been for the fact that the Englishman had made a host of
friends among the fishers, who would protect him at all risks in an
open attack, while Jervis wisely so far avoided Oily Dave as to
give no chance for the secret, cowardly thrusts in which the
deposed man delighted.

Astor M'Kree personally conducted the new boats, one by one, over
the rapids, bringing them down when the river was in flood and
anchoring them in front of the store until their crews were ready;
and when they had cleared for the bay the fishing was in full swing.

Eight hundred miles away, in the north of the great inland sea, the
whalers and sealers were still fast bound in ice and snow, longing
for freedom, yet forced to wait while the tardy spring crept
northward. But down in the more sheltered waters of James Bay
there was abundance of work for everyone. Hundreds of seals
gambolled on the ice floes and on the shores of the little
uncharted islands which make those waters such a serious menace to
the mariner. Sometimes the boats were away for a week. Sometimes
two days found them headed back for Seal Cove, laden with seals,
walrus, and narwhal. Many of them succeeded in getting a good
catch of white whales, for which those waters are so noted; but
these were caught at the mouths of the tidal rivers, for the whales
go up the rivers every day with the tide, and it was when the tide
was ebbing that the whales were most easily caught. It was only
the biggest and strongest boats that ventured so far as the tidal
rivers, however, and with these Jervis Ferrars never went. Indeed,
but from choice he need never have gone to sea at all, for his work
lay more particularly on land, where he had to keep toll of the
catch and take care that the various products of the sea harvest
were properly secured and stored, until the opening of Hudson
Strait enabled vessels to get through.

Astor M'Kree had made a queer addition to the side of Stee Jenkin's
house by building against one end of it part of an old fishing boat
which had been wrecked in the floodtime, and stranded on the bluff
upon which the little house was perched. In this peculiar abode
Jervis took his residence, while Mrs. Jenkin looked after his
comfort and kept his room clean with a slavish industry which she
had certainly never bestowed on her own house.

On most days when he was ashore Jervis contrived to get up to
Roaring Water Portage, his ostensible errand being to see 'Duke
Radford,