10 NEWFOUNDLAND 



he evidently considered this no bar to our conversation round 

 the fire, and rattled away when in the mood. 



Jack Wells, too, was also a good fellow. He had a hand- 

 some, rather melancholy face, with a low, quiet way of talking 

 that was very nice to listen to, and was both amiable and 

 good-natured. I make a special point of this, because four 

 days straight on end barking your shins and slipping off the 

 greasy stones into the Terra-Nova would try the temper of 

 an angel, and not once during those four days did I hear 

 Saunders or Wells swear or complain that the work was beyond 

 their powers, but took the discomfort to be the common lot 

 of man. There is a saying that, to be uncomfortable without 

 being unhappy, you must be either a philosopher or a woman 

 with tight shoes. Yet neither Bob nor Jack were of this 

 category. 



After the detestable fog of St. John's it was a great 

 delight to sit and sip one's tea in the pellucid clearness of an 

 autumn morning, waking to the sun's warmth, " Incalescente 

 sole aperuisset diem," as old Caesar poetically describes the 

 dawn of day. The grey mists were drifting off the river- 

 lake, and showing up the green woods in the distance, 

 when a splendid herring gull came sailing up along the 

 shore and pitched within twenty yards of us. His arrival 

 was the signal for the appearance of the "stationmaster," who 

 with sundry outcries to his various friends was approaching 

 our temporary camp. His "friends," I noticed, were all 

 either four-footed or web-footed, for hurrying at his heels were 

 two dingy-looking mongrels of undeterminable species, a billy 

 and two nanny goats, a sheep, another gull, and far in the 

 rear, endeavouring to keep pace over the logs of an abandoned 

 saw-mill, three adipose ducks. Occasionally "Mike" would 

 stop and call to his strange family in various ways, and they 



