My Strange Rescue — Wrecks and Wreckers of Anticosti

*WRECKS AND WRECKERS OF ANTICOSTI.

* Right in the mouth of the great St. Lawrence, which without exaggeration has been called "the noblest, the purest, the most enchanting river on all God's beautiful earth," lies a long, narrow island that might with equal propriety be called the dreariest, most inhospitable, and most destructive island on the earth; for it is doubtful if any other spot of corresponding size has caused so many shipwrecks and so much human suffering.

In ten years, according to official records, there have been as many as one hundred and six wrecks, including seven steamships and sixty-seven sailing-ships or barques, having on board no less than three thousand precious souls, and cargoes worth millions of pounds.

Years ago, before the Canadian Government erected lighthouses and established relief stations, the wrecks were more numerous still, and were rarely unattended with loss of life.

But times are better now, and when a wreck occurs, unless it be in one of those terrible winter storms that seem to make this ill-omened isle their centre, the crew generally manage to make the land in safety, where they are well cared for by the government officials.

Far different was it in 1737, when the French sloop-of-war _La Renommee_ stranded upon a cruel ledge of rocks, hardly a mile off shore, about eight leagues from the southern point of Anticosti.

It was in the month of November, just as winter, which could nowhere have been more dreadful than on that bleak, barren, shelterless island, was fast closing in.

In their mad haste to reach the land--for the waves were breaking high over the vessel--the crew took little food with them, although gallant Captain de Freneuse did not forget to take the ship's colours.

When in the gray, grim morning they came to reckon up, they found, to their dismay, that with six months of hopeless captivity before them, they had barely enough food for forty days, allowing the scantiest of daily rations to each of the sixty-five men who had survived the shipwreck.

The sequel, as related with simple, graphic pathos by Father Crespel, one of the few who ultimately emerged from the terrible ordeal, constitutes as grand a record of human courage and endurance and as harrowing a history of human suffering as ever has been told.

The poor castaways had nothing but a little canvas to shelter them from the keen, biting blasts.

Fever presently broke out amongst them.

Then half of them set forth in two small boats to coast around that merciless shore for forty leagues, after which they made a hazardous dash across twelve leagues of open sea to Mingan, where French fishermen were known to winter.

The "jolly-boat" was swamped after they had been five days out, and its thirteen occupants were thus spared further misery.

At last the ice setting in made the progress of the other boat impossible, and they had no alternative but to go into winter quarters and wait for the tardy spring.

With two pounds of damp, mouldy flour and two pounds of unsavoury fox-meat per day, these seventeen men, housed in rude huts of spruce boughs, prepared to endure the long agony of winter.

Once a week a spoonful of peas was served out to each man; which constituted such a treat that, as Father Crespel naively puts it, "On those days we had our best meal."

Hunger, cold, and disease carried off one by one as the months dragged themselves along, until at length only three still lived, when a band of Indians came just in time to save this remnant from perishing.

All this and more is told by heroic Father Crespel with a quaint simplicity, a minuteness of detail, and a perfect submission to the Divine will, that renders his recital extremely touching.

Not less saddening is the story of the stout brig _Granicus_, which in 1828 went to pieces off the east end of the island, also in the month of November.

Many of the crew escaped to land, but with little more than the clothing they wore.

[Illustration: "HUNGER, COLD, AND DISEASE CARRIED OFF ONE BY ONE, UNTIL ONLY THREE STILL LIVED.

_Page_ 252"] Winter soon closed in upon them.

No succour came.

Their provisions gave out, and what followed may be judged from the awful sight that met the eyes of some government officials when the following spring they stumbled across a rude hut strewn with human skeletons, and, in the pot that hung over the long-dead ashes, some bones that were not those of an animal.

Those dreadful days are happily past and gone.

Few lives are lost on Anticosti now.

Four fine lighthouses send their cheering rays across the anxious mariner's path, signal-guns and steam-whistles sound friendly notes of warning when the frequent fogs dim the lights, and half-a-dozen telegraph-stations at different points are ready to speed at once the news of disaster to the mainland by means of the submarine cable.

Where wrecks are plentiful, and the controlling hand of the law is absent, wreckers are sure to be plentiful also.

Anticosti has been no exception to this rule.

The island has had its share of those who did not hesitate to pursue this nefarious business.

From the earliest times the place has held out attractions to the fisherman and the hunter.

The cod, halibut, herring, and other fish that it pays to catch, abound along the coast; huge lobsters play hide-and-seek among the sea-weeds, and very good salmon and trout may be caught in some of the streams, while round-headed, mild-eyed seals spend the greater part of the year sporting in the waves or basking on the shore.

Then away inland there are, or used to be, bears, otters, martens, and foxes, to be had for the shooting or trapping.

Coming first to fish and hunt, the fishermen and hunters in many cases stayed to play the part of wreckers.

There was a good deal more money to be made out of the flotsam and jetsam that the storms sent their way than out of fish or fur, and they made the most of their opportunities.

One thing, however, must be said in their behalf.

They have never been accused of luring vessels to destruction by false lights, or of confirming their title to the goods cast up by the sea by acting upon the principle that dead men are not competent witnesses in court, and by despatching any of the shipwrecked who might have survived the disaster.

On the contrary, more than one unfortunate crew have owed the preservation of their lives to these very wreckers.

