Chapter 4

"Now then," muttered Tom, "I gotta creep an' creep an' crawl an' crawl till I get near, an' then I gotta lie down an' scrape along on my tummy same as if I was a seal myself. That's what I gotta do."

Suiting the action to the word, he started on, watching all the time that little dark spot on which all depended.

He could imagine the children waiting at home and asking their mother every little while: "When's Papa comin' back? Is he goin' to bring us somepin' to eat?"

"I wonder if that there Grenfell man is ever goin' to git this far north?" Tom asked himself as he crept toward the seal. "If us could only git a chance to sell our fish for better'n two cents a pound, after us gets 'em salted an' dried! Them traders, they bleeds the life outa us. They say Grenfell when he comes is a-goin' to fight them traders an' put 'em outa business!"

The swift wind was throwing stinging bits of ice, sharp as needles, in his face. He drew his cap about his ears more closely and plodded on. The further he walked the further away the seal seemed to be. He was half crouching as he walked: he wished he might cover himself with a skin and crawl on all fours. But if he started to crawl now--he felt as though it would be a year before he could get near enough to shoot.

"Please, God"--he spoke to God as naturally as to his family--"bless this ole gun an' make her shoot straight and he'p me knock that seal over, the first shot. For it don't look like there's goin' to be more'n one shot, an' if I don't kill her there's my whole family's goin' to starve and mebbe a whole lot o' other people that's a-lookin' for what they think I'm a-goin' to bring back."

Now it was time to flatten himself down on the ice and scrape along, like another seal. It was hard work--try it yourself, if you don't think so!--and it took lots of patience.

Now he could see the seal raise its head and look about. He mustn't give it a chance to ask questions of the wind, because the wind might say: "Look out, Mr. or Mrs. Seal! There's a man creeping and creeping toward you with a gun, and in a minute that man is going to shoot, and you'll be sorry you hung around here and didn't dive through the ice the very first second your nose told you you'd better!"

He raised his gun, and prayed again--this time a very short prayer: "O Lord, bless this gun!" And he fired.

The black spot had not vanished. It was motionless. "Did I hit him?" Tom asked himself. "Better try another shot an' make sure."

He was a long time sighting--and he imagined the spot moved a little as he did so.

Then he fired again.

There it was still. Now he dared to believe he had hit the seal. Dragging the gun he crawled nearer and nearer. Still the seal did not move.

Now he could see the whole animal clearly.

The sight was joyful.

"Glory be!" he shouted. Then he jumped up and capered about madly on the ice. It was a nice, fat, luscious, flipper seal and dead as a door-nail. Enough for a banquet for all of the tiny village of St. Anthony. And if Dr. Grenfell should be there when he and the dogs got back with it, the Doctor should have the largest, tenderest, juiciest steak of all.

The wind was setting toward the dogs. He could barely see them there, far, far behind him--making a black spot where they slept, exactly as though they were another seal.

So he put two fingers to his lips and blew a long, shrill blast.

It was the signal for which they had been waiting. On they came like two wild young race-horses, each eager to be first to greet their master.

They must have known well enough that he had killed the seal. They had hunted with him so often that if they had been human the man and the dogs could hardly have spoken to each other and understood better.

"Good old Jim! Good old Jack!" The dogs bounced round him like india rubber, mad with delight.

"Look what we gotta take back! Ain't that somethin' to make the old lady's eyes pop outa her head? First big seal's been caught off here for months! Enough to save the whole village from starvation. An' you dogs is to have some of it too, all o' you. Here's to begin with!"

He drew his clasp-knife and snicker-snacked two good-sized bits from the tail of the fallen monarch. He threw the meat to the dogs, who had it down in a gulp and a swallow and then stood with their ears up, like the Jack-in-the-pulpit, to know if there would be more.

"No, boys, that's enough to start back on!" He produced straps and ropes from the bread-bag and rigged up a harness so that the dogs might haul the seal, giving himself the end of a rope, to pull more than his share of the heavy carcass.

