Two days after that we were haunting the telegraph office at Twillingate for news of “The Invermore” or “The Kyle” out of Saint John’s to the Labrador. The Invermore blew out her tubes somewhere down the coast, and had to put back to Saint John’s, and we had to wait several days for her substitute, who finally arrived at Twillingate in the middle of the night, so that we went up the ladder over her side with the bags of mail at two o’clock in the morning, carrying with us a feeling that perhaps we ought not to be going, as two old fellows encountered on the pier the night before, had said, in the face of a rather threatening sky, that it was “too late to go down on the Labrador.”
However, we made that voyage safely and have since made another, proving that wiseacres are not always true prophets or their sayings to be heeded.
From Newfoundland to Labrador is but a step across the Straits of Belle Isle. In winter these waters are the hunting grounds of some of the sealers out of Saint John’s. In summer they are the hunting ground of some of the “growlers” out of Labrador.
Navigators here in the first instance are happy at the cry of “seals!” from the crow’s nest, but the skipper of the mailboat on this route runs away as fast as may be from the beautiful but treacherous iceberg so like in figure to giant Portuguese Men-o’-War “fishing with paralyzing underseas tentacles seeking whom they may devour.” Then comes out on deck the figure least expected, the Moving Picture man, reeling off, like one possessed, the bergs that navigation fears. And so we land at Battle Harbour, first of the thirty or more ports of call made by these fine mail-and-passenger boats out of Saint John’s.
The charm of the Labrador is hard to define. That it is there all will agree. Some say that it lies in the fact that the slightest miscalculation on the part of those adventuring in these parts may lead to an accident—accident that on so exposed a coast is instantly metamorphosed into irremediable disaster, as in the case of H.M.S. Raleigh. In other words, danger is its charm, the danger that lies so near, around the corner of every bay and tickle; danger of hidden rocks, of sudden gale, of fog, of bergs, washed by some fanciful twist of ocean current out of the beaten track. Romance follows danger as a twin sister. So, on the Labrador, many “figures” strut across the little stage.
There is the little Eskimo that paddles off to the steamer in his kyak, to dance on deck, while the ship rides at anchor off some port. That he ever reaches the ship or the shore again in the little scallop-shell he calls “boat” is a miracle. But he dances away or sings “gospel hymns” learned from missionaries, as free from worry as any child. The words are in Eskimo, but the old tune, sung out here on deck by the flare of the ship’s lantern, carries with it a gripping power, the while the faces of strong men—fishermen coming or going, traders, missionaries, even Syrian fur-dealers—are intermittently lighted by the flare of the lantern.
Two old acquaintances, the “fishnet drying from the masthead” and the “pot-a-tilt” among stones of the ice-age, greet one on stepping ashore at a Labrador tickle. Spruce beer is also here to be had, if one has the good fortune to fall in with Liveyer’s family up from Newfoundland for the summer-fishing and living in a hut with sodded roof, wherein the blooms of fireplant and live-for-ever make a splash of color against the gray background of sea and rocks.
These little liveyer homes bear a striking resemblance to the pioneer homes of foreigners on the Prairie, with sodded roofs abloom.
Two new characters peculiar to the zone emerge along this northern edge of the ‘Longshore road—Eskimos, men, women and children, and Eskimo dogs; both of which Newfoundlanders invariably speak of as “Huskies”.
