Bobby of the Labrador eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 219 pages of information about Bobby of the Labrador.

Bobby of the Labrador eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 219 pages of information about Bobby of the Labrador.

They understood few words of English, but they soon discovered that the boy called himself “Bobby,” and Bobby was accepted as his name.  Bobby, on his part, spoke English indifferently, and of all other tongues and especially the Eskimo tongue, he was wholly ignorant.  At that period of his life it was quite immaterial to him, indeed, what language he spoke so long as the language served to make his wants known; and he began to acquire an Eskimo vocabulary sufficient for his immediate needs, and his efforts in this direction afforded his foster parents a vast deal of pleasure.

Mrs. Abel Zachariah, considering the clothing Bobby wore quite too fine for ordinary use, and unsuited to the climate and the conditions of his new surroundings and life, fashioned for him a suit of coarse but warmer fabric.  When this was finished to her liking she dressed him in it, and washed and folded and laid away in a chest the things he had worn, as a precious souvenir of his coming.

From the skins of Arctic hares, which Abel killed with the wonderful shotgun, she made him a warm little jacket with a hood; for his feet she made sealskin moccasins, with legs that reached to his knees, and sewed them with sinew to render them waterproof, that his feet might be kept quite dry when the rocks were wet with rains, or when the first moist snows of autumn fell, as they did with the coming of September.  And when the great flocks of wild ducks and geese came flying out of the North, the feathers of all that Abel shot were carefully hoarded in bags for Bobby’s winter bed.

And so the weeks passed until early October.  The land was now white with snow, and steadily increasing cold warned them that winter was at hand and that presently the bays and sea would be frozen.  It was time now for Abel to set his fox traps, and time for them to move to their winter cabin on the mainland.

This cabin was situated at the head of a deep bay which the Eskimos call “Tissiuhaksoak,” but which English-speaking folk called “Abel’s Bay,” because Abel was the first to build a cabin there; and we, being English-speaking people, shall also call it Abel’s Bay.

The bloody record of the tragedy had long since been washed from the boat.  From two of the six long oars with which the boat was fitted, Abel improvised two masts.  The tarpaulin was remodeled into a second sail, and, one blustery morning, with their tent and all their belongings stowed into the boat, and the dogs in the skiff, which was in tow, they set sail for Abel’s Bay, and left Itigailit Island and the lonely grave to the Arctic blasts that would presently sweep down upon it from the icy seas; and late on the following afternoon they reached the cabin which for many years was to be Bobby’s home.

Thus it was that Bobby, amid adventure and mystery, made his advent upon The Labrador and found a home among strange people.  And in such a land it was quite plain that as the years passed he should have other adventures.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Bobby of the Labrador from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.