever saw," said Risk. "It's worth three hundred
dollars in St. Petersburg, if it's worth a cent."

"Who killed him?" said the elder Davies. "If you did, Ben, I'd like to
buy the skin."

"I bought it myself of La Salle for one hundred and fifty. He killed it,
and sold it to me. I guess I can sell to good advantage."

In the mean time Peter had drawn his _waghon_, or curved Indian knife,
from his belt, and, carefully commencing at the rear of the body,
skinned the animal without forming another aperture, removing the mask,
and ears attached, with great nicety. With equal dexterity he whittled a
piece of pine board to the proper shape, and, turning the skin inside
out, drew it tightly over the batten, fastening it in place with a few
tacks. His task completed, he handed it to La Salle, and rose to go.
The latter restrained him, saying,--

"Hold, Peter; you must have your pay first. Here is a pair of rubber
boots and some dry stockings. Put them on, and throw away those old
moccasons, and take these few things to your wife."

"You very kind, brother," said Peter, simply, taking the small bundle of
tea, sugar, bread, cake, and jellies which could be spared from their
limited stock of "small stores."

"And, Peter," continued La Salle, "Ben and I have concluded to share
with you in the matter of the fox. We have no wives yet, and therefore
think about one half the price ought to go to you. This paper will get
you that double-barrel of Ben's father to-morrow, if you feel like going
over for it; and you will also be allowed to purchase twenty-five
dollars' worth more of ammunition, food, and clothing."

The tears came into the poor fellow's eyes.

"Damn! I know you hite men. I know you heretic. I say I no hunt with
you. I try cheat you on the trail, and you make Peter cly like squaw. I
wish--I wish--you two, tlee, six fathom deep in river. I jump in for you
if I die."

And, seizing the bundle and the precious order, he dashed the moisture
from his eyes, and took the road homeward.

"He will never repay your kindness," said Lund. "Them Indians is never
grateful for anything."

"I think he will repay it, if it is ever in his power," said Risk.
"Peter is one of the most honest and industrious of his tribe, and it is
not his fault when his children want food."

"Well, boys," said the elder Davies, "I suppose you have done right, and
that you will receive as much gratitude as we give to our heavenly
Father; but, as men look at things, you have, indeed, 'cast your bread
upon the waters.'"

"If it is so, Mr. Davies," said La Salle, with a solemnity unusual with
him, "our reward is sure; for the promise is, 'Thou _shalt_ find it
after many days.'"

"But," said Lund, with a quiet twinkle in his sharp gray eye, "I'd like
to bet five shillin' that, when you are repaid, it won't be in Indian
bread."

"Pretty good!" laughed Kennedy, who had taken the day to finish up a
large pile of "back numbers" of his favorite daily, "but I think hardly
just to the Indians. Horace Greeley has given a great deal of thought to
this Indian question, and although he would disapprove of supplying them
with arms and ammunition, yet in all other matters would indorse your
policy."

"You don't mean to say that Greeley would disapprove of letting poor
Peter have a gun to shoot game to help support his family--do you?"
asked Ben, in astonishment.

"Certainly I do. With that fifty dollars, he could have procured tools
and seed, and started a farm on Indian Island. Instead of that, you give
him the means of continuing a savage, instead of encouraging him to
become a farmer and a civilized being. Horace Greeley would have
tried--"

"To attempt an impossibility," said La Salle, excitedly. "As well may
you expect to raise a draught horse from a pair of racers, or keep a
flock of eagles as you would a coop of hens. The French have been the
only people on this continent with an Indian policy founded in reason,
and a just estimate of the character and capabilities of the
aborigines."

"And yet they were completely driven from this continent," said Kennedy.

"True, sir; but their Indian policy made their scanty population of two
hundred thousand Europeans a dreaded foe to the nearly three million
colonists of English descent. They made of their savage allies an arm
that struck secretly, swiftly, and with terrible effect, and a defence
that kept actual hostilities a long distance from their main
settlements. I believe, sir, that the philosophers of the future will
condemn alike our policy of extermination, and the impossible attempt to
mould hunters, warriors, and absolutely free men, into peaceful,
plodding citizens of a republic."

"What else can be done with them?" asked Kennedy, sharply.

"It seems to me that in generations to come, it will be said of us,
'They did not try in those days to yoke the racer to the plough, nor to
chain the hound to the kennel, while they urged the mastiff on the track
of the deer; yet they failed to see that the Creator, and peculiar
conditions unchanged for centuries, had moulded the races of men to
different forms of government, modes of life, and varieties of
avocation. The Roman conqueror of the world knew better than to put in
his heavily-armed legions the flying Parthian, the light-armed horseman
of Numidia, or the slinger of the Balearic Isles. The American of the
past had at his disposal a race capable of being the skirmish line of
his march of civilization to wrest a continent from the wilderness. As
trappers, hunters, and guides; as fishermen and slayers of whale and
seal; as the light horseman, quick, brave, self-sustaining, and
self-reliant, the Indian was capable of valuable services to a people
who offered him but two alternatives--extinction, or a dull, plodding,
vegetative, unnatural existence.'"

"Well, La Salle, if you two Yankees can let your argument rest a little,
we'll go down to the shore, to take a look at the ice, and see what
to-morrow has in store for us," said Risk; and, as it was nearly
sundown, the party hastened down to a part of the bank clear of trees,
from whence they could discern the bay and the surrounding shores.

The rain was falling in gentle and melting showers; the south wind,
laden with penetrating warmth, borne from lands hundreds of leagues
distant, cut down drift and ice-hill with its fatal kisses; from the
rocky cliff a thousand tiny cascades wept and plashed; and over the icy
bonds of every brook and river another stream ran swiftly to the sea.
Over the icy levels of harbor and bay rippled another sheet of fresh
water, which each moment grew deeper and wider as the warm rain fell
more heavily, and the withering south wind came in increasing strength.

"If this lasts all night, boys," said Lund, oracularly, "it will open
the spring-holes and oyster-beds, and give the geese, which are sure to
come with this wind, a certain amount of feeding-grounds which are not
likely to be frozen up this winter. Come," continued he, turning away;
"the geese will be getting cold, and we want to have time to hear a good
yarn before we go to bed."

"It's your turn to-night, Mr. Risk," said Ben; "and we must have a story
as different as possible from the last. You know all about the old
notables of the country, who used to own thousands of acres, and keep
horses and servants as they do on large manors in the old country. Tell
us a story about some of that set, as you used to tell father and uncle
Dan, down at Morell."

"I won't try to back out, gentlemen," said Risk, laying aside his
meerschaum; "for the sooner I tell my story the better, as you will
'have it over with,' and hear a great many good stories before it
becomes my turn to bore you again. My story is about


"OLD ANTHONY WORRELL AND HIS NEWFOUNDLAND DOG.

"In my young days, a number of the immediate heirs of the original
proprietors were resident here; and among them this Major Worrell, whose
estate has since been purchased by the government. He was a little,
nervous, black-haired bachelor, who shared his chamber with a favorite
black Newfoundland retriever, named Carlo.

"One or two domestics did the housework, and helped the farm-hands in
haying, harvest, and potato-digging; and over all presided Mrs. Sims, a
tall, stout, and resolute widow, with a heavy hand and a shrewish
temper. With a huge bunch of keys at her side, and an eye quick to
detect the smallest waste and the slightest irregularity, she kept the
household in terror, and her master (poor little man!) in almost abject
vassalage. A specimen of one of their daily breakfast dialogues may be
worthy of reproduction.

"_She._ 'Good mornin,' sir. 'Ope you're well this morning.'

"_He._ 'Yes--quite well. Breakfast ready, eh?'

"_She._ 'Almost. Heggs just boiling when I came in. That Gillbear
(Gilbert, a little, French orphan) sucks heggs, hi'm sure. Hi wonder you
keep 'im hon the place.'

"_He._ 'Well, you know, Mrs. Sims, he's an orphan, and--'

"_She._ 'Well, hi like that. Han horphan! hand 'is father lives hup hin
has good a farm has there his hin Tracadie.'

"_He._ 'Well, his father Gilbert died, and Lisette, his mother, married
François: and then Lisette, his mother, died, and François married his
cousin Christine; and then François died, and Christine married Jacques
the blacksmith; and so he hasn't any father or mother, and no home, and
I let him stay here.'

"_She._ 'Yes, hand you'd 'ave the place heaten hup with lazy, dirty,
thieving beggars hif hit wasn't for me. Hi told your brother when 'e
sent me hover. Says 'e, 'My brother his too heasy, han' needs some un to
see that 'e hisn't himposed hupon.' Says hi, 'Wen hi'm hunable to do my
duty, hi've honly to return 'ome to Hingland. Wich hi've just 'ad a
letter from my sister; han' hif hi must slave for sich, hi'd rather give
warnin' for to-morrow come four weeks.'

"_He_ (nervously). 'Why, my dear Mrs. Sims--'

"_She._ 'Yes, sir; hand that dratted dog Carlo, hevery mornin', when hi
goes to hair your sheets, gives me ha start with growlin' hat me from
hunder the bed-clothes, wich 'e wraps 'isself hup hin hevery mornin',
sir, like has hif 'e were a Christian. Now, sir, hi'm ready to slave
hand wear myself hout for you, but has for slavin' for a dirty cur and a
French brat, hi've no need to, han' hi won't.'

_He._ 'Well, well, Mrs. Sims, we'll see what can be done--what can be
done. I'll get a chain for Gilbert, and send the dog away. No, I mean
I'll--No, I'll--Confound it, madam, let's have breakfast.'

"On the same afternoon Mr. Grahame, the nearest magistrate, called on
business, and to him Worrell related his domestic troubles.

"'I can't do without her, for she is a splendid cook, and keeps my
clothes in first-rate order. I can't bear the thought of the cookery I
should have to eat, and the dirt and disorder I should see around me, if
she does go away. But she's a regular Tartar, and I've no authority at
all in my house.'

"'Well, Worrell, it's a hard case; but I would chain up that dog. As to
poor little Gilbert, do what you think is right in spite of her. If she
leaves--Ah, I have it. Go into town, and propose to one of the F.
sisters. They are all good cooks and amiable women, and you'll be rid of
your Tartar.'

"'Wich I'm much hobleeged to you for the name, an' the good advice you
give the master, stirrin' hov 'im hup against a lone, friendless widow,
wat's slaved an' worked this six years come St. Michaelmas.'

"Mr. Grahame, of course, with the _mauvais honte_ which men too
generally display towards angry and unreasonable women, took an awkward
leave of the angry widow, and poor Worrell, whom she treated to a
lecture of half an hour, ending with a lively fit of tears and
hysterics. As the poor little man turned away, leaving her in the hands
of a servant, he caught her last broken objurgations.

"'An hungrateful fool, marry an' turn me hoff; ugh, ugh! fix 'im, hany
'ow.'

"The following morning Worrell rose early, and passing through the
breakfast-room, received a sulky greeting from his housekeeper, and went
out to over-look the labors of his men. Feeling a little unwell, he
returned to his room, and finding his dog in his bed, flung him into a
spare room, and getting into bed, went to sleep. Now, both dog and
master had a very unhealthy habit--that of keeping the head covered with
bed-clothes; and so it happened that when Mrs. Sims entered the room,
she saw, as she supposed, the black ears and head of the hated Carlo.

"Revenge urged her to undue and overhasty punishment; her overcharged
feelings sought relief on some object, and a stout-handled broom was in
her grasp. At last vengeance was within her reach; should she relinquish
it? No, a thousand times no!

"'You dirty brute!' she yelled, in fury. 'You hold rascal, I'll pay you
out! I'll murder you! I'll kill you!'

"Such was the preface of a shower of blows, which suddenly broke the
rest of the defenceless Worrell. Half stunned, astounded, almost
paralyzed, he heard, as if in a terrible dream, the threats which
accompanied the merciless blows of the assailant.

"'I've got you! Sleep again, will you? I'll kill you, you hold fool!
I'll murder--Good Lord! hit's my master;' and as a bruised and bloody
face, surmounting a meager figure, in remarkably scanty drapery,
vanished out of the room, Mrs. Sims drew a long breath, and fainted in
real earnest in one corner.

"Worrell never stopped until he reached Grahame's, who rather hastily
caught up a shawl, and wrapping him in it, got him to his chamber, and
into a suit of his own clothes, only about twice too large, for Grahame
was one of the tallest men in the county.

"When he had composed himself sufficiently, a complaint was duly entered
against Mrs. Sims for 'assault with intent to kill;' and Mrs. Sims,
despite her piteous entreaties, was arrested and brought before the
magistrate. Her appeals for mercy were heart-rending.

"'Ho, mercy, your washup; mercy, Mr. Worrell. Wich I thinks hit were
that dratted dorg. Don't 'ang me. I never hintended--' But Worrell was
inexorable.

"'But you said you would kill me, you would murder me, and you nearly
did murder me.'

