WAYEESES THE STRONG ONE



_The Old Wolf's Challenge_

We were beating up the Straits to the Labrador when a great gale swooped
down on us and drove us like a scared wild duck into a cleft in the
mountains, where the breakers roared and the seals barked on the black
rocks and the reefs bared their teeth on either side, like the long jaws
of a wolf, to snap at us as we passed.

In our flight we had picked up a fisherman--snatched him out of his
helpless punt as we luffed in a smother of spray, and dragged him
aboard, like an enormous frog, at the end of the jib sheet--and it was
he who now stood at the wheel of our little schooner and took her
careening in through the tickle of Harbor Woe. There, in a desolate,
rock-bound refuge on the Newfoundland coast, the _Wild Duck_ swung to
her anchor, veering nervously in the tide rip, tugging impatiently and
clanking her chains as if eager to be out again in the turmoil. At
sunset the gale blew itself out, and presently the moon wheeled full and
clear over the dark mountains.

Noel, my big Indian, was curled up asleep in a caribou skin by the
foremast; and the crew were all below asleep, every man glad in his
heart to be once more safe in a snug harbor. All about us stretched the
desolate wastes of sea and mountains, over which silence and darkness
brooded, as over the first great chaos. Near at hand were the black
rocks, eternally wet and smoking with the fog and gale; beyond towered