Bobby of the Labrador by Dillon Wallace

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"A tragedy brought me into the country," he said to himself, "and a
tragedy has taken me out of it, and the end of my life will be a
tragedy."

And then, after long thought:

"Skipper Ed says our destiny is God's will. But God always has a
purpose in His will. I wonder if I've fulfilled my destiny, and what the
purpose of it was. Maybe it was just to be a son to Father and Mother."

He mused upon this for a long time, and then his thoughts ran to Skipper
Ed and Jimmy:

"I wonder what there is in Skipper Ed's life that he's never told us,"
he pondered. "He's always said he was a wandering sailor-man, who stopped
on the coast because he liked it. He never was a common sailor, I'm
sure. I never thought of that before! Sailors aren't educated, and he
is! And whenever Jimmy or I asked him to tell about his own life before
he came here he always put us off with something else."

And then he fell asleep to dream that he and Skipper Ed were walking
under strange trees, with flowers, the like of which he had never seen,
blooming all about them and making the air sweet with their perfume.

CHAPTER XXVII

A STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE

It was fortunate that Bobby had selected the center of the floe for his
night shelter, for when he awoke in the morning and crawled out of his
snow cavern he discovered that the unstable shore ice of which the floe
was composed had been gradually breaking up during the night into
separate pans, and that he was now upon a comparatively small floe,
little more indeed than a large pan, which had originally been the
center of the great floe upon which he went adrift.

Surrounding him was a mass of loose pans, rising and falling on the
swell, and grinding and crunching against one another with a voice of
ominous warning. With quick appreciation he was aware that his position
was now indeed a perilous one, for it was obvious that his small remnant
of floe was rapidly going to pieces.

But another and more sinister danger threatened him, should he escape
drowning. Bobby was ravenously hungry. He had eaten nothing since the
hasty luncheon of sea biscuit and pork on the night he and Jimmy parted.
He had been terribly hungry the day before, but now he was ravenous and
he felt gaunt and weak. As though to tantalize him, numerous seals lay
sunning themselves upon the ice pans, for it was now past sunrise, but
his only weapon was his snow knife, and he was well aware that the seals
would slip into the water and beyond his reach before he could approach
and despatch them.

Looking away over the mass of moving ice he discovered to his delight
that the loose pans surrounding the little floe upon which he stood
reached out in a continuous field to the great Arctic pack which he had
watched so anxiously the previous day. And, what was particularly to
his satisfaction, the pans were so closely massed together that by
jumping from pan to pan he was quite certain he could make the passage
safely, and for a time at least be secure from the threatening sea.

Running over loose ice pans in this manner was not wholly new to Bobby.
Every hunter in the Eskimo country learns to do it, and Bobby had often
practiced it in Abel's Bay when the water was calm and the ice pans to a
great extent stationary. But he had never attempted it on the open sea
where the pans were never free from motion. It was, therefore, though
not an unusual feat for the experienced seal hunter, a hazardous
undertaking.

The situation, however, demanded prompt action. Should wind arise the
ice pans would quickly be scattered, and all possibility of retreat to
the big ice field cut off.

Bobby, after his manner, not only decided quickly what to do, but acted
immediately upon his decision. The distance to be traversed was probably
not much above a mile, and, selecting a course where the pans appeared
closely in contact with one another, he seized his snow knife, which he
had no doubt he would still find useful in preparing shelters, and
leaping from pan to pan set out without hesitation upon his uncertain
journey.

It was a feat that required a steady nerve, a quick eye, and alert
action, for the ice was constantly rising and falling upon the swell.
Now and again there were gaps of several yards, where the ice had been
ground into pieces so small that none would have borne his weight. He
ran rapidly over these gaps, touching the ice as lightly as possible and
not remaining upon any piece long enough to permit it to sink.

And so it came about that presently with a vast sense of relief Bobby
clambered from the last unstable ice pan to the big ice pack, and for a
time, at least, felt that he had escaped the sea.

For a moment he stood and looked back over the hazardous path that he
had traversed. Then climbing upon a high hummock, which attained the
proportions of a small berg, he scanned his surroundings.

To the northward lay the loose ice; to the eastward and southward as
far as he could see stretched the unbroken ice of the great field; to
the westward and two miles distant was the black water of the open sea,
dotted here and there by vagrant pans of ice which glistened white in
the bright sunlight as they rose and fell upon the tide.

