ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE UNKNOWN

"When shall we reach Rigolet, Captain?"

"Before daylight, I hopes, sir, if the fog holds off, but there's a
mist settling, and if it gets too thick, we may have to come to."

Crowded with an unusual cargo of humanity, fishermen going to their
summer work on "The Labrador" with their accompanying tackle and
household goods, meeting with many vexatious delays in discharging the
men and goods at the numerous ports of call, and impeded by fog and
wind, the mail boat _Virginia Lake_ had been much longer than is her
wont on her trip "down north."

It was now June twenty-first. Six days before (June fifteenth), when
we boarded the ship at St. Johns we had been informed that the steamer
_Harlow_, with a cargo for the lumber mills at Kenemish, in Groswater
Bay, was to leave Halifax that very afternoon. She could save us a
long and disagreeable trip in an open boat, ninety miles up Groswater
Bay, and I bad hoped that we might reach Rigolet in time to secure a
passage for myself and party from that point. But the _Harlow_ had no
ports of call to make, and it was predicted that her passage from
Halifax to Rigolet would be made in four days.

I had no hope now of reaching Rigolet before her, or of finding her
there, and, resigned to my fate, I left the captain on the bridge and
went below to my stateroom to rest until daylight. Some time in the
night I was aroused by some one saying: