Adrift in the Ice-Fields

by William Henry Giles Kingston

  CHAPTER XI.

  TAKING AN INVENTORY.--SETTING UP THE STOVE.

  Peter was already picking a dead goose, and Regnar and Waring were aboutto follow his example, when La Salle interposed.

  "Let us skin the birds, for it may be that we shall be unable to landfor several days, and if so, we shall need all the covering we can get,for this thaw is sure to be followed by a severe frost or two."

  "Sposum tide turn, ice lun down to capes, then get ashore," said Peter,confidently.

  La Salle drew out his watch.

  "It was high tide at four o'clock, and it is now nearly seven. Peter,just climb to the top of the berg, and see how we drift."

  Peter dropped his half-picked bird, ascended with eager agility, linedanother projection of the floe with some object on the New Brunswickshore, seemed puzzled, looked more carefully, and then slowly descended,apparently sad and disheartened.

  "Well, Peter, how is it?" said La Salle, cheerfully.

  "No good; ice lun north-west, against tide; no get ashore to-day," wasthe reluctant answer.

  Regnar seemed little surprised, but Waring turned almost white withanxiety and disappointment.

  "I thought as much," said La Salle, quietly. "With such a gale as this,the tide, whose rise and fall does not average four feet on this coast,often seems to run in one direction, and even to remain at flood for aday or two; but even if it did fall, this floe carries sail enough withthis wind to make from two to three miles an hour against it. We shallprobably have easterly and southerly winds until to-morrow, and must nowbe well up to Cape Bauld, and about mid-channel, say twelve miles fromshore."

  "Why not try land, then, with the boat? We four could surely make twelvemile in the course of the day," asked Regnar, somewhat impatiently forhim.

  "How deep is the snow and slush now, Regnie?" asked the leader of thelittle party, calmly.

  "'Bout knee-deep on level ice," said the boy.

  "Come up here, all of you," said La Salle, ascending the lookout.

  The three followed, and found themselves scarcely able to stand attimes, when a fiercer blast than usual swept up the strait, howlingthrough the tortuous and intricate ravines and valleys of theice-fields.

  "Can we cross such a place as that?" asked La Salle, pointing to wherean edge of a large ice-field, suddenly lifted by the wedge-like brink ofanother, began a majestic and resistless encroachment, with theincalculable power communicated by the vast weight pressing behind it.

  A body of ice, at least a yard in thickness, ran up a steep ascent offive or six feet, broke with its own weight, pressed on again up thesteeper incline, broke again, and so continued to ascend and break offuntil a ridge a score of feet high, crested with glittering fragments ofbroken ice, interrupted the passage between the two floes.

  Regnar was silent, and then said, resolutely,--

  "We can try, at least."

  "Well said, Regnie," cried La Salle; "but look again yonder." He pointedto a small lead of open water bounded with abrupt shores, which weresurrounded with rounded balls and water-worn fragments of ice. A berg,losing its balance, fell with a loud splash, sank, and came to thesurface with a bound, covering the water with wet snow and the ruins ofthe shattered pinnacles. "Can we also pass the heavy drags of thedrifted snow, the baffling resistance of floating sludge, and suchdangers as that?"

  Turning, he descended under the lee of the shelter, where he was soonfollowed by the rest.

  "What spose we do, then?" asked Peter. "We stay this place to die ofcold and hunger?"

  "Peter, I'm ashamed of you," said La Salle. "Die, do you say, when wehave food, shelter, fire, and covering? We must, indeed, stay here untilthe winds and sea give us a better chance to escape to the shore.Meanwhile let us try to make ourselves comfortable."

  Accordingly the birds--six geese and eight brent--were divested of theirskins, which furnished patches of warm covering, of from two to foursquare feet. The sinews of the legs were divided into threads, and,using a small sail-needle which he carried to clean the tube of his gun,La Salle proceeded to show Waring how to make a large robe, placing thelarger skins in the middle, and forming a border of the smaller ones.

  Meanwhile Regnar had cleared the snow from a space about twelve feetsquare in front of the door, and, with fragments of ice, cemented withwet snow, formed a walled enclosure which kept off the wind; and Peter,splitting two or three of the wooden decoys, soon built a fire, overwhich a pair of geese, spitted on sticks, were narrowly watched andsedulously turned, while La Salle made a cup of his carefully-treasuredcoffee.

  As they sat eating their rude meal, Regnar broke the silence; for it maywell be believed that no great hilarity pervaded the little party.