Suddenly his attention was attracted to something which made him stare
in astonishment and wonder. Near the water's edge, and extending back
from the water for a considerable distance, there appeared innumerable
dark objects, some lying quiet upon the ice, others moving slowly about.

"Seals!" exclaimed Bobby. "Seals! Hundreds--thousands of them! I can get
one now before they take to the water! They're too far back to get to
the water before I can get at them!"

And scrambling down from the hummock he set out as fast as he could go,
highly excited at the prospect of food that had so suddenly come to him.

"Oh, if I can get one!" he said as he ran, "if I can only get one! God
help me to get one!"

With this prayer on his lips, and keen anxiety in his breast, he neared
the seals. Then, all of his hunter's instincts alert, his advance became
slow and cautious. Crouching among hummocks, he watched his prey, and
studied the intervening ice, and its possible sheltering hummocks.
Carefully he stalked, now standing still as a statue, now darting
forward, and at last proceeding on all fours until finally he was quite
certain that those farthest from the water could not escape him. Then
springing to his feet he ran at them.

Bobby had until now kept his nerves under control, but with the attack a
wild desperation took possession of him, and looking neither to one side
nor the other he slaughtered the seals, one after another, as he
overtook them, until, the first frenzy of success past, he realized that
he had already killed more than he could probably use. Then he stopped,
trembling with excitement, and looked about him. Five victims of the two
species known to him as harp and jar seals had fallen under his knife.

Now he could eat. This thought brought relaxation from the great
physical strain and mental anxiety that had spurred him to activity and
keyed his nerves to a high pitch since leaving his snow cavern early in
the morning, and with the relaxation he was overcome by emotion. Tears
sprang to his eyes, and suddenly he felt very weak.

"The Lord surely has been taking care of me. Maybe it is my destiny to
live, after all, and if I get out of this I'll never forget 'twas the
Lord took me through."

Bobby's undivided attention until this time had been centered upon the
seals which he had attacked, which were among those farthest from the
open water. Now as he dried his eyes and, still trembling from effort
and excitement, drew his sheath knife to dress the animals, he looked
about him, and what he saw brought forth an exclamation:

"Puppies! That's what all the seals are here for!"

And, sure enough, lying about on the ice were a great number of little
white balls, so small and white they had escaped his notice at a
distance, and each white ball was a new-born seal. That, then, was why
old seals were so numerous and so fearless.

But Bobby had no time to think about this. Hunger was crying to be
satisfied, and now that food was at hand he was hungrier than ever. As
quickly as he could he dressed one of the seals, and as he had no means
of cooking the meat made a satisfactory meal upon the raw flesh and
blubber, after the manner of Eskimos.

This done he looked about him for a suitable place to build a shelter,
and finding a good drift not far away set about his building with
greater care than on the night before, and before noon time had a small
but well-fashioned _igloo_ erected with a tunnel leading to the entrance
that he might better be protected from the wind.

He now skinned and dressed the remaining seals, and spreading the skins
for a bed on his _igloo_ floor felt himself very comfortably situated
under the circumstances.

"Now," said he, surveying his work, "if I only had a lamp and a kettle I
could get on all right till the ice drives ashore or I'm picked up or
the pack goes to pieces and I won't need to get along any more."

But this last thought he quickly put from him with the exclamation:
"That's silly! I won't worry now till I have to. I'll just do my best
for myself, and if the Lord wants me to live He'll show me how to save
myself, or He'll save me."

Then Bobby sat down to think. The pieces of ice which he melted in his
mouth in lieu of water he was convinced had a weakening effect upon him,
and his mouth was becoming tender and sore from sucking them, and he
preferred his meat cooked. He had plenty of matches in his pocket, for
the man who lives always in the wilderness is never without a good
supply, but since he had gone adrift they had been of no use to him,
without means or method of making a fire.

"I've got it!" said he at last, springing up. "I'm sure it will work!"

Opening the jackknife he cut from one of the skins a large circular
piece, and at regular intervals near the edge of this made small slits.
Then from the edge of a skin he cut a long, narrow thong, and proceeded
to thread it through the slits. This done he tightened the thong,
puckering the edge of the circular piece of skin until it assumed the
form of a shallow bowl perhaps fifteen inches wide. This he set into a
snow block in order that it might set firm and retain its shape. This
was to be his Eskimo lamp.