"'Wich I told your brother--ugh, ugh! an' I've slaved, an', ugh, ugh!
an' wich it were all a mistake--ugh, ugh! 'ave mercy, gentlemen.'

"'But you said you would murder me, and you nearly did murder me, and--'

"'Peace, Mr. Worrell,' said Grahame, impressively; 'the hour of your
redemption draweth nigh. Prisoner at the bar,' continued he, 'the crime
which you have committed has always been held in just aversion and
horror by the English nation. Repaying the trust and confidence of your
master with unkind persecution and a shrewish tongue, you have finished
the measure of your misdeeds by what might have proved a most brutal
murder. Your unsupported statement, that you mistook Mr. Worrell for his
dog, would have little or no weight on any unprejudiced jury. We,
however, incline to mercy; and I therefore bind you over, in the sum of
one thousand pounds, to keep the peace for six months.'

"'Wherever can I find so much money?' asked the despairing prisoner.

"'On condition that you will leave for England, I will find bail for
you. Understand, however, that they will give you up, should you fail to
depart at the earliest opportunity.'

"Poor Mrs. Sims went in the next ship 'bound home;' but the story got
abroad at once, and Worrell never married. Great amusement, of course,
was created by the recital, and it became a favorite of the members of
the bar on circuit, who, however, generally expressed one regret, viz.,
'that Worrell escaped alive, as the world thereby lost a most remarkable
criminal case.'

"Well, that's all there is of it; and as it's nine o'clock, and we want
to be up early, I think I'll conclude by bidding you all 'good night,
and pleasant dreams.'"




CHAPTER IV.

THE GRAND FLIGHT.--A GOOD STRATAGEM.--THE PACKET LIGHT.


At sunrise the next morning, the sportsmen hurried through their frugal
meal, and hastened to their various "ice-houses;" for a great change had
taken place in the weather, which, although the rain had ceased and the
sky had cleared somewhat, was still mild and spring-like. Even as they
lit their cigars at the door, they heard far up the cove the calls of
the wild geese, and a scattering volley which told that the Indians had
been early at their posts. Above the others arose two heavy reports,
which Davies declared could come from no other gun than Peter's
newly-acquired double-barrel.

With hastened steps the East Bar party took the ice, La Salle drawing
behind him a long "taboggin," or Indian sled, consisting merely of a
long, wide, half-inch board, turned up at one end, and forming, in fact,
a single broad runner, which cannot upset, and will bear a heavy load
over the lightest snow without sinking too deeply. On it were placed,
besides his own gun and that of Kennedy, a heavy target rifle, a large
lunch-box, and an ample bucket containing ammunition.

"You mean to 'lay them out' to-day, I guess, Charley," said Creamer,
good-humoredly. "You ain't apt to want ammunition, any way."

"What will you take for to-day's bag, cash down?" asked Ben, laughing.

"Here are our decoys," said La Salle, pointing to several dark objects
partially imbedded in the ice, but marking an almost perfect straight
line from the boat to the inner shore of the island.

"We had a rather narrow escape," remarked Kennedy, picking up one of the
decoys; "and it was well thought of to secure a retreat to our boat, in
case we had failed to reach the shore."

Little time, however, was lost in conversation. The "boat" and "box"
were to be cleared of the snow which had drifted inside, and concealed
by fragments of ice, in place of those which the rain had melted away.
The decoys were to be rearranged, heading to windward, and at least half
an hour was consumed in making these necessary arrangements. At last all
was ready, the guns, ammunition, &c., were placed in the boat, and La
Salle had gone to hide the sledge behind a neighboring hummock, when,
turning his head, he saw Davies and Creamer running hastily to their
box, and Kennedy frantically gesticulating and calling on him to do the
same.

With the best speed he could make on such slippery footing, La Salle
crossed the intervening space, and threw himself down into the boat,
panting and breathless with exertion. After a moment's breathing space,
he slowly raised his head so that his eyes could just see over the edge
of the shooting-boat. To the east he heard the decoy-calls of Creamer
and Davies, and, somewhere between himself and them, the low,
questioning calls of the wished-for geese.

"They are near us somewhere, Kennedy," he whispered, "and, I guess,
coming in to our decoys. Don't fire until I tell you. Here they come.
No, they sheer off. Yes, there's one scaling down; there's another.
They're all coming. We've got them now."

The goose is far from being the silly fowl which popular belief supposes
him to be, even when tamed and subdued, and, in a state of nature, is
one of the most wary of birds. The flock in question, flying in from the
narrow, open channels of the Gulf, had seen the decoys, and heard the
calls of Ben and Creamer, who had not yet completed their preparations.
Swooping around the box at a safe distance, the wary leader decided that
all was not right there, and swung over the leading decoys of La Salle,
and doubtless wondering at the apathy of the strange geese which refused
to answer his calls, gave a signal which caused his flock to describe a
circle around the boat, full forty rods away. Still nothing could be
seen which could warrant a well-founded suspicion; and one or two of the
younger birds, impatient of restraint, and anxious for rest and food,
set their broad pinions, and, with outstretched wings, scaled down to
the decoys, alighting on the ice not twenty feet from the muzzles of the
concealed guns. Their apparent safety decided the rest, and in twenty
seconds as many geese, with clamorous cries, were hovering over the
heads of La Salle and his companions.

It takes a quick eye, steady hand, and good judgment, to kill a
partridge in November, when, with a rush of wings like an embryo
whirlwind, he gets up under your feet, and brushes the dew from the
underbrush with his whizzing wings. It is not every amateur that can
kill woodcock in close cover, or well-grown snipe on a windy day; but
there are few, who can do these things, who can kill with both barrels
in their first goose-shooting. The size and number of the birds, the
wary and cautious manner of their approach, the nice modulations
necessary to "call" them successfully, and the reckless sweep with which
they seem to throw aside all fear, and rush into the very jaws of
death,--all these combine to unsettle the nerves and aim of the novice.

All this Kennedy experienced, as he saw above him twenty outstretched
necks, with jetty heads, whose eyes he felt _must_ discern the ambush;
twenty snowy bellies, against which as many pairs of black, broad,
webbed feet showed with beautiful effect, and forty broad pinions, which
seemed to shut out the sky from view, and present a mark which no one
could fail to hit. At the word he pointed his heavy gun at the centre of
the thickest part of the flock and fired. At the first barrel a dead
bird fell almost into the boat; but the second seemed without effect. La
Salle "lined" four as they flapped their huge wings hurriedly, striving
to flee from the hidden danger, killing three and breaking the wing of a
fourth, who fluttered down to the ice, and began to run, or, rather, to
waddle rapidly away.

Kennedy seemed about to go after the wounded bird, but La Salle laid his
hand on his arm.

"Don't move, Kennedy, and he will get us another bird," said he,
reloading his heavy gun with a long-range shot cartridge. "We can get
that bird any time; and there is his mate flying round and round in a
circle."

"You won't get a shot at her," said Kennedy, as she warily kept out of
ordinary range, and finally alighted near the gander, which, weak with
pain and loss of blood, had lain down on the ice about one hundred and
fifty yards distant.

"I should not despair of killing her with 'the Baby,' charged as she now
is, even at a far greater distance; but I have a surer weapon for such a
mark in this target-rifle."

As he spoke, he drew from under the half-deck of the boat a heavy
sporting-rifle, carrying about sixty balls to the pound, and sighted
with "globe" or "peep" sights. Taking a polished gauge which hung at his
watch-chain, he set the rear sight, and, cocking the piece, set the
hair-trigger. Noiselessly raising the muzzle above the gunwale, he ran
his eye along the sights. A whip-like crack echoed across the ice, and
the goose, pierced through the lower part of the neck, fell dead by the
side of her wounded mate, which, frightened by the report, hastened to
increase the distance between him and such a dangerous neighborhood.

"I'll save you a half-mile run, Kennedy," said La Salle, raising "the
Baby" to his face.

The wounded bird suddenly paused, drew himself up to his full height,
and spread his wings, or rather his uninjured pinion. The huge gun
roared. The closely-packed _mitraille_ tore the icy crust into powder,
fifty yards beyond the doomed bird, which settled, throbbing with a
mortal tremor, upon the ice, shot through the head.

"That was a splendid shot of yours, La Salle," said Kennedy, in
amazement.

"You are wrong in that statement, Kennedy," replied he. "The shot any
one could have made, but the reach of that gun, with Eley's cartridge,
is something tremendous. When I first had her I fired at a flock at
about four hundred yards distance. Of course I killed none, but I paced
three hundred and twenty-five yards, and found clean-cut scores, four
and five inches long, in the crust, at that distance; and I have more
than once killed brant geese out of a flock at forty rods."

"Look, Charley! What a sight!" interrupted Kennedy. The sky had cleared,
the sun shone brightly, the wind had gone down, and the strange
stillness of a calm winter's day was unbroken. From the west high above
the reach of the heaviest gun, and almost beyond the carry of the rifle,
came the long-expected vanguard of the migrating hosts of heaven. Flock
upon flock, each in the wedge-shaped phalanx of two converging lines,
which ever characterize the flight of these birds, each headed by a
wary, powerful leader, whose clarion call came shrill and clear down
through the still ether, came in one common line of flight, hundreds and
thousands of geese. All that afternoon their passage was incessant, but
no open pool offered rest and food to that weary host, and in that fine,
still atmosphere it was useless to attempt to deceive by crude
imitations of the calls of these birds. And so, as the leaders of the
migratory host saw from their lofty altitude the earth below, for many a
league, spread out like a map, from which to choose a halting-place, the
marksmen of the icy levels had little but the interest of the unusual
spectacle for their afternoon's watching. Now and then, in answer to
their repeated calls, a single goose would detach itself from the flock
and scale down through the air, as if to alight, but nearly always would
repent in time, and with quickened pinions return to its companions.
Still, occasionally, one would determine to alight, and setting its
wings, circle around one of the stands, and finally be seen, by the
occupants of other ice-houses, to sweep close in to the concealed
ambush. Then would follow a puff or two of smoke, a few distant reports,
and the dead bird, held up in triumph, would convey to his distant
friends the sportsman's fortune.

Several birds fell in this way to the lot of our friends of the East
Bar, and La Salle and Kennedy got one each; but the sport was too
tedious, and La Salle, taking a bullet-bag and powder-flask from his
box, proceeded to count out ten bullets, which he laid carefully before
him.

"I am going to try to bring down at least one goose from those flocks
which pass over us nearly every moment. They are certainly four hundred
yards high, and I shall aim at the leader of the flock in every case,
giving him about ten feet allowance for headway."

The first ball was without effect, although the leader swerved like a
frightened steed as the deadly missile sung past him. The second cut a
feather from the tail of the bird aimed at; and the third failed
likewise. At the fourth shot the leader swerved as before, and then kept
on his way.

"You might as well try to kill them a mile off, as at that distance,"
said Kennedy, disparagingly.

"I hit a bird in that flock, and I think the leader, at that; for I
heard the rap of the ball as it struck. It may have been only through
his quill-feathers. No; there's the bird I hit. See, he can't keep up
with the flock."

The huge gander last fired at had hardly gone a hundred yards, ere,
despite his endeavors, he had lowered several feet below the flock. In
the next decade, the distance was increased to sixty feet, and in the
third to as many yards. In the last hundred yards of his flight he sank
rapidly, although struggling nobly to regain the flock; and when about
fifty yards above the ice, he towered up a few feet into the air, and
fell over backward, stone dead, with a rifle-shot transfixing his body,
in the region of the heart. On weighing him he turned the scale at
fifteen pounds.

Of the remaining six shots but one was effective--breaking the wing-tip
of a young female, which was secured for a live decoy.

Kennedy now proposed a plan for approaching a large flock, which had
alighted about a half mile distant on the sea-ice. Taking the taboggin,
which was painted white, from its concealment, he tied to its curved
front a thin slab of snowy ice, and laying his gun behind it, approached
the flock as near as possible, under cover of the hummocks. About three
hundred yards of level ice still intervened, and lying down behind his
snow-screen, he slowly moved his ingenious stalking-horse towards the
flock. Had he understood the nature of the birds thoroughly, it is
probable that his device would have succeeded splendidly; but when he
was still about a hundred yards distant, the wary leader became
suspicious, and gave a note of alarm. In an instant the whole flock,
with outstretched necks, stood prepared for flight. Had he lain still,
it is probable that the birds would have relaxed their suspicious
watchfulness, and allowed him to get nearer; but thinking that he should
lose all if he tried a nearer approach, he fired, killing one and
wounding another, both of which were secured.

Just before dark a slight wind sprang up, and a few flocks, flying low
about the harbor, came in among the decoys, and for a time the fire was
quite heavy, and the sport most exciting. Taken all round, this day was
the best of the season. Ben and Creamer received fifteen, La Salle and
Kennedy twelve, and Davies and Risk eighteen birds--in all, forty-five
geese. On arriving home they found a hearty supper awaiting their
attention, after a due observance had been paid to the rites of the
toilet. This observance seemed to demand much more time than ever
before, to the great amusement of Lund, who had anticipated as much all
day.

