The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador Part 7

He had now been nearly three days without eating. He was still several miles from the tilt where he had a scant supply that had been reserved for his journey home. To proceed to the tilt was obviously impossible, and he could only perish by remaining where he was.

Utterly exhausted after a fruitless effort to flounder forward, he sat down upon his flatsled, and looked out over the silent snow waste.

Weakened with hunger, it seemed to him that he had reached the end of his endurance. So far as he knew there was not another human being within a hundred miles of where he sat, and he had no expectation or slightest hope of any one coming to his a.s.sistance. "I was scrammed,"

said he, which meant, in our vernacular, he was "all in."

Gilbert is a fine Christian man, and all the time, as he told me in relating his experience, he had been praying G.o.d to show him a way to safety. He never was a coward, and he was not afraid to die, for he had faced death many times before and men of the wilderness become accustomed to the thought that sometime, out there in the silence and alone, the hand of the grim messenger may grasp them. But he was afraid for Mrs. Blake and the four little ones at home. Were he to perish there would be no one to earn a living for them. He was frightened to think of the privations those he loved would suffer.

Suddenly, in the distance, he glimpsed two objects moving over the snow. As they came nearer he discovered that they were men. He shouted and waved his arms, and there was an answering signal. Presently two Mountaineer Indians approached, hauling loaded toboggans, laughing and shouting a greeting as they recognized him.

"'Twas an answer to my prayers," said Gilbert in relating the incident to me. "I was fair scrammed when I saw them Indians. They were the first Indians I had seen the whole winter. They weren't pretty, but just then they looked to me like angels from heaven, and just as pretty as any angels could look."

The Indians had recently made a killing, and their toboggans were loaded with fresh caribou meat. They made Gilbert eat until they nearly killed him with kindness, and they had an extra pair of snowshoes, which they gave him.

This is the life of the trapper on The Labrador. This is the sort of man he is--hardy, patient, brave and reverent. He is a man of grit and daring, as he must be to cheerfully meet, with a stout heart and a smile, the constant hards.h.i.+ps and adventures that beset him.

Dr. Grenfell declares that it is no hards.h.i.+p to devote his life to helping men like this. His work among them brings constant joy to him.

They appreciate him, and he has grown to look upon them as all members of his big family. He takes a personal and devoted interest in each.

It is a great comfort to the men to know that if any are sick or injured at home while they are away on the trails the mission doctor will do his best to heal them. Before Grenfell went to The Labrador there was no doctor to call upon the whole winter through.

The trapping season for fur ends in April. Then the trapper "strikes up" his traps, hangs them in trees where he will find them the following fall, packs his belongings on his toboggan and returns home, unless he is to remain to hunt bear. In that case he must wait for the bears to come forth from their winter's sleep, and this will keep the hunter in the wilderness until after the "break-up" comes and the ice goes out. Those who go far inland usually wait in any case until the ice is out of the streams and boat or canoe traveling is possible and safe.

The break-up sets in, usually, early in June. Then come torrential rains. The snow-covered wilderness is transformed into a sea of slush.

New brooks rise everywhere and pour down with rush and roar into lakes and rivers. The rivers over-flow their banks. Trees are uprooted and are swept forward on the flood. Broken ice jams and pounds its way through the rapids with sound like thunder. The spring break-up is an inspiring and wonderful spectacle.

When the hunting season ends and the trappers return from their winter trails, they enjoy a respite at home mending fis.h.i.+ng nets, repairing boats and making things tidy and s.h.i.+p-shape for the summer's fis.h.i.+ng.

Everyone is now looking forward with keen antic.i.p.ation to the first run of fish. From the time the ice goes out all one hears along the coast is talk of fish. "Any signs of fish, b'y?" One hears it everywhere, for everybody is asking everybody else that question.

In Hamilton Inlet and Sandwich Bay salmon fisheries are of chief importance. Salmon here are all salted down in barrels and not tinned, as on the Pacific coast. Once there was a salmon cannery in Sandwich Bay, but the Hudson's Bay Company bought it and demolished it, as there was doubtless less work and more profit for the Company in salted salmon. Elsewhere the fisheries are mainly for cod.

In a frontier land it is not easy to earn a living. Everybody must work hard all the time. Men, women, boys and girls all do their share at the fis.h.i.+ng. Women and children help to split and cure the fish. It is a proud day for any lad when he is big enough and strong enough to pull a stroke with the heavy oar, and go out to sea with his father.

The Labrador, or Arctic, current now and again keeps ice drifting along the coast the whole summer through. When ice is there fishermen cannot set their nets and fish traps, for the ice would tear the gear and ruin it. Neither can they fish successfully with hook and line when the ice is in. When this happens few fish are caught.

