There was great excitement at the little village of St. Anthony, on the far northern tip of Newfoundland.
Tom Bradley was coming back from a seal-hunt, and his big dogs Jim and Jack were helping him drag a flipper seal big enough to give a slice of the fat to every man, woman and child in the place.
Tom had a large family, and for nine days they had tasted nothing but a little roasted seal meat.
Finally Tom took his gun down from the nails over the door. It was a single-barrel muzzle-loader, meant for a boy, but he was a good shot, and had often wandered out alone over the frozen sea and come back with a nice fat bird or even a seal to show for it.
"Where be you goin', Tom?" asked his anxious wife.
"Out yonder." He jerked his thumb toward the wide white space of the ice-locked ocean.
She ran to get his warm cap and mittens. "When'll you be back?"
"I dunno. Not till I get a seal. Us has got to have somethin' to eat, an' have it soon."
She found an old flour-bag, and tied up in it a few crusts of bread.
"You'd ought to keep this here," said Tom.
"No, Tom. You can't hunt without nothin' to eat. We'll manage somehow. We'll borrow."
"Ain't nobody to borrow from," answered Tom. "Ain't nobody round here got nothin'. We uns is all starvin'. Hope Sandy Maule's letter gits to that there Dr. Grenfell."
"Who's Dr. Grenfell?"
"He's a doctor comin' out here from England. He's goin' to help us."
"Will he have anythin' to eat?"
"Yes—he'll have suthin'. But he's got lots o' friends in England an' America—an' he can get 'em to send things."
"What'd Sandy Maule write?"
Tom was poking a bit of greasy cloth through the gun with a ramrod. Everything depended on the way that gun worked. He mustn't miss ashot—there was no fun in that long, hard hunt on the ice that lay ahead of him.
"Sandy Maule wrote, 'Please, Doctor, come and start a station here for us if you can. My family and I are starvin'. All the folks around us are starvin' too. The fish hain't struck in and bit like they should. We're cuttin' pieces outa the sides o' our rubber boots an' tyin' 'em on for shoes.' Things like that, Sandy writ to the Doctor."
Mrs. Bradley drew the sleeve of her thin, worn calico dress across her eyes. She was a brave woman, but her strength was nearly gone. She did not want her husband to see her cry.
"It's all of it true," she said. "If I could only get a little fresh milk to give the baby! Might as well ask for the moon."
She did not speak bitterly. She would stay by her man and live for her children to the end.
"Well," said Tom, trying to sound matter-of-fact, "we'll go out with the ole gun an' see what we get." Not one of the little boys was old enough to go, but the dogs Jim and Jack leaped up, wagging their tails and fawning upon their master.
Tom had only part of a dog-team: when he or his neighbors made a long trip they borrowed from one another. What one had, they all had.
As Tom stood looking at the dogs, he couldn't help thinking: "One of those dogs would keep the family alive for a while. But I sure would hate to kill one of the poor brutes. They've been the best friends we ever had." His wife knew what he was thinking, though the dogs did not.
Then he spoke. "Gimme a kiss, wifey." He smiled at her brightly. "Cheer up. This little ole gun and me'll bring ye enough to eat for a long time."
She kissed him, and off he trudged, the dogs leaping beside him and trying to lick his mittened hands.
Away out yonder on the ice was a little black speck. He strained his eyes to see.
"There's one!" he muttered. "Now, how to get up near enough. If the dogs comes with me they'll sure scare it away—it'll go poppin' into its old blow-hole afore I kin git it."
Jim and Jack were sitting on the bushy plumage of their tails, their bright eyes fixed ontheir master, waiting for orders. They would have loved it had he told them to chase that black speck far out at sea. They would have gone on till they dropped, at his lightest word.
"No, boys, you wait here," he said. "You're goin' to help me haul it back—when I get it. But gettin' it is somethin' I gotta do all by my lonely. Now, you stay right here an' wait for me. Don't you dast to come no nearer!" He shook his finger at them solemnly.
They seemed to understand. They curled up and lay down in the thin powdery snow-blanket.
