CHAPTER V—THE LABRADOR SEALING
"Now, Brothers, for the icebergs of frozen Labrador
Floating spectral in the moonshine, along the low black
shore!
When the mist the rock is hiding and the sharp reef lurks
below
And the white squall smites in summer, and the autumn
tempests blow."
The work of discharging our cargo began at once—first the sculps on deck, then those in the 'tween-decks and then those in the tanks. Thereafter the ship was given a rough cleaning; new berths were erected in the 'tween-decks and quarter-hatch but not so many as before. The bunkers and tanks were coaled and then we cast about for a crew. All the seals taken on this second cruise would have to be shot, so we did not expect to bring back very many; but the Aurora had her own Scotch crew under pay, and they had to be fed, so she might as well be at sea picking up a few seals as lying in the harbor waiting for May 1st. It was not so very easy finding a crew as they would have little to eat and could not possibly earn much money. However, at last we were ready and on Wednesday, April 2nd, sailed. We had heard nothing of the Arctic, and very little of any of the other ships. The Neptune came in after us with about 40,000, which was a tremendous cargo, but she was a big ship. There was much more room with our reduced Newfoundland crew, and we steamed out of the narrows for the second time with the ship very much more comfortable than on the first occasion.
I must say the appearance of the Aurora at this time was disreputable in the extreme. The paint had been scraped off by the ice, and the filthy sheathing covered the decks, while the fragrant bilge water flowed from her side in a pellucid stream.
The Captain told me that he intended following the seals which were going north towards Labrador and that he expected to fall in with great herds of year-olds, called bedlamers. We left port after breakfast and steamed out onto a calm sea, shaping our course north. During the afternoon we saw patches of ice scattered about and when night came we slowed down and kept a bright lookout.
April 2nd was a blustery day with occasional snow showers. There was no sea, however, to tumble the ship about as there was a good deal of ice. We were easily able to avoid the fields by steaming around them. Some were very heavy looking, having quantities of rafted ice on them. Towards night, it became calm and thick.
April 4th. Steamed dead slow all night as it was thick. In the morning the sea was calm but still foggy. This was pea-soup day. We always had pea soup on Fridays; we also always had fish for breakfast; it was salt cod. The salt was taken out in some way and then the fish was cut into very small pieces and boiled with broken up sea biscuits and butter, pepper, etc. I have never tasted anything so good since. In fact, I have never since tasted anything so good as the food on the whaler after the first month. There was an absurd arrangement about our meals; it was all right at sea, but in Greenland, when we walked about during the night perhaps as much as during the day, it was distressing. Breakfast was at eight, dinner at noon, and tea at five; there was no regulation meal between five P. M. and eight A. M. I modified this by having a special meal at eleven P. M. At that time I took a pot of coffee from the galley and retired to the pantry for a quiet half hour.
April 5th. The day was fine. A good deal of ice was in sight and occasional seals could be seen. When one was seen ahead, or a few points on either bow, the ship bore down upon it. As we came close, the seal would first raise its head to see what was coming, then raise its body upon its flippers and stare.
A number of men with rifles were always on the forecastle head and of this number I was generally one. If some one did not try too long a shot and frighten it, we always killed the seal. We had a large number of punts on board and one was towed astern in the daytime and with it every seal was picked up. They all counted. Some days we had very good sport and I enjoyed it.
April 6th. Sunday. Huff day. We had plum pudding on Sundays and Thursdays. The puddings were not round, but oval. The steward made delicious sauce out of condensed milk and, of course, we had the Spartan sauce with everything. The Captain was very consistent in his observation of Sunday—no unnecessary work was done on that day. If there were whales, we fished, but I never saw a man kept at work on Sunday if it could be avoided. This day we did the usual shooting from the forecastle head. The temptation to shoot first was dreadful. I dare say we picked up fifteen or twenty seals. This was a sad Sunday because of the death of our canary. I was in the cabin when Jack, the steward, discovered the fact. He immediately took the seed box out of the cage to the pantry, filled it and brought it back. Captain Fairweather came down shortly after to breakfast and immediately noticed the absence of the bird, as it was always hopping about and making a noise. Jack was called. A look of surprise came over his face when asked about the canary and he immediately climbed on to the seat and, looking into the cage, said, with tears in his eyes, "Oh, Sir, the poor wee bird is deid;" adding, as he pulled out the drawer, "Well, it is not for want of plenty to eat." I don't think for a moment that the bird died of starvation, but Jack wanted to simplify the post-mortem inquiry by eliminating that possibility. Our steward was a remarkable man and eminently qualified by nature for his position. He could produce a look of absolute innocence or of sympathy at a moment's notice; his suaviter in modo would have fitted him for the diplomatic service; and as a dreamer he was without a peer.
