But when February came at last there was not food enough to render it possible for them to make the long journey to the ice edge with safety.
Living now was from hand to mouth. Each day they must hunt for what they would eat that day. Grouse and rabbits were the game upon which they usually relied, but Fate had cast this as one of those years when the rabbits disappear from the land as it is said they do every nine years.
Be that as it may, not one was killed that winter and not a track was seen. For them to go to the ice without food was too great a risk. If they went and failed to find seals and were overtaken by a storm they would perish.
This was the condition of affairs when Bobby and Jimmy set out one cold, clear morning to hunt for ptarmigans, the white grouse of the North. Not far away was a barren hill whose top was kept clean swept of snow by the winds, and up this hill they climbed, for sometimes ptarmigans are found in places like this, feeding upon the frozen moss berries which cling to the rocks.
Bobby was in advance, and from the summit of the hill he scanned the great expanse of snow reaching away over the endless rolling country to the westward. And looking, he discovered in the distance a dark, moving ma.s.s slowly drawing down another hillside. For a moment he was speechless with joy, but it was for only a moment, and then he shouted:
"_Tuktu! Tuktu! Tuktu!_" (Caribou, or reindeer.)
Bobby"s excited cry brought Jimmy up on a run, and when he looked and saw, he, too, shouted, and was no less excited than Bobby.
"Caribou! The caribou are coming!"
That was enough to send them back on a run for Abel and Skipper Ed and their rifles and all the ammunition they could muster, and then all four turned back to meet the caribou.
On and on came the great herd, in a far-reaching, endless ma.s.s, thousands upon thousands of them, and they were heading directly for the hill where the four eager hunters waited.
At length the ma.s.s reached them, and what followed was not a hunt but a slaughter, and when they were through more than a hundred caribou lay stretched upon the snow, and still the caribou came.
The period of starvation was at an end. Comfort and plenty had appeared at their very door.
The dogs were harnessed, and as many of the carca.s.ses as they could use for man and dog food were hauled down, some to Abel Zachariah"s cabin and some to Skipper Ed"s. And bright and early the following morning Abel set out to the mission station and Skipper Ed to Abraham Moses"
cabin, to bid the starving people come and help themselves and feast, and in the end not a caribou of all those that were killed was wasted.
And so it was that the Almighty looked after these children of His, and so He cares for His children even in the wild wastes of Labrador.
"Good luck! Good luck at last!" said Skipper Ed.
CHAPTER XIX
OFF TO THE "SENA"
And so it was that the famine ended. There was small variety for the table, to be sure, but there was always plenty of good venison, varied with ptarmigans, and now and again a porcupine. And after all they were able to go to the ice edge on the winter seal hunt, and a profitable hunt it proved.
Thus the years pa.s.sed, and thus they were filled with ups and downs and many adventures and hard work, and withal plenty of good fun, too, to flavor them, as years are bound to be in that land of stern and active existence.
But there was always time for study, and when Bobby was in his sixteenth year he and Jimmy could boast of having read Caesar and Cicero and Xenophon, and they were delving into Virgil and the Iliad. Under Skipper Ed"s tutorship Bobby had advanced as far in his studies as most boys of his age in civilization, who have all the advantages of the best schools. And Skipper Ed was proud of his progress, and proud of Jimmy"s progress too, as indeed he had reason to be, for neither of them was a waster of time. There was no inducement to be laggards.
Their hearts were clean and their vision was clear. Their view was not cut off or circ.u.mscribed by the frivolous and ofttimes vicious amus.e.m.e.nts that stand as a wall around life"s outlook in the town. Their view and their hope were as wide as the wilderness and the sea, rugged and stern but mighty and majestic and limitless--G.o.d"s unspoiled works--and G.o.d was a living G.o.d to them.
Bobby at this age had developed into a big, husky lad. He could drive the dog team as well as Abel. He had already killed many seals, and he was an excellent hunter for his years. To Abel Zachariah and Mrs. Abel he was a dutiful, affectionate son. They, too, were proud of him, and looked upon him as the finest lad in the whole land, and Abel boasted that when he grew to be a man he would be the finest hunter on the coast.
It happened that early in February following Bobby"s fifteenth birthday Abel wrenched an ankle so badly that he could not go about his duties, or even hobble outside the cabin door. The responsibility of providing for the little household, therefore, fell upon Bobby. And Bobby, though keenly sympathetic, was nevertheless glad of an opportunity to show his prowess.
He squared his shoulders, and regardless of cold and storm set about the work, determined to prove that he was a man in the things he could accomplish, if not in years; and he succeeded so well that he won high praise from Abel. Certainly Abel himself could not have done better with the fox trapping, which at this season was the chief employment. Bobby kept the house, too, so well supplied with rabbits and ptarmigans, through his incessant hunting, that presently there were enough hanging frozen in the porch to last till the coming of warm weather.