"Are all you folks going sparkin', that you are so careful of your
complexions? Goodness! why, you've more pomatums, oils, and soaps than
any court beauty!"

There was some truth in this latter charge, for Ben and Creamer, after
washing and a very gingerly use of the towel, anointed their flaming
visages with almond oil. Kennedy, in his turn, approached the only
mirror the house afforded, and applied to his blistered nose and
excoriated cheeks the major part of a box of Holloway's Ointment; and
even La Salle's dark face seemed to have acquired its share of burning
from the ice-reflected rays of the sun. Davies and Risk, when called to
supper, smelled strongly of rose-scented cold-cream; and Lund was
unsparing in sarcastic remarks on the extreme floridness of complexion
of the entire party.

"Ben, don't have any powder lying round loose to-morrow, with such a
face as that. As for Creamer, he can't have any cotton sheets to-night,
for fear of a conflagration. I don't think I ever saw anybody burn as
bad as Kennedy has; and this is only the first day, too. A few days more
like this would peel him down to an 'atomy. As to La Salle, he's too
black to take any more color, but Risk and Davies won't dare to go home
for a good two weeks at least."

In truth, the whole party had received a notable tanning, for the
winter's sun, weak as it is compared with its summer fervor, has never
such an effect upon the exposed skin, as when its rays are reflected
from the millions of tiny specula of the glistening ice-field. The free
use of soothing and cooling ointments will prevent the blistering and
tan, to a great extent; but many on their "first hunt" lose the cuticle
from the entire face; and many a seal has been lost on the floes, owing
to the rapid decomposition produced by the sun's feeble rays thus
intensified.

Notwithstanding their "tanning", however, the party were in splendid
spirits, and ate their roast goose, potatoes, and hot bread with a gusto
which far more delicate viands at home would fail to provoke. As the
meal proceeded, and the merry jest went round, all feelings of fatigue,
pain, and discomfort were lost in the revulsion of comfort which a full
meal produces in a man of thoroughly healthy physique. How few of us in
the crowded cities know, or indeed can appreciate, the pleasures of the
hardy sportsman. To bear wet, cold, and discomfort; to exercise
patience, skill, and endurance; and to undergo the extreme point of
fatigue, was the sum of nearly every day's experience of the members of
the party; but when their heavy guns and cumbrous clothing were laid
aside, the rough chair and cushionless settle afforded luxurious rest,
the craving appetite made their coarse fare a delightsome feast, and
when, warm, full-fed, and refreshed, they invoked the dreamy solace of
the deity Nicotiana, the sense of animal pleasure and satisfaction was
complete.

"Is your pipe filled, Creamer?" asked Lund, carelessly.

"Yes; but you'll not get it until you give us the story you're to tell
us this night. Faith, there's not one of us can beat you at the same
trade, and it's little of fact that you'll give us, any how."

"For shame, Hughie, to malign the credibility of an old friend in that
way, and me the father of a family. I'm almost ready to swear that you
shan't have a yarn from me for the whole spring. To accuse me of
yarning--me that--"

"That humbugged the whole Associated Press of the United States no
longer ago than the war with the southerns. I mind myself how you told
them at Shediac, that the Alabama was down among the fishermen in the
bay, like a hawk among a flock of pigeons. Faith, you had twenty of them
taken and burned before you stopped that time, and the telegraph
operator at Point de Chêne was hopping all the evening between the boat
and the office, like a pea in a hot skillet," retorted La Salle,
laughing. "Ah, Lund! you mustn't plead innocent with us, who have been
humbugged by you too many times already. But come, captain, draw on your
imagination, and give us a regular stunner--one without a word of truth
in it."

"Well, gentlemen," answered Lund, deliberately, "I ain't got anything to
say to that young jackanapes, for nobody _that_ ever heard _him_ tell
stories will ever believe anything he says again. But I mean to have my
revenge somehow, and so I'll tell you a story that is as true as
gospel, and yet you'll hardly believe a word of it. We who live here on
this little island call it the story of


"THE PACKET LIGHT.

"About thirty years ago, my wife's father, old Mr. Bridges, lived in a
snug little log house down in the next field, towards the Point. He was
a young man then, and my wife here was a little girl, unable to do more
than to drive home the cows, or help mind the younger children. The
island is uncivilized enough now, sir, but in those days, besides the
old French military road to St. Peter's, and a government mail route to
St. Eleanor's, there was nothing but bridle-paths and rough trails
through the woods. Men came to market with horses in straw harnesses,
dragging carts with block-wheels sawn from the butt of a big pine; and
often when twenty or thirty of them were drinking into old Katty
Frazer's, the beasts would get hungry, and eat each other loose.

"It was next to an impossibility to get any money in exchange for
produce or labor, and everything was paid for in orders on the different
dealers for so many shillings' or pounds' worth of goods. In winter a
whale-boat on runners carried the mail between the Wood Islands and
Pictou, and in summer a small schooner, called the Packet, sailed with
the mail, and what few passengers presented themselves, between the
capital and the same port.

"It was in the last of November that year that the Packet made her last
cruise. The weather was freezing cold, with a thick sky, and heavy
squalls from the south of west, when she struck on the East Bar, near
the main channel. They put down the helm, thinking to slide off; but she
only swung broadside to the waves, and as the tide was at ebb, she was
soon hard and fast, with the sea making a clean breach over her.

"Captain Coffin, with the four other men, got into the rigging with a
flag of some kind, which they fastened at half mast, as a signal of
distress. It was about midday when they ran on the bar, and Bridges saw
them, and realized their danger at once; and their cries for help at
times rose above the roar of the ravenous seas. With the help of his
wife he launched a light boat, but long before he got into the sweep of
the heavier breakers, he saw that she could never live on the bar, and
it was with great difficulty that he regained the shore. At nightfall,
although the hull was badly shattered, no one had perished, and the tide
had so far abated that the party could easily have waded ashore; and
Captain Coffin and another man, after vainly attempting to induce the
other three to accompany them, started themselves.

"The others charged them with cowardice in leaving the vessel, said that
the wind would go down, and they could get the craft off at flood-tide,
and so prevailed over the better judgment of the captain and his
companion that they returned to the fated vessel, and prepared, as well
as possible, for the returning tide.

"As the tide rose, the sea came with little, if any, diminution of fury;
and until nearly midnight Bridges watched the signal lantern, which
called in vain for the aid which it was not in the power of man to
bestow. Intense cold was added to the other horrors of their situation,
and the heavy seas came each hour in lessened fury, as the water
thickened into 'sludge.' At eleven o'clock the tide was at its height;
the seas had ceased to sweep across the hogged and sunken hull, and a
sheet of thin ice reached from the shore to the vessel's side. Captain
Coffin tried the ice, and, finding that it would bear his weight,
decided to try to reach the Blockhouse Light, which shone brightly three
miles away.

"He summoned the others; but two of the others, who had persuaded him to
remain on board, were already frozen to death; the third decided to make
the attempt, but walked feebly and with uncertain steps, and about a
mile from the vessel succumbed to the piercing cold, falling into that
fatal sleep from which few ever waken, in this life at least. Coffin's
companion, a strong, hardy sailor, reached the light-house alive, but
swooned away, and could not be resuscitated; and Coffin barely escaped
with his life. He was terribly frost-bitten, but was thawed out in a
puncheon of cold water, the right foot, however, dropping off at the
ankle; but he escaped with life, after terrible suffering.

"The schooner sank, in the spring, at the edge of the channel, when the
moving ice forced her into deeper water; and at very low tides her
battered hull may still be seen by the passing boatman. But ever since
that fatal night, whenever a storm from that quarter is threatened, a
ball of fire is seen to emerge from the depths where lies the fated
packet, and to sway and swing above the water, as the signal lantern did
on the swaying mast of that doomed vessel. Then, if you but watch
patiently, the ball is seen to expand into a sheet of crimson light,
terribly and weirdly beautiful, until the eye can discern the shadowy
outline of a ship, or rather schooner, of fire, with hull and masts,
stays and sails; and then the apparition again assumes the shape of a
ball, which is lost in the sea.

"At times it appears twice or thrice in the same night, and often the
herring-fisher, after setting his nets along the bar, sees behind his
boat, as he nears the shore, the apparition of the 'packet light.' Since
that night of wreck and death, no dweller on this island has passed a
year without seeing it, and it is so common that its appearance awakens
no fear; and among the fishers of Point Prime, and the farmers of the
opposite shores, there are few who will not bear witness to the truth of
my story."

       *       *       *       *       *

"It is a little singular," said Risk, "that a ship is the only
inanimate object ever seen as an individual apparition. There are not
many of these ghostly ships on the seas, however. I do not remember to
have heard of more than one--that of the celebrated 'Flying Dutchman,'
off the Cape of Good Hope."

"It's no wonder, sir," said Lund, warmly, "that sailors suppose ships to
be haunted, and also to be capable of becoming ghosts themselves, when
you sit down and think how differently every one views a vessel, as
compared with a house, or store, or engine. Why, there are no two ships
alike, and two were never built just alike. There are lucky and unlucky
ships, and ships that almost steer themselves, while others need a whole
watch at the tiller in a dead calm. But I think that you are mistaken as
to the 'Flying Dutchman' being the only other 'flyer,' as the sailors
call them, for they are often seen in the Pacific, in the 'Trades.'"

"I can't swear to the truth of Mr. Lund's story, but I can affirm that
the 'fire ship' is a myth, universally recognized among the sea-going
population of our coast, from the Florida Keys to the mouth of the St.
Lawrence. Off the coral reefs, the crime-accursed slaver or pirate
haunts the scene of her terrible deeds. Amid the breakers of Block
Island, the ship wrecked, a generation ago, by the cruel avarice of men
long since dead, still revisits the fatal spot when the storm is again
on the eve of breaking forth in resistless fury. The waters of Boston
harbor, two centuries ago, presented to the wondering eyes of 'divers
sober and godly' persons, apparitions similar to those narrated by our
veracious friend, the captain. The lumberers of the St. John tell, with
bated breath, of an antique French caravel, which sails up the Carleton
Falls, where no mortal vessel or steamer can follow. And the farmers and
fishermen of Chester Bay still see the weird, unearthly beacon which
marks the spot where the privateer Teaser, chased by an overwhelming
English fleet, was hurled heavenward by the desperate act of one of her
officers, who had broken his parole. As for the Gulf, the myth exists in
a half dozen diverse forms, and all equally well authenticated by
hundreds of eye-witnesses, if you can believe the narrators."

"Well, La Salle, I see you don't put much more faith in my story than in
the thing I saw the night you came here. Now, I hope it won't be so, for
it is borne in my mind, and I can't get over it, that I shall see some
of you vanish into mist, as I saw those men. So, gentlemen, be very
careful, for I fear that some of us are very near their fate."

       *       *       *       *       *

There is a cord of fear in every man's heart which throbs more or less
responsively to the relation of the wonders of that "debatable land,"
which, by some, is believed to lie "on the boundaries of another world."
La Salle felt impressed in spite of himself, and the whole party seemed
grave and unwilling to pursue the subject. The silence was, however,
broken by Kennedy.

"I am going home to-morrow," said he, "and therefore am not likely to be
one of the unfortunates over whom a mysterious but melancholy fate
impends. I have never found in the Tribune anything calculated to
encourage a belief in ghosts of men, or vessels either; and what Horace
Greeley can't swallow I can't. But I shall make minutes of this little
matter, and if anything does happen, will forward a full account, in
detail, to that truly great man. Come, La Salle; it's time we were abed.
Good night, gentlemen."

[Illustration]




CHAPTER V.

A MAD SPORTSMAN.--SNOW-BLIND.--A NIGHT OF PERIL.


The next morning shone bright and clear, and the gunners were at their
posts in expectation of a good day's sport. They looked in vain,
however, for any indications of open water, and a hole, sunk with the
axe to the depth of eighteen inches, failed to reach salt water,
although several layers of sweet, fresh water were struck; and the
little hollow furnished them many draughts of an element nowhere more
welcome than upon the spring ice. The sun shone brightly, their faces,
still sore and feverish with yesterday's exposure, became sorer than
ever, and the neck became chafed wherever it rubbed against the coat
collar.

Still, these were minor evils amid the excitement of their occupation,
for many flocks of wild geese were seen; and the appearance of a flock,
however remote, is always the signal for every gunner to get under cover
at once. A small flock of seven were completely destroyed that morning,
in a manner that deserves recording here.

They were first seen striking in from the Gulf, and swinging well to
leeward,--for the wind was westerly,--scaled in to the stand occupied by
Davies and Creamer, who were lying down taking their noon lunch, and
received no warning of their approach until they saw the flock scaling
over their heads. Seizing their guns, both fired as quickly as possible,
Ben a little the first. His first barrel missed, but the second, aimed
at the same bird, brought it down. Creamer's first barrel went off in
the act of cocking, in the hurry and agitation of the surprise; and
letting the muzzle of his gun drop, he stood stupidly gazing at the
departing flock, until roused by Davies's "Give them t'other barrel, any
way." Raising his gun, he fired instantly, and killed a fine gander,
which fell dead a hundred and twelve yards from the stand.