"Now then," muttered Tom, "I gotta creep an' creep an' crawl an' crawl till I get near, an' then I gotta lie down an' scrape along on my tummy same as if I was a seal myself. That's what I gotta do."
Suiting the action to the word, he started on, watching all the time that little dark spot on which all depended.
He could imagine the children waiting at home and asking their mother every little while: "When's Papa comin' back? Is he goin' to bring us somepin' to eat?"
"I wonder if that there Grenfell man is evergoin' to git this far north?" Tom asked himself as he crept toward the seal. "If us could only git a chance to sell our fish for better'n two cents a pound, after us gets 'em salted an' dried! Them traders, they bleeds the life outa us. They say Grenfell when he comes is a-goin' to fight them traders an' put 'em outa business!"
The swift wind was throwing stinging bits of ice, sharp as needles, in his face. He drew his cap about his ears more closely and plodded on. The further he walked the further away the seal seemed to be. He was half crouching as he walked: he wished he might cover himself with a skin and crawl on all fours. But if he started to crawl now—he felt as though it would be a year before he could get near enough to shoot.
"Please, God"—he spoke to God as naturally as to his family—"bless this ole gun an' make her shoot straight and he'p me knock that seal over, the first shot. For it don't look like there's goin' to be more'n one shot, an' if I don't kill her there's my whole family's goin' to starve and mebbe a whole lot o' other people that's a-lookin' for what they think I'm a-goin' to bring back."
Now it was time to flatten himself down on the ice and scrape along, like another seal. It was hard work—try it yourself, if you don't think so!—and it took lots of patience.
Now he could see the seal raise its head and look about. He mustn't give it a chance to ask questions of the wind, because the wind might say: "Look out, Mr. or Mrs. Seal! There's a man creeping and creeping toward you with a gun, and in a minute that man is going to shoot, and you'll be sorry you hung around here and didn't dive through the ice the very first second your nose told you you'd better!"
He raised his gun, and prayed again—this time a very short prayer: "O Lord, bless this gun!" And he fired.
The black spot had not vanished. It was motionless. "Did I hit him?" Tom asked himself. "Better try another shot an' make sure."
He was a long time sighting—and he imagined the spot moved a little as he did so.
Then he fired again.
There it was still. Now he dared to believe he had hit the seal. Dragging the gun hecrawled nearer and nearer. Still the seal did not move.
Now he could see the whole animal clearly.
The sight was joyful.
"Glory be!" he shouted. Then he jumped up and capered about madly on the ice. It was a nice, fat, luscious, flipper seal and dead as a door-nail. Enough for a banquet for all of the tiny village of St. Anthony. And if Dr. Grenfell should be there when he and the dogs got back with it, the Doctor should have the largest, tenderest, juiciest steak of all.
The wind was setting toward the dogs. He could barely see them there, far, far behind him—making a black spot where they slept, exactly as though they were another seal.
So he put two fingers to his lips and blew a long, shrill blast.
It was the signal for which they had been waiting. On they came like two wild young race-horses, each eager to be first to greet their master.
They must have known well enough that he had killed the seal. They had hunted with him so often that if they had been human the manand the dogs could hardly have spoken to each other and understood better.
"Good old Jim! Good old Jack!" The dogs bounced round him like india rubber, mad with delight.
"Look what we gotta take back! Ain't that somethin' to make the old lady's eyes pop outa her head? First big seal's been caught off here for months! Enough to save the whole village from starvation. An' you dogs is to have some of it too, all o' you. Here's to begin with!"
He drew his clasp-knife and snicker-snacked two good-sized bits from the tail of the fallen monarch. He threw the meat to the dogs, who had it down in a gulp and a swallow and then stood with their ears up, like the Jack-in-the-pulpit, to know if there would be more.
"No, boys, that's enough to start back on!" He produced straps and ropes from the bread-bag and rigged up a harness so that the dogs might haul the seal, giving himself the end of a rope, to pull more than his share of the heavy carcass.
"Wisht we could git a coupla polar bears too!" he laughed. "But I don't know how wecould pull to the shore any more'n what we got here. Well, when we've got this et we'll be comin' back fer more, won't we, boys?"
