ON THE LABRADOR. 73 



week or more at that season, we lost no opportunity to 

 push ahead, but after a day spent toiling at the oars, 

 which were of the narrow-bladed pattern that girth 

 some twelve or fourteen inches below the grip, we 

 found ourselves wind-bound at nightfall. On the 

 following day the weather had become worse, and had 

 it been necessary to cross much open water we should 

 have been forced to anchor. Our way, however, lay 

 among the islands until we reached the long rock- 

 walled stretch of water which is called Windy Tickle. 

 In certain winds Windy Tickle is quite impassable, as 

 the gales roar down it like a league-long funnel, the 

 sheer cliffs on either hand rising some hundreds of feet 

 from the level of the sea. 



As I had left most of our provisions with our kind 

 friend Mrs. Broomfield, we suddenly discovered that 

 beyond a little tea and tobacco and a half-loaf of 

 bread our stock was at an end. We therefore ran 

 across to a rocky island locally famed as the breed- 

 ing place of the Arctic hare. But the most careful 

 search and earnest efforts of Sam, Abraham, Jack, and 

 Sandy all of whom probably for the first time in their 

 lives took part in a hare-drive resulted only in the 

 flushing of one or two twittering inhabitants of the isle 

 which Sam called snowbirds, and which were quite 

 unworthy of a twelve-bore cartridge. The hares were 

 either altogether absent or remained in shy seclusion, 

 and food having become a necessity, I succeeded, amid 

 the plaudits of the crew, in massacring five gulls, one 

 for each man. These were rapidly skinned, placed in a 

 large iron pot and drawn out of it while the water was 

 still almost lukewarm, but not before Sam, having 

 discovered the lack of salt, had found time to add a 



