After Icebergs with a Painter / A Summer Voyage to Labrador and Around Newfoundland.

by Louis Legrand Noble

CHAPTER LI.

EVENING WALK TO TEMPLE BAY MOUNTAIN.—THE LITTLE ICEBERG.—TROUBLES OF THE NIGHT AND PLEASURES OF THE MORNING.—UP THE STRAITS.—THE PINNACLE OF THE LAST ICEBERG.—THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE.

After dinner and a pleasant conversation on deck, we found time to slip ashore, and thread our way through thickets of sweet-scented spruce to the mountain-top for a prospect. Once in my life, on the borders of a forest pond, in the lower St. Lawrence country, I experienced the plague of black flies to an extent that was quite frightful. I turned from the margin where, head and face covered with handkerchiefs, I was fishing, and ran to a woodman’s hut. The same flies swarmed about us on the mountain of Temple Bay, and drove us down through its evergreens with all the speed it was prudent to make.

In the edge of the twilight, the Captain went across the bay to a little mouse of a berg, that had been all day creeping in from sea, to get a few cakes of ice; and asked our company. Our mouse, as might be expected, turned out to be a lion. We rowed alongside, notwithstanding, and sprung upon his white, glassy back melted all over into a roughness that resembled the rippled surface of a pond. In attempting to walk to a fairy-like bowl, full of that lovely blue water, the painter slipped up, and came near sliding off altogether. But for the Captain, at whose legs he caught as he was going by, he would have had a fine plunge and a ducking. Our chick of a berg, only ten or twelve feet across with a few minute pieces of sculpture in the shape of vases and recumbent animals, lay in its pale green bath like a burr or star, its white points visible at quite a depth—a fact which served to corroborate some experiments we had been making with respect to the parts of an iceberg under water. Here was a mass, with the exception of a few trifling spurs, only a little above the surface, but with a bulk, the extreme points of which were too far below to be discovered. To conclude several amusing liberties we were taking with it, the Captain proceeded to split off a kind of figure-head attached to the main body by a sort of horse-neck, which no sooner fell into the water than our bantling began to imitate the motions of the tallest giant of the icebergs. In making the grand swing, however, it rolled completely over, and came within an ace of catching us upon one of its horns. Anticipating the chance of danger from below, I looked over the side of the boat, when, sure enough, a prong was coming up in a way to give us a toss that would be no sport. A lucky push off saved us. Like the spoke of a big wheel it rolled up, giving us a blow in the ribs as it passed, and a good rocking on the swash. One would scarcely think that there was any excitement in so trifling an incident, but there was, and enough of it to make me resolve to meddle no more with a thing of the kind larger than a lamb. When it settled to rest, it was exactly upside down, and presented a curious specimen of the honey-comb work of the waters. It may occur to some that we were sporting upon the Lord’s Day. Upon reflection I confess that we were, although we might plead the privilege of voyagers, and the long day which touches hard upon our midnight.

Upon our return we found the musquitoes, a peculiarly hungry and poisonous species, coming down from the woods in numbers. We determined to crush that mischief in the bud, and did it most effectually, by filling the cabin with the dense smoke of spruce boughs, and then, upon its escape, covering the entrance with a sheet. One only came feebly and timidly singing about my face before I got to sleep. About one o’clock, there were sounds above: shaking of blocks and cordage, now and then a thump with a creak of booms, and jerking of the rudder. I went up; there was no watch; all were soundly sleeping. The ship’s cat was out on the rail, running from place to place, and mewing mournfully. The sky looked ominous, and there was the roar of wind outside. The waters and the woods of the bay, so prettily named, were gloomy as the crypt of a temple. I crept to my dreams, out of which in no long time I was startled by the painter. He was getting up to have his look. He reported breezes, but in the wrong direction, and without comment felt his way back to bed. At two, the voice of the Captain put an end to slumbers, fore and aft. He was calling all hands to the deck, where presently all was noise and bustle, hoisting sail, and heaving at the anchor. The old motion was soon perceptible, and we knew that we were taking leave of Temple Bay—a fact of which we were assured by the Captain, who peeped in upon us, by lifting a corner of the musquito-sheet, and announced the good tidings that the wind, northeast, was blowing briskly, and that the straits would give us no further trouble.

No sooner were we clear of the “tickle,” or narrows, than “Iceberg ahead!”—“Ice on the lee bow!” was cried by the man forward. It was no more to our purpose to go up and look at ices. It was a comfortable reflection that we were now bidding them farewell. By way of a parting salute, one of the bergs burst asunder with a great noise, before that we were out of the reach of its shells. But its thunder fell but faintly on our practised ears, and rather encouraged than disturbed our disposition to sleep. When daylight was broad upon the straits, we were over the worst, and the last iceberg, like the top of some solitary mausoleum of the desert, was sinking below the horizon. The high wind and sea were after us, and we ran with speed and comparative stillness. By noon we were fairly through; with Forteau, the last of Labrador, on the north—to the south, the coast of Newfoundland, and the broad gulf of St. Lawrence expanding before us. We felt that we might then breathe freely. The breeze most surely did, and we sped on our way southward toward Cape Breton.