And the dogs, tugging and wagging as they plodded shoreward, seemed to agree.
In spite of the weight of the seal, the trip back did not seem nearly so long. For you know how it is—when your heart is light any burden you carry doesn't count for nearly so much.
Tom Bradley in spite of pulling so hard was singing to himself like a kettle on a stove. And the dogs, too, would have spared breath to bark joyously, if huskies ever barked. But no well-bred husky makes remarks of that sort.
Tom stopped to rest, and sat on an ice-hummock, the dogs with their heads against his knee, their tongues lolling out.
"'Member that time we chased the ole bear?" he laughed. "That was the time I couldn't do nothing with you! You was young dogs then, an' you got so excited you wouldn't listen to nothin'!
"You just went a-racin' an' a-tearin' on from the time you seen 'im. O' course, as a driver don't have no reins, an' we only got a whip, wecan't pull you up if you really wanta go. We can just holler 'left' an' 'right' an' 'stop' an' 'go ahead.' But my oh my! We sure did stack up against trouble that day.
"You an' the rest o' the team, you waded right into that bear before I'd got you cut loose from the traces. The air was full o' bear-meat an' dog-fur flyin'. Guess the bear didn't know no difference between you an' wolves. There's many a man has made the same mistake.
"There was old Mr. Bear standin' up on his hind legs battin' away like he was wound up, handin' out punishment like it was a boxin' match, and you fellows hollerin' bloody murder.
"You done more'n wolves would 'a' done. Wolves wouldn't 'a' tackled a bear that way—unless it was a great big crowd o' wolves an' one lone, lorn, small bear.
"He was a buster, he was, an' there was only six o' you. But you stood right up-ta him all right! You remember, don't you?"
Jim and Jack flopped their tails on the ice as if to say yes. Their mouths were wide open—it looked as if they were laughing in delight to be reminded of the battle.
"Say, you dogs certainly are the willin', hard-workin' fellers when you're fed up right. I believe you'd rather haul a sled than eat. You rascals! 'Member the time you et my gloves just as I was goin' to start? I had to larrup outa you that trick you had when you was young o' gobblin' your own harness when you wasn't watched. I sure do hate to hit you. One o' these whips 'll bite a hole in a door twenty feet off: I've seen ole Pop Rinker drive a nail in a board with one.
"When we get back, if that ther Dr. Grenfell has come we'll get some other dogs an' take him out for a ride. He'll have to have a team o' dogs. Can't get along in this country without you dogs—not till they have reindeer. Heaven knows, the Doctor'll have miles and miles o' country to cover, to get round to all the people hereabouts that needs him. Ain't it a great an' mighty blessin' this country's now a-goin' to have a doctor all our own, all our very own?"
When they got back to the hamlet with their seal, there was a jollification.
Tom Bradley could have been Mayor, or King, or anything he wanted.
There was plenty of one thing in that place—and that was fire-wood, from the spruces and firs alongshore.
So they built a monstrous pyramid, big enough to cook twenty seals, and round the community bonfire they collected, dogs and all, for a feast. The children shouted in glee and clapped their hands. The mothers were happier for themselves than for their babies. And their joy was the greater because word had come that Dr. Grenfell was finding his way in the little steamer, theJulia Sheridan, through a channel behind the islands and was likely to be in their midst at any hour of any day.
Next day, the Doctor came. Such hand-shaking and back-slapping and outcries of honest pleasure as greeted him! And from the very first minute there were anxious appeals for his aid.
"Doctor, would ye please come to see my old woman?"
"What's the matter with her?"
"Oh, Doctor, she does be took wonderful bad. Sometimes the wind rises an' it goes all up an' down an' it settles in her teeth an' the painsshoots her in the stummick an' we has to take hold of her arms an' pull 'em out and she howls like a dog an' we dunno what's the matter. Would you please come an' see? She's askin' us to kill her she's in such punishment, but us didn't think us'd ought to do it without askin' you. Would you please come 'n' see?"
In that first winter Grenfell was "at home" three Sundays only, and he had to cover fifteen hundred miles behind the dogs. Sometimes they were heart-breaking, bone-racking miles. Sometimes they were as smooth and easy as a skating-rink. But not very often.
