The Crew of the Water Wagtail by Robert Michael Ballantyne (first ebook reader .txt) 📕

on such things?" asked the captain one night while they were all busy over this work.

"Ay, we can walk thirty or forty miles a day over deep snow with these shoes," answered Hendrick.

"Where do the deer all come from?" asked Oliver, pausing in his work to sharpen his knife on a stone.

"If you mean where did the reindeer come from at first, I cannot tell," said Hendrick. "Perhaps they came from the great unknown lands lying to the westward. But those in this island have settled down here for life, apparently like myself. I have hunted them in every part of the island, and know their habits well. Their movements are as regular as the seasons. The winter months they pass in the south, where the snow is not so deep as to prevent their scraping it away and getting at the lichens on which they feed. In spring--about March--they turn their faces northward, for then the snow begins to be softened by the increased power of the sun, so that they can get at the herbage beneath. They migrate to the north-west of the island in innumerable herds of from twenty to two hundred each--the animals following one another in single file, and each herd being led by a noble stag. Thus they move in thousands towards the hills of the west and nor'-west, where they arrive in April. Here, on the plains and mountains, they browse on their favourite mossy food and mountain herbage; and here they bring forth their young in May or June. In October, when the frosty nights set in, they again turn southward and march back to winter-quarters over the same tracks, with which, as you have seen, the whole country is seamed. Thus they proceed from year to year. They move over the land in parallel lines, save where mountain passes oblige them to converge, and at these points, I regret to say, my kinsmen! the Bethuck Indians, lie in wait and slaughter them in great numbers, merely for the sake of their tongues and other tit-bits."

"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.

The first intimation the travellers had of the impending storm was the rending of a limb of the tree under which they reposed. The way in which Oliver Trench received the rude awakening might, in other circumstances, have raised a laugh, for he leaped up like a harlequin, with a glare of sudden amazement, and, plunging headlong away from the threatened danger, buried himself in the snow. From this he instantly emerged with an aspect similar to that of "Father Christmas," minus the good-natured serenity of that liberal-hearted personage.

"Daddy!" he gasped, "are you there?"

The question was not uncalled for, the captain having made a plunge like that of his son, but unlike his son, having found it difficult to extricate himself quickly.

Paul and Hendrick had also sprung up, but the latter, remaining close to the stem of the tree, kept his eye watchfully on the branches.

"Come here--quick!" he cried--"the stem is our safeguard. Look out!"

As he spoke his voice was drowned in a crash which mingled with the shrieking blast, and a great branch fell to the ground. Fortunately the wind blew it sufficiently to one side to clear the camp. The air was so charged with snow particles that the captain and his son seemed to stagger out of a white mist as they returned to their comrades who were clinging to the weather-side of the tree.

"D'ye think it will go by the board?" asked the captain, as he observed Hendrick's anxious gaze fixed on the swaying tree.

"It is a good stout stick," replied his friend, "but the blast is powerful."

The captain looked up at the thick stem with a doubtful expression, and then turned to Hendrick with a nautical shake of the head.

"I never saw a stick," he said, "that would stand the like o' that without fore an' back stays, but it may be that shoregoin' sticks are--"

He stopped abruptly, for a terrific crash almost stunned him, as the tree by which they stood went down, tearing its way through the adjacent branches in its fall, and causing the whole party to stagger.

"Keep still!" shouted Hendrick in a voice of stern command, as he glanced critically at the fallen tree.

"Yes," he added, "it will do. Come here."

He scrambled quickly among the crushed branches until he stood directly under the prostrate stem, which was supported by its roots and stouter branches. "Here," said he, "we are safe."

His comrades glanced upwards with uneasy expressions that showed they did not quite share his feelings of safety.

"Seems to me, Master Hendrick," roared the captain, for the noise of the hurly-burly around was tremendous, "that it was safer where we were. What if the stem should sink further and flatten us?"

