"Stee said the ice at the river mouth didn't give way until after midnight, when it burst with a roar like cannon. When Oily Dave got to Seal Cove last night, the water reached to the shingles of his house; so the old fellow rowed across to Stee's hut and asked to be taken in for the night, because he was flooded out and the Englishman was drowned."
"But didn't Stee tell him that Mr. Ferrars was safe here with us?" asked Mrs. Burton.
"Not a bit of it," replied Phil. "That would have spoiled sport, don't you see? because Oily Dave was what Stee called most uncommon resigned, and talked such a lot about going to find the body in the morning, that they just made up their minds to let him go. He was up by daybreak and went over to look; but when he saw the door broken down he guessed there had been a rescue, and he was just mad because no one had told him anything about it."
"It was rather too bad to leave him in suspense all night, poor man," said Mrs. Burton gently.
CHAPTER XII
The First of the Fishing
For a whole week the thaw went merrily on. One by one the fishing boats left their winter anchorage in the river, and sailed out into the stormy waters of the bay. By the end of the week Jervis Ferrars had so far recovered the comfortable use of his feet that he could wear boots again and go about like other men. Directly he was able to do this he went down to Seal Cove every day, where he inspected every boat that was ready to put to sea, overhauled the store shed, and quietly took command, setting Oily Dave on one side with as little ceremony as if that worthy had never been master of the fleet.
Oily Dave took the change in government with very bad grace indeed, and it is probable that the life of Jervis Ferrars would have been in very grave danger many times during the next few weeks if it had not been for the fact that the Englishman had made a host of friends among the fishers, who would protect him at all risks in an open attack, while Jervis wisely so far avoided Oily Dave as to give no chance for the secret, cowardly thrusts in which the deposed man delighted.
Astor M'Kree personally conducted the new boats, one by one, over the rapids, bringing them down when the river was in flood and anchoring them in front of the store until their crews were ready; and when they had cleared for the bay the fishing was in full swing.
Eight hundred miles away, in the north of the great inland sea, the whalers and sealers were still fast bound in ice and snow, longing for freedom, yet forced to wait while the tardy spring crept northward. But down in the more sheltered waters of James Bay there was abundance of work for everyone. Hundreds of seals gambolled on the ice floes and on the shores of the little uncharted islands which make those waters such a serious menace to the mariner. Sometimes the boats were away for a week. Sometimes two days found them headed back for Seal Cove, laden with seals, walrus, and narwhal. Many of them succeeded in getting a good catch of white whales, for which those waters are so noted; but these were caught at the mouths of the tidal rivers, for the whales go up the rivers every day with the tide, and it was when the tide was ebbing that the whales were most easily caught. It was only the biggest and strongest boats that ventured so far as the tidal rivers, however, and with these Jervis Ferrars never went. Indeed, but from choice he need never have gone to sea at all, for his work lay more particularly on land, where he had to keep toll of the catch and take care that the various products of the sea harvest were properly secured and stored, until the opening of Hudson Strait enabled vessels to get through.