One day he had a run of seventy miles to make across the frozen country.
The path was not broken out—it wasn't even cut and blazed.
Just once had the leading dog made the journey.
But because he had made it once—they left it all to him to choose the way to go.
Straight on the good dog went, never stopping to turn round and look in the face of the driver, the way dogs will.
The way—such as it was—took them overwide lakes, and through thick woods deep-hung with snow.
"Halt!" called Grenfell. The driver gave the command to the dogs. They stopped and rested while the men explored.
Sure enough, the leading dog was right. A climb to the top of a high tree showed the "leads" and proved to the men that they were traveling in the right direction: and the compass said so too.
Again and again they stopped—and every time it proved that the dog was right.
On journey after journey of this kind, round about St. Anthony on that far northern peninsula of Newfoundland, Grenfell and the dogs he drove got to know and love one another better.
Grenfell has done seventy-five miles in a day easily: but how far one goes depends on the state of the ice and snow and the roughness of the trail: sometimes five miles a day is as much as the dogs, pulling their very hearts out, are able to cover. Six miles an hour is an average rate of speed when it is "good going." Once the Doctor made twenty-one miles in a little more than two hours, over level ice.
The building of the sled, or komatik, is a most important matter. The Doctor prefers one eleven feet long, of black spruce, with runners an inch thick, covered with spring steel. With such a sled, and a good team of dogs attached with proper traces, travel on firm and level snow is an exhilarating experience. But a thousand and one things may go wrong, the dogs when not running are forever picking bloody quarrels, and continual vigilance is the price of a swift, smooth passage.
A member of Grenfell's staff had crossed a neck of land between two bays, and was "twenty miles from anywhere," when his dogs struck the fresh trail of deer.
At such times the dogs are likely to take leave of all their senses save the instinct of the chase. These plucky beasts were no exception to the rule.
As they were short of food, the two teams were hitched to one sled, and the other sled, laden, was left in charge of a boy, while the men gave chase to the caribou. Like Casabianca on the burning deck, the boy had been told not to stir from that chilly, lonesome spot.
But just as the men got under way, a terrible snowstorm sprang up from nowhere, and so enveloped and bewildered the hunters that for two days they wandered, till they lost all hope.
Then, by great good luck, starving and worn out, they came to a little house many long and weary miles from where the boy was left with the komatiks.
They sent a relief team back to find him. There he was, standing by the sleds like a good, true soldier, just where they told him to remain. He was bound to be faithful unto death, even though he should freeze stiff for his obedience to orders.
Another time, the team was halted in a wood at nightfall, and Grenfell and his comrades started to walk on snowshoes to the village six miles distant.
They lost their way, and found themselves by nightfall at the foot of steep cliffs which they could not get round, though the village was hardly more than a mile away and its lights twinkled them a warm yellow welcome like friendly eyes.
The only thing to do was to fight their wayup and over the rocks. As they came to the top, they found two tired men who knew the way, but were so weary they had made up their minds to flop down in the snow for the night.
But Grenfell started a fire, and served out some bits of sweet cake he carried: so that presently they took heart to go on. If they had not done so, they might all have frozen to death in the snow, for the night was bitterly cold and they were perspiring from their hard work, so that their clothes were turning as stiff as suits of armor with the ice. As it was, the whole party reached the village safely, and came back next day to find the dogs and the sleds and bring them in.
A lumber mill was started on a bay sixty miles below St. Anthony, and a boiler weighing three tons was landed and set in place with the whole neighborhood helping. After Christmas Grenfell decided to make the run thither with the dogs from St. Anthony.
There was no trail. Most of the way the journey was through virgin forest. There were windfalls and stumps and bushes with pointed rocks amid the snow—offering no end of pitfallswhere a man might break his ankle and lie groaning and helpless as a wounded caribou till he died.
Nobody they could find had ever made the trip. But they had to know without delay how the boiler worked and how the mill was going. So off they started, gay as a circus parade, telling themselves they would do the distance in two days.
