tales-of-Fogo-Island

too much of a chance to stay on her. There were four or five of us onboard and we all crawled out in the small punt. That's when the line wehad ashore come in handy. We got a hold of 'en and hauled ourselves toshore. We got in alongside this feller's wharf. It was dark as pitch andraining. Oh boy, I'll tell you! It was coming down.Back in them days people had dogs for working. You know, haulingwood and stuff. These were not like the house pets that people havetoday. P'raps they would eat you if you was too handy to them. We gotup on the wharf, but the dogs up on the road started howlin'. We wasafraid of them and had no choice but to get back down in the punt Ifthem dogs was not on the road we could have got up and found a placeto go fer the night, but we was out of luck. Even to get up and walkaround would have been better than sitting in the punt. All of a sudden,a light shined right down in the punt. Then a voice said, "What are youfellers doing down there?" He said, "I seen it all going on. I knowedthere was something wrong." I said to the wife, "Them men is gone outof that schooner. I got to go down and have a look."It turned out that we was landed to this man's wharf. His name was Mr.George Hewitt. He said, "You get up out of that punt and come up to thehouse." When we got up to the house, he started singing out to thewoman telling her that some fellows was there. My son, she come downthe stairs and took our wet cuffs and put them on the damper of thestove. Then she went about getting the table 'sot' for a lunch. Sure, thatwas one or two o'clock in the morning! They was two wonderful people. Ican tell you that! They're gone now I spose, but they was some friendly.After it came towards morning, we could see the boat was still in theharbour. It wasn't fit to put a dog out be the door. There was the worstkind of sea. We 'bide there for eleven days before it calmed downenough to get out of it.I went down on the Labrador with Jimmy John for six or sevensummers. Sometimes, we would leave to go to the Labrador during thelast week in May. Other times, we went in the first part of June. Mostboats from here would go around the same time.We would go down to places in Labrador called Long Island, Grady's,and Cox's Arm. We always tried to be there a week or two before the fishcome in. That gave us a spell to get ready. Sometimes it would only takeus three or four days to get there. More times it might take up to twelve