Categories
- Antiques & Collectibles 13
- Architecture 36
- Art 47
- Bibles 22
- Biography & Autobiography 811
- Body, Mind & Spirit 110
- Business & Economics 26
- Computers 4
- Cooking 94
- Crafts & Hobbies 3
- Drama 346
- Education 45
- Family & Relationships 50
- Fiction 11812
- Games 19
- Gardening 17
- Health & Fitness 34
- History 1377
- House & Home 1
- Humor 147
- Juvenile Fiction 1873
- Juvenile Nonfiction 202
- Language Arts & Disciplines 88
- Law 16
- Literary Collections 686
- Literary Criticism 179
- Mathematics 13
- Medical 41
- Music 39
- Nature 179
- Non-Classifiable 1768
- Performing Arts 7
- Periodicals 1453
- Philosophy 62
- Photography 2
- Poetry 896
- Political Science 203
- Psychology 42
- Reference 154
- Religion 488
- Science 126
- Self-Help 61
- Social Science 80
- Sports & Recreation 34
- Study Aids 3
- Technology & Engineering 59
- Transportation 23
- Travel 463
- True Crime 29
Left on the Labrador A Tale of Adventure Down North
by: Dillon Wallace
Description:
Excerpt
THE LOST PASSENGER
Charley Norton was bored and unhappy. He stood at the starboard rail of the mail boat gazing out at the cold, bleak rocks of the Labrador coast, dimly visible through fitful gusts of driving snow.
Charley Norton and his father's secretary, Hugh Wise, had boarded the ship at St. John's ten days before for the round trip voyage to Hopedale, and during the voyage there had not been one pleasant day. Biting blasts swept the deck, heralding the winter near at hand, and there was no protecting nook where one could escape them and sit in any degree of comfort. The cabin was close and stuffy, and its atmosphere was heavy with that indescribable odor that rises from the bowels of old ships. The smoking room, bare and dismal and reeking with stale tobacco smoke, was deserted, save when the mail boat doctor and Hugh Wise were occasionally discovered there in a silent game of checkers.
Charley had tried every corner of the ship to which he was admitted, and had decided that, as uncomfortable as it was, he preferred the deck to cabin or smoking room.
It was the middle of October, and the last voyage the mail boat was to make until the end of the following June, when the winter's ice would clear from the coast, and navigation would open for another short summer. The last fishing schooner had already hurried southward to escape the autumn gales and the blockade of ice, and the sea was deserted save by the lonely mail boat, which was picking up the last of the Newfoundlanders' cod fishing gear at the little harbours of the coast.
"A swell time I'm having!" Charley muttered. "Not even a decent place on the old ship where I can sit and read!"
"Not having a good time, eh?"
Charley looked up into the smiling face of Barney MacFarland, the second engineer.
"Hello!" he exclaimed. "I didn't know anybody was around. I didn't hear you."
"Having a rotten time?" Barney grinned good-naturedly.
"The worst I've ever had!" said Charley. "It's too cold to stay on deck and too close and smelly inside, and there's no one to talk with. Mr. Wise sprawls in his bunk reading silly novels he brought with him, when he isn't playing checkers with the Doctor."
"'Tis a bad season to be coming down to The Labrador," suggested Barney. "Though there's fog enough in July and August, we're having fine weather too, with plenty of sunshine. 'Tis then the passengers are with us, with now and again sightseers from the States. And the fishing places are busy, with enough to see. Then's the time to come."
"I didn't pick the time," explained Charley, glad to have an opportunity to talk into sympathetic ears. "Dad was going hunting in Newfoundland, and he took me to St. John's with him. I thought I was going along, but after we got to St. John's he said I was too young to hike through the country, and that this trip on the mail boat would be more interesting for me while he hunted. He sent Mr. Wise along to keep me company. He's Dad's secretary. He's left me alone most of the time. Dad said I would see Indians and Eskimos and loads of interesting things, but I've been on the ship ever since we left, except at Hopedale when the Captain took me ashore for an hour while we were lying there before we turned back....