Oily Dave took the change in government with very bad grace indeed, and it is probable that the life of Jervis Ferrars would have been in very grave danger many times during the next few weeks if it had not 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, who was slowly creeping back to physical convalescence.  That is, the bodily part of him was resuming its functions, only the mental part was at a standstill; and although the sick man seemed to know and love them all, he had no more understanding for the serious things of life than an average child of six or seven might have possessed.