Then, too, there are seasons when game and animals move away from certain regions, and then the trapper cannot get them. Perhaps they go farther inland, and too far for him to follow. I have seen times when ptarmigans were so thick men killed them for dog food, and perhaps the next year there would not be a ptarmigan to be found to put into the pot for dinner. I have seen the snow trampled down everywhere in the woods and among the brush by innumerable snowshoe rabbits, and I have seen other years when not a single rabbit track was to be found anywhere. It is the same with caribou and the fur bearing animals as well. In those years when game is scarce the people are hard put to it to get a bit of fresh meat to eat.

When no fresh meat is to be had salt fish, bread (rarely with b.u.t.ter) and tea, with mola.s.ses as sweetening, is the diet. There is no milk, even for the babies. If all the salt fish has been sold or traded in for flour and tea, bread and tea three times a day is all there is to eat.

People cannot keep well on just bread and tea, or even bread and salt fish and tea. It is not hard for us to imagine how we would feel if every meal we had day in and day out was only bread and tea, and sometimes not enough of that.

X

THE SEAL HUNTER

No less perilous is the business of fisherman and sealer than that of hunter and trapper. Every turn a man makes down on The Labrador is likely to carry him into some adventure that will place his life in danger, at sea as on land. But there is no way out of it if a living is to be made.

It is a strange fact that one never recognizes a great deal of danger in the life that one is accustomed to living, no matter how perilous it may seem to others. If a Labradorman were to come to any of our towns or cities his heart would be in his mouth at every turn, for a time at least, dodging automobiles and street cars. It would appear to him an exceedingly hazardous existence that we live, and he would long to be back to the peace and quiet and safety of his sea and wilderness. And our streets would be dangerous ground to him, indeed, until he became accustomed to dodging motor cars. He is nimble enough, and on his own ground could put most of us to shame in that respect, but here he is lacking in experience.

The same hunter will face the storms and solitude of the wilderness trail without ever once feeling that he is in danger or afraid. He knows how to do it. That is the life that he has been reared to live.

The average city man would perish in a day if left alone to care for himself on a trapper's trail. He has never learned the business, and he would not know how to take care of himself.

The Labradorman being both hunter and fisherman, is perfectly at home both in the wilderness and on the sea. He has the dangers of both to meet, but he does not recognize them as dangerous callings, though every year some mate or neighbor loses his life. "'Tis the way o' th'

Lard."

Ice still covers the Labrador harbors in May, and this is when the seal hunt begins, or, as the liveyere says, he goes "swileing." He calls a seal a "swile." With a harpoon attached to a long line he stations himself at a breathing hole in the ice which the seals under the ice have kept open, and out of which, now and again, one raises its nose and fills its lungs with air, for seals are animals, not fish, and must have air to breathe or they will drown. The hole is a small one, but large enough to cast the spear, or harpoon, into.

Seals are exceedingly shy animals, and the slightest movement will frighten them away. Therefore the seal hunter must stand perfectly still, like a graven image, with harpoon poised, and that is pretty cold work in zero weather. If luck is with him he will after a time see a small movement in the water, and a moment later a seal's nose will appear. Then like a flash of lightning, he casts the harpoon, and if his aim is good, as it usually is, a seal is fast on the barbs of the harpoon.

The harpoon point is attached to a long line, while the harpoon shaft, by an ingenious arrangement, will slip free from the point. Now, while the shaft remains in the hands of the hunter, the line begins running rapidly down through the hole, for the seal in a vain endeavor to free itself dives deeply. The other end of the line also remaining in the hands of the hunter is fastened to the shaft of the harpoon, and there is a struggle. In time, the seal, unable to return to its hole for air, is drowned, and then is hauled out through the hole upon the ice.

These north Atlantic seals, having no fine fur like the Pacific seals, are chiefly valuable for their fat. The pelts are, however, of considerable value to the natives. The women tan them and make them into watertight boots or other clothing. Of course a good many of them find their way to civilization, where they are made into pocketbooks and bags, and they make a very fine tough leather indeed. The flesh is utilized for dog food, though, as in the case of young seals particularly, it is often eaten by the people, particularly when other sorts of meat is scarce. Most of the people, and particularly the Eskimos, are fond of the flippers and liver.

Sometimes the seals come out of their holes to lie on the ice and bask in the sun. Then the hunter, simulating the movements of a seal, crawls toward his game until he is within rifle shot.

Should a gale of wind arise suddenly, the ice may be separated into pans and drift abroad before the seal hunters can make their escape to land. In that case a hunter may be driven to sea on an ice pan, and he is fortunate if his neighbors discover him and rescue him in boats.

