CHAPTER III
Toward the end of April there came a great change in the Pup’s affairs. Primarily, the change was in Captain Ephraim’s. Promoted to the command of a smart schooner engaged in cod-fishing on the Grand Banks, he sold his cottage at Eastport and removed his family to Gloucester, Massachusetts. At the same time, recognizing with many a pang that a city like Gloucester was no place for him to keep a seal in, he sold the Pup, at a most consoling price indeed, to the agent of an English animal trainer. With the prospect of shortly becoming the cynosure of all eyes at Shepherd’s Bush or Earl’s Court, the Pup was shipped on a freighter for Liverpool.
With his pervasive friendliness, and seeking solace for the absence of Toby and Captain Ephraim, the Pup proved a most privileged and popular passenger. All went well till the ship came off Cape Race, Newfoundland. Then that treacherous and implacable promontory made haste to justify its reputation; and in a blind sou’wester the ship was driven on the 228 ledges. While she was pounding to pieces, the crew got away in their boats, and presently the Pup found himself reviving half-forgotten memories amid the buffeting of the huge Atlantic rollers.
He felt amazingly at home, but very lonely. Bobbing his head as high as he could above the water, he stared about him in every direction, dimly hoping to catch sight of Captain Ephraim or Toby—or even of the unsociable yellow cat. They were nowhere to be seen. Well, company he must have. After fish, of which there was no lack in those teeming waters, company was his urgent demand. He headed impatiently for the coast, which he could not see indeed, but which he felt clearly in the distance.
The first land he encountered was a high hogback of rock which proved to be an island. Swimming around under its lea, he ran into a little herd of seals of his own kind, and hastened confidently to fraternize with them.
The strangers, mostly females and young males, met his advances with a good-natured indifference. One of the herd, however, a big dog-seal who seemed to consider himself the chief, would have none of him, but grumbled and showed his teeth in a most unpleasant 229 manner. The Pup avoided him politely, and crawled out upon the rocks, about twenty feet away, beside two friendly females. He wanted to get acquainted, that was all. But the old male, after grumbling for several minutes, got himself worked up into a rage, and came floundering over the rocks to do up the visitor. Roughly he pushed the two complaisant females off into the water, and then, with a savage lunge, he fell upon the Pup.
But in this last step the old male was ill-advised. Hitherto the Pup had felt diffident in the face of such a reception, but now a sudden red rage flared into his eyes. Young as he was, he was as big as his antagonist, and, here on land, a dozen times more nimble. Here came in the advantage of Captain Ephraim’s training. When the old male lunged upon him, he simply wasn’t there. He had shot aside, and wheeled like a flash, and secured a hold at the root of his assailant’s flipper. Of course in this position he too received some sharp punishment. But he held on like a bulldog, worrying, worrying mercilessly, till all at once the other squealed, and threw up his muzzle, and struggled to get away. The Pup, satisfied with this sign of submission, let him go at once, and he flounced off furiously into the water. 230
As a prompt result of this victory, the Pup found himself undisputed leader of the little herd, his late antagonist, after a vain effort to effect a division, having slipped indolently into a subordinate place. This suited the Pup exactly, who was happy himself, and wanted everybody else to be so likewise.
As spring advanced, the herd worked their way northward along the Newfoundland coast, sometimes journeying hurriedly, sometimes lingering for days in the uninhabited inlets and creek mouths. The Pup was in a kind of ecstasy over his return to the water world, and indulged in antics that seemed perhaps frivolous in the head of so important a family. But once in a while a qualm of homesickness would come over him, for Toby, and the Captain, and a big tin basin of warm milk. And in one of these moods he was suddenly confronted by men.
The herd was loitering off a point which marked the entrance to a shallow cove, when round the jutting rocks slid a row-boat, with two fishermen coming out to set lines. They had no guns with them, fortunately. They saw the seals dive and vanish at the first glimpse of them, as was natural. But to their amazement, one seal—the biggest, to their astonished eyes, in the whole North Atlantic—did not vanish 231 with the rest. Instead of that, after eying them fearlessly at a distance of some fifty feet, he swam deliberately straight toward them.
Now there is nothing very terrifying, except to a fish, in the aspect of even the biggest harbor seal; but to these fishermen, who knew the shyness of the seals, it was terrifying to the last degree that one should conduct himself in this unheard-of way. They stopped rowing, and stared with superstitious eyes.
“Howly Mother!” gasped one, “that b’ain’t no seal, Mike!”
