92 THE LABRADOR PENIXSULA. chap. xxvi. 



into tlie empty pork-barrel ; we may want them yet. I 

 do n't like the looks of that sky ! " The men laughed, and 

 did so ; but night came, and with night a storm that drove 

 us far away from land, and left us helpless as a log in 

 the wide ocean. Our provisions gave out, and then we 

 lived for eighteen days on that pickled shark, which the 

 doctor told the men just to put into the empty pork- 

 barrels, because he didn't hke the looks of the sky.' 



Another night and day of calm. During twenty-four 

 hours we made about two miles, but the beauty of the 

 day compensated for the weary rolling of the vessel in 

 the Ions: swell of the sea. Wonderful indeed were the 



D 



effects of mirage at Long Point and off Anticosti. The 

 Perroquet Islands seemed raised high in the heavens and 

 spread out hke tables. Fishing-boats, "svith the sails 

 idly flapping against the mast, assumed strange fantastic 

 forms continually changing. Anticosti loomed now high, 

 now low, now clear and well defined, again broken into 

 twenty parts, each of which appeai^ed to be a separate 

 island. But the sea was most wonderful of all ; floating 

 past were vast numbers of beautiful MedusiB, ' heaving 

 and sinking, soft and fair,' as they slowly drifted past. 

 Great belts of seaweed swept slowly past us, and 

 under the huge wide-spreading leaves many fishes were 

 sheltering themselves from the intense light of the sun, 

 whose rays beat with great force on the unruffled sea. 

 On the banks which He midway in the north channel 

 were several fishing schooners, each with three or four 

 boats catching cod-fish as fast as two men could pull up 

 the long fines. 



A breeze sprang up at evening on the 20th, and at 