There is a great knack about dreaming. To make a reputation and keep it up even on a whaler requires the judgment of a Delphic priest.
It was the presence of Jack, the steward, that gave the atmosphere of a home to the Aurora's cabin and we all liked him.
April 7th. I saw a most interesting thing today. It was an old dog hood; to call it Cystophora Cristata might give the describer some relief; but it would convey no idea of this angry-looking creature as he reared up and gazed at us. How we all resisted firing until he had exhibited himself, I don't know; but when he was looking perfectly terrible and fifty yards away, a dozen copper-nosed bullets found their billets about his head and neck. He was 7 1/2 feet long and a tremendous size around the shoulders. The bag on his head, when fully distended, must have stood eight or nine inches, and extended from the muzzle to four inches behind the eyes. The hood is only found on the male. It is considered ornamental by the females of the same species, but horrible looking by all other animals, I am sure. The beast added about 400 pounds to our little cargo, but the animal, skin and all, certainly weighed seven or eight hundred. During the day we killed quite a number of hoods, but the first was the largest. We did not make much of a run, but dodged about and picked things up. A young hood is rather blue-looking on the back and white underneath.
The engine slowed down at night, as usual.
April 8th. This was one of the most lovely days, with bright sunshine, and there was dazzling ice in every direction. To the east of us we saw a beautiful barque under canvas; she was playing our game, dodging about and picking up seals. As she was not a steamer, and had a small crew, she was consequently inexpensive to work; there was no reason why she should not pay her owners well, especially if she got amongst the hoods, five or six of which would yield a ton of oil. We kept out to her, and finding she was the Maud of Dundee, I was sent on board to hear the news. I was hospitably entertained by the captain, who gave me some old Dundee papers, but those I brought from the Aurora were much more recent. When I returned, I saw a funny thing happen. We had a Newfoundland cook, Jack; he had a triangular face with the base up; a tuft of hair grew from the apex and was the only decoration. With his long shaved upper lip, he had an amusing look and he was a character.
The ship was bearing down towards ice upon which there was a young hood. It had been injured and made no effort to escape. Thinking it dead, no one fired and we were almost on to it when Jack, looking over the side, saw it. He had not killed a seal that season, so, seizing a gaff, he leaped on to the pan and we all cheered. As Jack lit on the ice, it broke in two. The seal slid gracefully off its half, but Jack's half, almost submerged, swung around under the ship's quarter, where the propeller was threshing away. Jack paused for a moment between Scylla and Charybdis, and then giving a wild leap, he disappeared in the sea as far from the propeller as he could jump. It was most amusing to see this big man give his wild leap; he was fished out by the punt astern. A small matter, like a man being half drowned, always amused these simple people so much.
I have said that the Newfoundlanders were not over-fed on this trip. We had, for cabin use, numerous quarters of Dundee beef lashed in our tops. They kept splendidly up there. One morning the steward reported a quarter of our Dundee beef stolen. One of the Newfoundland cooks was sent for at once and I heard the conversation between the angry Captain and the astonished cook. I heard the cook report every morning how he was on the track of a thief: "Begorra, sor, I have my eye on him;" or, "Begorra, sor, I could put my hand on the man," and so on until we got back without the thief having been turned over; I heard afterwards that the cook certainly could have at any moment put his hand on the man who took the beef.
