40 NEWFOUNDLAND 



a' 'adn't forgot none, an' if 'a hadn't remember 'em all she'd 

 make me say de prayer all again. 



" A' was a ' loose ' (active) little kid, and used to help 

 de men getting things aboard Bona'va Bay when my dad 

 went to the sea, and one spring a' scooted up on deck and 

 found de sea runnin' by and us far out in de bay. ' Good 

 Lord,' said my dad, ' here's dat child, little Bob.' I said I'd 

 gone to sleep in the cabin just before they was startin'. 

 They couldn't put back, so a' got took. It was mighty cold, 

 but a' didn't mind that, as the men were kind to me, and 

 dad let me come on the ice one day, and I killed a seal. 

 Ye know, sir, that when we gets to be young men in this 

 country they don't think much of a chap unless he's bin 

 to de ice. It's a sort o' test o' hardiness, and the girls 

 think a heap of the young fellers that's bin once or twice 

 to the swoile fishin' and come back free with their money. 

 It's jest dog's work while it lasts, but somehow there's an 

 excitement in it that sets young fellers kind o' restless in 

 the spring ; and 'fore they know, they're a-signing on wi' Joe 

 Windsor or Sam Blandford. We sealers say, too, that man'U go 

 for a swile where gold won't drag 'un. A' was but fifteen 

 when old Sam asked me to go wi' him as cabin boy, and after 

 that a' goes to the ice every spring for twenty-two years." 



"Is that so!" interposed Jack, with a look of profound 

 respect. 



There was another long pause, but when a man's in the 

 humour to talk it is best to do nothing but look interested. 

 Presently Little Bob resumed : 



" My first season wi' Sam we struck the 'harps' (Greenland 

 seals), nor'-east of the Funks, and killed 4100 in a week.^ 



' This number was afterwards exactly corroborated by Captain Sam Blandford 

 in a conversation I had with the "doyen" of the seal-hunters. A sealman takes 

 a pride in remembering the statistics and returns of every hunt. 



