Bobby of the Labrador

by Dillon Wallace

It was Bobby's custom morning and night to lie in wait for them with his shotgun, and he always returned to the cabin with as many birds as he could carry. These were hung in the entrance shed of the cabin, where they would freeze and remain fresh and good until needed for the table. And thus he too was doing his part in providing for the long winter which was at hand.

The goose-hunting season was always one of great sport for Bobby, but this year he found it lonesome enough without Jimmy's company. It was this loneliness, no doubt, that prompted him, one morning in the beginning of the second week after the departure of the seal hunters, to take Abel Zachariah's old skiff and pull far down the bay in the hope that he might kill a seal on his own account. It was a gray day, with leaden clouds hanging low. Patches of snow lay upon the ground. The bay, throbbing with a gentle swell, was somber and dark.

Bobby rowed the old skiff down the bay and past the bird islands near which he and Jimmy had their adventure on the cliff, but no seals were to be seen, and presently he turned his attention to the numerous sea pigeons which were swimming here and there. The young birds were quite full-grown now, and it was great fun shooting at them and watching them dive and rise again unharmed, though sometimes one would be just a fraction of a second too slow and the shot would find it, and then its downy body would float upon the water, and Bobby would pick it up and drop it into the boat and turn his attention to another, which might escape, or might be added to Bobby's bag.

This was exciting sport—so exciting that Bobby could not bring himself to give it up until a full two hours past noonday, and even then he would not have done so had not a rising northeast wind created a chop which made shooting from the skiff so difficult and inaccurate that it lost its interest.

Then Bobby discovered that he was possessed of a great hunger, and he ran the skiff ashore on a wooded point, and in a snug hollow in the lee of a knoll and surrounded by a grove of thick spruce trees, where he was well sheltered from the keen northeast wind, he lighted a fire, plucked and dressed one of the fifteen sea pigeons he had secured, and impaling it upon a stick proceeded to grill it for his dinner.

He was thus busily engaged when snow began to fall. Thicker and thicker it came, but Bobby was well protected and he finished his cooking and his meal without a thought of danger or concern for his safety. And, when he had eaten, reluctant to leave his cozy fire, he tarried still another half hour.

"Well," said he, rising at length, "the snow's getting thick and I'd better be pulling back. My! I didn't know it was so late! It's getting dusk, already, and it'll be good and dark before I get home!"

Then, to his amazement, he discovered when he emerged from his sheltered nook that the wind had risen tremendously, that the cold had visibly increased, and that the chop had developed into a considerable sea, and that the snow, too, driving before the wind, was blinding thick.

Bobby was not, however, alarmed, though he realized there was no time to be lost if he would reach home before the full force of the rising blizzard was upon him, and he chided himself for his delay. But the old skiff was a good sea boat, and Bobby was a good sea-man, and he pulled fearlessly out upon the wind-swept waters. And here the driving snow soon swallowed up the land, but Bobby was not afraid, and pulling with all his might turned down before the storm.

For a little while all went well, and Bobby was congratulating himself that after all he would reach home before it became too dark to see. Then suddenly a big sea broke over his stern, and left the skiff half filled with water. This was serious. He could not relinquish the oars to bail out the water. Another such deluge would smother him.