Not so. At the end of two days they were still wrangling with mean little scrub bushes, fallen rotten logs and the pointed rocks treacherously sheeted with ice and snow.
If they struggled to the top of a snow-laden spruce for an outlook, all they saw was more of the same old thing—a scowling landscape of white-clad woods and lonesome ponds. The compass always seemed to lead them straight into the thick of the worst places.
They took the wrong turning to get round a big hill, and found a river which they thought would lead them to the head of the bay where the mill stood.
But the river was a raging torrent, which leapt among the rocks, made rapids and falls,and left gaping holes in the ice into which the dogs fell, snarling their traces and their tempers and many times risking a broken leg.
Still the brave little beasts of burden strained and tugged forward, encouraged by the shouts of the men.
They couldn't get away from the river, for the banks were too steep. By and by they reached a ravine where the water boiled and churned and raced along in its great rocky trough too rapidly to be frozen, even by the intense cold that prevailed. It seemed as if they must be halted here—but that is not the way with men of Newfoundland and the Labrador.
The only thing to do was to chop a passage through the ice along the bank—like making a tow-path for a canal.
After they had fought their way through the narrows, they yearned for sleep. So they built a fire, and felled tree-trunks twenty feet long into it, till they had a "gorgeous blaze." Then they dug holes in the snow, deep as bear's dens, broke loose from their stiff, icy clothes, got into their sleeping bags, and slept the sleep ofthe just till the golden sun warmed them with its morning blessing.
The rest of the way gave them no trouble. They got a royal welcome from the hands at the mill. It was such a great event, in fact, that a holiday was declared, and all hands went "rabbiting." At the end of the day they built another mighty fire of logs, gathered round it with steaming cocoa and pork buns, and decided all over again that life was worth living and that moving a lumber-mill on an Arctic fore-shore is sheer fun, if you only think so.
Not long after an experimental fox farm was begun. The farm part of it is not so hard as the foxes. All you need for the farm is a few poles and some wire netting.
They picked up a dozen couples of foxes—red, white, cross, and one silver pair. A Harvard professor describes moving day when foxes were being brought on the little steamer to St. Anthony. "Dr. Grenfell at one time had fifteen little foxes aboard.... Some of these little animals had been brought aboard in blubber casks, and their coats were very sticky. After a few days they were very tame and played withthe dogs; they were all over the deck, fell down the companionway, were always having their tails and feet stepped on, and yelping for pain, when not yelling for food. The long-suffering seaman who took care of them said, 'I been cleaned out dat fox box. It do be shockin'. I been in a courageous turmoil my time, but dis be de head smell ever I witnessed.'"
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Probably the fox farm suffered from too much publicity. A mother silver fox is one of the scariest of creatures, and is known to "kill her children to save their lives" when a thunderstorm comes on, or visitors are alarming. Most fox farms are therefore in the depths of the woods: and the path to them is kept a dark secret by the owners. But the farmers at St. Anthony's were green to the business, and they let the fishermen come in numbers to see the show, not realizing what the consequences would be. The red and the cross foxes seemed pleased to entertain guests; not so with the white foxes, and the precious silver foxes were the shyest of all. Not a pup lived to grow up. Many were born, but their parents killed them all. By and by, after a mortal plague broke out among the animals,the farm was converted into a garden with a glass frame for seeding vegetables.
But others, with more science at their command, developed a profitable industry in Quebec, Labrador and in Prince Edward Island. In the year the war began a silver vixen and her brood were sold for ten thousand dollars. A wild fox, sold for twenty-five dollars, was resold for a thousand. There is money in the business, properly conducted. For those who want wild animals to have fair play, there is satisfaction in the thought that to get fox fur by way of breeding is infinitely more humane than to get it by way of the trap, whose cruel teeth may hold the animals through hours and days of suffering till the hunter comes.
"Get out o' there, youse!"
A big raw-boned fisherman with an oar in his hand came running up the stony beach at Hopedale.
The door of the little Moravian church was open. So were the windows. And so were the mouths of a pack of dogs who were yowling their heads off and trying to kill each other inside the church.