As if blinded by the unexpected danger, the remaining five swung just
inside of the ice-boat, where La Salle and his companion, who had seen
them from the first, picked out a brace at long but practicable range,
while the retreating birds flew up the channel towards Nine Mile Creek,
where two more fell to Risk and the elder Davies. For over an hour the
remaining bird flew with clamorous cries about the scene of his
bereavement, until a stranger, who had erected an ice-house, and placed
a few rude decoys a few hundred yards from the bar, called him down, and
fired a shot which dropped him on the ice.

[Illustration: "GIE ME MY GUSE, MON, AND DINNA DELAY ME." Page 97.]

He seemed to be little hurt, however; for, getting to his feet, he
walked rapidly away in the direction of the sea ice, followed by the
stranger, who did not attempt to use the long gun which he carried with
him even when the bird took wing and flew heavily between the ice-houses
on the East Bar, where a long shot from La Salle's gun brought him down
dead. La Salle brought in the bird, and while reloading his gun, the
stranger came up and claimed it as his.

He was a tall, lean, sharp-featured man, with long, lank hair, a dark
complexion, and large lack-luster eyes, imbedded in cavernous hollows.
His gun was not loaded, nor did he wear either shot-bag or powder-horn;
and his weapon, an ancient Highland Scotch "fusee" changed to
percussion, seemed as worn out and dilapidated as the owner.

"Gie me my guse, mon, and dinna delay me, for I hae much to do the day,
and I munna be hindered in my mission," was the strange salutation of
the original, as he leaned upon his gun at the side of the boat.

"You are welcome to your goose, friend, although I fear that you would
have had a long chase, if the Baby there had not put in her word in the
matter. Here is your bird, sir;" and La Salle handed the body to the
unknown, who, after examining it closely, sighed heavily, and
replied,--

"It's a braw bird, but it's nae the king o' the geese."

"The king of the geese, friend? What do you mean?" said Kennedy,
sharply.

"O, naething; that is, naething to ye, sirs; but to me, O yes, to me
everything. Ah," said he, plaintively, "how mony days hae I sat through
storm, and frost, and sleet! how mony nights hae I watched in the still
moonlight, amang the reedy creeks! how mony times I hae weized a slug
through a bird a'maist amang the clouds! but I hae had a' my labor in
vain, in vain."

"But how do you know that you have not already shot the king of the
geese?" said La Salle, anxious to investigate the peculiar monomania of
this poor lunatic; for such, indeed, he evidently was.

"Why, mon," said he, evidently surprised at the absurdity of the
question, "by his croun, of course. The king has ae braw croun o' white
an black fedders, an' I'se reckon ye's never seen a guse like that
ava'--hae ye now?" he asked, anxiously.

"I have never seen any such bird," said La Salle; "but why do you care
so much about shooting this rare bird?"

"Weel, I'll tell ye, sin ye were kin' till me, an' did na keep the guse
fra' me. Ye must promise me that ye will na try to kill it wi' your ain
hands, for I must kill it mysel'."

"We promise," said La Salle, encouragingly, while Kennedy gave a
half-pitying nod of the head.

"Weel, when I was young I cared for naething but the gun, an' mony a
beating I got for wark negleckit, an' schule-days wasted in the woods,
or on the ice. As I grew older I cared more an' more for huntin', an'
although I killed mair than ony three in the settlement, I was never
satisfied. Ance I sat here on a could day in April; the ice had gane off
the bar, but the flats were yet covered, and I knew that until the win'
changed the ice would not be carried off.

"Sae, as I sat an' saw the breakers roolin' in an' breakin' an' heavin'
the outer ice, I saw mony flecks pass under the lee of the Governor's
Island, an' then I grew mad like, an' swore an' cursed at my ill luck.

"'Ay, my lad, but you're right;' an' turnin', I saw an ould man wi' dark
eyes an' a coat of black furs stannin' beside me.

"'I've seen i' the Bible,' said I, 'that man was gi'en "dominion ower
the beasts o' the earth an' the fowls o' the air," but I canna do as I'd
wush wi' thae cursed geese ower there.'

"'Verra richt; ye're verra richt, young man,' said he. 'What wud ye gie
to be able to kill as mony fowl as ye list, an' never miss ava?'

"It seemed as I were mad at th' thocht. 'I'd gie my saul,' said I.

"'Well, hae your wish, laddie,' said he; 'it's a sma' penny fee for so
dear a bargain;' and, turnin', I fand mysel' alone, an' not a saul upon
the ice, far or near. Weel, that day I killed birds until I had nae mair
pouther an' grit-shot; an' ilka day I went I had the like luck; but my
min' was ill at ease, an' I grew sad, an' dared na gae to prayers, or
the kirk; for then hell seemed to yawn under me. At last they said I was
mad, an' I went awee tae th' 'sylum yonder i' th' town, an' then I gat
some sleep; an' ane nicht I saw in a dream a woman a' in white, an' she
laid her cool, moist han' on my hot forehead, an' tauld me she would
save me yet. 'It was th' auld enemy that ye forgathered wi' on th' ice,
an' ye are his until ye can kill th' king o' th' geese; an' then ye ken
whaever carries his croun o' black an' white feathers can unnerstand th'
language o' all fowl, an', wha' is more, call them to himsel', sae that
he canna' fail to hae his wull o' them. Then, laddie, ye wull hae earned
yoursel' th' penny-fee for whilk ye hae perilled your saul.

"'But,' said she, 'my ain bairn, when ye hae won the croun, use it na'
at all, though a' the fiends fra' hell tempted ye, but carry it to the
kirkyard at mirk midnight; an' when ye hae cannily lichted a bit bleeze,
burn the king's croun, an' say wha' I shall tell ye. "I gie back more
than I hae taken, an' I rest on Christ's smercy;" an' then shall ye be
safe an' happy if ye fail na' to be constant in gude warks.'

"Then, sirs, the vision faded, an' I woke calmer an' happier than for
many a lang day; an' a few days after, they aye sent me hame, but the
folk say I've a bit bee in my bannet yet. But sin' that time, I hae
hunted a' I can. I get mony birds, an'," lowering his voice, "yesterday
I killed thretty-seven."

A long whistle from the astonished Kennedy broke up the conference, and
the offended lunatic walked angrily away.

"He hasn't had a gun until to-day, to my certain knowledge," said
Kennedy; "and I saw him yesterday afternoon taking aim at a goose that
had lighted among his decoys, along the helve of his axe."

"Well, well! No one believed him, of course; but, for Heaven's sake,
when you express incredulity again, wait until the lie is finished, if I
am in the party!" grumbled La Salle.

"Well, never mind; he got through with the best part of it; and the
great wonder is, how a distempered brain could imagine all that
impossible but well-connected delusion."

"Kennedy," said La Salle, with unusual gravity, "how can we decide that
it is all a delusion? Few men, indeed, have claimed to see the devil, to
whom they sell themselves daily for trifles lighter than the hunter's
meed of unrivaled success; and who can say that the story of yonder
madman is more or less than the fruit of the idle habits and unbridled
temper which burned up happiness, and consumed his reason? There are few
who go mad who would have done so had they at the first governed and
denied themselves, and been content to enjoy in reason the benefits of
the great Giver."

"There is much that is true in what you say, and I've got a piece in
this very Tribune which bears on that point. I'll read it to you. Hang
me if ever I saw the like! Where's Davies' ice-house? Is there a fog
coming up, or am I dizzy?"

"O, that's nothing," said La Salle, laughing. "You're only going
blind--snow-blind, I mean. You know that Kane tells about his people
using goggles to prevent snow-blindness; and you left yours off
yesterday and to-day."

"Well, it's a curious thing. I can barely see you now; and I know I
could not find my way home to save my life. But what shall I do? Will it
last long?"

"If I had but a handkerchief full of clay, I could cure it in half an
hour; but lie down in the straw, and get your head under the half-deck,
where you can see neither sun nor snow, and I think you will rest
yourself enough to see pretty well by the time we want to go home."

But Kennedy was fated to lie in impatient helplessness during the
remainder of the afternoon. Several fine flocks came in to the decoys;
and La Salle, using the double-barrel first, and firing the huge
duck-gun at long range, killed three, and sometimes four, out of each
flock, while Kennedy groaned in anguish of spirit. At last he could bear
it no longer.

"Keep close, Kennedy; there's another flock coming, and the finest I've
seen this year. There's twenty at the least, and they're coming right
in."

"Give me my gun, Charley. I can't see much, but I can a little, and I
can fire where I hear them call. This is my last day; for Patrick is
coming out to-night with the boys, and I go in with them. Where are the
birds now?"

"Right dead to leeward. Ah-h-huk! ah-h-huk! Here they come, low down,
and ready to light. Ah-h-huk! ah-h-huk! Now, Kennedy, can you see them?"

"Yes; that is, I see something like flies in a black gauze net. Are
those geese?"

"Yes, and close to us; so up and fire."

Bang! bang! crashed the heavy double-barrel, with both reports nearly
blended in one, and Kennedy was driven back by the recoil against the
rear top board of the boat. Nearly bursting with laughter, La Salle
"lined" the flock as they swung off, killing and wounding three.

"Are you hurt, Kennedy?" he inquired, jumping out of the boat to catch
the wounded birds.

"Dot buch, but by dose bleeds a little, a'd I've cut by lip. How baddy
have I killed, Charley? for I cad see dothing," inquired the victim,
anxiously.

"One, two, three, four, FIVE, by jingo! Faith, you've beat the crowd, so
far, this spring, and when you were stone-blind, almost, at that. Well,
it's pretty dark, and we'd better be getting home now, I think."

The geese were picked up, and, with the others,--about twenty in
all,--were loaded upon the "taboggin," which the two hunters with some
difficulty drew through the drifts to the house where, on their arrival,
they found that Pat had arrived from the city with some small stores,
papers, letters, &c., but the boys had not accompanied him.

"They'll be out on skates wid Carlo and his slid on Monday," he said.
"Now, Misther Kennedy, whiniver you're ready, ye'll find me to the fore
in the kitchen."

"Mr. Kennedy mustn't go until he gives us a story in his turn. Now the
moon rises to-night, at about nine o'clock, and it will be much
pleasanter and safer on the ice by moonlight. What say you, Pat?"

"Faith, I'm agreeable, and I'd a little rather, to tell the truth; for
there's an ugly bit of road across the Pint there."

"Well, Kennedy will have time to eat supper, and then we'll have his
story, when it will be time for us to go to bed, and just right for him
to start for town."

"Or, in other words," said La Salle, "it will be 'time for honest folk
to be abed, and rogues on the road.'"

All sat down to supper, including Pat, to whom a plate of roast goose
and two or three cups of strong, hot, black tea were very refreshing
after his ten-mile drive; and then, after the little preparations for
the next day's shooting, and Kennedy's little arrangements for his
departure, the little group gathered round the blazing hearth, and
Kennedy, with some little hesitation, began the story of


"A NIGHT OF PERIL.

"I am but a short man, and, as my time is short, you must not complain
if my story is short, too.

"I am not so imaginative as the captain; I haven't pestered all the old
men and women of the island to death for legends and stories, like my
friend Charley here, who will surely bore you to death when his turn
comes; I am sure I cannot make you laugh as Hughie and Mr. Risk have
done with their very interesting narratives, and I can only detail a
little adventure which I unexpectedly got into on this coast last
summer, and which I as unexpectedly got out of alive."

"You mean your crossing the straits in a sixteen-foot boat?" said
Captain Lund. "I want to hear about that myself."

"Well, in the early part of last August, my wife and I decided to visit
some friends, who reside a few miles up the River Jean, on the opposite
side of the straits, I suppose about twenty miles from here. We could
reach no port by steamer that was nearer our destination than Pictou,
and there remained a long, tedious stage ride when we got there. I
concluded to take a boat, and procured of Frank Stanley a little
row-boat, with a spritsail for running before the wind; for I intended
to choose my own time for crossing. We set out from C. early one
morning, and arrived in the afternoon after a very pleasant passage, and
we enjoyed our visit to that section very much.

"After waiting a day or two for a fair wind down the river, we set sail,
but, owing to the lightness of the breeze, were nearly all the afternoon
in getting down. Still, on reaching the harbor, I determined to proceed,
as the lights on both shores could be plainly seen, and I did not like
to lose a favorable wind.

"Accordingly I put boldly out, heading for Point Prime Light, although
my mind misgave me a little as I got clear of the lee of the land; for
the sea rose rapidly, and a tremendous breeze, each moment growing
stronger, carried us on with frightful rapidity. When we were about half
way across, the wind was blowing a gale, and it was only for a moment,
while on the crest of the waves, that I could see the light for which I
was steering.

