Adrift in the Ice-Fields | Page 5

any waking auditor, had such there been; but no one kept awake, and to all intents and purposes "silence reigned supreme."
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CHAPTER II.
BUILDING THE ICE-HOUSES.--MATTHEW COLLINS'S GHOST.
At daybreak the gunners arose, and without disturbing the members of the family, took some strong, hot coffee, prepared by the indefatigable Creamer, and ate a breakfast, or rather lunch, of cold meats and bread and butter, after which all proceeded to don their shooting costume, which, being unlike that worn in any other sport, is worthy of description here.
In ice-shooting, every color but pure white is totally inadmissible; for the faintest shade of any other color shows black and prominent against the spotless background of glittering ice-field and snow-covered cliffs. Risk and his partner wore over their ordinary clothing long frocks of white flannel, with white "havelocks" over their seal-skin caps, and their gray, homespun pants were covered to the knee by seal-skin Esquimaux boots--the best of all water-proof walking-gear for cold weather. Risk carried the single ducking-piece before mentioned, but Davies had a Blissett breech-loading double-barrel. They had chosen their location to the north of the island, near a channel usually opening early in the season, but now covered with ice that would have borne the weight of an elephant. With much banter as to who should count first blood, the party separated at the door; the younger Davies and Creamer, with Kennedy and La Salle, plunging into the drifted fields to the eastward, and in Indian file, trampling a track to be daily used henceforward, until the snows should disappear forever. The two former relied on over-frocks of strong cotton, and a kind of white night-caps, while La Salle wore a heavy shooting-coat of white mole-skin, seal-skin boots reaching to the knee, and armed with "crampets," or small iron spikes, to prevent slipping, while a white cover slipped over his Astrachan cap, completed his outre costume. Kennedy, however, outshone all others in the strangeness of his shooting apparel. Huge "arctics" were strapped on his feet, from which seemed to spring, as from massive roots, his small, thin form, clad in a scanty robe de chambre of cotton flannel, surmounted by a broad sou'wester, carefully covered by a voluminous white pocket handkerchief. The general effect was that of a gigantic mushroom carrying a heavy gun, and wearing a huge pair of blue goggles.
La Salle alone of the four carried a huge single gun of number six gauge, and carrying a quarter of a pound of heavy shot to tremendous distances. The others used heavy muzzle-loading double-barrels. A brisk walk of fifteen minutes brought them to the extremity of the island, and from a low promontory they saw before them the Bay, and the East Bar, the scene of their future labors.
Below them the Bar, marked by a low ridge, rising above the level of the lower shallows,--for the tide was at ebb,--trended away nearly a league into the spacious bay, covered everywhere with ice, level, smooth, and glittering in the rising sun, save where, here and there, a huge white hummock or lofty pinnacle, the fragments of some disintegrated berg, drifted from Greenland or Labrador, rose along the Bar, where the early winter gales had stranded them. Leaping down upon the ice-foot, the party hastened to their respective stands, nearly a mile out on the Bar--Davies being some four hundred yards from that of La Salle.
The "stand" of the former was a water-tight box of pine, painted white, and about six feet square by four deep, which was quickly sunk into the snow-covered ice to about half its depth; the snow and ice removed by the shovel, being afterwards piled against the sides, beaten hard and smooth, and finally cemented by the use of water, which in a few moments froze the whole into the semblance of one of the thousands of hummocks, which marked the presence of crusted snow-drifts on the level ice.
La Salle, however, had provided better for comfort and the vicissitudes of sea-fowl shooting; occupying a broad, flat-bottomed boat, furnished with steel-shod runners, and "half-decked" fore-and-aft, further defended from the sea and spray by weather-boards, which left open a small well, capable of seating four persons. Four movable boards, fastened by metal hooks, raised the sides of the well to a height of nearly three feet, and a fifth board over the top formed a complete housing to the whole fabric. La Salle and Kennedy swung the boat until her bow pointed due east, leaving her broadsides bearing north and south; and then, excavating a deeper furrow in the hollow between two hummocks, the boat was slid into her berth, and the broken masses of icy snow piled against and over her, until nothing but her covering-board was visible.
A huge pile of decoys stood near, of which about two dozen