"That's just the way with them huskies!" panted Long Jim, as he stumbled up the slope. "Can't leave 'em be ten minutes without their gettin' into mischief. 'Tis a nice place they picked out for a fight this time! I'll soon have 'em out o' there! They'll find out the house o' God ain't no dog-house."
Swinging his oar right and left he dashed into the church.
Such a scene as met his eyes!
The dogs had been tearing the hymn-booksapart as if they were slabs of raw seal-meat. For the Eskimos had been handling the books with their fingers fresh from cleaning fish and cutting up blubber. So that to a dog's nose each book smelt and tasted perfectly delicious. As fast as one dog closed his hungry jaws on a book, another dog, snarling and yowling, would try to snatch it from him.
Over and over in the aisles and between the pews they rolled, snapping and tearing at one another. For the sake of meat they would do murder any day—and the fact that it was in a church on Sunday meant nothing to Long Jim's idle, hungry pack.
"Go on, now! Git outa here!" Long Jim laid about him vigorously with the oar. Sharp yelps resounded as he thwacked their heads and legs. One dog took a header into the baptismal font, which was full of stale water.
Another tried to climb under the little cabinet organ. But there were two dogs there already, and one of them bit him in the chest. He backed away, slobbering and raging.
Another dog hid under the communion table, but Long Jim found him and kicked him awaywith his soft furry boots that did no damage to dog ribs.
The leaders of the pack, Jock and Sandy, soared out of the window at the right. Jock landed on his head in the kitchen garden where the precious cabbages were growing behind high wooden palings. Sandy was more fortunate, and fell squarely on his feet. Both dogs began to gobble the soft green stuff just visible above the ground.
The other dogs came after them, biting and tearing at each other even while they were scrambling across the window-sill.
"Long Jim" ran out at the door, and had to tear down a lot of the stakes before he could drive the dogs out of the garden. When at last they went, most of the young and precious cabbages went with them. The garden looked like a mud-pile where children have been in a quarrel.
"Ain't that a shame!" exclaimed Long Jim. "Them poor Moravian brothers worked so hard to git that garden goin'! I s'pose I gotta pay for them hymn-books an' them cabbages. Where I'm a-gonna git the money t' pay f'r it all,I'm blessed if I know! I guess I'll have to see if I can git the money from Dr. Grenfell till I get paid for my fish."
Dr. Grenfell was in a cottage near by, visiting a patient. The sick man couldn't stir from his bed.
A puff of wind blew the door open, just as the hungry pack of dogs came rushing up.
Instantly Jock and Sandy halted, and sniffed a mighty, soul-satisfying sniff.
Such a nice, sweet smell of dinner as was blown on the breeze from the door!
Their whiskers twitched and their mouths watered.
Then it was just as if Jock and Sandy said to the other dogs: "Well, what about it, boys? Shall we have some more fun? Are you hungry?"
For the whole pack as though pulled by a string made a dash for the door and swept in on the Doctor and the sick man lying there.
It was like an avalanche. Dr. Grenfell was swept off his legs, as if he had been bathing in the surf and a big wave rushed up and knocked him down.
The boldest jumped up on the stove, where the stewpot was, that sent out such a delicious smell.
He pried off the cover, and then the pot rolled off the stove with a terrible clatter, and its steaming contents were dumped out on the floor.
You could fairly hear those beasts screaming "That's mine! Get out of there! That belongs to me!" Just like greedy, quarrelsome boys that forgot their manners long ago, if they ever had any.
They fought with added fury because—the hot stew burned their noses. They were in such a hurry they couldn't wait for it to cool. They snuffled and scuffled, they bit and snarled and snorted, as they had done in the church with the hymn-books and then with the cabbages in the vegetable garden.
One of the dogs thrust his head in the pot to get the last "lickings" and then he couldn't shake it loose again.
Round and round the room he banged and struggled, till the Doctor took pity on him and hauled it off his head.
Meanwhile the house filled with steam as if it were on fire.
The Eskimos came rushing from everywhere, with shouts in their own tongue that sounded almost like the cries of the dogs.
They had long harpoon handles, and they pranced about the room, thwacking right and left.
