CHAPTER IV 



THE FREEZING OF THE SEA SEALSKIN CLOTHES AND BOOTS 

 WINTER COLD THE HOME-COMING. 



ON the morning of the 10th of November the 

 Harmony was gone, and big and bare the 

 bay looked without the familiar black hull and 

 spidery rigging. It was impossible to avoid feeling 

 just a touch of the loneliness of Labrador on that 

 raw morning, but there was work to be done, and 

 the constant round of duties proved an ideal cure. 

 When a man is busy making and painting and 

 furnishing a home, unpacking a two years' supply 

 of all imaginable necessaries, and at the same time 

 wrestling with a new language and making acquaint- 

 ance with a strange people, time cannot drag ; and 

 I found that the days simply melted away. 



The village seemed to have suddenly emptied, 

 for more than half the houses were boarded up 

 and deserted ; and I was told that the people had 

 ! gone back to their autumn seal-hunting, which they 

 I had left when the Harmony came. As I took my 

 daily walks upon the hills the cold struck dismal 

 indeed. The land was all covered with hard snow, 

 and the beach was crusted with a coating of ice 

 that crackled and boomed as the tides lifted it and 

 left it. The sea had a queer haze hanging over 

 it ; it looked exactly as if the water were getting 

 ready to boil, and the vapour was gently drifting 



with the wind. " Ah," said the people, " the sea 



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