"Wisht we could git a coupla polar bears too!" he laughed. "But I don't know how we could pull to the shore any more'n what we got here. Well, when we've got this et we'll be comin' back fer more, won't we, boys?"

And the dogs, tugging and wagging as they plodded shoreward, seemed to agree.

In spite of the weight of the seal, the trip back did not seem nearly so long. For you know how it is--when your heart is light any burden you carry doesn't count for nearly so much.

Tom Bradley in spite of pulling so hard was singing to himself like a kettle on a stove. And the dogs, too, would have spared breath to bark joyously, if huskies ever barked. But no well-bred husky makes remarks of that sort.

Tom stopped to rest, and sat on an ice-hummock, the dogs with their heads against his knee, their tongues lolling out.

"'Member that time we chased the ole bear?" he laughed. "That was the time I couldn't do nothing with you! You was young dogs then, an' you got so excited you wouldn't listen to nothin'!

"You just went a-racin' an' a-tearin' on from the time you seen 'im. O' course, as a driver don't have no reins, an' we only got a whip, we can't pull you up if you really wanta go. We can just holler 'left' an' 'right' an' 'stop' an' 'go ahead.' But my oh my! We sure did stack up against trouble that day.

"You an' the rest o' the team, you waded right into that bear before I'd got you cut loose from the traces. The air was full o' bear-meat an' dog-fur flyin'. Guess the bear didn't know no difference between you an' wolves. There's many a man has made the same mistake.

"There was old Mr. Bear standin' up on his hind legs battin' away like he was wound up, handin' out punishment like it was a boxin' match, and you fellows hollerin' bloody murder.

"You done more'n wolves would 'a' done. Wolves wouldn't 'a' tackled a bear that way--unless it was a great big crowd o' wolves an' one lone, lorn, small bear.

"He was a buster, he was, an' there was only six o' you. But you stood right up-ta him all right! You remember, don't you?"

Jim and Jack flopped their tails on the ice as if to say yes. Their mouths were wide open--it looked as if they were laughing in delight to be reminded of the battle.

"Say, you dogs certainly are the willin', hard-workin' fellers when you're fed up right. I believe you'd rather haul a sled than eat. You rascals! 'Member the time you et my gloves just as I was goin' to start? I had to larrup outa you that trick you had when you was young o' gobblin' your own harness when you wasn't watched. I sure do hate to hit you. One o' these whips 'll bite a hole in a door twenty feet off: I've seen ole Pop Rinker drive a nail in a board with one.

"When we get back, if that ther Dr. Grenfell has come we'll get some other dogs an' take him out for a ride. He'll have to have a team o' dogs. Can't get along in this country without you dogs--not till they have reindeer. Heaven knows, the Doctor'll have miles and miles o' country to cover, to get round to all the people hereabouts that needs him. Ain't it a great an' mighty blessin' this country's now a-goin' to have a doctor all our own, all our very own?"

When they got back to the hamlet with their seal, there was a jollification.

Tom Bradley could have been Mayor, or King, or anything he wanted.

There was plenty of one thing in that place--and that was fire-wood, from the spruces and firs alongshore.

So they built a monstrous pyramid, big enough to cook twenty seals, and round the community bonfire they collected, dogs and all, for a feast. The children shouted in glee and clapped their hands. The mothers were happier for themselves than for their babies. And their joy was the greater because word had come that Dr. Grenfell was finding his way in the little steamer, the _Julia Sheridan_, through a channel behind the islands and was likely to be in their midst at any hour of any day.

Next day, the Doctor came. Such hand-shaking and back-slapping and outcries of honest pleasure as greeted him! And from the very first minute there were anxious appeals for his aid.

"Doctor, would ye please come to see my old woman?"

"What's the matter with her?"

"Oh, Doctor, she does be took wonderful bad. Sometimes the wind rises an' it goes all up an' down an' it settles in her teeth an' the pains shoots her in the stummick an' we has to take hold of her arms an' pull 'em out and she howls like a dog an' we dunno what's the matter. Would you please come an' see? She's askin' us to kill her she's in such punishment, but us didn't think us'd ought to do it without askin' you. Would you please come 'n' see?"

