Left on the Labrador: A Tale of Adventure Down North

Charley Norton was bored and unhappy. He stood at the starboard rail of the mail boat gazing out at the cold, bleak rocks of the Labrador coast, dimly visible through fitful gusts of driving snow.

Charley Norton and his father's secretary, Hugh Wise, had boarded the ship at St. John's ten days before for the round trip voyage to Hopedale, and during the voyage there had not been one pleasant day. Biting blasts swept the deck, heralding the winter near at hand, and there was no protecting nook where one could escape them and sit in any degree of comfort. The cabin was close and stuffy, and its atmosphere was heavy with that indescribable odor that rises from the bowels of old ships. The smoking room, bare and dismal and reeking with stale tobacco smoke, was deserted, save when the mail boat doctor and Hugh Wise were occasionally discovered there in a silent game of checkers.

Charley had tried every corner of the ship to which he was admitted, and had decided that, as uncomfortable as it was, he preferred the deck to cabin or smoking room.

It was the middle of October, and the last voyage the mail boat was to make until the end of the following June, when the winter's ice would clear from the coast, and navigation would open for another short summer. The last fishing schooner had already hurried southward to escape the autumn gales and the blockade of ice, and the sea was deserted save by the lonely mail boat, which was picking up the last of the Newfoundlanders' cod fishing gear at the little harbours of the coast.

"A swell time I'm having!" Charley muttered. "Not even a decent place on the old ship where I can sit and read!"

"Not having a good time, eh?"

Charley looked up into the smiling face of Barney MacFarland, the second engineer.

"Hello!" he exclaimed. "I didn't know anybody was around. I didn't hear you."

"Having a rotten time?" Barney grinned good-naturedly.

"The worst I've ever had!" said Charley. "It's too cold to stay on deck and too close and smelly inside, and there's no one to talk with. Mr. Wise sprawls in his bunk reading silly novels he brought with him, when he isn't playing checkers with the Doctor."

"'Tis a bad season to be coming down to The Labrador," suggested Barney. "Though there's fog enough in July and August, we're having fine weather too, with plenty of sunshine. 'Tis then the passengers are with us, with now and again sightseers from the States. And the fishing places are busy, with enough to see. Then's the time to come."

"I didn't pick the time," explained Charley, glad to have an opportunity to talk into sympathetic ears. "Dad was going hunting in Newfoundland, and he took me to St. John's with him. I thought I was going along, but after we got to St. John's he said I was too young to hike through the country, and that this trip on the mail boat would be more interesting for me while he hunted. He sent Mr. Wise along to keep me company. He's Dad's secretary. He's left me alone most of the time. Dad said I would see Indians and Eskimos and loads of interesting things, but I've been on the ship ever since we left, except at Hopedale when the Captain took me ashore for an hour while we were lying there before we turned back. That was dandy! I saw Eskimos, and Eskimo dogs, and I bought some souvenirs at the Moravian Mission for Mother and some of the boys. But I wasn't there half long enough to see everything. They never let me go ashore in the boat at the harbours where we stop."

"Well, well, now! That is hard on you, b'y," agreed Barney sympathetically. "Where is your home?"

"In New York. But Dad is so busy at his office that I don't see him often. I thought I was going to have a dandy time with him!"

Charley choked back tears, which he felt it would be unmanly to shed, and gazed out over the sea.

"Lad, when you gets lonesome to talk come down to the engine room when it's my watch on," Barney invited heartily. "I'll show you the big engines, and we'll chum up a bit. I'm off watch now, but I'll be on at eight bells. That's four o'clock, land reckoning. I'll come and get you, b'y, and show you the way."

"Thank you! Thank you ever so much!" Charley acknowledged gratefully, as Barney left him.

The ship which had been standing off from the shore was now edging in toward the land. Suddenly there came a long blast of the whistle. There was activity upon the deck at once. Sailors were swinging a boat out upon the davits. Charley hastened to join the sailors, and asked:

"Are we going to make a port?"

"Aye, lad," answered one of them good-naturedly.

"What place is it?" asked Charley.

"Pinch-In Tickle."

"Will it be a long stop?"

"Now I'm not knowin' how long or how short. We stop inside the Tickle to take on fish and gear. I'm thinkin' 'twill be a half hour's stop, or thereabouts."

"May I go ashore in the boat?"

"Ask the mate. I'm doubtin' there'll be room. The boat comes back with full cargo at this harbour."

Charley turned his inquiry to the mate, who was directing the men.

"No, lad. I'm sorry," he answered, "but there'll be no room for passengers."