"The spray was breaking over us so that my wife had to bale continually
to keep our craft free, and I dared not leave the helm to lessen sail,
although I expected that each slat of the canvas, as we took the wind on
the crest of a wave, would run us under, or carry away the mast, and
leave us at the mercy of the waves.

"On we went before the breeze, darting down into the hollow between two
seas, toiling heavily up the next wave, with death apparently close
behind on the crests of two or three pursuing breakers, and then, with a
puff which made every timber and plank quiver, the gale would almost
lift us through a breaking wall of white foam, and, with more or less of
the sea aboard, away we would go down the incline, a plaything of a
boat, with a frightened little man at the tiller, and a little woman
baling incessantly, with nerves that never gave way for a moment in our
long struggle for life.

"I felt that if I could get that sprit down we were safe; but my wife
dared not attempt it, and she would not trust herself at the tiller.
Fortunately the boat steered 'very small,' and seizing my opportunity, I
set the tiller amidships, darted forward, cleared the end of the sprit
from its becket, and got back just in time to meet her as she began to
broach to, on the crest of a wave, which nearly half filled us with
water.

"I felt now as if we were safe; for no longer cumbered with a press of
sail, we shipped less water, and had a better chance to lay out our
course. Keeping Point Prime Light, as I supposed, well to starboard, I
headed up the bay, seeking to make the Blockhouse Light, when suddenly I
saw the coast dead ahead, and a bar, which must have been the West Bar,
which I dared not attempt to cross.

"I therefore bore away until I made a harbor, and running in, got aboard
a vessel, from whose captain I learned that we had mistaken the
Blockhouse Light for that on Point Prime, and had at last made Crapaud
River."

"Leaving the boat to be brought around by the next steamer, we drove up
to town the next day, and found, to our surprise, that we had crossed
close on the heels of that hurricane, which unroofed so many buildings,
and uprooted so many trees. I consider that passage as the most stirring
incident in my short life, gentlemen, and in the language of an old
story, 'my wife thinks so, too.'"

       *       *       *       *       *

"And you may well think so, Mr. Kennedy," said Lund. "For all the money
in the banks of C. wouldn't tempt me to run the risk, the almost
certainty, of death, I mean, that you two did. Your wife is a brave
woman, sir, and there are very few men who would have borne themselves
as she did."

"Well, gentlemen, I see Pat is ready, and I must bid you good night.
Charley, I'll give the boys the list of things you want them to bring
out Monday. I suppose you'll get through in a couple of weeks, and come
back to civilized life. Good night."

Followed by a dozen expressions of adieu and goodwill, the travellers
entered the sleigh, and drove merrily off on the ice. Charley stood
still a moment alone in the moonlight, listening to the last tinkle of
the bells as they died away in the distance.

"What nonsense to stand here bareheaded, and getting cold! and yet it
seems as if something urged me to go back to the city. Yet, why should I
dread anything here? or rather, why should I fear anything with such a
prospect as I have before me?"

He turned, and entered the house; a dainty letter from his betrothed,
brought that night from the city, lay upon his breast; but honey and
gall mingled strangely in its offerings, and many a bitter word bore
heavy on his heart. No one of all that merry party was readier for song,
or jest, or manly sport, than he; and yet he, too, had his share of that
bitter cup which mortals call sorrow.

[Illustration]




CHAPTER VI.

ADDITIONS TO THE PARTY.--AN INDIAN OUTFIT.--A CONTESTED ELECTION.


The following day was Sunday, and was spent as most Sabbaths are spent
by similar parties in such out-of-the-way places. A few members of the
household drove off across the ice of the Western Bar to a little
country church; but the goose-shooters cared not to display their half
savage dress, and tanned and blistered faces, to the over-close
inspection of the church-going farmers and their curious "_women
folks_."

Accordingly, Risk passed most of the day luxuriously stretched out on
the sofa, reading the Church Magazine, while Davies, on the opposite
side of the fire, in the recesses of an arm-chair covered with a buffalo
robe, devoted the larger portion of his time to the Weekly Wesleyan.
Creamer, after a cursory glance at a diminutive prayer-book, spent most
of the day in a comparison of sea-going experiences and apocryphal
adventures with Captain Lund, in much the same manner as two redoubtable
masters of fence employ their leisure in launching at each other's
impregnable defence, such blows as would prove mortal against less
skilled antagonists.

By the middle of the afternoon Lund had related his sixth story, being
the veracious history of how one Louis McGraw, a famous fishing-skipper
of Mingan, rode out a tremendous gale on the Orphan Bank, with both
cables out, the storm-sail set, her helm lashed amidships, and the crew
fastened below as tightly as possible. It is hardly worth while to
detail how the crew were bruised and battered by the terrible rolling of
the schooner; it may be left to the imagination of the intelligent
reader when he learns that, when the storm abated, the skipper found,
besides innumerable "kinks" in the cables, and sea-weed in the rigging,
_both topmasts broken short off_, indubitable proof, to the nautical
mind, that the Rechabite had been rolled over and over again, like an
empty barrel, in that terrible sea.

Creamer had just begun, by way of retaliation, his favorite "yarn" of
the ingenious diplomacy of one Jem Jarvis, his father's uncle, who,
being wrecked "amongst the cannibals of Rarertonger," with a baker's
dozen of his shipmates, escaped the fate of his less accomplished
comrades by his skill on the jewsharp, and an especial talent for
dancing the double-shuffle, so that they gave him a hut to himself, two
wives, and all he could eat, until he broke his jewsharp, and got fat
and lazy, and then there was nothing to do but to run for it.

How Creamer's paternal relative extricated himself from his precarious
position will never be known, as, at this juncture, Ben and La Salle,
respectively, weary of playing a limited _repertoire_ of psalm-tunes on
the concertina, and reading the musty records of a long-forgotten
"_Sederunt_ of the quarterly Synod," as detailed in an old number of the
Presbyterian Witness, interrupted the prolonged passage at arms by an
invitation, to all so disposed, "to take a walk around the island."

Lund, who had misgivings as to his ability to give Creamer "a Roland for
his Oliver," rose at once, and Creamer acceding more reluctantly, the
four set off, through a narrow wood-path, to a cleared field near the
western extremity of the island.

At the verge of this field, a cliff of red sandstone, ribbed and seamed
by centuries of weather-wear and beat of sea, overlooked the ample bay
which opens into the Straits of Northumberland at their widest point.
Before them it lay covered with huge level ice-fields, broken only where
tide and storm had caused an upheaval of their edges, or a berg,
degraded and lessened of its once lordly majesty, it is true, but still
grand even in its decay, rose like a Gothic ruin amid a snow-covered and
desolate plain.

The sun was declining in the west, but his crimson rays gave warmth to
the picture, and the still air had, as it were, a foretaste of the
balmy revivifying warmth of spring. In the woods, close at hand, were
heard the harsh cawing of the crow, the shrill scream of the blue-jay,
and the garrulous chatter of many a little family of warm-furred,
pine-cone-eating little red squirrels.

Neither was animal life wanting elsewhere to complete the picture. On
the ice could be counted, in different directions, no less than
seventeen flocks of Canada geese, some of them apparently on the watch,
but the major part lying down, and evidently sleeping after their long
and wearisome migration. In a single diminutive water-hole below the
cliff, which probably marked the issue of one of the many subterranean
springs of the islet, a half-dozen tiny ouac-a-wees, or Moniac ducks,
swam and dove in conscious security.

"I can't see any open water yet," said Creamer, "although it looks to me
a little like a water-belt, alongshore, inside Point Prime."

"There's no more water-belt there," said Lund, "than there was music in
your great-uncle's jewsharp; but there's a spot off to the sou'-west
that looks to me a little like blue water."

"Blue water, indeed!" retorted Creamer; "who ever saw blue water on
soundings! I'll lay a plug of navy tobacco there isn't open water enough
there away to float La Salle's gunning-float comfortably."

"Well, Hughie," slowly replied the practiced pilot, who was really
little disposed to vaunt his knowledge of coast and weather, "the tide
will soon decide whether you or I, or both of us, are right. It is just
full flood now, and the ice is pressed in so against the land, that I
know there can be no openings along the Point, and but very small ones
where I think it looks like one. It seems to me that a water-vapor is
rising out there, by yonder high pinnacle just in range of the pool
below the ice-foot; but the tide will soon let us know if there are any
large leads open within a dozen miles."

"There's a sign in your favor," cried La Salle, pointing in the
direction of the supposed 'lead.' "There's a flock of Brent geese, and
they can't live away from open water. See, Ben, they are heading right
in for the East Bar, and if we were only there we might depend upon a
shot."

La Salle was right; the flock of birds, identified plainly by their
smaller size, their tumultuous order of flying, and especially by their
harsh, rolling call, like a pack of hounds in cry, swept in from sea,
wheeled around one of the resting flocks of Canada geese, alighted near
them, took flight again, and, sweeping in an irregular course over and
among the higher points of the icy labyrinth, disappeared behind the
eastern promontory, as if in search of the open water, which winter had
so securely locked up in icy bonds.

As the sun sank behind the neighboring firs, his reddening light fell on
a bright blue streak, which seemed to glow like a stream of quicksilver
between two heavy bodies of "piled ice." With the ebb, the narrow,
glittering canal began to widen, piercing nearer to the islet, until,
heading towards the westward, it lay little more than four miles from
the interested spectators. The shadowy pinions of many flocks of
water-fowl were seen exploring its course, and the neighboring geese,
one by one, took flight, and, with clamorous calls, winged their way to
its borders.

"I give it up," said Creamer.

"Never mind, Hughie," said Ben, "I'll pay the wager; for, with open
water so close to us, the first good storm will soon sweep the bay clear
to the bar."

"Yes, a sharp north-easter would soon do that for you; but all the heavy
winds may be northerly and westerly for three weeks to come yet," said
Lund; "I've known the ice to hold here until the first week of May."

"Well," returned La Salle, "I'm sure I hope it won't be so late this
year, for the stock of flour on the island is very small, and many of
the poor folks can't afford to buy any, and are living on potatoes
almost altogether. They say, too, that there is much suffering among the
farmers at the North Point."

"Yes," said Ben; "I saw a man from Lot Ten last week, and he said that
the French were eating their seed-grain, and feeding their cattle, or
such as were left alive, on birch and beech tops."

"That has happened often, since I can remember," said Lund, "and I
suppose is likely to after I am gone; but it seems to me that those
stupids might learn something by this time."

"It will occur to a greater or less degree, just as long as the island
is shut out from the rest of the world for nearly half the year. There
are few men who have any just estimate of the amount of provisions and
fodder necessary for the sustenance of a family and its cattle for so
long a period as a half year, and when accident, or the unwonted
backwardness of the season, increases the number of mouths, or the
length of the cold term, it is hard for the farmer to decide on
sacrificing the life of even a superannuated horse, or weakly yearling,
in time to benefit the more valuable survivors."

"You're right, Charley," said Creamer; "that's what my father's uncle
said, when he was a mate on board the Semyramsis, in the Ingy Ocean. The
ship was lost in a harricane, sir, and only seven was saved in the
captain's gig--six able-bodied seamen and one passenger, a fat little
army ossifer. So my great-uncle, who were bosin, made an observation,
and says he, 'There's just ten days' provision for seven men, and we're
twenty days to looard of Silly Bes (Celebes), if we only row ten miles a
day. Now, we must row twenty miles a day; an' to do that, we must have
full rations an' somethin' to spare. Besides, the boat ort to be lighter
to row well. So, as passengers don't count along of able-bodied seamen,
I move we just get rid of the major on economical principles. All in
favor say "Ay;" and they all said "ay" except the major, an' he just
turned as white as a sheet.' An' then my great-uncle asked him if he'd
got anything to say why the resolution o' that meetin' shouldn't be
carried out. Well, the major just grinned kind o' uggly, an' said that
'he liked to see things done methodistically, if it were a little
irregular, an' he'd give his 'pinion after the rest.' So my uncle went
on, an' said, 'All contrary say, "No."' Well, no one said 'no;' an' then
my great-uncle said, 'Well, major, nothin' remains but to carry out our
resolution; so please to vacate this boat; although, seein' as it's not
dinner time for some hours yet, there's no need of hurry, unless you
wish to have it over with.'

"'But,' says the major, 'your action is altogether unparlymentary. You
haven't heard a word from _my_ friends.'

"'Friends! there ain't any one here on your side o' the question.'

"'You're mistaken, my friend,' said the major; an' he drew from his belt
a long Indian dagger that had been hid under his coat; 'there's one, any
how.'

"'That ain't much account against a boat-hook,' said one of the men, as
he took one with a sharp spike from beneath the gunwale.

"'Lay that down, you beggar!' cried the little red-coat; and he pulled
out of each side-pocket a four-barreled pistol,--for there were no
revolvers in them days,--and the man laid down the boat-hook as quick as
a flash. 'Now, men,' said the little ossifer, 'you'll see that we number
at least ten, and there's only six of you. Ah, here's to make us a
little more ekil;' and he just fired at a noddy that was flying over,
and dropped him right into the stern-sheets. 'That'll help out our
rations some,' says he; 'and besides, you don't see what I'm sittin'
on;' and, sure enough, he had histed into the boat a basket of port an'
a whole case of cap'n's biscuit. 'Now,' says he, 'reconsider your
vardick.'