Now he tore a strip from his shirt, folded it to proper size, filled his
lamp with oil from the blubber, drove the point of his snow knife into
the side of his _igloo_ in such manner that the side rested in a flat
position on the top of the bowl, and saturating the cloth with the oil
he arranged it upon the knife, taking care that it did not touch either
side of the bowl. This he lighted, and to his great delight found that
his lamp was a success.

It was easy to grill small pieces of seal meat over this, but the
problem of melting ice for water was a puzzling one. Finally this, too,
was solved, by improvising another bowl from sealskin and suspending
over it a piece of ice. This bowl he held as near as possible to the
flame without putting it in danger of scorching the skin. The ice,
suspended by a thong directly above the bowl and a little on one side of
the flame, began at once to drip water into the bowl. The water
resulting was very oily and unclean, but Bobby in his position had
neither a discriminating taste nor a discriminating appetite.

"Well," said Bobby that evening when he had settled himself comfortably
after a good meal of grilled meat, "this isn't as comfortable as home,
but it's away ahead of raw meat and ice, and no _igloo_ at all. And it's
safe for a while, anyhow."

And so our young adventurer took up his lonely life upon the shifting
ice, and day after day he watched the baby seals grow, and wondered at
it, for each morning they were visibly larger than they had been the
previous night. And he wondered, too, that each mother should know her
own little one, by merely sniffing about, for the babies, or "white
coats" as he called them, were as like as peas.

Thus he had lived ten lonely days, and sometimes he believed God had
forgotten him, when one morning a black streak appeared in the sky and
then another and another, and something wonderful happened, for God had
not forgotten Bobby and was guiding his destiny.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SHIPS THAT CAME DOWN TO THE ICE

Closer and closer came the three black streaks, and presently the masts,
then the funnels, and finally the hulls of three ships appeared, first
one, then another, then the third. Bobby watched them with awe and
wonder. He even forgot for a time that a way was opening for his escape.

The three ships were streaming directly toward the ice, and in the
course of an hour after he had first sighted them the advance ship came
to, half a mile or so from the floe, and not above a mile to the
southward of him. Boats were lowered before the steamer had fully
stopped, and immediately men swarmed over her sides and into them, and
in a moment the boats put off for the ice, the men climbed out upon it
and presently were running everywhere, beating to the right and to the
left with clubs.

Then the boats returned to the ship to fetch more men, and still more,
until there were more men upon the ice than Bobby had ever seen before,
and all beating about them with their clubs. So it was with the other
ships as they came up; they, too, sent scores upon scores of men to the
ice in boats.

Bobby was astonished beyond measure at what he saw, and at first he was
afraid, and watched from a distance. But at last he recalled that he had
heard of this thing before. These were the seal hunters from
Newfoundland, and with bats they were slaying the young white-coat
seals, and such of the old seals, also, as did not slip away from them
into the water.

Finally some of the sealers from the first ship were making their way up
over the ice in the direction of Bobby's _igloo_, and presently he knew
they would be upon the very seals that he had watched with so much
interest growing from day to day. Among these were two men with guns,
instead of clubs, and these two devoted their attention to the old
seals, which now and again they shot.

Overcome with awe and wonder, and timid in the presence of so many
strangers, Bobby kept himself from view while he watched, though he knew
that presently he would be called upon to present himself, in order that
he might escape from the floe, for in all probability no other
opportunity would come to him.

So, uncertain, expectant, and trembling with excitement, he remained
concealed behind an ice hummock until the seal hunters in advance had
nearly reached him, and further concealment was impossible. Then he
stepped boldly out.

The effect of Bobby's appearance was instantaneous and wonderful. A man
in the advance, looking up, saw the strangely clad figure apparently
rise out of the ice itself. The man turned about and wildly broke for
the boats. Then another and another took one terrified glance at the
supposed apparition, and tarrying not, turned about to compete with the
first in a mad race for the boats. Shouts of "Ghost! Ghost!" filled the
air, and then the stampede and panic became general, though after the
manner of panic-stricken crowds, perhaps none but the first two or three
had the slightest idea why or from what they were running.