"As long as we stood to windward of it" replied Hendrick, "we were safe from the tree itself, though in danger from surrounding trees, but now, with this great trunk above us, other trees can do us no harm. As for the stem sinking lower, it can't do that until this solid branch that supports it becomes rotten. Come now," he added, "we will encamp here. Give me the axe, Oliver, and the three of you help to carry away the branches as I chop them off."

In little more than an hour a circular space was cleared of snow and branches, and a hut was thus formed, with the great tree-stem for a ridge-pole, and innumerable branches, great and small, serving at once for walls and supports. Having rescued their newly made snow-shoes and brought them, with their other property, into this place of refuge, they sat or reclined on their deerskins to await the end of the storm. This event did not, however, seem to be near. Hour after hour they sat, scarcely able to converse because of the noise, and quite unable to kindle a fire. Towards evening, however, the wind veered round a little, and a hill close to their camp sheltered them from its direct force. At the same time, an eddy in the gale piled up the snow on the fallen tree, till it almost buried them; converting their refuge into a sort of snow-hut, with a branchy framework inside. This change also permitted them to light a small fire and cook some venison, so that they made a sudden bound from a state of great discomfort and depression, to one of considerable comfort and hilarity.

"A wonderful change," observed Trench, looking round the now ruddy walls of their curious dwelling with great satisfaction. "About the quickest built house on record, I should think--and the strongest."

"Yes, daddy, and built under the worst of circumstances too. What puzzles me is that such a tree should have given way at all."

"Don't you see, Olly," said Paul, "that some of its roots are hollow, rotten at the core?"

"Ah! boy--same with men as trees," remarked the captain, moralising. "Rotten at the core--sure to come down, sooner or later. Lay that to heart, Olly."

"If ever I do come down, daddy, I hope it won't be with so much noise. Why, it went off like a cannon."

"A cannon!" echoed the captain. "More like as if the main-mast o' the world had gone by the board!"

"What if the gale should last a week?" asked Olly.

"Then we shall have to stay here a week," returned Hendrick; "but there's no fear of that. The fiercer the gale the sooner the calm. It won't delay us long."

The hunter was right. The day following found the party _en route_, with a clear sky, bright sun, and sharp calm air. But the art of snow-shoe walking, though easy enough, is not learned in an hour.

"They're clumsy things to look at--more like small boats flattened than anything else," remarked the captain, when Hendrick had fastened the strange but indispensable instruments on his feet--as he had already fastened those of the other two.

"Now look at me," said Hendrick. "I'll take a turn round of a few hundred yards to show you how. The chief thing you have to guard against is treading with one shoe on the edge of the other, at the same time you must not straddle. Just pass the inner edge of one shoe over the inner edge of the other, and walk very much as if you had no snow-shoes on at all--so."

He stepped off at a round pace, the broad and long shoes keeping him so well on the surface of the snow that he sank only a few inches.

"Why, it seems quite easy," observed the captain.

"Remarkably so," said Paul.

"Anybody can do that," cried Oliver.

"Now then, up anchor--here goes!" said the captain.

He stepped out valiantly; took the first five paces like a trained walker; tripped at the sixth step, and went headlong down at the seventh, with such a wild plunge that his anxious son, running hastily to his aid, summarily shared his fate. Paul burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter, lost his balance, and went down--as the captain said--stern foremost!

It was a perplexing commencement, but the ice having been broken, they managed in the course of a few hours to advance with only an occasional fall, and, before the next day had closed, walked almost as easily as their guide.

This was so far satisfactory. Our three travellers were quite charmed with their proficiency in the new mode of progression, when a sudden thaw set in and damped not only their spirits but their shoes. The netting and lines became flabby. The moccasins, with which Hendrick had supplied them from the bundle he carried for his own use, were reduced to something of the nature of tripe. The damp snow, which when rendered powdery by frost had fallen through the net-work of the shoes, now fell upon it in soft heaps