It was always that way! Charley left them to return to his old place at the rail. The ship had slowed to half speed, and was already picking her way cautiously into the tickle, where the cliffs, nearly as high as the masthead, were so close on either side that Charley believed he might have touched them with a ten-foot pole.

At the end of two hundred yards the narrow tickle opened up into a beautiful, sheltered harbour. Perched upon the rocks at the north side of the harbour were some rude cabins. Opposite these the ship swung about, the boat was lowered, and manned by four sailors, pulled to the rocks that formed a natural pier for the fishing station.

There was some bitterness in Charley's heart as he watched the retreating boat, and so occupied was he that he failed to observe, until it was quite near, another boat pulling toward the ship. It was a small, dilapidated old boat, with a boy of fourteen or thereabouts at the oars.

Charley leaned over the rail, and with much interest watched the boy make the painter fast to the ladder, and then, like a squirrel, mount the ladder to the deck.

The visitor was dressed much like the other natives that Charley had seen. An Eskimo adikey, made of white moleskin cloth, with the hood thrown back, served as a coat. His trousers were also of white moleskin, and were tucked into knee-high sealskin boots with moccasined feet. From under a muskrat fur cap appeared a round, smiling face, tanned a dark brown, and a pair of bright, pleasant eyes.

"Hello!" said Charley. "Looking for some one?"

"No," answered the boy, "I'm just pullin' over to look at the ship."

Charley was seized by a sudden impulse, and acted on it instantly.

"Will you take me ashore? The ship will be here for half an hour, and maybe longer. I'll give you a dollar if you'll take me ashore and bring me back."

"And you wants to go I'll pull you ashore," agreed the boy cheerfully. "I'll be goin' down and holdin' the boat up so you can get into she easy."

Without parley he slipped over the side and down the ladder into the boat, which he drew broadside to the ladder and there held it until Charley, who followed, was seated astern.

"Where you wantin' to go now?" asked the boy. "To the boat landin'?"

"Just anywhere ashore," directed Charley. "Let's land over where I can climb that hill and have a look around."

He indicated a low hill midway between the tickle and the cabins, and the boy soon made a landing on a shelving rock, above which the hill rose abruptly. Charley helped him pull the boat to a safe place, and waited while he made the painter fast. Then the two began the ascent of the hill.

"What's your name?" asked Charley.

"Toby Twig," answered the boy.

"My name is Charley Norton, and I'm from New York. I'm taking a cruise in the mail boat."

"I'm wishin' every time I sees she come in that I could be takin' a cruise in she! It must be wonderful fine."

"I don't think it is. It's too cold on deck and too smelly in the cabin. It must get pretty cold here in winter. Where I live we hardly ever have snow until the end of December."

"Aye, it does get wonderful cold," agreed Toby. "'Twill not be long now till the harbour freezes and the sea too."

"Can't you use boats in winter?"

"No, we can't use un much longer now. We cruises with dogs in winter, after the harbour and the sea freezes."

"It must be dreadfully lonesome with no boats coming in."

"I don't find un lonesome. There's aplenty to do. We hunts in winter, and 'tis fine fun."

"Did you ever shoot a wolf?" asked Charley in some awe.

"No, but I sees un. Last winter I sees five wolves, but they keeps too far away to shoot un."

"My, but I'd like to see a wild wolf! Did you ever see a bear?"

"Yes, I sees bears, black and white. Dad killed a black bear last week."

The two had crossed the crest of the hill, as they talked, wholly oblivious of the passage of time, until Toby suggested:

"I'm thinkin' now we'd better be goin' back. The mail boat never bides long here."

"She was to be here half an hour," said Charley, as they retraced their steps. "We haven't been half an hour."

A moment later they reached the top of the hill. Both boys stopped and looked below them and in consternation into the empty harbour.

"She's gone! The ship has gone!" cried Charley in sudden fright.

"She's gone!" echoed Toby. "She's goin' and leavin' you!"

"Oh, catch her! Signal her! Do something!" Charley plead helplessly.

"We can't catch she or signal she! She's too far," and Toby pointed to a long black line of smoke rising above the rocks beyond Pinch-In Tickle, and more than a mile distant.

"What shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?" wailed Charley in wild despair.

What indeed could he do? Here he was, left upon the bleak rocks of the Labrador coast, at the edge of an Arctic winter, a lad of thirteen, a stranger in a strange and desolate land.

"SHE'S GONE! THE SHIP HAS GONE!" CRIED CHARLEY IN SUDDEN FRIGHT.

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