The two men with guns were still some little distance from Bobby when
the stampede began. One of these men was perhaps twenty-three or
twenty-four years of age, the other many years his senior. They were
dressed after the manner of sportsmen, and were evidently not members of
the sealing crew. They did not join in the stampede as the men rushed
past them in wild flight and confusion, but in utter astonishment looked
for its cause in the direction from which the men had come, and
discovered nothing more terrifying than Bobby, standing alone and no
less astonished at what had occurred than themselves, and more than half
inclined to run as fast in the opposite direction as the sealers had run
toward their boats.

"Uncle, there's an Eskimo!" exclaimed the younger of the two, observing
Bobby's sealskin garments, but at that distance unable to note that his
features were wholly unlike those of an Eskimo.

"Sure enough!" said the older man. "That explains it! The men weren't
expecting to see any one, and they've taken him for a ghost! Come on,
Edward. Let us interview him."

"How could an Eskimo get out here on the floe?" asked Edward, as they
set out toward Bobby. "We're a long way from land."

"I don't know," said his companion. "We'll soon learn. But Eskimo
hunters go a long way after seals, and he's probably on a hunting
expedition."

"Why, he hasn't the features of an Eskimo, though he's dressed like one;
and he's a handsome looking chap!" said Edward, in an undertone, as they
drew near Bobby, who had overcome his inclination to run and had not
moved.

"Good-morning!" greeted the older man a moment later, when they were
within speaking distance.

"Good-morning, sir," said Bobby, timidly.

"We thought you were an Eskimo, and" laughing, "the men apparently
thought you were a ghost. You gave them a fine fright."

"I didn't mean to frighten them," said Bobby apologetically.
"I only wanted them to take me off the ice."

[Illustration: "I was hunting," explained Bobby. "The ice broke loose
and cut Jimmy and me off from Skipper Ed"]

"Take you off the ice? Why, how did you get on it? We thought perhaps
you were hunting."

"I was hunting," explained Bobby, "but now I'm adrift. I'm Bobby
Zachariah, from Abel's Bay. The ice broke loose and cut Jimmy and me
off from Skipper Ed, and Jimmy's drowned--"

Tears came into Bobby's eyes and he choked at the recollection.

"I'm Frederick Winslow," said the man kindly and sympathetically, taking
Bobby's hand, "and this is my nephew Edward Norman. We do not know where
Abel's Bay is, nor who Skipper Ed and Jimmy are, but we're glad we found
you, and you're to go with us to the ship, and then you can tell us
about it, and there'll be a way to send you home to Abel's Bay."

"Edward Norman!" exclaimed Bobby. "Why, that's Skipper Ed's name!"

"Who is Skipper Ed?" inquired Mr. Winslow. "But never mind. Don't
explain now. You must be nearly starved if you've been adrift long. Come
with us."

"I've been over a week--nearly two weeks, I think," said Bobby, "but I'm
not hungry. I've had plenty of seals. Let me get my snow knife, sir.
It's in the _igloo_."

Then they went with Bobby and marveled at his _igloo_, and his crude
lamp, which they must have as a souvenir, and that Bobby had not
perished. And praised him for a brave lad, as they led him off. And
Bobby, who saw nothing wonderful or strange in his _igloo_ or lamp, or
anything he had done, said little, but followed timidly. And when the
men he had frightened so badly learned that Bobby was a castaway and a
very real person and not a ghost at all, they vied with one another in
showering kindnesses upon him, for these men of the fleets, though a bit
rough, and a bit superstitious at times, have big brave hearts, filled
with sympathy for their kind.

And so it came about that Bobby, who had come to the Coast a drifting
waif of the sea, was carried from it by the sea. And now he was to see
the land of strange trees and flowers and green fields of which Skipper
Ed had so often told when they sat in the big chairs before the fire on
winter evenings. And many other wonderful things were in store for
Bobby.

CHAPTER XXIX

IN STRANGE LANDS

Mr. Winslow and his nephew Edward Norman were sportsmen who, as many
other sportsmen had done before them and have done since, had gone as
passengers with the sealing fleet that they might see the big ice and
secure for themselves trophies of the seal hunt of their own killing.
And so it came about that they met Bobby, and took him under their care.
Indeed, Mr. Winslow felt an unusual interest in the lad from the moment
he met him, for Bobby had an open, frank countenance and a pleasing
manner.

But they would not permit him to talk or tell them much of his story
until they had him on shipboard, and Bobby had eaten and bathed and
changed his ill-smelling skin clothing for a suit that Edward Norman
pressed upon him. And though the clothes were a trifle large, and the
trousers two or three inches longer than was necessary, they set Bobby
off to good advantage and wrought a wonderful change in his appearance.