The Doctor was entirely forgotten. So was the sick man. The room was filled with steam, stew, dogs, harpoons, and blue language.
At last the dogs were shoved out, and the door was slammed after them.
"How are you feeling?" said the Doctor to his patient.
"B-b-better, Doctor. It was a funny show while it lasted. But I guess they ain't much left o' that there stew, is there?"
The Doctor laughed. "No—our dinner is wrecked. A total loss!"
The door opened slowly. Long Jim stood there in the doorway, fumbling his hat in his hand. "Awful sorry about them dogs, Doctor," he muttered. "They just seem to ha' gone clean crazy. They ain't had nothin' to eat for so long, you see. They're good dogs when they ain't hungry. Would you—would you lend me themoney to pay for them hymn-books an' cabbages an' the stew till I can pay ye back?"
"Oh, that's all right, Jim!" answered the Doctor. "All told, the damage won't amount to much. I'll fix it up. Dogs will be dogs."
"Thank ye, Doctor," said Jim, simply. But he was deeply grateful. He went out after his dogs to make them quit rampaging and take their places in the team.
"Doctor," said the sick man, "I minds me o' the time one o' them missionaries put a young dog in the team ahead o' the old leader. Did ye ever hear tell o' that?"
"No. What happened?"
"Well, the big feller bit through the little feller's traces an' then must 'a' said 'you get out o' here!' the way one dog knows how to talk to another. 'Cause the pup he began to run away, before they'd got the sled started at all."
"And then what?" asked Grenfell.
"Why—Mr. Young harnessed up the pup three times an' each time the big dog he bites the pup loose an' the pup runs away."
"So what did Mr. Young do then?"
"He give the big dog a whipping."
"Did that do any good?"
"Not the least little bit that ever was. It done a lot o' harm. The old dog's heart was bust. After that beatin' he weren't never the same again—he seemed to lose all taste for haulin' a sled. He might as well have lain down an' died in the traces, for all the use he was to the team after that. He wa'n't no good for a leader any more. He wa'n't no good for anything."
"Do you use moccasins for your dogs?" asked Grenfell.
"Sure us does. Makes 'em o' sealskin. Us ties 'em round the dog's ankles, cuttin' three little holes for the claws."
"I know," said Grenfell. "And the dog sometimes eats his own shoes, doesn't he?"
"Yes, sir. Till he gets to know what the shoes is for. I've had my dogs eat their own harness, many's the time. Don't seem as if dogs could ever git so tired they wouldn't rather fight than sleep. I'd just like to know what'd wear out a husky so he wouldn't be ready for a scrap. They likes fightin' next to eatin'!"
"I suppose you feed your dogs once a day?" said the Doctor.
"Yes, Doctor. Only—they puts down the two fish I gives 'em in about one swallow for both fish. I can't see that they gits much fun out o' their supper."
Then the sick man began to laugh feebly. "It 'minds me o' the time I was out with the dogs in the deep snow. I was just goin' to build me a snow hut for the night. There was a herd o' caribou come by, goin' so fast I couldn't git my gun ready in time.
"But the dogs—they tears 'emselves loose from the traces, 'cause I hadn't taken 'em out yet, an' off they starts like the wind. They leaves behind one little mother dog. She was their leader—they was mostly from her litter.
"So off they goes like a shot from a gun, me runnin' an' yellin' after 'em.
"Pretty soon they finds a deer a hunter had shot an' must ha' left behind 'cause he had so much he couldn't carry any more.
"Anyway, they didn't ask no questions. They eats an' eats till you could see 'em bulgin' way out like they had swallowed a football.
"Well sir, would you believe it? All those dogs wa'n't such pigs. There was one hadn'tforgot the poor little ole mother dog at home that was all tied up so she couldn't go with 'em. The biggest dog, he brought back a whole hunk out o' the leg o' that deer, an' he laid it down, within her reach, where she could grab it up an' give a gnaw to it when she felt like it."
"That reminds me," said Grenfell. "A settler and his wife, in a lonely place, got the 'flu.' They were so weak they couldn't take care of each other. The poor woman could hardly crawl to the cupboard and get what little food there was, and she couldn't cook it when she got it.