After the ice goes out, those who own seal nets set them, and a great many seals are caught in this way. At this season the seals frequently are seen sunning themselves on the sh.o.r.e rocks, and the hunters stalk and shoot them.

Newfoundlanders carry on their sealing in steamers built for the purpose. They go out to the great ice floe, far out to sea and quite too far for the liveyeres to reach in small craft. Here the seals are found in thousands. These vessels, depending upon the size, bring home a cargo sometimes numbering as many as 20,000 to 30,000 seals in a single s.h.i.+p, and there are about twenty-five s.h.i.+ps in the fleet.

This terrible slaughter has seriously decreased the numbers. The Labrador Eskimos used to depend upon them largely for their living.

They can do this no longer, for not every season, as formerly, are there enough seals to supply needs. All of the five varieties of North Atlantic seals are caught on the coast--harbor, jar, harp, hooded and square flipper. The last named is also called the great bearded seal and sometimes the sealion. The first named is the smallest of all.

Scarce a year pa.s.ses that we do not hear of a serious disaster in the Newfoundland sealing fleet. Sometimes severe snow storms arise when the men are hunting on the floe, and then the men are often lost.

Sometimes the s.h.i.+ps are crushed in the big floe and go to the bottom.

The latest of these disasters was the disappearance of the _Southern Cross_, with a crew of one hundred seventy-five men.

One of my good friends, Captain Jacob Kean, used to command the _Virginia Lake_, one of the largest of the sealers. She carried a crew of about two hundred men. A few years before Captain Kean lost his life in one of the awful sea disasters of the coast, he related to me one of his experiences at the sealing.

Captain Kean was in luck that year, and found the seals early and in great numbers. The crew had made a good hunt on the floe, and they are loading them with about a third of a cargo aboard when suddenly the ice closed in and the _Virginia Lake_ was "pinched," with the result that a good sized hole was broken in her planking on the port side forward below the water line. The sea rushed in, and it looked for a time as though the vessel would sink, and there were not boats enough to accommodate the crew even if boats could have been used, which was hardly possible under the conditions, for the sea was clogged with heaving ice pans.

The pumps were manned, and Captain Kean, and with every man not working the pumps, with feverish haste s.h.i.+fted the cargo to the starboard side and aft. Presently, with the weight s.h.i.+fted, the s.h.i.+p lay over on her starboard side and her bow rose above the water until the crushed planking and the hole were above the water line.

The hole now exposed, Captain Kean stuffed it with sea biscuit, or hardtack. Over this he nailed a covering of canvas. Tubs of b.u.t.ter were brought up, and the canvas thoroughly and thickly b.u.t.tered. This done, a sheathing of planking was spiked on over the b.u.t.tered canvas.

Then the cargo was re-s.h.i.+fted into place, the vessel settled back upon an even keel, and it was found that the leak was healed. The sea biscuit, absorbing moisture, swelled, and this together with the canvas, b.u.t.ter and planking proved effectual. Captain Kean loaded his s.h.i.+p with seals and took her into St. John's harbor safely with a full cargo.

The following year the _Virginia Lake_ was again pinched by the ice, but this time was lost. Captain Kean and his crew took refuge on the ice floe, and were fortunately rescued by another sealer. When Captain Kean lost his life a few years later the sealing fleet lost one of its most successful masters. He was a fine Christian gentleman and as able a seaman as ever trod a bridge.

But this is the life of the sealer and the fisherman of the northern sees. Terrible storms sometimes sweep down that rugged, barren coast and leave behind them a harvest of wrecked vessels and drowned men and dest.i.tute families that have lost their only support.

These were the conditions that Grenfell found in Labrador, and this was the breed of men, these hunters and trappers, fishermen and sealers--st.u.r.dy, honest, G.o.d-fearing folk--with whom Grenfell took up his life. He had elected to share with them the hards.h.i.+ps of their desolate land and the perils of their ice-choked sea. They needed him, and to them he offered a service that was Christ-like in its breadth and devotion.

It was a peculiar field. No ordinary man could have entered it with hope of success. Mere ability as a physician and surgeon of wide experience was not enough. In addition to this, success demanded that he be a Christian gentleman with high ideals, and freedom from bigotry. Courage, moral as well as physical, was a necessity. Only a man who was himself a fearless and capable navigator could make the rounds of the coast and respond promptly to the hurried and urgent calls to widely separated patients. Constant exposure to hards.h.i.+p and peril demanded a strong body and a level head. Balanced judgment, high executive and administrative ability, deep insight into human character and unbounded sympathy for those who suffered or were in trouble were indispensable characteristics. All of these attributes Grenfell possessed.

A short time before Mr. Moody's death, Grenfell met Moody and told him of the inspiration he had received from that sermon, delivered in London many years before by the great evangelist.