CARIBOU HUNTING 41 



In those days if you killed two seals you had one of them, 

 not like now, when you only take every fourth seal, and 

 sometimes not that. We didn't form ' pans ' (piles) of seals 

 as they do now, but stuck pretty close to the vessel and 

 hauled two seals a man. We never spent a night out on 

 the ice, and alius went off wi' a piece o' fat pork, a few 

 biscuits an' cakes. When times was good we'd take a few 

 billets o' wood to make coffee, and eat the raw heart i' the 

 young ' whitecoats.' Captains was kind to their men, and 

 looked after them as fren's. We made a bit o' money then, 

 and them was the good times o' sealing when men weren't 

 treated worse than dogs as they are now," and Little Bob 

 puffed fiercely at his pipe. 



"Now it's full speed ahead up into the 'good' ice. 

 Two hundred men in a foul tub not fit to carry thirty, an' 

 a bully to thrash you out o' your bunk whether you're fit 

 to go to the ice or no. They fling you out on the floe 

 ice with a few billets of wood, and steams away a day to 

 dump off another crowd, and like as not you've got to spend 

 the night out wi' your clothes freezin' on you, for you're 

 bound to fall in the cracks least once a night, however ' loose ' 

 you may be. Thar's no room below once the steam winch gets 

 a-going and seals a-comin' aboard, so up comes the coal, and 

 what with the grit and the blubber, two hundred men can't 

 sleep very comfortable on the open decks in a mass of muck, 

 wi' the cold freezin' your marrow." 



" I wonder the men stand it, and they get crews year 

 after year," I suggested. 



" Ah, that's cos you don't know what the poverty o' 

 Newfun'lan' is," returned the old man sadly. "There's boys 

 goes once or twice to prove they're men, but the crews dont 

 consist d them. It's the poor, the very poor, and they just 