April 9th. This was one of the most interesting days I spent. At breakfast, I heard the captain and the mate discussing blinks, that is, reflections. For instance, an ice blink at sea would mean a sort of whitish reflection in the sky over an area of ice, or a water blink would be a dark reflection in the sky over a dark area. We were surrounded by ice and were approaching a dark blink. Was it water or seals? Before breakfast was over, the report came from the crow's-nest that the seals were ahead. I went aloft and saw an extraordinary sight. The ice ahead of us appeared to be positively black with seals. They covered acres and acres. We steamed right up to them and then about twenty men, with rifles, went on to the ice and a lot of others followed to sculp and haul the sculps to the ship. This ice was not solid but made up of thousands of pans all detached. They were generally touching in places, but two or three sprawls would bring any individual seal to some sort of a hole through which it could escape; therefore, it had to be killed instantly or it would disappear. The shooting began at once, the men kneeling down and opening up at the nearest animals. Just as fast as they could consume ammunition, they fired at seals close at hand, and, as these disappeared, at those farther away. There was far too much shooting for much result. Presently they began to get closer. A would kneel down and fire as fast as possible so as to use as much ammunition as he could before B would pass him. B would then rush past and begin shooting, and so on. Now, with regard to this rushing about,—we were travelling on pans of ice of all sizes, some a few feet square, some as large as a table, some twenty times that size, but we certainly had to watch where we were going. When the men scattered, they shot better, but it was much more dangerous, as the express bullets were singing about everywhere. I had two men who took me off to one side and who gave me the best shooting I ever enjoyed. The seals were inclined to bask in the sun and enjoy themselves; so, if we went about it quietly, we could easily stalk a pan and advance to within fifty or seventy-five yards; then, if we shot carefully and only hit heads, we would not disturb the others. Should we wound one, it would not only go down itself but would frighten the others on the same pan. I shot off a number of entire pans by quietly getting close and then picking them off.
The seal, properly hit, just drops its head, while the others hold theirs up for you. This was warm work and the barrel of the rifle became so hot that I had constantly to put it on the snow to cool off. I watched some of the Newfoundland men shooting when we started and saw several of them miss every shot. All they did was to endanger their fellow men and wound an occasional seal; of course there were some crack shots among them, but it would have paid well to have tested the ability of all before serving out rifles to them. As there was not a cloud in the sky, we were greatly sunburnt and several had a touch of snow-blindness in spite of wearing colored glasses. We probably picked up three or four hundred seals, and had there been about eight or ten men who understood the use of firearms, they would have killed a thousand easily.
The sealing cap worn by the Dundee men was very suitable. The peak was covered with lamb's wool dyed black, so when turned down it absorbed a great deal of the glare. Wool had to be wound around the metal work of the colored glasses we wore on account of the cold.
April 10th. Nothing makes one rest like a hard day's work in the open air. My shoulder was black and blue with firing and my ears rang with the noise while my eyes smarted and my face burned, but I slept like a log until seven bells.
The ship had not moved all night. We were off the coast of Labrador, but out of sight of land. There was a great deal of ice everywhere and by dawn we were steaming north as fast as possible in the effort to overtake our game. By noon the seals were in sight and we went through the same performance as the day before. I did not attempt it with the main body, but with two good men went off in a slightly different direction. The express was certainly a good rifle, and its trajectory very flat, when we consider the powder. I examined a great many wounds that day and in every case found the bullet had expanded well if it had hit anything hard. These seals were nearly all bedlamers and we did not kill any hoods either of these days, although we had picked up quite a number coming up the coast. This was a shorter day, and we did not kill so many. It was quite late when the ship took the last of her men on board, for they had become scattered. One man had fallen in several times and was very much exhausted. However, I was able to make him swallow some rum and he soon revived. A sailor is very feeble and dissolution near at hand when a little rum cannot be coaxed down with a spoon or other suitable instrument—even then I would not advise leaving the bottle close to him while looking for the spoon, lest, during his unconscious struggles, he should spill it.
April 11th. We were always on the lookout for the Arctic, but saw nothing of her. Before leaving St. John's we heard that the Thetis had been sold to the American Government for the Greely relief expedition, so she would not appear among the sealers that year. Captain Fairweather's brother was master of her, so he was disappointed.
We kept north in our effort to overtake the seals, the barometer falling a little towards evening, and a swell coming in from the southeast. We were well on the outer or eastern edge of the ice, as the Captain did not want to take any chance of being jammed among heavy floes coming down the coast. During the evening we had a most wonderful sunset. The sky was red not only to the west, but nearly all over, and the reflection on the ice was magnificent. The frozen sea is fascinating when the sun goes down and before dark; also by moonlight, or bright starlight.
