Chain Locker (14 page)

“Did you get enough molasses from the puncheon to fill up the keg?”

“Yep. I got everything done you told me to,” Jackie replied.

“Okay, a half-hour. Tha's it.”

“Thanks, Reub,” Henry said. Then, whispering to Jackie, “A crooked old bugger, ain't he? Is he always like that?”

“Most of the time. He was pretty good the other night when we were loadin' the seals. But then he expects me to be grateful to him for bein' civil.”

“He ever hit ya?

“Couple of swats.”

“The next time he does it, you let me know and I'll teach him to pick on somebody his own size.”

“Thanks, but I can fight my own battles.”

“Fighting them is one thing, but are you winnin'?”

“There's no winnin' with Reub.”

“Well, if he gets out of hand, you know where to find me. Now, what have you got on your feet, there? I suppose you got no skinny-woppers, have you?”

“I'm a stowaway, remember; I got nothin'. What's wrong with these boots? They're nice and warm.”

“They might be warm but those boots'll put you on your arse the first step you take. You can wear my spare skinny-woppers. Let's go get you rigged out.”

Henry handed him a pair of knee-high leather boots with thick, studded soles. “Man, I wouldn't want somebody to tramp onto my fingers with those on,” Jackie said.

“If they did you'd be pickin' your fingers up with your other hand.”

“These would be the clear thing for walkin' to school in winter.”

“If everybody wore those to school, you wouldn't have much of a floor left. Those sparbles are sharp and they're hard. They got no trouble diggin' into the ice.”

“These must be what Dad calls frosters.”

“Could be. I noticed that a lot aboard this one call them frosters. Must be the St. John's crowd. I hear the proper word is sparrowbills; I guess somebody figured they looked like a sparrow's bill.”

“These seem to fit pretty good,” said Jackie. “They feel nice and warm, too.”

“You keep them for a while,” said Henry, “and if I need 'em I'll know where they're to. Now, let's see if we can get you a gaff and you'll be all set.”

“I got one of those!” Jackie said triumphantly, and returned two minutes later with a brand new product of Eddie's labours.

“Okay, you go on down there now and I'll come after you.”

Jackie cautiously slid down one of the ropes, his long coat slowing him down. As he stepped off the side stick he went flying forward and landed on his hands and knees, his gaff bouncing along the ice. He was used to slipping and sliding on ice and didn't realize how effectively the sparbles would grab hold. It was like having glue on the bottoms of his feet.

“I guess you didn't go on your arse after all,” Henry laughed. “You went on your face instead.” For his trouble Jackie received hoots and hollers from the previously bored onlookers aboard the ship, now guffawing as they anticipated his next mishap.

“That was a fine jig,” one yelled. “What other steps do you know?”

“They don't mean anything,” Henry yelled over from the side stick. “Give them a bow, for the hell of it.”

Jackie faced the ship, stood solemnly for a few seconds and bowed deeply, to the accompaniment of whistles and clapping from his audience. “I was just checking it out to see if it was soft enough to sleep on,” he yelled up to them. “I think it's better than the coal.”

“This ice is even more jumbled than it looks like from the deck,” he said to Henry.

“Yeah, it's rough, but perfect for learning how to copy without having to worry about falling overboard,” said Henry. “Get rid of that heavy coat and jump around a bit on the pinnacles to get used to the boots.”

Jackie made a few halting steps.

“What's with the baby steps?” Henry chided gently. “Stick the gaff in and jump; you saw the boys doing it when they went for the rally yesterday. Pretend you're a goat.”

“Actually, that's not something I ever dreamed of being.”

“Come here. Let me show you how to use the gaff. This is your most important tool when you're out on the ice. All a sealer needs is a gaff, a towrope, a sculpin' knife and a sharpening steel to keep an edge on his knife. Now, look here. You got a good strong handle made outa dogwood—looks like this one is taller than you are—and then on the end is the hook and the point. You stick the point in the ice to help you get about. Like this, see. Give it a try, now. Good, not too bad at all.”

