seals.

Men's lives were staked against the value of a fur, edicts were lightly
contravened, and now and then a schooner barely escaped into the
smothering fog with skins looted close aboard forbidden beaches. It
was a perilous life, and a strenuous one, for they had every white
man's hand against them, as well as fog and gale, and the reefs that
lay in the tideways of almost uncharted waters; but Wyllard made the
most of it. He kept the peace with jealous skippers who resented the
presence of a man they might command as mate, but whose views they were
forced to listen to when he spoke as supercargo; won the good-will of
sea-bred Indians, and drove a good trade with them; and not
infrequently brought his boat back first to the plunging schooner
loaded with reeking skins.

Then he fell into trouble again when they were hanging off the Eastern
Isles under double reefs, watching for the Russians' seals. A boat's
crew from another schooner had been cast ashore, and, as they were in
peril of falling into the Russians' hands, Wyllard led a reckless boat
expedition to bring them off again. He succeeded, in so far that the
wrecked men were taken off the roaring beach through a tumult of
breaking surf, but as they pulled seaward the fog shut down on them,
and one boat, manned by three men, never reached the schooners. They
blew horns all night, standing off and on, and crept along the smoking
beach next day, though the surf made landing impossible. Then a sudden
gale drove them off the shore, and, as it was evident that their
comrades must have perished, they reluctantly sailed for other fishing
grounds. As one result of this, Wyllard broke with his prosperous
relative when he came back to Vancouver.

After that he helped to strengthen railroad bridges among the mountains
of British Columbia, worked in logging camps, and shovelled in the
mines, and, as it happened, met Hawtrey, who, tempted by high wages,
had spent a winter in the Mountain Province after a disastrous harvest.
In the meanwhile, his father had sold out, and taken up virgin soil in
Assiniboia. He died soon after Wyllard went back to him, and a few
months later the relative in Vancouver also died. Somewhat to
Wyllard's astonishment, he bequeathed him a considerable property,
which the latter realised and sunk most of the proceeds in further
acres of virgin prairie. Willow Range was already one of the largest
farms between Winnipeg and the Rockies.