I learned also from one who wore a coat of yellowish-gray skins with otter trimmings that they were a belated company, who would start shortly for Orleans Island across the ice. That was Orleans Island there to the left. No, it did not seem far, but I might find it far enough if I tried to get there. At this they all laughed.
Meekly I sat down, as was befitting, and listened to the talk. They conversed in bad French or worse English, and were most of them, strange to say, Scotchmen who had never seen Scotland and never would—Douglasses and Browns and McGregors, who couldn't pronounce their own names, but could take a liner to the gulf, day or night, through the reefs of Crane Island, past the menacing twin Pilgrims, by windings and dangers, safe down to sea.
I asked the man what they were going to Orleans Island for, and he explained that they lived there through the winter months—they and other pilots, many others. It was a pilot colony, set out in midstream. Yes, it was cut off from the land, quite cut off; they liked it so. Sometimes they didn't come ashore for weeks; it was not exactly fun fighting those ice-floes. And they all laughed again; well, not exactly!
Meantime several jolly little cutters, no higher than cradles, had jingled up with more men in furs and one woman. Also boxes and bundles.
"Pilots?" I asked.
The man nodded.
"And the woman?"
"Dees lady, pilot's wife. She been seek." And he went on in a jargon that is charming, but not for imitation, to explain that they would lay the sick lady in the bottom of the boat and pile coats over her and around her until it was tolerably sure she couldn't freeze. From the way he spoke one would fancy they were about to start for the North Pole, but I presently understood that this two-mile ice journey over the crackling St. Lawrence—the crackling comes from the ice-crust breaking as the tide drops under it—is about as hard a test of men's endurance as any Arctic performance.
They were all gathered now save one, whose cutter tarried still. He was a good pilot, but overfond of the convivial glass, and was no doubt this very moment in some uproarious company, forgetful that the start was to be sharp on the hour. Well, they would give him ten minutes more, say fifteen minutes, pauvre garçon.
Then they fell to discussing winter navigation, and whether it would ever come on the St. Lawrence as it had on rivers in Russia. A pilot in coon-skins was sure it would come; they would put on one of these new-fangled ice-crunching steamers to keep the main channel open, and, sacré bleu, there you are! That would save five months every year. But the others shook their heads; they didn't believe it, and didn't want it anyway. A pilot, sir, must have a certain time to smoke his pipe!