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"To you, sailing along easily and comfortably in your boat, I dare say it would seem no very arduous job to work your way along a few miles of open beach; but to us two, circumstanced as we were, in a place swarming with savage brutes that seemed to be for ever lurking on the watch for us; without the means of kindling a fire as a protection; and with only our sheath-knives as weapons; obliged to enter the woods at the peril of our lives to obtain food and as often as not driven out again without the food; able to sleep only during the day-time and very often not even then; compelled to seek shelter in trees for hours at a time ay, and often enough for a whole day to save our lives, it was simply well, there are no words strong enough to describe it.
Through this opening the river rushed out upon them to their waists, burying the sled and swinging the dogs off at right angles in a drowning tangle. But the men stopped their flight to give the animals a fighting chance, and they groped hurriedly in the cold confusion, slashing at the detaining traces with their sheath-knives.
Luckily Dunmore had a pocket-knife with him, for the sheath-knives we carried were but rude instruments for surgery, and with the small blade he slashed the bitten part freely, while Lizzie, applying her lips to the wound, did her best to draw out the subtle venom.
There were Gloucestermen among it, the champion fishers of the world, who spent their spare time in drifting past the English boats and hurling salty wit at which pastime they often came off second best. There were Frenchmen, too, from the Miquelon Islands, who worked in colored caps and wore sheath-knives in belts around their waists.
Our first afternoon on Labrador soil we spent in assorting and packing our outfit, while the Newfoundlanders and livyeres stood around and admired our things, particularly the canoe, guns, and sheath-knives. Their curiosity was insatiable; they inquired the cost of every conceivable thing.
They were searched for arms, and the sheath-knives which Mr. Shaw and Cuthbert carried at their belts were taken away. The three prisoners were then ordered to seat themselves in a row on the trunk of a prostrate palm. The whole thing had happened in the strangest silence.
I was boy when I was twelve, on the Herald o' the Morn, when she made around in ninety-nine days half the crew in irons most o' the time, five men lost from aloft off the Horn, the points of our sheath-knives broken square off, knuckle-dusters an' belayin'-pins flyin', three men shot by the officers in one day, the second mate killed dead an' no one to know who done it, an' drive! drive! drive! ninety-nine days from land to land, a run of seventeen thousand miles, an' east to west around Cape Stiff!"
But we had our cooking-pots and billies, our sheath-knives, wooden skewers, fingers, and O'Gaygun's shingle-plates. What more could any one want? And if there were not enough pannikins or mugs to hold our tea all round, there were empty preserve-cans, gallipots, and oyster-shells! We were content and happy. But this blissful state was to be rudely broken.
Don't run; let us stick together." "I'm not running," said Venning. "We've got our sheath-knives." They drew their knives, and, holding each other by the disengaged hand, fell back step by step, till they found the support of a tree- trunk, when they waited for the attack.
The cousins walked aft to their mess-chest, and found the berth-deck filled with men, who were sitting around the chests, brandishing their sheath-knives over plates fall of salt beef and "hard-tack."
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