“What d’ye s’pose he wants wid us, Barney, annyhow?” demanded Mike, in an awed voice.
“Sure, an’ it’s a sign for the one or t’other of us. It’s gittin’ back to shore we’d better be,” suggested Barney, pulling round hard on the bow oar.
As the mysterious visitor was still advancing, this counsel highly commended itself to Mike, who would have faced a polar bear with no weapon but his oar, but had no stomach for a parley with the supernatural. In another moment the boat was rushing back up the cove with all the speed their practised muscles could impart. But still, swimming leisurely in their wake, with what seemed to them a dreadful deliberation, the Pup came after them. 232
“Don’t ye be comin’ nigh me!” cried Mike, somewhat hysterically, “or I’ll bash yer face wid the oar, mind!”
“Whisht!” said Barney, “don’t ye be after talkin’ that way to a sperrit, or maybe he’ll blast ye!”
“I’m thinkin’, now,” said Mike, presently, in a hushed voice, “as maybe it be Dan Sheedy’s sperrit, comin’ back to ha’nt me coz I didn’t give up them boots o’ his to his b’y, accordin’ to me promise.”
“Shure an’ why not that?” agreed Barney, cheered by the hope that the visitation was not meant for him.
A moment more and the boat reached the beach with an abruptness that hurled both rowers from their seats. Scrambling out upon the shingle, they tugged wildly at the boat to draw her up. But the Pup, his eyes beaming affection, was almost on their heels. With a yell of dismay Mike dashed up the shore toward their shack; but Barney, having less on his conscience, delayed to snatch out of the bow the precious tin pail in which they carried their bait. Then he followed Mike. But looking back over his shoulder, he saw his mysterious pursuer ascend from the water and come flopping up the shore at a pace which assuredly no 233 mortal seal could ever accomplish on dry land. At that he fell over a boulder, dropped the pail of bait, picked himself up with a startled yell, and made a dash for the shack as if all the fiends were chasing him.
Slamming the door behind them, the two stared fearfully out of the window. Their guns, loaded with slugs, leaned against the wall, but they would never be guilty of such perilous impiety as to use them.
When he came to the tin pail and the spilled bait the Pup was pleased. He knew very well what the pail was for, and what the men expected of him. He had no objection to being paid in advance, so he gobbled the bait at once. It was not much, but he had great hopes that, if he acquitted himself well, he might get a pan of warm milk. Cheerfully he hoisted his massive chest upon the pail, and then, pounding jerkily with his flippers as hard as he could, he lifted his muzzle heavenward and delivered himself of a series of prolonged and anguished groans.
This was too much for his audience.
“Howly Mother, save us!” sobbed Barney, dropping upon his knees, and scrabbling desperately in his untidy memory for some fragments of his childhood’s prayers.
“Don’t, Dan, don’t!” pleaded Mike, gazing 234 out with wild eyes at the Pup’s mystical performance. “I’ll give back them boots to the b’y. I’ll give ’em back, Dan! Let me be now, won’t ’ee, old mate?”
Thus adjured, the Pup presently stopped, and stared expectantly at the shack, awaiting the pan of warm milk. When it did not come, he was disgusted. He had never been kept waiting this way before. These men were not like Captain Ephraim. In a minute or two he rolled off the pail, flopped heavily down the beach, and plunged back indignantly into the sea. As his dark head grew smaller and smaller in the distance, the men in the shack threw open the door, and came out as if they needed fresh air.
“I always said as how Dan had a good heart,” muttered Mike, in a shaken voice. “An’ shure, now, ye see, Barney, he ain’t after bearin’ no grudge.”
“But ye’ll be takin’ back them boots to young Dan, this very day of our lives,” urged Barney. “An’ ye’ll be after makin’ it all right wid the Widdy Sheedy, afore ye’re a day older, now.”
“Shure, an’ to wanst ain’t none too quick for me, an’ me receavin’ a hint loike that!” agreed Mike. 235
As for the Pup, after this shock to his faith in man, he began to forget the days of his comfortable captivity. His own kind proved vastly interesting to him, and in a few weeks his reversion was complete. By that time his journeyings had led him, with his little herd, far up the coast of Labrador. At last he came to a chain of rocky islands, lying off a black and desolate coast. The islands were full of caves, and clamorous with sea-birds, and trodden forever by a white and shuddering surf. Here old memories stirred dimly but sweetly within him—and here he brought his wanderers to rest.