"But she managed to write in pencil on a bit of paper, 'come over quickly.' She put it in a piece of sealskin and tied it with a piece of deer-thong round a dog's neck.
"He ran with it to the nearest house, which was ten miles away. And soon men came and brought them aid, and their lives were saved.—Well, John, I'm coming back in a day or two to see how you are. And I'll call in on neighbor Martha Dennis, and she'll make you some nice broth to take the place of the stew the dogs got."
"Thank you, Doctor! I'll be glad to see youwhen you comes back. I don't know what us would do, if it wasn't for you, Doctor!"
To the stories that the Doctor and his patient told each other might be added many more true tales of the intelligence of the "husky" dogs.
Sometimes a man at work in the forest, getting in his winter's supply of fire-wood, will send the dog home with no message at all.
Then the good wife looks about, to see what the dog's master has forgotten. It may be an axe-head, or his pipe, or his lunch of bread and potatoes.
Whatever it is, she ties it to the dog and back he trots to his master in the woods, a willing express-messenger.
But one of the finest deeds set down to the credit of a "husky" is what a plain, every-day "mutt" dog did at Martin's Point, on the west coast of Newfoundland near Bonne Bay, in December 1919.
The steamerEthie, Captain English commanding, was making her last southward trip of the season. I knew theEthiewell, every inch of her, for I had made the up trip and the down trip aboard her only a few weeks before.Through no fault of her gallant captain, she had been carrying a great many more passengers than she ever was meant to carry. On a pinch, she had accommodations for fifty. But on one trip, by standing up the fishermen in the washroom as if they were bunches of asparagus, she had taken three hundred passengers. From a hundred to two hundred was a common number. I had been one of about twenty-five lucky enough to find a "berth" in the small dining-saloon. The berth was like a parcel-rack in a railway car. The people of the coast were signing a long petition to have the miserable old tub laid up and a larger, modern vessel substituted.
When Captain English was nearing Martin's Point on theEthie'slast voyage, a high sea was running, and she sprang a leak. The water rushed into the fireroom. Captain English went below and made an appeal to "his boys" not to desert their fires and not to fail him.
"If you will stick till we get round the Point we can beach her," he said. The stokers manfully plied their shovels: with the snow whirling, and the wind blowing half a gale, the vessel struck, several hundred yards from the beach.In a little while the waves, sweeping furiously over the deck, would have swept the ninety-two persons aboard into the sea.
They tried to fire a line ashore to the willing crowd that stood at the edge of the breakers.
But the line fell short, across an ugly reef of jagged rocks half-way to the land.
Then volunteers were asked to swim ashore with the rope. But none of the sailors knew how to swim. It is a rare accomplishment among sailors, especially in those bitter northern waters. So that plan was surrendered.
A boat was launched. Before it had fairly hit the tremendous waves, it was dashed to pieces against theEthie'sside.
The company on shipboard seemed at the end of their resources. But the people ashore had not been idle.
There was a fisherman of Martin's Point named Reuben Decker, who had a dog whom he had not taken the trouble to name at all. It was one of the young dogs in process of being broken to the sled, and in the meantime it was kicked and stoned and starved—not by the owner, but by strangers afraid of it, as is the general lot ofdogs in this part of the world, after they have done their best by man.
The dog happened to be down at the shore, forlornly searching for sculpins and caplin. There was still open water between the shore and the ship. Reuben Decker pointed to the rocks across which the rope had fallen. At his word of command, the dog jumped into the sea, swam to the rocks, and seized the rope in his mouth. Then, with the cries from the ship and the shore ringing in his ears, he turned and began to swim with it to the shore. It was not a heavy line. It was meant to be used to haul a thicker rope. But it was wet, of course, and partly frozen, and the miracle is how the animal managed to pull it through a sea where men did not dare to go.
The watchers ashore, standing waist and shoulder deep in the waves, anxious to launch a boat as soon as the heavy swell would let them, watched the dog and clapped their hands and yelled to him to come on.
"Look at un!"
"Swimmin' like a swile!"
"Kim alang, b'y, kim alang!"