It will only take a few minutes longer."
In spite of their efforts at self-defence, faces, hands, and Cabot's
bare legs were covered with blood before their task was completed, and
they were once more in the boat pulling furiously for the wind-swept
water of the open bay.
"I never expected to find mosquitoes this far north," said Cabot, as
the pests began to disappear before the freshening breeze and the
rowers paused for breath.
"Strangers are apt to be unpleasantly surprised by them," replied
White, "but they are here all the same, and they extend as far north as
any white man has ever been. I have been told that they are as bad in
Greenland as here, and I expect they flourish at the North Pole itself.
They certainly are the curse of Labrador, and until ice makes in the
fall they effectually prevent all travel into the interior. Even the
Indians have to come to the coast in summer to escape them, while the
whites who visit this country for the fishing make their settlements on
the barest and most wind-swept places. The few who live here the year
round have summer homes on the coast, but build their winter houses
inland, at the heads of bays or the mouths of rivers, where there is
timber to afford some protection from the cold. Those are winter
houses back there."
"I wondered why they were abandoned," said Cabot, "but I don't any
longer.
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