It was now late summer and the young birds of the year were able to take care of themselves, but when the boys had first gone ashore on their hunts, ducks, geese, and other wild fowl were nesting by thousands in every hollow and swale.
It was on their first trip that Jim had an amusing experience, and for months afterwards Tom and the ship’s officers never ceased teasing him about it. The two boys were strolling across a little vale, a spot carpeted with deep reindeer moss and stunted bushes, when, from almost under Jim’s feet, a duck fluttered away apparently unable to take wing. Leaping forward to grasp it Jim’s foot tripped and he plunged headlong into the bushes. There was a crunching crash beneath him and, as he regained his feet, Tom fairly doubled up with uncontrollable laughter. From chest to waist Jim was drenched with a sticky yellow mass dotted with broken and crushed bluish egg shells. He had fallen squarely upon the duck’s nest!
“Oh you are a sight!” choked Tom. “Gosh, you certainly did find that nest, Jim!”
Jim looked ruefully at the dripping mess and without a smile exclaimed: “Gee, I like eggs, but I don’t like ’em scrambled that way!”
The story was too good to keep, and whenever eggs were served thereafter some one would invariably ask Jim if he’d have his scrambled.
At last the signs of approaching autumn warned Captain Edwards that they must leave the shores of Baffin Island and speed southward to Hudson Straits and winter quarters in Hudson Bay. Long strings of swans and great V-shaped flocks of geese passed daily across the sky, headed south. The vast rafts of ducks became uneasy. The Old Squaws whistled querulously, the eiders swam restlessly about, buffle heads and teal winged swiftly back and forth, and the blackheads darkened the sky with their veering, ever-turning flocks. The plover lost their black waistcoats and took on silvery white ones; the snow bunting became gray and white; the ptarmigan were dotted with white feathers among their soft brown plumage and the Arctic hares grew paler and paler as they gradually assumed their winter coats to match the spotless snow. The days grew shorter, the sun disappeared below the horizon, and the Aurora glowed and flashed and scintillated in tongues and bands of lambent hues across the zenith. The wind was chill with the feel of frost and ice as it swept across the land which now showed hardly a tint of green or a speck of the scarlet, blue and yellow that had formerly decked the hillsides.
So, with many casks of oils, great piles of walrus hides, bundles of sealskins, sacks stuffed full of eider feathers, and many hundred pounds of walrus ivory in her hold, the Narwhal picked and felt her way out through the leads among the ice pack and into the broad waters of Baffin Bay. To the strong and biting wind her sails were spread, and across the short sharp waves with their spiteful hissing caps of foam, the schooner plunged towards Disko Bay. Here the Eskimos were landed laden with axes, powder and lead, cloth, brass, and gee-gaws as their wages. Then with yards braced sharp up and sheets close hauled, the Narwhal buried her blunt nose deep in the tumbling foam, and with lee rail awash sped southward for the entrance to Hudson Straits.
Twice bowheads were sighted and boats lowered; but to the boys’ chagrin and disappointment, Captain Edwards absolutely refused to let them go in on the giant creatures without an experienced man in charge, for the weather was squally, swirling flakes of snow fell now and then, the sea was rough and time was precious.