Adventure and adventurers > Hudson Bay, or, Everyday life in the wilds of North America

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DIFFICULTIES OF AMATEUR NAVIGATION.
my two men, in a very pompous, despotic way, to heave
up the anchor again; but not a bit would it budge.
We all heaved at the windlass, still the obstinate anchor
held fast—again we gave another heave, and smashed
both the handspikes.
In this dilemma I begged assistance from the neigh¬
bouring schooner, and they kindly sent all their men on
board with new handspikes; but our refractory anchor
would not let go, and at last it was conjectured that it
had got foul of a rock, and that it was not in the power
of mortal man to move it. Under these pleasant cir¬
cumstances, we went to bed, in hopes that the falling
tide might swing us clear before morning. This turned
out just as we expected—or, rather, a little better—for
next morning, when I went on deck, I found that we
were drifting quietly down the gulf, stern foremost, all
the sails snugly tied up, and the long cable dragging at
the bows! Towards evening we arrived at Jeremie;
and I gladly resigned command of the vessel to my
first lieutenant.
One afternoon, near the middle of April, I sat sun¬
ning myself in the verandah, before the door of the
principal house at Isle Jeremie; and watched the fields
of ice, as they floated down the Gulf of St. Lawrence,
occasionally disappearing behind the body of a large
pig, which stood upon a hillock close in front of me,
and then reappearing again as the current swept them
slowly past the intervening obstacle.
Mr. Coral, with whom I had been leading a very
quiet, harmless sort of life for a couple of weeks past,
leant against a wooden post, gazing wistfully out to sea.