In that first winter Grenfell was "at home" three Sundays only, and he had to cover fifteen hundred miles behind the dogs. Sometimes they were heart-breaking, bone-racking miles. Sometimes they were as smooth and easy as a skating-rink. But not very often.

One day he had a run of seventy miles to make across the frozen country.

The path was not broken out--it wasn't even cut and blazed.

Just once had the leading dog made the journey.

But because he had made it once--they left it all to him to choose the way to go.

Straight on the good dog went, never stopping to turn round and look in the face of the driver, the way dogs will.

The way--such as it was--took them over wide lakes, and through thick woods deep-hung with snow.

"Halt!" called Grenfell. The driver gave the command to the dogs. They stopped and rested while the men explored.

Sure enough, the leading dog was right. A climb to the top of a high tree showed the "leads" and proved to the men that they were traveling in the right direction: and the compass said so too.

Again and again they stopped--and every time it proved that the dog was right.

On journey after journey of this kind, round about St. Anthony on that far northern peninsula of Newfoundland, Grenfell and the dogs he drove got to know and love one another better.

Grenfell has done seventy-five miles in a day easily: but how far one goes depends on the state of the ice and snow and the roughness of the trail: sometimes five miles a day is as much as the dogs, pulling their very hearts out, are able to cover. Six miles an hour is an average rate of speed when it is "good going." Once the Doctor made twenty-one miles in a little more than two hours, over level ice.

The building of the sled, or komatik, is a most important matter. The Doctor prefers one eleven feet long, of black spruce, with runners an inch thick, covered with spring steel. With such a sled, and a good team of dogs attached with proper traces, travel on firm and level snow is an exhilarating experience. But a thousand and one things may go wrong, the dogs when not running are forever picking bloody quarrels, and continual vigilance is the price of a swift, smooth passage.

A member of Grenfell's staff had crossed a neck of land between two bays, and was "twenty miles from anywhere," when his dogs struck the fresh trail of deer.

At such times the dogs are likely to take leave of all their senses save the instinct of the chase. These plucky beasts were no exception to the rule.

As they were short of food, the two teams were hitched to one sled, and the other sled, laden, was left in charge of a boy, while the men gave chase to the caribou. Like Casabianca on the burning deck, the boy had been told not to stir from that chilly, lonesome spot.

But just as the men got under way, a terrible snowstorm sprang up from nowhere, and so enveloped and bewildered the hunters that for two days they wandered, till they lost all hope.

Then, by great good luck, starving and worn out, they came to a little house many long and weary miles from where the boy was left with the komatiks.

They sent a relief team back to find him. There he was, standing by the sleds like a good, true soldier, just where they told him to remain. He was bound to be faithful unto death, even though he should freeze stiff for his obedience to orders.

Another time, the team was halted in a wood at nightfall, and Grenfell and his comrades started to walk on snowshoes to the village six miles distant.

They lost their way, and found themselves by nightfall at the foot of steep cliffs which they could not get round, though the village was hardly more than a mile away and its lights twinkled them a warm yellow welcome like friendly eyes.

The only thing to do was to fight their way up and over the rocks. As they came to the top, they found two tired men who knew the way, but were so weary they had made up their minds to flop down in the snow for the night.

But Grenfell started a fire, and served out some bits of sweet cake he carried: so that presently they took heart to go on. If they had not done so, they might all have frozen to death in the snow, for the night was bitterly cold and they were perspiring from their hard work, so that their clothes were turning as stiff as suits of armor with the ice. As it was, the whole party reached the village safely, and came back next day to find the dogs and the sleds and bring them in.

A lumber mill was started on a bay sixty miles below St. Anthony, and a boiler weighing three tons was landed and set in place with the whole neighborhood helping. After Christmas Grenfell decided to make the run thither with the dogs from St. Anthony.

There was no trail. Most of the way the journey was through virgin forest. There were windfalls and stumps and bushes with pointed rocks amid the snow--offering no end of pitfalls where a man might break his ankle and lie groaning and helpless as a wounded caribou till he died.