"An' they all voted down the first resolution, and he gave them a bottle
of port to mix with their water every day, and when they were drinking
the last bottle, they made Silly Bes, and got ashore all right; but my
uncle always said that his calculations was right, and that it showed
great weakness on the part of the men not to carry them out."

"Well, Hughie," said Ben, "you've kept us here a good half hour later
than tea time, and Mrs. Lund will think we've done well to waste her
time in listening to your stories."

"Well, we can see enough to assure us that the ice won't break up on the
bar to-morrow," said Lund; "but you may get your ice-boats ready at
once, for the next thaw, with a north-easter after it, will leave all
clear along the ship channel to the harbor's mouth."

There was quite a pleasurable excitement among the stay-at-homes at the
tea table, when the incipient breaking up of the ice was declared; for
on the proximity of narrow feeding-grounds to the ice-houses depended
the hopes of good sport of our adventurers. To be sure they had thus far
had nothing to complain of; but the geese killed had been merely
"flight" geese, weary with long migration, thin with want of food, and
seeking among the treacherous lures only a rest from their long
wandering in the safe companionship of their own kind.

Very shortly after supper the whole household retired, but, save the
accustomed prayers, which few, either Catholic or Protestant, forget in
that still "unsophisticated" land, it is to be feared that the Sabbath
was to them little but a literal "day of rest," in its purest physical
sense.

Monday morning a glassy look to the snow-crust induced the younger
members of the party to use their skates in going to their stands, and
as La Salle drew his from his feet to deposit them in his undisturbed
stand, his eyes caught, amid the distant ice-spires, the mazy flight of
what he took to be a flock of brent, headed in-shore.

Signaling to Davies to get under cover, he sprang into his own stand,
and, crouching amid the straw, hastily drew over his black fur cap his
linen havelock, and looking well to the priming of his gun, sought the
whereabouts of the swift-flying birds.

Unlike the slower Canada geese, these birds seldom fly high above the
surface of the water or ice when seeking food; and several times he lost
sight of the flock, as it darted around a berg, or swung round the
circle of some secluded valley of the ice-field.

"H-r-r-r-r-huk! H-r-r-r-r-huk!" Their barbarous clamor, insufficiently
rendered in the foregoing, suddenly sounded close to leeward, and close
up against the light north-wester then blowing came the beautiful
quarry, their small, black heads and necks showing as glossy as a
raven's wing, in contrast with the asheous hue of their wings, and the
pure white of other parts of their plumage. With a wild, tumultuous
rush, they circled in head-on over the decoys; and it was so quickly
done, that they had swept on fifty yards before La Salle could realize
that the leader of the flock was heading for Davies, and had no
intention of surging around to his lures again.

"It will never do to let them get the first brent," muttered La Salle.
"She has a long-range cartridge in, and I'll try them."

Turning on his knees, he raised the ponderous gun until it "lined" the
retreating flock, but elevated at least five feet above the birds, now
nearly two hundred yards away. The heavy concussion reverberated across
the ice, and the fatal cartridge tore through the distant flight,
picking out two of the twelve which composed the flock; and some of the
shot, as both Davies and Creamer afterwards averred, rattled smartly in
among their decoys nearly four hundred yards away. The remaining birds,
hurrying away from the dangers behind them, passed within range of
Davies and his companion, and left several of their number dead and
dying on the ice; but the first brent of the season had fallen to La
Salle's gun.

The day was mild and without wind, and as but few birds were flying, La
Salle coiled himself down in the sunny corner of his stand, and drawing
from his pocket the letter of which we have spoken in the last chapter,
gave it a careful and deliberate perusal. As he closed, a smile,
strangely expressing contempt, pity, and admiration, curled his lips, as
in low but audible tones, as is often the habit of the solitary hunter
or fisherman, he communed with his own heart.

"Ah, Pauline! time has brought no change to thy passionate, impulsive,
unreasoning heart; and what thy biting tongue may not say, the pen will
utter, though lapse of years and the waves of the Atlantic roll between
us. Is it not strange that a woman's letter to her betrothed, beginning
with 'My own love,' and ending 'Until death,' can contain eight
double-written pages of unreasonable blame, cruel innuendos, and
despicable revenge on the innocent? Well, we are betrothed, and should
have been married years ago, had not Fate or Providence stood in the
way; and I suppose her life at home is far from pleasant, for her
step-mother is not one to let a good marriage go by, without reminding
poor Paulie of my general worthlessness; but I must say that my better
financial and matrimonial prospects offer little hope of added
happiness."

His eye lit up a moment, and an expression of keen and almost cruel
intent contracted his gaze; then, with a look of disdain, he seemed to
throw off some evil influence, and a look of pity softened his face.

"Yes, if I were to resent these affronts--for such they are--with one
half the virulence which animates them, her pride would alienate us
forever, and I should be free. There are few who would blame me, and
many who would scorn to do aught else. In truth I am almost decided to
answer this precious _billet-doux_ in the same vein in which it was
written. Ah, it was not all delusion that made yonder madman think that
evil spirits haunt these icy wastes. It was not thus I felt when
together we voyaged across that summer sea; and the vows we plighted
then may not lightly be broken. I will answer patiently, and as becomes
the past. As to the future, it will bring due reward or punishment here
or hereafter."

From these somewhat morbid self-communings, which we introduce for a
purpose hereafter to be disclosed, La Salle started, seized his
glittering skates, and taking his gun, glided with long, powerful
strokes across the inner bay towards the ice-houses of the other party,
which lay within the embouchure of Trois-Lieue Creek. The ice was
almost perfectly level, save where a heavy drift had formed a small
mound around which it was better to steer, although the sleety crust had
frozen so hard that the broad-runnered Belgian skates would run almost
anywhere. At the first ice-house he found Risk and Davies, who had done
little or nothing for some days, and talked of going home at the end of
the week.

"Indian Peter gets about all the geese that go through here, and there's
little show for us," said Davies.

"Where is his ice-house?" asked La Salle.

"Just up the cove--the nearest of those two," answered Risk.

"I guess I'll have a look at his outfit, and then go and meet the boys
at the block-house, for they have never been here before, and the track
can't be very plain now." So saying, La Salle skated up to the Indian
stand, almost half a mile distant.

"One-armed Peter," as he was commonly called among his tribesmen, had
neither the means nor the inclination to deviate much from the
traditionary usages of his tribe, and was found kneeling, or, rather,
"sitting man-fashion," as the vernacular Micmac hath it, although we
call it "tailor-fashion," within a circular, fort-like enclosure, some
twelve feet in circumference, and with walls about three feet high.

The latter were composed of thick slabs of ice placed on edge, and
cemented together by frozen water, while tiny apertures, cut here and
there, enabled the crouching hunters to note every foot of the approach
of their wary game. A few of the decoys were of pine wood, rudely carved
out and _burnt_ to something like the natural coloring of the bird they
were intended to represent; but a large proportion of them were
"sea-weed" or "spruce" decoys; that is, bunches of the weather-bound
sea-wrack, or bundles of evergreen twigs, made about the shape and size
of the body of a goose.

These were elevated on blocks of snow-ice, which strikingly imitated, at
a little distance, the hue of the under feathers, and a fire-blackened
stake set in the ice, at one end, with a collar of white birch bark at
its junction, completed the rude but effective imitation. Such are the
appliances which a hundred years ago brought the geese in thousands
under the arrows of all the many tribes which range between the Straits
of Canso and the most northern inhabited regions about Hudson's Bay.

Within the enclosure a few armfuls of fir branches--laid upon the hard
ice, and kept carefully clear of snow, formed a soft floor, on which now
sat three hunters, Peter, and Jacob, and Louis Snake, much younger men
than he of the one arm. Each sat enveloped in the folds of a dingy
blanket, and their guns rested against the icy walls--two of them
rickety, long-barreled flint-locks; but Peter's new acquisition, a true
"stub-twist," Hollis's double, was as good a fowling-piece as any
sportsman needs.

True to their customs, the Indians were taciturn enough, although Peter
thanked La Salle rather warmly for his new weapon.

"I find 'em good gun; not miss since I got 'em. Give t'other gun my
nethew." And he pointed to the worst looking of the two antiquated
weapons, as Cleopatra may have surveyed her rather costly
drink-offering, with visible misgiving as to such reckless liberality.

"You were very kind, Peter. I suppose he has no family," said La Salle,
smiling.

"Yes, me _berry_ kind my peeple," suavely responded the chief, a just
pride beaming in his eyes. "That young man no family yet--only squaw
now."

"It is evident that the average Indian doesn't understand a joke,"
muttered La Salle, as he said "Good by" to the motley trio, and darted
off to meet a distant group, which he rightly judged to be the expected
boys.

Twenty minutes later he had joined the little party, who were proceeding
at a slow dog-trot around the shores, instead of taking the direct
course across the ice, which, being deemed unsafe by them, had wisely
been avoided; for no one can be too cautious on ice of which they know
nothing.

George Waring, the only son of La Salle's employer, skated ahead of his
companion, who was evidently of other than Caucasian origin, in part at
least. The skater was a tall, fresh-complexioned, slender youth, of
about seventeen, bold, active, and graceful in his movements, but having
the appearance of one whose growth had been a little too rapid for an
equal development of health and strength; and indeed it was only on
condition that he should submit carefully to the directions of La Salle
that his father had consented to the present expedition.

His companion was, perhaps, a year older, but rather short and
thick-set, with features in which the high cheek-bones and coppery hue
of the American showed very prominently. La Salle had fallen in with him
at the Seven Islands, on the Labrador coast, the year before, and
employed him as a pilot to the Straits of Belle Isle. He called himself
Regnar Orloff, was of tremendous strength for one of his years, and
although apparently lazy, and somewhat fleshy, could move quickly
enough, and to purpose, in time of need.

Now, however, he rested one knee on the only unoccupied portion of a
large, light sled, drawn by the third member of the party, a powerful
dog of the Newfoundland species, which he was evidently training into
some little excellence as a sledge-dog. It was only an added virtue,
even if complete; for noble old Carlo had already excellences enough to
canonize a dozen individual canines. He was strong, sagacious, peaceably
inclined, but a terrible foe when aroused; could eat anything, carry a
man in the water, watch any place, team, or article, hold a horse, beat
for snipe or woodcock, lie motionless anywhere you might designate,
retrieve anywhere on land, water, or ice, and loved a gun as well as his
young master, La Salle.

[Illustration: "WELL, GEORGE, YOU'RE HERE AT LAST."--Page 127.]

"Well, George, you're here at last," cried La Salle, as he came up. "How
is everything in town, and what's the news?"

"O, nothing out of the common. All are well. The governor gave a ball
Wednesday, and the House dissolves next week. We've had plenty of geese
to eat, but we wanted to kill some; and so here we are."

"How are you, Regnie? Getting tired of civilization, and wanting to get
back to the ice?"

"Ha, ha, ha! Yes, master, just so. After I see Paris and Copenhagen, I
do very well, keep quite satisfied. But when I shut up in large city
like C., I think it too much. I feel lonesome, want to get back to the
wild'ness."

"And how does Carlo learn sleighing?"

"O, he does well enough. He can't be taught right, for it would be too
bad to use Greenland whip; but I make this little one, and can drive
very well;" and as he spoke, he held up a wand of supple whalebone,
tipped with a slender "snapper" of plaited leather, and lightly touching
the noble animal with the harmless implement, the dog gave a playful
bark, and started off on an easy trot.

"We strike off here for those black specks yonder," said La Salle; "but
what is coming behind us, George?"

"O, that is Dolland, Venner, and that set; and I guess they'll have 'a
high old time,' and no mistake."

"Well, let's take an observation, boys, and then we'll set off."

And, stopping, the party turned to survey a spectacle truly annoying to
any true sportsman, whatever may be his views on the temperance
question.

Advancing in their rear came a truck-sled, loaded with what, although
evidently a miscellaneous freight, was largely composed of liquor; for a
goodly ale-keg formed the driver's seat, a bottle-hamper the pinnacle of
the load, and a half dozen young men, who were perched wherever a seat
presented itself, filled the air with loud, and oft-repeated shouts and
roaring songs, whose inspiration could plainly be traced to certain
bottles, jugs, and flasks, with which each in turn "took an observation"
of the heavens, at about every other hundred yards. An expression of
disgust on La Salle's deeply-tanned face gradually gave way to
resignation, and then a well-founded hope irradiated his features; a new
movement of the crowd attracted his attention.

"Well, boys," he exclaimed, "you're in luck to have such a gang to come
out with, and you may count on having little or no sport to-day and
to-morrow; but they'll have to go in, in three days at farthest."

"Why so?" asked the boys, in a breath.

