Left to Die

by Gary Collins

  After much consideration, the three men decided to take on repairing the discarded cod trap and buddy up fishing with it the following spring. It would not be easy and would take all winter for the three men to complete. Fortunately, Phillip Holloway’s hands were as adept at netting traps as they were at skinning fur. The speed of the twine needle in his hands as it clicked and twirled mending (also called “making”) the net was the talk around every twine loft in the community. There was one other thing they would need in order to fish with a large cod trap: a bigger boat.

  They knew where to purchase one in Greenspond, another isolated outport island community just a few miles north of Newport. The price for the thirty-one-foot boat—complete with a five-horsepower Atlantic one-lunger engine—was $75. Neither of the three men had a cent to their name. Phil agreed to put more time in on his trapline and to put what extra dollars he could earn into their new enterprise. He also asked Jesse to use his influence with the sealing skippers to get him and Joshua a berth at the ice on the same ship. Joshua had spent six years to the ice and was an experienced hand.

  Jesse agreed. The income from that hunt, no matter how little it would be, was still cash. The three men figured that this money would be enough to set themselves up as trapmen.

  * * * * *

  On the other side of Salt Water Pond, with the day just about gone and close to an hour’s walk from home, Phil had his mind on another kind of trap. It was a big leg-hold trap for an otter which he had set in the animal’s lead by the side of a brook. Despite his occupation, Phil hated to see animals suffer, and this evening was no different. He had trapped an otter by its left hind foot and the animal was crazed with pain and fear as he approached it. It was a young male, full of fight and anger. It snarled and spat at the hunter as he crouched among the trees, axe in hand. Each time the otter sprang to free itself, the small mesh chain leash attached to the steel trap jangled tight and yanked the otter back onto its haunches, trembling. It took several minutes before the otter tired and Phil got the chance to dispatch it with a blow to its head with the pole of his axe. Phil was sweating. He had been hurrying on the trail all day, wanting to cross the pond before full dark.

  Bending down to remove the trap, he shivered as the cold leaked into his open collar. Phil saw the wound to the otter’s leg. He removed the trap, cleaned the blood from it, and covered the mechanism with fir boughs before resetting it in the same lead. Crouched low, he inspected his kill, running both hands first against and then with the grain of the luxurious fur. The otter’s fur was thick, and though the animal was sleek, it was well-muscled and would make good eating.

  He was about to stand when he felt hot liquid running down over his top lip. He knew immediately what it was—blood. Phillip Holloway was prone to bad nosebleeds. He had always had them, even when he was a young man, but they had been less frequent then. Sometimes he would go years without one. But as he got older they occurred more often, sometimes two or even four times a year. Not only were they occurring more frequently, they were also becoming more severe. He noticed over the years that the bleeding came on more often when he was sweating, or sometimes soon after engaging in strenuous work. Blood dripped rapidly from both his nostrils in huge, hot drops that kept on coming. At intervals it spurted from his nose. In just a few seconds the snow around his feet was covered with bright red blood.

  Phil wasn’t worried too much about it, for though a bad episode might leave him feeling weak, the bleeding always stopped. Someone had told him to sit up straight, lean his head forward, and pinch his nostrils tight for several minutes until the bleeding stopped.

  He sat against a tree and tilted his head forward. By now his blood had stained the snow all around him. It dripped onto the dark skin of the otter. He tasted the sweet metallic stickiness of it on his lips and felt it run down over his chin. Before he had stemmed the initial flow between his thumb and forefinger, both his hands were bright red and his clothing was smeared with it. Phil sat motionlessly for several minutes, feeling tired and weak. He didn’t know if he should release the pressure on his nose or not. The warmth of his blood tickled his throat and he spat it out. Sweating and shivering, he steeled himself against the urge to straighten up and remove his fingers. Gradually, he began releasing the pressure from his nostrils. When he took his fingers away, his left nostril was glued shut with his blood and the other had stopped bleeding. He stood shakily to his feet, lifting the dead otter with him. Leaning against the tree, he waited longer than usual for his strength to return. This had been his worst nosebleed yet. Taking his time, he staggered a bit as he headed down the trail toward the pond and home.