Nobody they could find had ever made the trip. But they had to know without delay how the boiler worked and how the mill was going. So off they started, gay as a circus parade, telling themselves they would do the distance in two days.

Not so. At the end of two days they were still wrangling with mean little scrub bushes, fallen rotten logs and the pointed rocks treacherously sheeted with ice and snow.

If they struggled to the top of a snow-laden spruce for an outlook, all they saw was more of the same old thing--a scowling landscape of white-clad woods and lonesome ponds. The compass always seemed to lead them straight into the thick of the worst places.

They took the wrong turning to get round a big hill, and found a river which they thought would lead them to the head of the bay where the mill stood.

But the river was a raging torrent, which leapt among the rocks, made rapids and falls, and left gaping holes in the ice into which the dogs fell, snarling their traces and their tempers and many times risking a broken leg.

Still the brave little beasts of burden strained and tugged forward, encouraged by the shouts of the men.

They couldn't get away from the river, for the banks were too steep. By and by they reached a ravine where the water boiled and churned and raced along in its great rocky trough too rapidly to be frozen, even by the intense cold that prevailed. It seemed as if they must be halted here--but that is not the way with men of Newfoundland and the Labrador.

The only thing to do was to chop a passage through the ice along the bank--like making a tow-path for a canal.

After they had fought their way through the narrows, they yearned for sleep. So they built a fire, and felled tree-trunks twenty feet long into it, till they had a "gorgeous blaze." Then they dug holes in the snow, deep as bear's dens, broke loose from their stiff, icy clothes, got into their sleeping bags, and slept the sleep of the just till the golden sun warmed them with its morning blessing.

The rest of the way gave them no trouble. They got a royal welcome from the hands at the mill. It was such a great event, in fact, that a holiday was declared, and all hands went "rabbiting." At the end of the day they built another mighty fire of logs, gathered round it with steaming cocoa and pork buns, and decided all over again that life was worth living and that moving a lumber-mill on an Arctic fore-shore is sheer fun, if you only think so.

Not long after an experimental fox farm was begun. The farm part of it is not so hard as the foxes. All you need for the farm is a few poles and some wire netting.

They picked up a dozen couples of foxes--red, white, cross, and one silver pair. A Harvard professor describes moving day when foxes were being brought on the little steamer to St. Anthony. "Dr. Grenfell at one time had fifteen little foxes aboard.... Some of these little animals had been brought aboard in blubber casks, and their coats were very sticky. After a few days they were very tame and played with the dogs; they were all over the deck, fell down the companionway, were always having their tails and feet stepped on, and yelping for pain, when not yelling for food. The long-suffering seaman who took care of them said, 'I been cleaned out dat fox box. It do be shockin'. I been in a courageous turmoil my time, but dis be de head smell ever I witnessed.'"

Probably the fox farm suffered from too much publicity. A mother silver fox is one of the scariest of creatures, and is known to "kill her children to save their lives" when a thunderstorm comes on, or visitors are alarming. Most fox farms are therefore in the depths of the woods: and the path to them is kept a dark secret by the owners. But the farmers at St. Anthony's were green to the business, and they let the fishermen come in numbers to see the show, not realizing what the consequences would be. The red and the cross foxes seemed pleased to entertain guests; not so with the white foxes, and the precious silver foxes were the shyest of all. Not a pup lived to grow up. Many were born, but their parents killed them all. By and by, after a mortal plague broke out among the animals, the farm was converted into a garden with a glass frame for seeding vegetables.

But others, with more science at their command, developed a profitable industry in Quebec, Labrador and in Prince Edward Island. In the year the war began a silver vixen and her brood were sold for ten thousand dollars. A wild fox, sold for twenty-five dollars, was resold for a thousand. There is money in the business, properly conducted. For those who want wild animals to have fair play, there is satisfaction in the thought that to get fox fur by way of breeding is infinitely more humane than to get it by way of the trap, whose cruel teeth may hold the animals through hours and days of suffering till the hunter comes.

V

SOME REAL SEA-DOGS

"Get out o' there, youse!"

A big raw-boned fisherman with an oar in his hand came running up the stony beach at Hopedale.

