The trip proved a bumper one. They carried a full fare home; and big were the rumours which got around of the fisherman's paradise which Ned Waring had discovered. When the voyage was turned in, Ned was able to purchase every essential and many comforts for the new home in the North, and yet have a balance coming to him large enough to furnish him with the bravest winter outfit a young suitor could wish.
Uncle Johnnie was, however, all the time "one too many" for him as well as all the rest; and never was he able to catch Marie alone. Things went on uneventfully through Christmas and the New Year. The old man no longer drove dogs. He spent almost all his time pottering around his own house, now and again cleaving a few billets of wood; but to all intents and purposes he was hibernating like one of our Labrador bears.
When March month once more came around, the magic word "swiles" was whispered from mouth to mouth, and Uncle Johnnie woke up like a weasel when a rabbit is about. Every day he sallied up to his lookout on the hill, telescope in hand, at stated hours. But the hours were so timed that Marie could always go with him.
"Swiles" are second nature to most Labrador men. As for Uncle Johnnie, he would leave his Christmas dinner any time if any one came and called, "Swiles!" He would rather haul a two-dollar pelt over "t' ballicaters" than make two hundred in any other way.
"So I reckoned," said Ned cannily, "one chance to make t' old man friendly was to put him in t' way o' doing again what he was really scarcely able to do any longer; and that was, to have as many notches on his gaff-stick for dead seals as any other man.
"It were, however, longer than I cares to remember now, before much of a chance come my way, but it come at last. T' spring had been that hard and that quiet that I 'lows us could have walked over to t' Gaspé shore if us had been so minded. T' standing ice never broke up from Christmas to April month; and there'd been ne'er a bit of whelping ice near enough to see with a spyglass, or a swatch big enough for an old harp to put his whiskers through. So when us woke one morning and found that t' sea had heaved in overnight unbeknownst to us, and that there was lakes of blue water everywhere, every man was out with his rope and gaff, as natural as a young duck takes to water.
"That evening t' ice packed in again, and by nightfall it all seemed fast as ever. There was always a big tide made round Cape Blowmedown, and as t' land fell sharp away on each side of it, it were never too safe to go off very far on t' ice. But, that being a bad year, every man was on his mettle, and us all took more chances than was real right.
"From t' bluff of t' head Uncle Johnnie had spied old and young seals on t' ice before most of t' boys was out o' bed; and us had a dozen or so on t' rocks before t'others was out t' ice at all. As those near t' land got cleaned up, us went a bit farther out each time; and more'n one seal I didn't exactly see so's to give Uncle Johnnie a better chance, and to let me keep all t' time outside o' he.
"Just before it came dark and we was two or three miles out, t' wind shifted all of a sudden and came off t' land. Uncle Johnnie had a tow of three big pelts, and, believe me, heaven and earth wouldn't have made he leave them swiles behind. I'd left mine just as quick as I felt t' shift, and never let on I had any, so's I could rope up Uncle Johnnie's load and hustle him toward t' land. But t' ice was that hummicky it was an hour before us got near, and there we were, almost dark, t' ice broken off, driving along about twenty yards from t' standing ice almost as fast as a man could walk, and t' wind freshening every minute. There was about a mile to t' bill of t' Cape, and after that there'd be no hope whatever.
"Four years before Jim Willis and his brother Joe had been caught just t' same way. Joe had perished in his brother's arms next day after he'd carried him for some hours, and Jim had drifted ashore on t' second day with only a spark of life left in him.