“There is no call for regret, Master Hendrick,” said Captain Trench. “Surely where the deer are in such numbers, the killing of a few more or less don’t matter much.”
“I think it wrong, captain, to slay God’s creatures wantonly,” returned the hunter. “Besides, if it is continued, I fear that the descendants of the present race of men will suffer from scarcity of food.”
That Hendrick’s fears were not groundless has been proved in many regions of the earth, where wanton destruction of game in former days has resulted in great scarcity or extinction at the present time.
In a few days a pair of snowshoes for each traveller was completed, and the party was prepared to set out with renewed vigour on their return to the hunter’s home.
Chapter Fourteen.
Tells of a Tremendous Storm and a Strange Shelter, etcetera.
Proverbial philosophy teaches us that misfortunes seldom come singly. Newfoundland, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, does not seem to have been a place of refuge from the operation of that law.
On the morning of the day in which the explorers meant to commence the return journey, a storm of unwonted rigour burst upon them, and swept over the land with devastating violence—overturning trees, snapping off mighty limbs, uplifting the new-fallen snow in great masses, and hurling it in wild confusion into space, so that earth and sky seemed to commingle in a horrid chaos.