  Later that evening, Phil entered the stage with the otter in his hand just as Jesse was climbing the steps up to the twine loft. Phil could hear Joshua working on the twine loft floor above the stage ceiling.

  “Died hard, did he?” Jesse commented, looking at the bloodstained otter.

  “Yeah, well you knows how hard it is to get a good smack at ’em sometimes.” Phil fastened the otter to a hook in the beam overhead, where the animal spun slowly in the lantern light, a rictus grin on its face. Jesse stepped back from the ladder.

  “Some of the b’ys were out on the ’ead this evenin’ and said they saw a few turrs flyin’ in the bay. I was thinkin’ maybe we could haul my punt out over the ice tomorrow marnin’ and row down to Greenspond. I’ll get a message wired off fer our berths to the ice and we’ll shoot a meal of turrs there and back.”

  “I only got a dozen or so shells,” said Phil. “Been meanin’ to fill a few more.”

  “I’ve about the same. Josh got about the same, he told me. We’ll make sure to fire at doubles at least. We’ll do all right.” Jesse was always confident. “Be wonderful good if we could talk to one of the sealin’ skipper’s face to face, Phil b’y. Them bloody merchants in S’n John’s don’t know if they’re punched er bored er tore wit’ a jigger! ’Tis the skippers who’ll get the berth fer us!” He headed for the steps again. “We’ll get in a couple o’ hours of nettin’ twine before we heads home, eh Phil?”

  “Just as soon as I skins the otter, Jess b’y. Can’t let ’em stiffen up too much. ’Ard to skin when they’re froze.” As Jesse disappeared through the hatch above, Phil pulled out his skinning knife and stepped to the turning otter. He moved it into the lantern’s glow as night deepened outside the stage. Frost descended on the sleeping village, smoke drifted out of every funnel, and the harbour ice thickened.

  Jesse, Phil, and Joshua had lots of help hauling their rowboat out over the harbour ice very early the next morning. Others were also going turr hunting, so everyone was only too willing to help. It was the outport way. They slipped their four-oared punt into the slob ice at the edge and had to rock the boat back and forth to get it through and into open water. Phil sat on the front thwart and pulled with the two oars while Joshua worked the oars on the middle seat. Jesse stood near the after seat with the sculling oar tucked in his arms, sculling and guiding the craft along. The sea was calm and had an oily, silvery smooth look after last night’s heavy frost.

  They hadn’t gone far before they saw their first turr. Jesse put down the sculling oar and picked up his shotgun. Phil and Joshua looked over their shoulders and rowed hard toward the plump black-and-white seabird.

  “Steady now!” said Jesse.

  The two men stopped rowing and allowed the punt to drift closer to the bird. The boat rose and fell on the swell as Jesse aimed and fired. The bird tried to rise but fell over on its back, showing its white belly and its feet twitching in death.

  “T’ought we was goin’ to shoot doubles!” exclaimed Phil.

  “Oh! Well, that was just a practice shot, Phil b’y.”

  Jesse dropped an iron bolt down the barrel of his old twelve-gauge gun, forcing the spent shell out. He placed the shell in a leather bag to be packed with shot and powder and used again lat
er. He rammed another shell into the gun with the heel of his hand, placed the gun down with its muzzle leaning up over the low gunnel, and picked up the oar. After fishing the turr out of the water with a dip net, they continued on in a northerly direction.

  2

  It took the three men a couple of hours of rowing and hunting before they reached the community of Greenspond. By that time they had fifteen fat turrs in the bottom of their punt, their white feathers spattered with blood. The birds flew in from the open sea and they figured on killing a few more on the way back. The tickle in Greenspond was slobbed over and the men had to rally the punt from side to side to get close enough to tie up to one of the wharves.

  Two ships were moored in the narrow tickle. Jesse recognized them as sealing vessels. He would learn later that several more sealing ships were moored in Pond Tickle, the thin waterway separating Greenspond Island from the mainland. It was a common practice for some of the merchants from the mainland to secure their vessels in or near Greenspond, fearing that a hard winter freeze-up in their own inland harbours would keep them from getting to the spring ice floes with the other vessels in time for the seal hunt.

