"Smith, you ran great risk of your life," said one, as the intrepid man stepped on board, with a great gout of blood on his sleeve; "and your life is surely worth more by many times than that of the creatures you rescued."
"I know nothing about that; I only know that they have immortal souls, and are not fit to die."
"Nor to live either, unhappily," said another.
There was cod- and cunner-fishing while here. Trout, also, were caught in a pond a little inland,—good trout, too, though nothing, of course, to what we shall find in Labrador! Enjoy, while ye may, short pleasures, O trouters! for long tramps—and faces—are to succeed!
June 11. After prolonged northeast rain a bright day, and with it the setting of sail, a many-handed seesaw at the windlass, and departure.
"Well rid of that vile hole!" says one and another.
"Oh, but you'll be glad enough to see it three months hence," answers the experienced Bradford.
And we were!
The wind blew briskly down the Gut; the tide also, which, especially on the ebb, runs with force, helping to carry off the waters of the St. Lawrence, was against us; and the deer-footed schooner made haste slowly toward the west. Slower vessels failed, and were swept down by the tide; we crept on, crept past the noble Porcupine Head, which rises abruptly six hundred and forty feet from the sea, and at last, ceasing to tack, made a straight line out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, beautiful, most beautiful, this day, if never before. It was a sweet sail we had across that gulf, well-named and ill-reputed. The sun shone like southern summer; the summer breeze blew mild; the rising shores and rich red soil of Cape-Breton Isle, patched here and there with dark evergreen-forests, and elsewhere by the lighter green of deciduous woods, lay on the starboard side, warm-looking and welcome to the eyes. This shore, as then seen, reminded me more than any other ever did of the Spanish coast on the approach to Gibraltar,—the spruce woods answering in hue to olive-groves, the other to the green of vines. Meanwhile, the palpitating sheen on the land, the star-sprinkled blueness of the sea, together with the softness of the delicious day, brought vividly to mind those days in the Aegean when not even the disabilities of an invalid could prevent his leaping over and swimming along by the ship's side.
It was a great surprise, this climate and scene. I had expected chill skies and bleak shores: I found the perfect pleasantness of summer in the air, and a coast-scenery with which that of New England in general cannot vie.