The most renowned of them all--a man of whom it might in truth be said that there was not a St. Lawrence pilot or a Canadian sailor who knew him not by reputation, or a parish between Quebec and Gaspe where marvellous tales were not told about him around the evening fire--was Louis Olivier Gamache.

In these stories he figured as the beau-ideal of a pirate, half ogre, half sea-wolf, who enjoyed the friendship and special protection of a familiar demon.

The learned and loquacious Abbe Ferland, in his dainty little volume of "Opuscules," which I hold in my hand, tells us about this wonderful Gamache, that, according to popular rumour, he had been seen to stand upright upon the thwarts of his sloop, and command the demon to bring him a capful of wind.

Instantly his sails were filled, though the sea around him was in a glassy calm, and away he went, while all about him were vessels powerless to move.

During a trip to Rimouski he gave a grand supper to the devil, not to a devil of the second class, but to the veritable old gentleman himself.

Aided by invisible assistants, he had massacred whole crews, and appropriated to himself the rich cargoes of their vessels.

When hotly pursued by a government boat sent to capture him, and just about being overtaken, both sloop and Gamache suddenly disappeared, leaving nothing behind but a blue flame that went dancing over the waves in mocking defiance of the disappointed minions of the law.

Upon such thrilling legends as these was founded the reputation of the "Wizard of Anticosti," and so generally were they believed that the genial abbe assures us that the majority of the mariners in the gulf would rather have attempted to scale the citadel of Quebec than to approach by night the bay where Gamache was known to have his stronghold.

We can put plenty of confidence in the abbe, for in the year 1852 he had the courage to pay the wizard a visit, and I am sorry that I have not room to give the full particulars of that visit as they are brightly presented by this ever-entertaining writer.

He found the terror-inspiring Gamache to be a tall, erect, and vigorous old man, with snow-white hair but piercing eyes, who came forward to meet his visitors with an easy, dignified bearing that betrayed no concern or troubled conscience.

His house appeared to be a perfect arsenal of deadly weapons.

No fewer than a dozen guns, many of them double-barrelled, grimly adorned the walls of the first room they entered, and every other room up to the very garret had at least two or three more, loaded and capped; they hung upon racks, surrounded by powder-flasks, shot-bags, swords, sabres, daggers, bayonets, and pistols, in most imposing profusion.

The house itself was something of a fortress.

Every possible precaution had been taken to prevent persons entering it without the permission of its master.

All the doors and windows were strongly barred and shuttered, and so complete were the defences that one man inside might have defied twenty outside.

In the sheds, arranged in the most orderly manner, were long rows of barrels, bales, casks, and other gifts of the sea.

Such was the den of the dreaded wrecker, a man not one tithe so bad as wild rumour made him, but who, nevertheless, took pains to intensify the public feeling about himself, in order that he might be the more undisturbed in the solitude he had chosen for himself in that strange, wild place.

He had not always been alone, either.

Twice had a woman been found willing to brave the rigours of his life for love of him, and in both cases they had succumbed to the terrible loneliness and desolation.

His second wife died suddenly, while he was off on a hunting-trip in mid-winter; and he returned, after a fortnight's absence, to find her frozen form clasping to its icy breast the bodies of their two little children, the one five and the other six years old.

"That is how they will find me some day.

Each one in their turn.

Ah!

well--since she is dead we can only bury her."

That was all the strange, taciturn man said to his companion, a hunter who had been with him, and yet he had always shown his wife the greatest kindness and affection.

It was not that he was heartless, but that he would rather have died than reveal the depth of his feeling.

He amused the abbe very much by relating the various devices to which he had resorted in order to heighten his reputation for diabolic associations.

He would go to a country inn, for instance, order a supper for two to be served in a private room, stating that he expected a gentleman in sable garments to share it with him.

When the supper was ready he would then lock himself up in the room, polish the supper off unaided, and summon the astonished landlady to clear the remains away, as he and his friend had supped and were satisfied.

He would further increase their mystification by sundry rappings, and inexplicable openings and shuttings of doors.

He could also employ more sinister means of protecting himself when necessary.

One day, when he was quite alone, a canoe glided into the bay, and presently a gigantic Montagnais Indian stepped ashore, armed to the teeth, and advanced with a firm step towards the house.

He was evidently crazed with fire-water, and Gamache felt in no mood to try a tussle with so brawny an opponent.

Standing in the doorway, with a rifle in his hands, he called out in his sternest tones,-- "Stop!

I forbid you to advance."

The intruder took not the slightest notice of him.

"Take another step and I fire," shouted Gamache.

The step was taken, but before it could be repeated, the rifle spoke and the Indian fell, his thigh-bone smashed with the bullet.

In an instant Gamache was beside the wounded man.

Removing his weapons, he lifted him to his shoulder, and bore him tenderly to the house, and there nursed him until he was completely recovered.

Then filling his canoe with provisions, he sent him back to his tribe, with a warning never to intrude upon Gamache again unless he wanted a bullet through his head instead of his thigh.

In 1854, Louis Olivier Gamache died, like his poor wife, alone and unattended.

For weeks no one had visited his abode, and when at last some seafarers chanced that way they found only the corpse of the once dreaded wizard, whose supposed league with evil spirits did not avail to save him from fulfilling his own prophecy.