



Produced by Al Haines










[Frontispiece: "So you're not dead after all, my hearty."  _Page 37_]




[Illustration: Title page]




THE WRECKERS

OF

SABLE ISLAND



BY

J. MACDONALD OXLEY


_Author of "Up Among the Ice-Floes," "Diamond Rock," &c._




T. NELSON AND SONS

_London, Edinburgh, and New York_

1897




CONTENTS.


    I.  THE SETTING FORTH
   II.  IN ROUGH WEATHER
  III.  THE WRECK
   IV.  ALONE AMONG STRANGERS
    V.  ERIC LOOKS ABOUT HIM
   VI.  BEN HARDEN
  VII.  A SABLE ISLAND WINTER
 VIII.  ANXIOUS TIMES
   IX.  FAREWELL TO SABLE ISLAND
    X.  RELEASE AND RETRIBUTION




THE WRECKERS OF SABLE ISLAND.


CHAPTER I.

THE SETTING FORTH.

A voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in the year 1799 was not the
every-day affair that it has come to be at the present time.  There
were no "ocean greyhounds" then.  The passage was a long and trying one
in the clumsy craft of those days, and people looked upon it as a more
serious affair than they now do on a tour round the world.

In the year 1799 few people thought of travelling for mere pleasure.
North, south, east, and west, the men went on missions of discovery, of
conquest, or of commerce; but the women and children abode at home,
save, of course, when they ventured out to seek new homes in that new
world which was drawing so many to its shores.

It was therefore not to be wondered at that the notion of Eric Copeland
going out to his father in far-away Nova Scotia should form the subject
of more than one family council at Oakdene Manor, the beautiful country
seat of the Copeland family, situated in one of the prettiest parts of
Warwickshire.

Eric was the only son of Doctor Copeland, surgeon-in-chief of the
Seventh Fusiliers, the favourite regiment of the Duke of Kent, the
father of Queen Victoria.  This regiment formed part of the garrison at
Halifax, then under the command of the royal duke himself; and the
doctor had written to say that if the squire, Eric's grandfather,
approved, he would like Eric to come out to him, as his term of service
had been extended three years beyond what he expected, and he wanted to
have his boy with him.  At the same time, he left the matter entirely
in the squire's hands for him to decide.

So far as the old gentleman was concerned, he decided at once.

"Send the boy out there to that wild place, and have him scalped by an
Indian or gobbled by a bear before he's there a month?  Not a bit of
it.  I won't hear of it.  He's a hundred times better off here."