  With a population of more than 1,600 to Newport’s 200 souls, Greenspond was considered a metropolis. This “capital of the north” was the oldest continuously inhabited outport in Newfoundland. Greenspond had a resident doctor, a court, a customs house, and three churches. A few of the houses were rumoured to be brothels. There was a cobbler and cooper, a blacksmith, and even a tinsmith on the little island. Greenspond also boasted the most sealing captains from anywhere else in Newfoundland—fifty-one of them! More than three-quarters of all vessels involved in the annual Newfoundland seal hunt set sail from the port of Greenspond.

  Even before the St. John’s merchants took sealers to the icefields to kill seals with clubs, the industrious fishermen from Greenspond had realized the financial potential of these migratory mammals. They killed them with rifle and heavy shot while in the open sea, but mostly they “fished” for them using fishing nets. One year, the fishermen from Greenspond caught more than 18,000 seals with their nets. Now they used nets that were designed for use in this seal fishery. The seal nets were stronger and had a bigger mesh than the others. Netting for seals became an annual spring event that offered the only considerable source of money to most of the struggling fishermen. When the seal hunt finally evolved into a serious money-making venture involving dozens of great ships and thousands of men, the name “seal fishery,” a name the fishermen of Greenspond had given to the seal harvest, had stuck.

  It was nearly midday when Jesse, Joshua, and Phil climbed up onto the wharf, tied up their boat, and walked ashore. Children were piling out of the big schoolhouse and running home for dinner, exciting several barking dogs as they went. Some of the rowdy children chased a lone two-wheeled dray piled with fishing gear as it was pulled along by a plodding dark brown pony. The teamster cursed and shouted at them.

  Clothes hung from drooping clotheslines while smoke rose into the air from cheap black funnels and expensive brick chimneys alike. Behind picket fences men sawed firewood into short stove lengths with rasping bucksaws. Men split stove junks into smaller pieces, their axes ringing and thudding clearly. Others strolled and hurried along the narrow roads, stood in groups on wharves, and chatted at stage doors.

  One of the Greenspond men recognized Collins and the Holloways as they approached.

  “Well now, Jesse Collins from New Harbour! Furrin’ Phil and his little brother wit’ ya, too.” Many people in the area, including some of Greenspond’s own residents, referred to Newport as New Harbour. It was the community’s original name. “Yer the ones who’s been makin’ all them little poppin’ sounds up in the reach this fine marnin’! Shootin’ them scrawny bull birds fer a pot o’ soup, I s’pose ya was!”

  “I didn’t see any blood in your boat, Job Easton. Eatin’ canned bully beef these days, are ye?” the young Collins shot back with his quick tongue, smiling as he did.

  “Ha ha! Bully beef fer all of us again this spring at the swile hunt, I ’lows,” said Easton. “’Orse meat I says they puts in them cans! Ya knows the merchants are takin’ names already fer berths to the ice, I s’pose?”

  Jesse assured Easton and the others that they did know. Not only that, he told them, he and the two Holloway boys were hoping to ship out together. They were planning on trap fishing as a crew for cod next year, and they figured they would all try and get to the ice on the same ship. Jesse, who had acquired an excellent reputation with the sealing skippers as a seal hunter, had agreed to use his influence to get them on a ship with him.

  They talked more for a while about seals, or swiles as some of them called the animals, about skippers they wished to sail with and some they wished they hadn’t sailed with, about ice conditions, pelt prices, and the pay they might receive.

  “That bloody Abe Kean. Got ’e’s name as top jowler offa our backs, he did,” said one of the men with Job Easton. Jowler was the name given to the most successful of sealing captains. “Not fit to sail with, that man idden, the way he treats his swilers.”

  “Knows where to find the seals, though,” another chimed in. “Can’t stick him fer that. He kin smell ’em, they says.”

  “Oh, aye, he kin find the bloody swiles, all right. But ’tis the likes o’ we as does the killing.”