"You're to stay in the cabin as our guest," said Mr. Winslow when Bobby
was dressed, and would have gone forward to the sailors' quarters. "I
have arranged it with the Captain. I am very much interested in what you
said about Skipper Ed. His name, you said, is Edward Norman. Who is he?"

"Skipper Ed's our nearest neighbor," Bobby explained simply.

"Do you call him 'Skipper' because he is a sea captain? Has he always
lived on the Labrador coast? You see," added Mr. Winslow, "I'm greatly
interested because his name is the same as my nephew's. It is a strange
coincidence, and we should like to learn all about him."

"We've always called him 'Skipper,'" answered Bobby. "He was a sailor
once, but that was long before I came. He's lived at Abel's Bay, I heard
him say, over twenty years. He's told Jimmy and me a lot about Harvard
College, and when he was a boy he lived in a place called Carrington--"

"What! Carrington?" exclaimed Mr. Winslow. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, sir," said Bobby. "He's often told Jimmy and me about his home
there when he was a boy."

The two men looked at each other and they were plainly excited, and in
an intensely expectant voice Mr. Winslow asked:

"Did he ever speak of his family?"

"Yes, sir--of his father and mother and brother and sister," said Bobby.

"Anything else?"

"Why, yes, sir; about the trees and flowers and garden and--"

"I mean about himself," interrupted Mr. Winslow. "Did he ever tell you
about a bank, or why he left home?"

"No, sir," said Bobby. "I remember, though, a story he used to tell us
about two boys whose father had a bank. One borrowed some money from the
bank and lost it gambling, and because he had a wife and little child
the other brother told their father that he did it, though he didn't
know anything about it until after it was done. The brother that took
the money tried to stop him. The father of the boys sent the one who
said he took the money away, and he went and settled in a land like The
Labrador, and never saw his old home or any of his people again."

The two men were leaning eagerly forward during this recital. When Bobby
had finished they sat back and looked into each other's eyes, and after
a moment Mr. Winslow spoke:

"There is no doubt, Edward, that Skipper Ed is your uncle--your father's
brother who disappeared so long ago, when you were a baby."

"Yes," agreed Edward, "and we must go to him and take him home again."

"You--don't--mean--you're Skipper Ed's people?" stammered the astonished
Bobby.

"Yes," said Mr. Winslow, "Edward's father and Skipper Ed were, I believe
from what you have told us, brothers, and in that case Mrs. Winslow is
Skipper Ed's sister. She was a little girl when he went away. We must
look into the matter, and we shall all be very glad if it proves to be
true."

And then they talked for a long while, and drew from Bobby the story of
their life at Abel's Bay--of how Skipper Ed had taught him and Jimmy,
and the evenings spent in talking and studying in the easy chairs before
the big box stove in Skipper Ed's cabin, and about Abel Zachariah and
Mrs. Abel--so much, in fact, about their daily lives and hopes and
disappointments that presently his two hearers felt that they had known
Bobby and his friends all their life.

And Bobby told them the story of his own coming to the Coast, as he had
heard it from Abel and Mrs. Abel many a time, of how he had been found
drifting in a boat with a dead man, of the grave Abel had made on
Itigailit Island for his dead companion, and the cairn he himself had
built.

"We have the boat yet," said Bobby, "for it was a good boat. Father has
always taken great care of it. He and Mother always say it's the boat
God sent me in out of the mists from the far beyond, where storms are
born."

"What a romantic life you've led!" said Edward. "Your very advent upon
the Coast was romantic--and tragic. And the way we found you today is no
less so."

"Have you no clue that would help you identify yourself? No clue as to
where you came from? Was there nothing to identify the dead man?" asked
Mr. Winslow.

"No," answered Bobby, "and I've never thought about it very much. Mother
has the clothes I wore, wrapped in a bundle and stowed into a chest.
I've often seen the bundle, but I never undid it or meddled with it for
she prizes it so."

"It was probably a boat from a whaling or fishing ship that was
wrecked," Mr. Winslow suggested. "Perhaps you were the captain's son.
You should look into the bundle; it may help to identify you, and you
may have relatives living, perhaps in Newfoundland, who would be glad to
know of you."

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