"Because their rum won't last them more than forty-eight hours,
especially with the amateur aid they'll get from the driver; and twelve
hours after that event takes place, they'll be in town again. But come,
they are getting near us, and are loading their guns; so let's leave
before the vicinage is dangerous."

"Why, Charley," said Waring, in astonishment, "there's no danger. Those
fellows wouldn't shoot at us. I know them."

"And so do I, my dear fellow; and that's just the reason I want to get
out of the way. If I didn't know what drunken men will do in the way of
'sporting casualties,' or felt certain that their object was to shoot
us, I should feel perfectly easy on the subject;" and setting off at
full speed, followed by Waring and the sledge, La Salle led the way to
the ice-houses, which they reached about an hour before sunset.

Drawing up by the boat, La Salle examined the load of the day, and from
it took a little case made of a candle-box with stout hinges and a
padlock. He opened it, and found, as he had ordered, a "Crimean
cooking-lantern," with spring candlestick and a pound of candles, a
small tin canister of coffee, another of sugar, some pilot bread, and
several boxes of sardines. Taking all but two of the latter from the
box, he relocked it, and carefully removing the matted straw in the
stern of his boat, placed the box under the decking, and replacing the
compressed straw, effectually hid it from sight.

"We can now have a lunch, with a hot cup of coffee, whenever we please,
and you will find some weather even yet when it will be very welcome.
Come, let us go home to-night, and get ready for to-morrow's
_charivari_, for noise will not be wanting, although game may;" and
adding his brent to the load, La Salle covered his boat, and, joined by
Davies and Creamer, who greeted the boys warmly, all went up to their
welcome, if somewhat narrow, quarters.

After tea, which boasted of fried bacon and eggs, the usual circle was
formed, and Mr. Davies, being called upon to entertain the company, said
that he was "not much of a story-teller, but had learned some facts
relating to a terrible political tumult, which took place years ago, but
was still spoken of everywhere on the island as the great 'Belfast
Riot.' I shall term it, unless some one offers a better name, the most
lively specimen we ever had of


"A CONTESTED ELECTION.

"It need hardly be said, in this company, that an election among us is a
far more exciting occasion than among our less-favored American
neighbors, who ignore the superior advantages of voting _viva voce_, and
adopt the less manly and unobtrusive medium of the ballot.

"Why, gentlemen, I venture to say, that our little capital town of C.,
with its thousand votes, presents more stir, makes more noise, drinks
more whiskey, and is the arena of more fistic science and club play,
during an ordinary election, than any city in New England, of four times
the population, during a presidential struggle. The open polling-booths
in the heart of the city surrounded by crowds of intelligent (and
highly-excited) voters; the narrow gangways crowded, rain or shine, by
those immediately claiming the right of suffrage; the narrow precincts
of the sheriff's court, the sublime majesty of that important officer;
the ineffable serenity of the city clerk; the various bearings of the
candidates or their representatives; the frantic efforts of a few
uniformed police to keep order; the evident and good-natured
determination of the crowd that the aforesaid officials shall 'have
their hands full;' the loud voices and sharp questions of the
challengers and their victim; the dainty bits of family history made
public property; the overbearing insolence of the old lawyers, and the
overweening impudence of the young ones; the open taverns; the rival
carriages for the accommodation of doubtful, drunken, and lazy voters,
together with the lively little incidents which diversify the picture as
the culminating glory of these various provocative elements,--form a
picture which it hath not entered into the heart of the average American
citizen to conceive of.

"But, however lively the picture, an election in these degenerate later
days is but a tame affair compared with those which took place during
my first years of labor in political matters. As all know, the island
was given away on one day to certain individuals, on conditions of which
nothing more may be said here than that one was, that a certain number
of settlers were to be placed on each estate within a given number of
years. Accordingly, from almost every section of the British Isles, the
proprietors sought out such emigrants as could most easily be procured.

"The result was, that we still have settlements in close proximity to
each other, whose peoples use different languages in daily conversation,
who vary radically in religious belief, have few natural traits in
common, and are almost, if not altogether, 'natural enemies' each to
each. Thus we have a settlement of Protestant Highland Scotch close by a
large estate peopled with Monaghan or Kilkenny Irish Catholics; and
perhaps a little farther on is a hamlet of Low-landers, or a village of
thrifty English folk.

"But in those days these distinctions were yet more marked, and the
feuds of Orange and Ribbon-man, Scotch and Irish, Englishman and French
Acadian, had not then given way before the softening and concealing hand
of 'Time, the great leveler;' and so some twenty years ago, during a
close contest between the then rising liberal party and the
conservatives, a riot took place near the polling-booth in the Highland
Scotch settlement of Belfast. All the combined strength of both parties
was present; the canvassing had been of the most thorough nature, and
all the antipathies of race and religion appealed to for electioneering
purposes.

"It is said that the Catholics went there expecting a fight, each armed
with a well-balanced, tough _shillelagh_, and that they made a general
attack on the Scotch. At all events, it is certain that the larger
number of the latter had to betake themselves to the nearest available
weapon, and that many were cut and bruised by the skilfully-handled
weapons of the active Irish cudgel-players. One Scotchman, however (a
fellow of unusual stature), seized a fence-rail, and, by his single arm,
stayed the tide of flight in his part of the fray. Almost frantic with
apprehension, rage, and the desire for revenge, he wielded his ponderous
weapon as if it were an ordinary club, striking such tremendous blows
that tradition has it that not one of a half-score of the best and
bravest of the Irish leaders survived the effects of those terrible and
crushing blows. Profiting by his prowess, the Scotch procured the heavy
stakes of their sleds, tough poles, pieces of firewood, and similar
ponderous weapons, and, headed by the hero of the day, made a charge,
returning with terrible severity the comparatively slight damage
inflicted by the light cudgels of the Irish.

"The details of that day of blood--how the fray began, and between whom;
the varying records of its progress as victory inclined first to one
side, and then to the other; the number of the killed and wounded, and
the names of the fallen--have never been generally known, and probably
never will be; for many of the principal actors in that savage drama
have passed away 'into the dread unknown.'

"But it is still commonly believed, and so reported, that over a score
of the Irish were killed on the field, or died of their wounds; that no
Scotchman perished; that the field where the deadliest part of the work
was done became accursed, and has lain barren to this day; and that the
leader of the Scotch became insane with the memory of his own terrible
prowess.

"Among those who have reason to remember that dreadful affair, however,
may be numbered C." (Here the narrator named an influential and wealthy
business man.) "He was travelling in that section, and being ignorant of
what had taken place, stopped at a country town to bait his horse, and
warm and refresh himself. Entering, he found the reception-room filled
with Irish, whose harsh features were inflamed with varied passions,
while the persons of many bore marks of recent injury. No one replied to
his friendly greeting, and their whole conversation was carried on in
Erse, although every intonation and gesture was replete with passion.
Suddenly he saw the landlady beckoning him out of the room, and, rising,
he approached her as if to give directions about his horse.

"Trembling with agitation, she addressed him:--

"'O, Mr. C., for the love of Heaven, run to your sleigh, and leave at
once, or your life isn't worth an hour's purchase!'

"Then, in a few words, she gave him some idea of the day's events, and
taking the measure of oats provided, Mr. C. passed on through his
enemies to the shed, where, beside a number of rude country sledges,
stood his own fleet horse and light cutter. Taking the bells off his
horse, he backed him out of the shed, and was ready for flight. On the
nearest sledge was bound a long, oblong parcel, covered with a rug.
Curiosity proved stronger than fear, and lifting a loose corner of the
scanty covering, Mr. C. found himself face to face with a corpse!

[Illustration]

"Springing into his sleigh, he put his horse to his utmost speed, and
when day dawned was a score of miles from the scene of his unexpected
danger and appalling night adventure."




CHAPTER VII.

A CHANGE IN THE WEATHER.--BREAKING UP OF THE ICE.--JIM MOUNTAIN'S FIGHT
WITH THE DEVIL.


The boys awoke somewhat disappointed the next morning, for the heavy
rain was falling, and the wind blew hard from the south-east, so that no
one in his senses would think of facing such discomfort for the sake of
sport.

"Don't look blue, George," said La Salle; "we've enough to do to prepare
for the open water, which this gale will probably lead up to the outer
edge of the bar, at least. There's the float to be painted and fitted,
and the floating decoys to be put in order; and while I use the white
paint, you and Regnie must rope and repair the decoys."

Accordingly the four sought the barn, whither Ben and Creamer had
preceded them on a similar errand. La Salle's boat was a flat-bottomed
"sculling-float," twelve feet long by three feet beam, and ten inches
deep, with a hole through the stern-board, through which, with a short,
crooked oar, a man could silently propel himself within shot of a flock
of fowl. Davies's boat aimed at the same end in another way, being a
large side-wheel paddle-boat, propelled by cranks, for two persons. Both
boats were painted white, so as to be indistinguishable from the
floating ice at a little distance. Besides these two, there were a
double boat with centre paddle-wheel, and a side-wheel worked by the
feet on the velocipede principle, belonging on the island.

The forenoon was spent as proposed, and as the bad weather still held, a
target was set up for practice with the rifle, and many excellent shots
were made from the great door of the barn. At last, however, the
impatience of the party overcame all fears of exposure, and, donning
their water-proof clothing, all went down to the East Bar to watch its
effect on the ice.

The huge floe had given way at last, and broken into many floating
islets of varied size, had become a scene of life and animation, in
striking contrast to its late icy desolation. In every direction geese,
singly and in flocks, fed along the edges of the still immovable inner
ice-fields; swam placidly among the narrow leads, or in huge bodies
blackened the open pools or the projecting points of ice. Among them,
too, wheeled many flocks of clamorous brent, while, from time to time,
the desolate cry of the Moniac duck, or the shrill, monotonous, strident
flight of the "Whistler" warned the sportsmen that new visitants were
about to greet their vision.

"You will have to change your location, Risk," said Lund, who had
accompanied them; "for you must shoot on the water-line, now the ice has
opened."

"Davies and I go home to-morrow," answered he. "I regret to leave with
such a prospect before us, but business presses; and besides, there are
new dangers now which I care not to face."

"Ay, ay! you're right, Mr. Risk," said Lund; "and although I am glad to
have you around me, I shall be glad this year when I see the last of you
safely across the Western Bar."

"There, there, Lund," said Risk; "they're young, smart, have good boats,
and, what is more, know well how to use them; and if I were less clumsy
and old, I would no more fear any danger here than I would at home.
Don't frighten the young lads with your nonsense, but let us get home to
supper, and, as it is our last night together, have a cosy evening in
the kitchen, and a good story from Ben and Charley here."

The proposition was acceded to, and after supper, Ben, with little
urging, commenced a legend of the North Shore, even now related by the
farmers around the winter's hearth with full faith in its veracity. He
termed it by its local name


"JIM MOUNTAIN'S FIGHT WITH THE DEVIL."

"Fifty years ago Jim Mountain, of Goose Creek, was as stout and jovial a
young farmer of twenty-five, as there was in his section. No ship-launch
frame-raising, logging-bee, or dance, was considered complete without
him, and while his strength was almost equal to that of any two of his
companions, his merry laugh was so infectious that even envy couldn't
resist joining in, when public opinion pronounced him 'the best man in
the county.'

"He soon married the daughter of a well-to-do farmer, and then, for the
first time, it appeared that his love of 'divershin' and whiskey, had
grown by what it fed on, and poor Mary dreaded the approach of
market-day, as he seldom returned from the shire town altogether sober,
and often not until late into the next day.

"It was in vain that his blooming Mary entreated, coaxed, cried, and
threatened; he never lost his temper; often, indeed, promised amendment,
but did in the end about the same as usual. At last the merchant with
whom he traded, a man of some little medical knowledge, finished their
business interview with the following bit of advice:--

"'Jim, it's none of my business, but you are ruining your health and
breaking your wife's heart. You are not one of the kind that show how
much they do drink; but no man in your district can match you, and when
you do get sick, I shan't expect to see you alive.'

"'An' do ye think so, then, Mr. B.?'

"'I am almost sure of it, for Long Tom Cunningham, the big ship
carpenter that you've heard your father tell of, was just such a man,
and the first touch of "the horrors" carried him off.'

"'Well, sir, I'm much obliged for your good will, any how, and after my
cousin Johnny McGrath has his bit of a spree, I'll try and leave it off
for a while, any way.'

"Johnny McGrath's 'spree,' a fulling-frolic, came off one Saturday
night, about a fortnight after this; and while the web of strong, coarse
homespun cloth, which was to furnish Mac and his boys with their year's
stock of outer clothing, was being duly lifted, rubbed, banged on a
bench, and twisted by the strong hands of about thirty men and women,
Jim led the roaring choruses, and manipulated his end of the cloth with
a vigor which at once delighted and alarmed the fair weaver thereof.

"In the dancing and whiskey-drinking which followed, Jim was in his
element; and it was nearly midnight before the party broke up, and he
was left alone with the rest of his relative's household.