  “’Twill be a bad year fer ice, I’m ’lowin’,” another interjected, changing the subject.

  They talked on, about sealing skippers and their hunting methods, about ships and the fierce conditions aboard these hunting vessels, about the many near-death experiences they had encountered while at the seal hunt, about food “I wouldn’t give me dog,” about the filthy shipboard conditions of the seal hunt, about sleeping on the bloody sculps, about the paltry dollars they had been paid last year. But to a man they agreed they would sell their souls to go to the hunt again.

  Soon the three Newport men took their leave, with many encouraging shouts ringing in their ears.

  “Good luck to ye!”

  “’Ope ye gets a top berth!”

  “Mark yer X fer Killer Kean!”

  “Don’t shoot no mooty birds on the way back!”

  “Can’t beat rabbit’s piss fer fox bait!”

  This last was directed at the man everyone in these parts knew as “Furrin’ Phil.”

  Although the fishing season was over, Greenspond was still bustling with business. Chandlers and merchants, blacksmiths, coopers, and tinsmiths still plied their trade. Goods from all over the northeast side of Newfoundland came to this port for shipment to Europe and beyond. Barrels of partridgeberries picked from the hills in the bays, casks of pickled Atlantic salmon and herring, dried capelin seined and cured months ago, and thousands of quintals of sun-dried codfish all readied to leave before the winter winds came to stay, had to be exported. Bales of cordage and twine, rusted iron grapnels, barrels of tar, tons of coal, and mountains of salt were imported into this busy, poorly sheltered harbour. Lumber and billets of birch firewood from the bay communities were stacked beside bulging warehouses. And then there were the preparations needed for the massive seal hunt just over two months away. Many companies from St. John’s had established themselves here in this seaport. One of them was Harvey and Company, one of the major seal hunting firms in Newfoundland. It was the Harvey’s premises that the men from Newport were headed for.

  A figure clad in a fur coat walked ahead of them. The fur came down to the tops of the man’s expensive-looking boots, making him look bigger than he actually was. He appeared to be headed toward the Harvey’s building, too. His shoulders were rounded but not stooped and he walked with a decisive step. On his head was a hat made of sealskin.

  “By God, Captain Kean!” Phil whispered hoarsely to his companions. “Jest the man we wants to see! You speak to ’im, Jess.”

 
“Skipper Kean, sir! A word, if ya don’t mind, sir!” Jesse called to the black figure ahead of them.

  The man stopped and turned slowly, as if the speaker behind him were a hindrance to be admonished. The clean-shaven man was Abram Kean’s youngest son, Westbury. For three years Wes Kean had been sealing skipper of the SS Newfoundland with Harvey and Company out of St. John’s, and everyone knew he was trying to step out of his famous father’s shadow with a big seal kill of his own. It hadn’t happened yet. Wes recognized Jesse Collins.

  “Rowed across in punt, did ya, Collins? Fine marnin’ fer a few turrs!”

  “’Tis so, sir. We got a few. Yer welcome to a meal of ’em if you’d like, sir.” Collins hoped to please the young sealing skipper. “If I took all the turrs offered to me since last evenin’ and this marning here in Pond—all picked an’ ready fer the pot, too, mind ye—I’d need a four-thwart trap skiff to put ’em in.”

  Kean waved a big hand in dismissal of Jesse’s offer. “Now if ’twas saltwater ducks you was offerin’! Ah, my man, dem’s the good eatin’! None about yet, they tells me. What word did ye want with me, Collins?” Kean had wasted enough of his time discussing seabirds.

  Jesse stepped forward. He was one of the few men who wasn’t intimidated by the Keans, father or son. In his strong, determined voice, brazen with youth, he said, “I heard you was to be skipper on the Newfoundland again this year, sir. I sailed with ye before, sir, and this year the t’ree of us would like to go to the ice with you.”

  Phil shifted uneasily on his feet. He was a quiet man who didn’t like confrontations, especially in public. He was sure one was coming now.

  “There’s no need fer a man who can hunt swiles like you to be bribin’ me with a few turrs, Collins. What about yer buddies? Good as yerself, I s’pose they are.”