"Do you catch enough fur to keep you in flour and molasses?"

"Not always, sir. Sometimes us has only partridges t' eat, sir."

We started at five o'clock in the evening in Steve's boat, the
Mayflower, a leaky little craft that kept one man pretty busy
bailing out the water. She carried one ragged sail, and Steve
sculled and steered with a rough oar about eighteen feet long. An
hour after we got under way a blanket of grey fog, thick and damp,
enveloped us; but so long are the Labrador summer days that there
still was light to guide us when at eleven o'clock Steve said:

"Us better land yere, sir. I lives yere, an' 'tis a good spot t'
stop for th' night, sir."

I wondered what sort of an establishment Steve maintained, and
drawing an inference from his personal appearance, I had misgivings
as to its cleanliness. However, anything seemed better than
chilling fog, and land we did--in a shallow cove where we bumped
over a partly submerged rock and manoeuvred with difficulty among
others, that raised their heads ominously above the water. As we
approached, we made out through the fog the dim outlines, close to
the shore, of a hut partially covered with sod. Our welcome was
tumultuous--a combination of the barking of dogs and the shrill
screams of women demanding to know who we were and what we wanted.
There were two women, tall, scrawny, brown, with hair flying at
random. The younger one had a baby in her arms. She was Steve's
married sister. The other woman was his mother. Each was loosely
clad in a dirty calico gown. Behind them clustered a group of
dirty, half-clad children.