  "As we not know how long we may be adrift, I think we better take'count stock. See how much wood, provisions, powder, shot, everyting."

  "You are right, Regnie; we will set to work at once. I can tell how muchfood we have now. We have a little bread, coffee, sugar, and a tin ofsardines, which I think we had better reserve for possible emergencies,also six candles, which we must not waste. I have a pound canister ofpowder untouched, and nearly half a pound more in my flask, with aboutfive pounds of shot, and three dozen shot-cartridges of different sizes,say sixty charges in all. Besides that, my rifle lies in the boat,loaded, with a small bag of bullets, and a quarter-pound flask of riflepowder."

  "I," said Waring, "have thirty cartridges for my breech-loader, and afew of the caps for them, in a box in my pocket."

  "I have nearly a pound powder, some wads, caps, and 'bout two pounds ofshot left," said Regnar.

  "Spose I got half pound powder in old horn, box caps mos' full, an' treepoun' goose shot," said Peter.

  "We have, then, somewhere between one hundred and fifty and two hundredrounds of ammunition, and provisions for a week, allowing ourselves noaddition to the present stock. Count the decoys, Regnie, while I look upour tools, &c."

  Regnie reported forty wooden decoys, twelve of sheet iron, eight of corkand canvas, and twelve wooden duck decoys. Besides these, there werestill untouched a dozen bunches of fir and spruce twigs, like those usedin covering the floor of the ice-hut. In addition to these, La Sallefound one large boat, the broken smaller one, a pair of oars, a pair ofrowlocks, a short boat-hook, baler, two lead-lines and leads, twoshovels, and two axes.

  "We are well provided for a week of such weather as this, and have onlyto fear a sudden change to extreme cold. I therefore think the firstthing for us to do, is to finish our feather quilt, enlarge our hut, andget up a stove as soon as possible."

  A general expression of incredulity showed itself on the faces of thetrio, which La Salle evidently interpreted rightly, and thereforehastened to explain himself.

  "Of course we must first make our stove."

  "Why, Charley, what on earth can we make our stove of?" said Waring.

  "Sheet iron, of course."

  "But where is the sheet iron to come from? We haven't any here--havewe?"

  "Ah, I know twelve decoys sheet-iron, only they painted."

  "Yes, Regnie, you have guessed it. Those decoys are about as good sheetiron as is made, and we can burn the paint off, I guess. Five of themwill furnish a cylinder, conical stove, fifteen inches diameter, and asmany high, and five more will give us about seven feet of two and ahalf-inch stove-pipe. Bring in the decoys and axes, and we'll get it upat once."

  "Come on, boys," said Waring, whose spirits had risen perceptibly sincebreakfast. "We'll have a hotel here yet, and supply passengers by themail-boat with hot dinners."

  "Sposum me have knife, I help you. Leave _waghon_ home yesterday for_h_ould woman make baskets," said Peter, ruefully.

  "I guess we shall manage with the axes, although we need a knife likeyour Indian draw-knife. Reach me a large decoy, and the heaviest ofthose cod-leads."

  La Salle had already "laid out" with the point of his penknife the shapeof one of the sections of his proposed stove upon one of the decoys fromwhich Regnar had already remo
ved the iron leg, which was about sixinches long, sharp pointed, and intended to be driven into the ice. Eachsection was twenty inches long, eight and a half inches wide at thelower end, and two and a half at the upper; and luckily the outline ofthe goose gave very nearly this shape, with little trimming, which waseffected by laying the iron on the lead, applying the edge of thesmaller axe as a chisel, and striking on its head with the large. Thelaps were then "turned" over the edge of an axe with a billet of woodcut from the old cross-bars of Davies's shooting-box, which were youngash saplings. Then the pieces were put together, the laps solidlybeaten down, and despite a little irregularity of shape, the job wasnot a bad one.

  Five other decoys furnished as many parallelograms of seventeen by eightand a half, which made good two and three quarter inch pipe, andafforded nearly seven feet in length when affixed to the cylinder.

  It was nearly four o'clock when the work was thus far completed.

  "If we only had a flat stone to set it on," said Waring.

  "I should not despair of that even," said La Salle, "if we dared lookaround on some of the older floes; but we shall have to do without onefor a day or two, I think."

  "Peter make glate, three, two minutes, only glate burn up every day ortwo;" and hastening out, he returned with a very large decoy, which, onaccount of its portentous size, had been made the leader of the "set"when arranged on the ice.