During the day the glare is too great but a moonlight night on a frozen sea is the grandest sight possible. The weird sounds caused by the ever restless ice are a fitting accompaniment. On this Friday night, the sounds caused by the ever increasing sea, crunching the pack up, were rather startling at times, but we kept pretty well out of it, so we were safe. There was quite a little motion on board, owing to the swell, and we steamed easy ahead all night, going full speed at daybreak, and by noon had the satisfaction of finding our seals. We went oft, but not quite as usual. The roll of the sea had crunched the pack up and broken all the large sheets of ice, so we were obliged to jump from one pan to another while they were rising and falling on the long swell of the Atlantic. There was nothing sudden or uncertain about the motion. The long heavy rollers lifted one up and lowered one down, and when between them, one could not see very far. Now occurred a sort of stalking that I have never seen described, i. e., running after a large wave and keeping perfectly still when the following wave overtook one; then repeating the stalk, always running in the trough between the two waves. In this manner I did some efficient work and shot a great many seals.
Most of the time was spent watching where to put my feet; but, on feeling the rise coming, I stood perfectly still and watched the seals. I was regaled with accounts of men who had been injured and cut in two by this sort of thing; but we did not meet with the slightest accident and every one was picked up by sundown. The ship managed to follow through the ice pretty well, picking up a few seals here and there, as they had been sculped, so that we added several hundreds to our collection.
April 13th. Sunday. The day was fine and we picked up occasional seals but did not find a herd. It was a complete day of rest for all hands. The ice to the west of us looked very heavy and the Captain was careful to avoid it. We lay to at night, but by daybreak on Monday morning we were dodging north again.
April 14th. I had my first shot at a walrus, sea-horse, as it is called. Shortly after breakfast the usual rifles were on the forecastle head when the officer in the crow's-nest called down that he saw a walrus. The ship was kept down on it, and presently we all saw the big animal with his long white tusks. In this case, they were very long and could be seen from a great distance. He was on a pan with open water all around, so we steamed straight at him. As we approached, he raised himself higher and higher on his flippers and disappeared after having received a fearful fusillade, at less than a ship's length. I would have liked the chance of examining his skin just to count the hits and see the effect. We heard the thud of striking bullets, but the walrus gave a plunge and was seen no more.
We did the usual amount of sealing from the ship, but had not any men on the ice. Two or three times we had several punts out, but they did not pick up very many.
April 15th. We dodged back and forth amongst the floating ice, keeping a little closer to land but not seeing much of interest. There was a very large floe which bore evidence of great rafting; between the hummocks on it there was fresh water, regular ponds with connecting channels. I was on this floe, as we shot a few seals on it, so tasted the water, which was sweet and good. I have often seen quite big ponds on floes fast to bergs, and we took water on board sometimes from these.
For the next few days we steamed south without seeing anything of interest. The weather was cold, but fine, and the ice less as we neared St. John's. We were careful after dark and generally steamed slow. The crew were employed in cleaning up.
April 19th. Saturday. Arrived at St. John's in the morning and took our usual berth. Our entire catch of seals for the two trips was 28,150, but the crew were paid for 29,300 as there were some large old seals and they counted more.
There was great news for us on our arrival. I have already mentioned the sale of the Thetis to the American Government. We now received orders from Dundee to take the place of the Thetis and proceed to Davis Straits. The gear removed from this ship was being sent out to us by an Allan boat. We were to keep our eyes open for the lost Greely, as a reward had been offered by the United States for any whaler picking him up.
I certainly never intended going on a long trip when sailing, and the Captain told me I could leave if I wished, but there was a fascination about the whole thing that I enjoyed.
The Aurora had been getting more comfortable all the time,—the first awful experience of a fearful Atlantic winter passage with the ship loaded, to the scuppers, then the crowded ship at the first sealing, and the much pleasanter trip to Labrador.
Now I could see that the ship would be very comfortable with only her own crew, and the deck clear of boats, as it would be on the next part of the cruise, so I decided to go. It took a very short time to put our seals out, and, as it was Saturday afternoon by that time, all the work ceased until Monday morning.
I heard an amusing story about a man being nearly drowned in a tank of oil. A sealer came in and four of her tanks nearest to the boiler had the sculps break down into oil, owing to the heat. When the crew were discharging cargo it was the custom for a man to jump into a tank and throw the sculps out. Coming to the first of these tanks, and looking in, some sculps could be seen, and, never suspecting that these were a few floating on the surface, the man jumped in and disappeared under, but was presently fished out, every one thoroughly enjoying the incident except, of course, the leading man.