One evening near the end of February Bobby announced, as he entered the cabin after giving the dogs their daily feed:
"There"s only enough seal meat left to last the dogs a week. I"ll have to go to the _sena_ and kill some more."
"You do not know how to do that kind of hunting," objected Abel. "It is not like hunting seals from a boat, or like spearing them through their breathing holes in the ice. Feed the dogs only once every two days, and perhaps before the meat is gone my foot will be strong enough for me to go to the _sena_."
"I was there with you last year," Bobby insisted. "Jimmy will go with me. He has been to the _sena_ with you twice, and he knows how. We will be careful."
And at last Abel surrendered, for he could not long deny Bobby any reasonable thing that the lad set his heart upon, and after all Bobby had proved himself a good and careful hunter; and they needed seals.
Skipper Ed had not kept dogs since the slaughter of his team in the year of famine. He hunted and trapped more after the manner of the Indian than the Eskimo, going long journeys inland on snowshoes, and now Jimmy accompanied him. And living quite alone, as he had during his earlier years on the coast, there was no one who could have fed or cared for dogs when Skipper Ed was absent upon these trapping expeditions. It was therefore only during the two or three years preceding the year of famine, when Jimmy was old enough to care for them, and wished them, that he had a team.
Abel, on the other hand, after the manner of Eskimos, set his traps nearer the sh.o.r.e, that he might, so far as possible, make the rounds of them with dogs.
Abel, therefore, had constant need of dogs, and he now had sixteen fine big fellows, which so nearly resembled the great wolves of the barrens that were dogs and wolves to intermingle only the practiced eye could distinguish the one from the other. These dogs never barked, but howled with the weird, dismal howl of the wolf. And when they were hungry they were such dangerous, savage brutes that it was unsafe for a stranger, unless armed with a cudgel, to wander among them.
With sixteen dogs Abel could muster two ordinary teams of eight dogs each, or one powerful team of ten or twelve, or even the entire number.
Skipper Ed and Jimmy, when they required the services of dogs, could always borrow a team from Abel, and to repay this courtesy it was their custom to join in the autumn and spring seal hunts, and to contribute the carca.s.ses of the seals they killed to Abel, retaining only the skins, which Mrs. Abel dressed and made up for them into boots and winter garments and sleeping bags, as needs demanded.
It was a Sat.u.r.day evening when Bobby finally received Abel"s consent for him to go to the _sena_ seal hunting. He was preparing to go over, as was his custom on Sat.u.r.days, to spend the evening with Skipper Ed and Jimmy in reading and study, and when he had eaten his supper he donned his snowshoes and _netsek_[D] and hurried eagerly away to Skipper Ed"s cabin to invite Jimmy to join him in the adventure.
[Footnote D: An Eskimo garment of seal skin, which is drawn on over the head like a shirt, and has a hood to protect the head. When this garment is made of caribou skin it is called a _kulutuk_, and when made of cloth, an _adikey_.]
"Yes, to be sure, Partner, you must go with Bobby," said Skipper Ed.
"But it"s going to be bleak and cold out there. It"s a man"s work at this season, hunting at the _sena_, and a strong man"s work, too.
Perhaps I had better go along. Then we can take two teams of dogs."
"That will be dandy!" exclaimed Bobby, "We"ll have a fine time!"
"Yes, Partner, come!" urged Jimmy. "You can leave your traps for a week."
"I think I can--yes, I"ll go," Skipper Ed decided. "I was never hunting at the _sena_ but twice, though, and I"ve never forgotten my first experience. It was a good many years ago, before you came, Partner. I went with Abel. We had a hard time of it that year, for stormy weather came up and we nearly perished in a blizzard."
"We"ll build a snow _igloo_" said Bobby, "and be pretty comfortable.
We"ll take Father"s snow knives and two of his old stone lamps. We"ll have plenty of seal oil to burn. You know there"s no wood out there, and it isn"t worth while hauling any."
"Yes," agreed Skipper Ed, "we"ll need the lamps, though I don"t like them. I never could get used to them, and I never liked to go too far from wood."
And so it came to pa.s.s that in the bright moonlight of Monday morning they lashed upon the two _komatiks_ a good supply of hardtack and boiled salt pork--the only provisions that would not freeze too hard to eat--with tea, and sleeping bags, and numerous articles of equipment for their own use and comfort, and a day"s supply of seal meat for the dogs.
Then the dogs were caught and harnessed, and in great excitement began to strain at the traces and howl their eagerness to be off. _Oksunaes_ were shouted to Abel and Mrs. Abel, and Bobby, grasping the front of one _komatik_, and Skipper Ed the front of the other, they pulled them sharply to one side to break them loose, shouting to the teams as they did so: "_Hu-it! Hu-it!_" Then they flung themselves upon the _komatiks_, and away they dashed, down the steep and slippery incline, and off through the sh.o.r.e hummocks at a wild, mad gallop.
They were away to the _sena_, and the Great Adventure, at last.
CHAPTER XX