Solomon’s eyes beamed with quiet exultation; he drew a long breath of silent rapture, and gently rubbed his-old hands together. For a few moments his emotions deprived him of the power of utterance; but at length he found voice.
“Well, chilen, to tell de troof, I intended it as a great ‘prise, for you. I saw dem dis yer mornin when we landed, and didn’t say nuffin. But dar dey is—dem’s um. De cove is full; nuff heah to feed a ship’s company ten years; an we’s boun to feed on de fat ob de lan so long as we stick to dis yer place. Dat’s so; mind I tell you. Yes, sir.” After such a repast as this, they all felt much more able to grapple with the difficulties of their situation. And now once more arose the question, what land this was upon which they had been thrown.
“Of course,” said Arthur, “there’s no use now to talk about the Magdalen Islands, or Prince Edward’s Island, or Cape Breton, or even Miramichi. This coast lies east and west, as we saw while we were drifting towards it. We came from a southeast direction towards it; we can tell now. There’s the west, where the sun is soon going to set, and there’s the south. Now, my idea is, that this must be Gaspé. Besides, the desolation of the country shows that it must be Gaspé.”
Phil shook his head.
“Gaspé doesn’t lie east and west,” said he; “and it may just as well be Miramichi as Gaspé. The fact is, it can’t be either of them. It must be Newfoundland. We’ve drifted up from the south, and have been driven upon these shores. I can’t imagine where it is, but I rather think it may be the south-west corner of the island. If that is right, then settlements ought to be not very far away; only we can’t get to them by land. There’s St. Pierre’s Island east, and there’s the Bay of Islands.”
“It’s rather a bad lookout’ for us,” said Tom, “if there isn’t any settlement nearer than St. Pierre or the Bay of Islands. Why, there are hundreds of miles of the roughest coast in the world lying between. We may be on the coast, as you say; somewhere between Cape Ray and Fortune’s Bay; but how we are ever to get to any settlement is a little beyond me.”
“There’s the boat,” said Bart.
“What can we do with the boat?” said Tom. “We have no oars. I don’t feel inclined to set out on a long journey with paddles like those. They do very well to land a shipwrecked party, but are hardly the things to start off with on a sea voyage. I tried going about with a bit of board once, and didn’t find, that it worked very well.”
“O, we can rig up a sail. We can get something on board the Petrel that’ll do—some quilts, or, better yet, some sheets.”
“Sheets aren’t big enough,” said Arthur.