“You use the hook to pull stuff towards you, right?”

“Yep, for that and to pull yourself alongside other ice pans—and to tow your sculps, of course. But, the main thing is if you go overboard and there's nobody to give you a hand getting out, you can hook the gaff into the ice and haul yourself out. And then you can even use the gaff for a half-assed paddle to row yourself; not much good but better than nothing.”

“How do people survive falling into this water? Must be pretty cold.”

“Hah! I guess it's cold! You got to be darned quick to get yourself out while you still got the strength.”

“And you use the gaff to kill the seals, right? Bat 'em over the head?”

“That's right.”

“It's hard to believe that kills them,” said Jackie, his eyebrows raised in doubt.

“Hit them hard enough in the right place and you can't go wrong. Any good sealer can do it with one whack.”

Jackie made a few mock swings, pretending he was swatting a seal, as Henry watched with satisfaction and the audience aboard the
Viking
each passed judgement.

“We need to find a couple of live ones for you to practice on,” said Henry. “How's the time, I wonder. Our half hour must be just about up, is it?”

“Yeah, I guess we better get back before Reub has a fit. Hey, what's goin' on over there?”

Smoke poured from the
Viking
's smokestack, and a dozen or more men were climbing down the side with a great sense of purpose. “Looks like we're getting up steam,” said Henry. “I guess the skipper's planning to clear away some space around the ship to take off some of the pressure.”

“And Ed is back to work luggin' coal to the firemen,” said Jackie. The work seemed endless.

“She still looks jammed pretty solid to me, but I guess he's got something up his sleeve,” Henry replied as they climbed back up the side of the ship. “You better get back to the galley so you don't get your ass kicked.”

“Is that open water gettin' any closer?” the captain yelled up to the lookout in the barrel.

“It's loosening up a bit out there,” the lookout replied, his eye to the telescope as he scanned the horizon on the left.

“What about off to starboard?”

“Completely jammed right outa sight.”

“See ar swile?” he ventured.

“Not a one. There's two vessels jammed solid six or seven mile off the beam. I 'magine they'll have a tough go of it.”

“That's too bad,” the captain said with a smile of intense satisfaction, while all within earshot exchanged grins.

He had decided to use explosives only as a last resort. They cost money, and no sealing company spent a penny more than they could get away with. For now he would try the cheaper alternative. With long stabber poles the men prised and prodded the ice pans that had piled around the ship, as they tried to free the rudder. It took another hour of sliding, hauling and pushing to coax enough ice from behind the ship to make it worth trying to ram through.

“Okay, b'ys, ye can knock off now and 'ave a spell,” the bosun ordered. “Okay, Cap'n, you got a bit of room back 'ere, ten foot or so.”

“Half astern,” the captain ordered, and the ship slowly moved back as great chunks of ice sloshed and wallowed behind her. The two helmsmen, one grasping each side of the big wheel, strained to keep the rudder centred so the wheel did not fly out of their hands when the rudder contacted the solid ice.

“Full ahead,” the captain roared theatrically, as though something spectacular was about to occur.

Down in the belly of the
Viking
the two cylinders of the fifty-year-old Nylands engine thumped slowly back and forth as the propeller changed its direction of rotation and the ship laboured forward, with a distinct lack of conviction. The iron-clad bow struck the ice with an ineffective thud, and the
Viking
was soon sitting immobile with the propeller thrashing away at the stern. The captain, standing with feet apart and hands planted firmly on the rail of the bridge, uttered a low curse. “There's not a wooden wall ever built with enough guts to get through this kind of ice,” he lamented. “I suppose if we build up more steam we'll blow up the damned boiler and scald everybody to death down in the engine room. Bosun!”

Within five minutes a keg of blasting powder was sitting out on the ice and a dozen or so men were busy digging holes ahead of the immobile ship, while another batch of onlookers milled about, quietly passing judgement on everything they observed.

“Okay, some of you fellers come over here,” ordered the bosun, “Fill these cans with powder and…get rid o' that cigarette! No smok-in' around this powder now, none o' ye, unless you want to meet your maker this morning! Git back, the whole lot o' youse. Git back outa the way!”

