. So we lashed all our lines together and cast over
our anchors, hoping to find bottom. Alas, the water was too deep.
Darkness came on and the prospect of a long, weary night struggling
for safety made us thrill with excitement. Suddenly a schooner's
lights, utterly unexpected, loomed up, coming head on toward us. Like
Saul and his asses, we no longer cared about our craft so long as we
escaped. At once we lashed the hurricane light on the boat-hook and
waved it to and fro on high to make sure of attracting attention. To
our dismay the schooner, now almost in hail, incontinently tacked,
and, making for the open sea, soon left us far astern. We fired our
guns, we shouted in unison, we lit flares. All to no purpose. Surely
it must have been a phantom vessel sent to mock us. Suddenly our
amateur engineer, who had all the time been working away at the
scrap-heap of parts into which he had dismembered the motor, got a
faint kick out of one cylinder--a second--a third, then two, three,
and then a solitary one again. It was exactly like a case of blocked
heart. But it was enough with our oars to make us move slowly ahead.
By much stimulating and watchful nursing we limped along on the one
cylinder, and about midnight found ourselves alongside the phantom
ship, which we had followed into the harbour "afar off." Angry enough
at their desertion of us in distress, we went aboard just to tell them
what we thought of their behaviour. But their explanation entirely
disarmed us. "Them cliffs is haunted," said the skipper. "More'n one
light's been seen there than ever any man lit. When us saw you'se
light flashing round right in on the cliffs, us knowed it was no place
for Christian men that time o' night. Us guessed it was just fairies
or devils trying to toll us in."

We had no lighthouses on Labrador in those days, and though hundreds
of vessels, crowded often with women and children, had to pass up and
down the coast each spring and fall, still not a single island,
harbour, cape, or reef had any light to mark it, and many boats were
unnecessarily lost as a result.

Most of the schooners of this large fleet are small. Many are old and
poorly "found" in running gear. Their decks are so crowded with boats,
barrels, gear, wood, and other impedimenta, that to reef or handle
sails on a dark night is almost impossible; while below they were
often so crowded with women and children going North with their men
for the summer fishing on the