Heart So Hungry Read Online Free PDF Page A

and Hubbard’s office.
    But even George’s solid presence could not quiet Mina’s dark forebodings. The passage from New York to St. John’s, Newfoundland, where they had arrived on the twenty-sixth after a short layover in Halifax, had in no way been enjoyable for her, despite her husband’s and Wallace’s increasing excitement. Not long out of New York the rain had begun, and the
Sylvia
had bucked and lurched its way through a steady headwind.
    In St. John’s they were to transfer at once to the steamer
Virginia Lake
but, to Hubbard’s vexation and Mina’s secret relief, the ship was overdue and not expected for several more days. This delay gave Hubbard time to purchase and pack more provisions, and provided Mina an interlude from the fears that gnawed at her. To pass the time the entire party travelled to the village of Broad Cove, where, they had been promised, the trout fishing would be excellent. There Mina did her best to pretend that at the end of their short holiday she and Laddie would return to Congers and life would go on as usual.
    But she could not slow the hours no matter how tightly she clung to her Laddie each night, and just before noon on July 1 the party was again aboard ship.
    The
Virginia Lake
, overbooked and crowded even before they boarded, stank of spilled fuel and seal blubber. The ship functioned as a mail boat, a freighter and a passenger ship, and every spring it hauled a cargo of slaughtered seals from the Labrador coast to St. John’s. Its decks had not been adequately cleaned and were still foul and slippery. In comparison with the
Sylvia
, the
Virginia Lake
seemed tiny and repugnant.
    With its five small staterooms already claimed, the Hubbards were forced to settle for a cramped cubicle. Wallace acquired a berth only after browbeating a steward into relinquishing his own cabin. George, without complaint or expectations to the contrary, lugged his duffel to steerage.
    One of the worst moments for Mina during the entire passage occurred in the open air of the deck, on a grey afternoon whenicebergs could be seen rising and falling in the open sea. Smaller chunks of ice that the men called growlers scraped past the hull with a prolonged squeak and an awful moan. Mina had gone topside with Laddie for one of his frequent inspections of the gear. He was met there by William Brooks Cabot, a former acquaintance who had also travelled north on the
Sylvia
. Cabot was embarking on his own canoe trip, this one a solitary paddle along the Labrador coastline, in hopes of encountering Naskapi Indians when they came to the trading posts. Cabot, an engineer and gentleman explorer from Boston, had been making annual treks into northern Canada since 1899. He would spend months at a time travelling alone or with a few friends, hiking and canoeing.
    Cabot would later explain his passion for the wilderness in his book
In Northern Labrador:
“My objective was Indians. They were people in the primitive hunter stage … living substantially in the pre-Columbian age of the continent. … They lived under their own law, in their old faith unchanged.” It had been Cabot who, when he and Hubbard had first met in Quebec during one of Hubbard’s early writing assignments, had planted in Hubbard’s brain the notion of following the Northwest River into unknown Labrador.
    Now, on the deck of the
Virginia Lake
, Cabot cast a critical eye at Hubbard’s canoe as it lay surrounded by other gear. “An eighteen-foot Old Town, I see. Canvas-covered. Same as mine.”
    “A good choice for both of us,” Hubbard said.
    “Except that I will be travelling alone. Yours will carry three men and all your gear. Through some reportedly tempestuous waters, no less. Personally I would be concerned about swamping. Too much weight for one canoe to carry.”
    “I’ve been assured that it will more than suffice.”
    It wasn’t long before George Elson joined them on deck. He stood off to the side, smoking his pipe but taking