Returning to the task at hand, the nervous bosun ordered, “Now, fill up these cans with powder and stick one of these fuses down into it. Then, seal the whole top of the can with butter from that tub so the powder don't get wet. Ralph: run over, will you, and see how they're coming with the holes.”

“Five more minutes,” Ralph reported back.

“All right,” said the bosun. “Now, we'll tie the can of powder to this pole, light the fuse, and shove it down into the hole. Let's make sure we got a couple ready so we can set them off together.”

Back in the galley, Jackie was jarred from the monotony of his chores by the loud crack of an explosion. The bow of the ship rose and slammed down, bringing a flashback of his days in the chain locker. “Damnation!” Reub yelled, as his precious duff came close to going on the floor; scalding water slopped over the top of the pot and hissed on the stovetop. The thought of having to wrestle the huge steaming dumpling back into the pot motivated Jackie to scram onto the deck just in time to be peppered by a shower of ice chunks and water.

“What are you fellers doin' down there?” the captain screamed, his arms still in their protective position above his head after the deluge had subsided. “I said to loosen up the ice, not to blow us all to kingdom come! Stunned as me arse,” he growled under his breath, the words barely out of his mouth when a second deafening blast occurred, this one farther ahead of the vessel and only slightly less disconcerting to the worried skipper.

“That's enough, there, before youse kills somebody,” he bellowed.

Going forward to assess the ice, he was pleased with the results. There was hope. “Okay, bosun, get a couple of men to muckle onto that powder keg and get it aboard. The rest of you fellers come on in and we'll see if we can get underway.” Then, in an inaudible mutter, “If we still got a bow on this one.”

Without waiting, he yelled down to the engine room, “For'ard half,” and the
Viking
plowed through the newly broken ice until she came to a stop. Men scrambled up the side, manhandling the powder keg and tools.

“Back!” he ordered; the ship slid across the small but growing area of open water, and then, “Full ahead!” again. This time there was a decisive “crack” as the iron struck the ice, splitting it apart and pushing it aside. The ship gained another twenty feet before toiling to a halt.

“Back!”

Sensing that this might be their final opportunity, the last men on the ice ran to get aboard, leaping over open water to the moving side sticks and scrambling up over the rail. The ship lunged ahead and struck with a loud, satisfying bang, forcing pans of ice atop one another; the prop churned the sea astern, and the ship kept moving, huge chunks of ice sliding up the bow and along the sides, others breaking as the
Viking
smashed and beat her way, slowing under the strain of the load, until she barely made it into the small road of open water that curved to the left in the direction of the open sea and freedom.

“My son, don't it feel some good to be movin' again!” one sealer said to his buddy as the ship travelled towards the northwest, paralleling the coast that lay over the horizon to their left. Everybody was upbeat. Henry joined Jackie at the rail just as the lookout yelled, “Cape John off the port bow.” They were approaching land for the first time in two days.

“Looks like we're coming up to the French Shore,” said Henry. “There's a lighthouse in there on Gull Island that marks Cape John. This is an important navigation point for the Labrador schooners, the end of Notre Dame Bay.”

“Yes, sure, there was piles of Frenchmen in this area at one time until we drove 'em all out,” a nearby sealer declared to his buddy.

“Proper thing.”

“What was all that about the Frenchmen?” Jackie inquired when the two raconteurs were out of earshot.

“You mean about driving the Frenchmen out?” replied Henry.

“Yeah.”

“France used to have a treaty with England that allowed them to fish on certain parts of the coast, and the Newfoundlanders weren't supposed to fish there. But they did anyway, like buddy just said.”

“And they drove 'em out, eh?”

“Actually, I think the treaty expired. It was a long time ago.”

“Sounds like those guys don't think too much of Frenchmen.”

“We drove them out, my ass!” said Henry. “They probably never even met one. You ever known any Frenchmen?”

“Don't think so. Seen Portuguese and Spanish down on the waterfront at home.”