CARIBOU HUNTING 43 



then wi' Captain Kane and Captain Green. A' also did two 

 trips wi' young Bill Windsor. 



"Most wonderful sealman was ole Captain Sam Windsor. 

 The men on the east coast used to say that he could generally 

 tell where the seals was 'fore he went out. Some twenty 

 men, friends of mine, went one spring from Green Bay to 

 Green's Pond, to get a berth wi' Captain Carter. The ship 

 was about full, so only ten could sign on, and the others 

 had to walk home again, feelin' sick and hungry. On the 

 way home they saw ole Captain Sam Windsor standing at 

 the door of his house, and he after askin' their business 

 invited the whole lot in to breakfast. Then he says to 'em : 

 ' Don't be downhearted, boys, for not gettin' a berth wi' 

 Carter. The shore men hev bin haulin' whitecoats these 

 two days in Green and White Bay. Green Bay is full o' 

 swoile,^ so hurry home and look on the " driven " ice, and 

 you'll do better than goin' wi' Carter.' Each of those men 

 killed about ^60 apiece, and Carter got no seals." 



" First spring Bill Windsor, his son, had a steam vessel, 

 a' went wi' him. She was called the Vanguard, and we 

 got jammed in the ice off Belleville Island, near to the Grey 

 Islands, on March 10. We couldn't move, so he sent me, 

 bein' a ' loose ' ice-man, over the ice to see if a' could get 

 to the islands and hear news of the seals. It was moon- 

 light, and a' travelled nine miles over pretty rotten stuff to 

 the north island, and then nine miles more across the 

 tickle^ to the next. Then a' had to go six miles across 



' The young Greenland seals only very rarely come as far south as this in the 

 spring, and then only when driven in by an easterly gale. 



^ This is a perfectly true story, and well known to all dwellers in St. John's. 

 The explanation is simple. Captain Windsor, as his nephew told me, perfectly 

 understood the spring winds and the movements of the floe ice under exceptional 

 circumstances. 



' A strait between two islands. 



