The fire burned brightly before the tent she shared with Susie, and the
dry dead pine with logs of long-burning birch crackled merrily. Over the
little lake, behind the dark conifers and the distant hills, the sun had
gone down in a glory of incandescent gold and crimson.
After we had finished our supper we all sat around the blaze and the
tales began, of big caribou and mighty salmon. Yet after a time, as
one always must in this country, we drifted off to stories of the
never-ending fight against mighty powers.
Very simply, in brief sentences, with short intervals to permit of more
accurate recollection, good old Sammy opened to us vistas of unending
fields of ice whereupon men slew the harp-seals, and pictured to us the
manner in which the toll of death sometimes turns against the slayers. He
also spoke of fishing schooners tossed by fierce gales, drifting by the
side of mountainous bergs of ice rimmed with foam from the billows lashed
in fury, and of seams that had opened as the ship spewed off its creeping
oakum. I am sure we could all see the men at the pumps, working until
their stiffened arms and frozen hands refused the bidding of brains
benumbed by cold and hunger.
"Yes, ma'am, it's hard, mighty hard, times and times, but when yer gets
through wid it ye'll still be there, if yer has luck, and them as doesn't
get ketched gets back ter th' wife an' young, 'uns, an' is thankful they
kin start all over again.
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