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"I have heard the sealers talk about clubbing them." "They are so pretty," she objected. "I cannot bear to think of it being done. It is so directly brutal, you know; so different from shooting them." "That roof must go on," I answered grimly. "Winter is almost here. It is our lives against theirs.
Everything like work was, of course, suspended during this tempest, which seriously menaced the unfortunate sealers with the necessity of again breaking up their schooner, now nearly completed, with a view again to keep themselves from freezing.
Daggett well knew it would be useless to remain without the aid of Roswell's counsel, and that of his crew's hands; for Macy was not to be trusted any more as the leader of a gang of sealers. The man had got to be provoked and reckless, and had called down upon himself latterly more than one rebuke. It was necessary, therefore, that one of the Sea Lions should accompany the other.
They're like wild animals, an' fight jest the same. I've seed a Feweegin, only a little mite uv a critter, make attack on a whale-boat's crew o' sealers, an' gi'e sev'ral uv 'em ugly wounds. They don't know sech a thing as fear, no more'n a trapped badger. Neyther do thar weemen, who fight jest the same's the men. Thar ain't a squaw in that canoe as cudn't stan' a tussle wi' the best o' us.
As many sealers should now be in this part of the Gulf, we should always be upon the watch for them." "I think," said Waring, "that we ought to keep one man as a lookout on the highest ice in the vicinity." "Pity the great iceberg so far off," added Regnar. "Sposum wind hold north-west, and ice keep packed, why not go down to-morrow and look alound?" asked Peter, quietly.
"This is an old chart, and of the date of 1802," observed Daggett, raising himself erect, as a man who has long been bent takes the creaks out of his back. "So old a chart as to be of little use now-a-day. Our sealers have gone over so much of the ground to the southward of the two capes, as to be able to do much better than this now."
"If these westerly winds hold, there will be no danger in so doing, if, as I guess, the pack extends from here to the shore of the Magdalens. If so, we are not likely to find any sealers to the eastward, unless they have got jammed in the pack; and probably that steamer we saw the other day has passed to the south, and will make to westward before another southerly gale comes to open the ice."
I landed on the largest island;* which I found to be a mile and a half in extent, inhabited by a number of dogs left by sealers, that had become quite wild; in a cave on the south-east point were some fur seals. Two small islets front a boat-cove on the north-east side, where there is fresh water; and outside these there is a rock just awash.
But the great consideration of the moment, the centre of all the hopes and fears of our sealers, was the rebuilding of the mutilated Sea Lion. Although the long thaw did so much for them, the reader is not to regard it as such a spell of warm weather as one enjoys in May within the temperate zone.
The fence-viewer decides the matter, and charges a small fee for his services. Where it is necessary he may order suitable walls or fences to be built. The measurers of wood do the same for firewood. The sealers test the correctness of weights and measures used in trade, and tradesmen are not allowed to use weights and measures that have not been thus officially examined and sealed.
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