  With the axe he broke off the head, and then taking six of the ten ironlegs, he drove them two or three inches deep into the tough spruce log,until the spikes surrounded it like the points of a crown. La Salle hadre-riveted the four others at equal distances around the base of thestove, while Regnar had removed a part of the snow on the roof, and,cutting a large aperture through the bottom of the inverted box, nailedover it the eleventh decoy, through which a roughly-cut hole gaveadmittance to the chimney.

  The fir-branches were then removed to the yard, and covered from thestill falling rain with the rubber blanket, while all hands joined inenlarging their quarters. The ice was singularly hard and clear, andcontained no cracks or other sources of weakness. By sunset the lowerpart of the hut was enlarged from eight feet square to twelve feetdiameter, a circular shape being given to the excavation, so that acontinuous berth, about two feet wide and a yard high, ran completelyaround the floor of the hut, or rather to within about four feet of thedoor on either side. The fir-twigs were replaced in the berths andaround the floor, leaving a bare space of nearly four feet diameter inthe centre. Here a slight hollow was made, to contain the novel grate,and the stove was placed in position over it.

  Waring brought in a shovelful of embers from the dying fire outside,under whose ashes a goose, swathed in sea-weed, was preparing forsupper, and Peter followed him with some small chunks of wood. The stove"drew" beautifully, and but one drawback could be discovered--it madethe atmosphere within too warm for comfort, at the then temperature. "Nomatter that," said Peter, prophetically; "we glad see plenty fire hereto-morrow night."

  It was nearly midnight when the four ate supper and gave the fragmentsto their faithful dog. Before sleeping, La Salle stepped outside thehut. The wind had lessened greatly, but still blew mildly warm from asoutherly direction. "We must now be somewhere off Shediac, but I see noopen water, and the pack is as close as ever. We shan't get down to thecapes with this wind, and to-morrow at this time, if the wind holds, weshall be up to Point Escumenac. I don't care to think what next; but if,as Peter says, we are to have cold, westerly weather, we must move offinto the open Gulf and then--Well, we shall endure what it pleases Godto send us."

  Notwithstanding their fatigue, all were awake at daylight the nextmorning, and immediately the whole party ascended their lookout. Thewind still blew in very nearly the same direction, but with littleforce, and at noon, as the party sat down to their first meal for theday, no land could be plainly determined, and for an hour the utmostcalm prevailed, with an unclouded sun. The pack was still closed,however, with the exception of two or three small openings, in whichwere seen a seal and several flocks of moniac ducks, known on theAtlantic coast as "South-Southerlies." The former could not beapproached, but Peter got two shots at the ducks as they gyrated overthe berg, and killed three at one time and four at another, which wereduly skinned, and the bodies consigned to the "meat-safe," a hole in theice near the door.

  This meal tasted a little better than the former ones, the birds beingseasoned with salt procured from sea-water by boiling--a slow process,which La Salle promised to make easier when the next frost set in. Thebird-skins had been carefully cleaned from fat, and sewed into twoblankets about seven feet by five each, and stretched on the ice withthe flesh side uppermost, were rubbed with salt and ashes, and thenexposed to the sun, receiving considerable benefit thereby.

  For supper, a soup of fowls thickened with grated biscuit was eaten withhearty relish by all but Waring, who claimed to have eaten too much atdinnertime, although La Salle fancied that he looked flushed and pale byturns.

  "Do you feel sick, George?" said La Salle, anxiously, when the otherswere temporarily absent from the hut.

  "O, no, Charley; don't fuss about me. I'm all right, only I've eaten alittle too much of that fat meat, and taken scarcely any exercise," wasthe reply.

  "Well, George, don't fail to let me know at once if you do feel sick,for my stock of medicines is limited, and I must do my doctoring duringthe first stages of the disease," said La Salle, gravely.

  "Yes, I should judge so, doctor," laughed Waring; and, turning to thefire, he placed another stick under the cylinder, as if suffering from achill.

  At an hour before sunset they saw on their left hand, and, as nearly asthey could judge, about twelve miles away, the high headland ofEscumenac. The pack opened a little, for the wind had now been blowingfor about three hours from the west, the air was very perceptiblycolder, and the standing pools on the ice began to freeze. Under LeSalle's direction, Regnar cut a hole in the ice, which would hold aboutfour pailsful of salt water, and filled it to overflowing, while Petercut up a dozen of the decoys into junks three inches square, and piledthem near the door.

  As they entered the hut, they found Waring shivering over the fire. "Iam afraid, Charley," stammered he, "that I am going to be very sick, forI can't keep warm to save my life."