Brothers of Peril: A Story of old Newfoundland

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

"Let it go, lad," he said. "A sailor is made in this way. Tom, pass me along a blanket."

With his unemployed hand he fixed a comfortable rest for the boy, and helped him to a drink of water. For an hour or more he maintained a hold on the young Beothic's belt, for, by this time, the soaring and sinking of the Pelican were enough to unsteady even a seasoned mariner. As for Ouenwa!—the poor lad simply clung to the gunwale with the grip of despair, and entertained regretful, beautiful visions of level shores and unshaken hills. Tom Bent eyed him kindly.

"The young un has it wicked, sir," he said. "Maybe, like as not, a swig o' rum ud sweeten his bilge, sir."

Kingswell acted on the old tar's advice. The rank liquor completed the boy's breakdown. In so doing it served the purpose which Bent had intended. The sufferer was soon sleeping soundly, already half a sailor.

When Ouenwa next took interest in his surroundings, the Pelican had the surf of a sheer coast close aboard on her port side. She was heading due north. The sun was half-way down his western slope. Behind the Pelican's bubbling wake, hills and headlands and high, naked barrens lay brown and purple and smoky blue. In front, and on the right hand, loomed surf-rimmed islands and flashed the innumerable, ever-altering yet unchanged hills and valleys of the deep. Tom Bent was now at the tiller, and Kingswell was in the bows, gazing intently at the austere coast. Ouenwa crawled over the thwarts and cargo of provisions, under the straining sail, and crouched beside him. His head felt light and his stomach painfully empty, but again life seemed worth living and the adventure worth while.

About an hour before sunset the Pelican ran into a little cove, and her two grappling anchors were heaved overboard. She lay within five yards of the land-wash, swinging on an easy tide. Ouenwa sprang into the water and waded ashore. It was a dismal anchorage, with only a strip of shingle, and grim cliffs rising in front and on either hand. But at the base of the cliffs, in fissures of the rock, grew stunted spruce-trees and birches. Ouenwa soon found a little stream dribbling a zigzag course from the levels above. It gathered, clear and cold, in a shallow basin at the foot of the rock, and from there spilled over into the obliterating sand.

By this time the others were ashore. Clotworthy hacked down a couple of armfuls of the spruce and birch shrubs with his cutlass, and started a fire. Then he filled a pot from the little well and commenced preparations for a meal. The other seamen erected a shelter, composed of a sail and three oars, against the cliff. Kingswell and Ouenwa sat on a convenient boulder, and the commander filled a long pipe with tobacco and lit it at a brand from the fire. He seemed in high spirits, and in a mood to further his young companion's education. Pointing to the roll of Virginian leaf, from which he had cut the charge for his pipe, he said, "Tobacco." Ouenwa repeated it many times, and nodded his comprehension. Then Kingswell pointed to old Tom Bent, who was watching Clotworthy drop lumps of dried venison into the pot of water.

"Boatswain," he said.

Ouenwa mastered the word, as well as the term "able seamen," applied to Clotworthy and Peter Harding. By that time the stew was ready for them. They were all sound asleep, under their frail shelter, before the last glimmer of twilight was gone from the sky.

It was very early when Ouenwa awoke. A pale flood of dawn illumined the tent and the recumbent forms of Master Kingswell and Clotworthy. Tom Bent and Harding were not in their places. The boy wondered at that, but was about to close his eyes again, when he was startled to his feet by a shrill cry that went ringing overhead and echoing along the cliffs. He darted from the tent, with Kingswell and Clotworthy hot on his heels. Bent and Harding were on the extreme edge of the beach, with their backs to the sea, staring upward. Ouenwa and the others turned their faces in the same direction. They were amazed to see about a dozen native warriors on the cliff above them, fully armed, and evidently deeply interested in what was going on in the little cove. One of them was pointing to the Pelican, and talking vehemently to the brave beside him. In two of them Ouenwa recognized young Wolf Slayer, and his father, the chief of the village on the River of Three Fires. He called up to them, and asked what brought them so far from their village.