The door of the little Moravian church was open. So were the windows. And so were the mouths of a pack of dogs who were yowling their heads off and trying to kill each other inside the church.

"That's just the way with them huskies!" panted Long Jim, as he stumbled up the slope. "Can't leave 'em be ten minutes without their gettin' into mischief. 'Tis a nice place they picked out for a fight this time! I'll soon have 'em out o' there! They'll find out the house o' God ain't no dog-house."

Swinging his oar right and left he dashed into the church.

Such a scene as met his eyes!

The dogs had been tearing the hymn-books apart as if they were slabs of raw seal-meat. For the Eskimos had been handling the books with their fingers fresh from cleaning fish and cutting up blubber. So that to a dog's nose each book smelt and tasted perfectly delicious. As fast as one dog closed his hungry jaws on a book, another dog, snarling and yowling, would try to snatch it from him.

Over and over in the aisles and between the pews they rolled, snapping and tearing at one another. For the sake of meat they would do murder any day--and the fact that it was in a church on Sunday meant nothing to Long Jim's idle, hungry pack.

"Go on, now! Git outa here!" Long Jim laid about him vigorously with the oar. Sharp yelps resounded as he thwacked their heads and legs. One dog took a header into the baptismal font, which was full of stale water.

Another tried to climb under the little cabinet organ. But there were two dogs there already, and one of them bit him in the chest. He backed away, slobbering and raging.

Another dog hid under the communion table, but Long Jim found him and kicked him away with his soft furry boots that did no damage to dog ribs.

The leaders of the pack, Jock and Sandy, soared out of the window at the right. Jock landed on his head in the kitchen garden where the precious cabbages were growing behind high wooden palings. Sandy was more fortunate, and fell squarely on his feet. Both dogs began to gobble the soft green stuff just visible above the ground.

The other dogs came after them, biting and tearing at each other even while they were scrambling across the window-sill.

"Long Jim" ran out at the door, and had to tear down a lot of the stakes before he could drive the dogs out of the garden. When at last they went, most of the young and precious cabbages went with them. The garden looked like a mud-pile where children have been in a quarrel.

"Ain't that a shame!" exclaimed Long Jim. "Them poor Moravian brothers worked so hard to git that garden goin'! I s'pose I gotta pay for them hymn-books an' them cabbages. Where I'm a-gonna git the money t' pay f'r it all, I'm blessed if I know! I guess I'll have to see if I can git the money from Dr. Grenfell till I get paid for my fish."

Dr. Grenfell was in a cottage near by, visiting a patient. The sick man couldn't stir from his bed.

A puff of wind blew the door open, just as the hungry pack of dogs came rushing up.

Instantly Jock and Sandy halted, and sniffed a mighty, soul-satisfying sniff.

Such a nice, sweet smell of dinner as was blown on the breeze from the door!

Their whiskers twitched and their mouths watered.

Then it was just as if Jock and Sandy said to the other dogs: "Well, what about it, boys? Shall we have some more fun? Are you hungry?"

For the whole pack as though pulled by a string made a dash for the door and swept in on the Doctor and the sick man lying there.

It was like an avalanche. Dr. Grenfell was swept off his legs, as if he had been bathing in the surf and a big wave rushed up and knocked him down.

The boldest jumped up on the stove, where the stewpot was, that sent out such a delicious smell.

He pried off the cover, and then the pot rolled off the stove with a terrible clatter, and its steaming contents were dumped out on the floor.

You could fairly hear those beasts screaming "That's mine! Get out of there! That belongs to me!" Just like greedy, quarrelsome boys that forgot their manners long ago, if they ever had any.

They fought with added fury because--the hot stew burned their noses. They were in such a hurry they couldn't wait for it to cool. They snuffled and scuffled, they bit and snarled and snorted, as they had done in the church with the hymn-books and then with the cabbages in the vegetable garden.

One of the dogs thrust his head in the pot to get the last "lickings" and then he couldn't shake it loose again.

Round and round the room he banged and struggled, till the Doctor took pity on him and hauled it off his head.