"'Well, Johnny,' said he, 'you've done the decent thing this time, and
I'm glad my last spree has been at your place, for I'm going to quit
grog for a while. Give me a coal for my pipe, Jane, for it's late, and
I've a good five miles' of beach atween me an' home.'

"'Is the man mad?' said Jane, good-naturedly. 'Surely, John, you'll not
let him out of the house to-night.'

"'No, no, Jim,' said McGrath, getting between him and the door; 'out of
this you don't stir to-night; so sit down, have another drop, and tak' a
quiet night's rest.'

"'Come, John, don't anger or hinder me, for I feel strangely to-night,
and I must go home.'

"'Faith, that's all the more reason I have to keep you here. Come, sit
down, you obstinate fellow, and don't be waking the wife up just before
daybreak, only to let in a man that must be out walking all night.
Confound it, would you hit me, Jim? Sure, now, you're not angered--are
you?'

"'No, I'm not angry; but I'll not be treated like a child, nor lectered,
neither. Let me go, I tell you, or there'll be ill blood between us.
Home I'll go, I tell you!' shouted the excited man. 'Home I'm going,
_although the devil tried to stop me_;' and flinging his cousin aside as
if he were a child, he rushed out of the house, and took a narrow path
which led down to the moonlit sea-beach.

"About an hour after, a despairing cry at the door awakened McGrath and
his wearied household, and, opening it, they found a bruised, bloody,
and literally naked man, lying senseless on the threshold. With some
difficulty they recognized the features of Mountain, and it was broad
daylight before he came to himself. His story was short, but strange.

"'I took the path down to the beach, thinking to wade the narrow run at
Eel Pond, and so save a mile or two of road. It was light as day, and I
went along well enough, though I felt sad-like, an' as if somethin' were
about to happen me.

"'It's an unchancy place there, near the pond, where the great san'-hill
blew over the birch grove an' killed the trees; and last night, as I
went through them, the tall, white, broken trunks seemed almost alive.
Why, man, I'd have sworn that some of them had a dozen faces grinnin'
and laughin', and I felt all the while as if I was a fool; for, whenever
I stopped an' looked close, there was nought but knots, an' bark, an'
gnarly limbs. Still, although I'd been through them a thousan' times, I
felt afraid, for it seemed to me as if there was somebody near me _that
I couldn't see_.

"'Well, at last I got through the dead grove, an' came to the san'-plain
wher' the ribs of the old ship are stannin', an' I got to thinkin' what
she might hev' bin, fer none o' us know how many years she lay in the
san' before the great gale swept the san' off of her white bones. I
looked at her close as I passed, an' although I saw nauthin' but her
ribs, she made me think o' a 'natomy; an' I looked all around, but saw
no one, an' went down into the water, hevin' first ta'en off my shoes.

"'The cool water did feel nice; an' as I stepped ashore, I whistled up
"The Devil's Dream," an' struck out across the beach, when, looking
back, I saw, between me an' the stream, a man who made at me with
terrible ferceness. I can tell you nauthin' about him, 'cept that his
clothes were black an' strange, his face dark an' savage, an' his eyes
almost like fire. I had no doubt that he meant me harm, an' as he cam'
up, I struck out wi' all my strenth. Ye mind when I hit big Jack Ready,
an' thought I should have to flee the country. Well, I hit _him_ twicet
as hard, an' he never stopped, but came in an' clinched. My God! I'm
breathless now wi' the squeezin' I got there. I'm afraid of no man
standin' within twenty mile, at ayther Ingin hug, collar an' ilbow, or
side-hold, but I was like a child in its grip.

"'Still I fought on, though the san' flew into the air; an' through it,
like a fog, I saw the old wrack an' the dead grove, an' the fiery eyes
that glared into mine, an' I felt the grasp of a han' that seemed to
burn into my hip; an' then I knew I couldn't fight fair wi' _that_. I
drew my knife an' opened it, an' three times I thrust it to the hilt
into the side o' the black man, or devil, an' he only glared at me
fercer, an' took a stronger hold on my hip. Just at this moment I felt
the cool water at my feet, an' wi' one tremendous effort, I whirled
myself into the stream to fight it out there. A moment I lay on my back
in the shallow stream, an' then I rose to my feet. I was alone wi'
nauthin' o' what had happened, save the open knife in my han', the
trampled beach, an' my torn an' ruined clawthin'.

"'Then I remembered that old McGregor used to say that nauthin' bad
could pass runnin' water, an' I thought I'd get back to ye if I could. I
remember somethin' of tearin' through the lonely beach an' blasted
woods, of seein' more faces in the trees, an' hearin' quick footsteps on
my track, but I remember nauthin' more. Look at my hip, will you, wi'
the cannle there? It hurts me awfully.'

"The candle fell from Jane's shaking hands, but was caught by her
husband before it was extinguished.

"'As God lives, ye have spoken the truth, for there is the mark o' the
devil's grip;' and greatly to the terror of all, there appeared on the
hip of the exhausted man the black imprint of a thumb and four fingers.

"My informant told me that, fifty years later, after Mountain had raised
a large family of children, and passed a life subsequently innocent of
his youthful excesses, the same indelible marks were left to tell of the
terrible conflict of that memorable night; and none of his neighbors
ever doubted the literal truth of his strange story, save one.

"That man was B., who never undeceived Mountain, or tried to do so; but
in detailing the story to my father, closed the recital thus: 'I have
always thought that he had an attack of delirium tremens, and that he
fancied the assault of the goblin; for I forgot to tell you that next
morning they followed his track, finding his shoes and fragments of his
attire on the opposite side of the run, which was torn up, with the
marks of a terrible struggle and many feet. Probably he tore off his own
clothes in the fancied fight, drew his knife, struck at "an air-born
fantasy," and was finally partially restored by falling into the water,
after which he completed his exhaustion by running back to the house.'

"'Have you seen the marks?' asked my father.

"'Yes; I saw them at the time,' slowly answered Mr. B.

"'Were they as described?'

"'Very like the grip of a hand; one dark impression on the back of the
left hip, and four smaller ones in a row on the front,' said B.

"'And how do you account for those?' asked my father.

"Mr. B. hesitated, and then answered candidly, 'I don't know what to
think of that myself. I have sometimes thought that a fall among the
many roots and fallen trunks of trees, which then strewed that desolate
place, may have caused such injuries; but why did they remain apparent
long after discolorations of such a nature should have disappeared?
Perhaps imagination may have had its effect, and made the impressions
indelible. But if there _is_ any truth in old-world stories, few places
fitter for such horrors can be found than was that drear waste of sand,
destitute of all signs of man's proximity, bounded on one side by a
blackened forest, on the other by the sailless sea, and containing only
the whitened ribs of a long-forgotten wreck. None of the folk around
here, sir, join in my doubts as to the reality of Mountain's fight with
the devil.'"

       *       *       *       *       *

As Ben closed, a sound of sleigh-bells came up the road, and Lund opened
the door, at which appeared a light sleigh driven by one of Risk's sons.

"You and uncle are wanted in town at once. L. has sent you this letter,
and says--" And he whispered a few words in his father's ear.

"I came out to-night, for the ice is getting very bad, and a horse was
lost crossing the North River at Duckendorff's to-day. It is freezing
to-night, but the moon shows at times through the clouds, and we can get
home before one o'clock."

An hour later, Risk and the elder Davies bade a regretful farewell to
their young companions. "I am sorry," said the former, "that as yet we
have had no story from you, La Salle; but I hope to see you at my house
in C., and hear it there when your trip is over. Take care of yourself,
and make Lund out a false prophet. Good night, captain, you old
croaker;" and the sleigh disappeared in the shadows of the
forest-covered lane which led to the beach.

"Well, boys," said La Salle, "the best of our evenings are over, and we
must look to boat and gun for our best sport."

"We must have your story, though," said Ben.

"O, of course; but not to-night, for we have much to do to-morrow, to
get our boats down for the open-water shooting."

With this no one disagreed; and half an hour later, all were fast
asleep.




CHAPTER VIII.

FLOAT-SHOOTING.--A GENERAL FIELD-DAY.--CHANGES OF THE ICE.


The next morning, the boats, which were all provided with runners, were
drawn to the bar, and Carlo's sled carried, besides the lunch and
ammunition of the party, a dozen wooden duck decoys, weighted and roped,
for open water.

Davies and Creamer gave up their box and outfit to one-armed Peter, as
they were about to try their new paddle-boat. She was duly launched, and
Ben placed himself forward, between the paddle-boxes, ready to do the
steering and shooting, while Creamer acted as the motive power,
transmitted by a belt and pulleys. Although somewhat high out of water,
she moved off easily, and made little noise when running slowly; and
taking the first of the ebb, the pair moved eastward into the opening
ice.

George and Ben Lund, in their new-fashioned centre-wheel, made poorer
progress, but hurried out "to get ahead of the skimmin'-dish," as they
styled La Salle's light, shallow craft. He let them go, and stationing
George and Regnar in the ice-boat, put out his floating decoys in the
nearest waters, and, cutting slabs of ice, built a high wall around his
own boat, which he drew up on the ice. Carlo incontinently plunged into
the straw under the half-deck of the larger boat, and soon all was ready
for the expected birds.

Meanwhile, upon the stranded berg which lay immovable off the southern
face of the island, gathered the new comers, whose Bacchanal approach
has of late been chronicled. Had they had any outfit of decoys, and
known how to use them, they could not but have had good sport; and even
as it was, so many birds passed and repassed them, that a good shot
could not have failed to secure at least a few ducks. But, however
unfortunate in securing any trophies, they failed not in the weight or
constancy of their fire.

Not a flock passed within a quarter of a mile but received a volley; not
a loon that showed his distant head above water but went down under the
fire of a platoon; and not a frightened duck darted overhead but heard
the air behind him torn with whistling shot enough to have exterminated
his whole tribe.

From time to time a lull in the storm would occur, and then peals of
laughter would come across the intervening waters; and looking up, the
irritated sportsmen generally beheld a tableau of inverted
pocket-flasks, and feats of strength with a rapidly lightening ale-keg.
But, although our friends bore the proximity of these city gunners with
great patience for a while, an event soon occurred which brought matters
to a focus.

A flock of geese were seen approaching from the eastward, and La Salle,
cautioning the boys, crouched down in his boat and "called." Peter
followed suit, and so did the party on the bergs. The flock swung within
a hundred yards of Peter, who held his fire, and then, seeing the
floating decoys, swung round to leeward of them, and setting their
wings, scaled slowly in, passing within about two hundred and fifty
yards of the party on the berg.

Of course they opened fire at once, with shot of all sorts and sizes,
doing no execution but sending a bullet from one of their guns straight
over the heads of La Salle and his friends. A flock or two of ducks and
brent made similar attempts to alight, but every shot was spoiled in the
same way.

La Salle was indignant, and the boys were at a white heat, when, without
any birds being between them, the report of a heavily charged gun was
heard, and a few heavy shot struck the ice near the boats, while the
drunken crowd yelled in triumph as the water, by its ripples, showed the
great distance attained by the shot.

"I'll shoot, too, the next chance, and so may you, boys. Elevate well,
and fire when the birds are between us and the berg," said La Salle.

It was not long before three geese attempted to scale in as the others
had done, and were fired at as before, the bullet this time striking the
water in line of the boat, and whistling a few feet above it. The birds,
somewhat frightened, got within a hundred yards before swinging off, and
all three discharged their large shot simultaneously. A single goose
fell with a broken wing, and Carlo, springing out of the boat, plunged
into the water. Charley watched the effect of his shot on the party on
the berg. One stood just then in bold relief against the distant
horizon, displaying the broader part of his physique to view while
taking an observation with a brandy-bottle. Suddenly a faint yell was
heard, the bottle dropped on the berg, the hands that had held it
frantically clutched at the coat-tails of the victim, and an agonized
_pas seul_ told that the "Baby" had well avenged the wrongs of her
owner.

Half an hour later, the party had evacuated their position, bag and
baggage, "carrying their wounded," who, from the stern-sheets of their
boat, shook his fist in savage pantomime at the innocent La Salle and
his amused companions. Some weeks later he learned that a single large
shot had, without piercing the cloth, raised a contusion about the size
of a pigeon's egg, on muscles whose comfort, for a fortnight after,
emphatically tabooed the use of chairs, and made a feather bed an
indispensable adjunct to repose.

After a long chase Carlo secured his bird, and swimming to the nearest
shore, ran around the edge of the ice, in a way which showed his
appreciation of the difference between running, and swimming against a
five-knot tide. Securing the bird, he was allowed to shake himself, and
was then called into the boat, from which a good lookout was kept, as
there now existed some chance for good management and skilful shooting.

The first victims were a flock of black ducks, which with the usual
readiness to decoy of these birds, had flown in and lit among the decoys
before La Salle could warn his boys, who had their backs turned at the
time. They managed, however, to hear him, and poured in a sharp volley,
killing four in the water, while La Salle picked a brace out on the
wing.

Regnar, who had a breech-loader, got ready in time to kill a brac

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/21607