Mattie Mitchell by Gary Collins Page A

This man was almost as tall as the observant one
and, although he wore a long, grey, grizzled beard, he resembled
the other clean-shaven one in his long stride and commanding
attitude.
    At a rough command from this man, one of the other men
walked briskly to the shoreline and stepped lively out over a
short, log-built wharf where the big boat bobbed on its painter.
Leaning against the rope, he pulled the vessel closer to the crude
dock and jumped aboard. Buka was amazed to see the boat barely
move at such an indignity, a motion that would have sunk and
probably destroyed his own tapoteek .
    The white man bent below the gunnels of the boat and soon
stood erect again, holding a large fish in each hand. He threw
both fish onto the deck of the wharf. Again and again he repeated
the work, now using a long handle with a sharp, curved end,
pronging the fish in their white stomachs. He sometimes flung
two and three at once upon the narrow log surface. As the hunter
watched, his mouth watered for the delicious codfish that lay on
the wharf before him. Never had he seen so many bobusowet at
one time.
    Soon the boat was emptied and the fisherman joined the
others on the shore. Now the work of cleaning the catch began
in earnest. There was a short, rectangular table set up, made of
small, round logs. Onto this the fat fish were placed one by one.
Using a long, shiny knife, one of the men eviscerated the large bobusowet . He pulled the twin white livers from the dead fish
and threw them into a puncheon nearby. The stench of the livers
fermenting in the huge barrel stirred anew with each addition.
    Another, shorter man, his face hidden by a tangle of dried,
grass-coloured hair, seized the gutted cod and placed his left
hand on the open breast of the fish, his right hand holding its head
below the sharpened edge of the table. With one of his thumbs
and one of his fingers poked into the eye sockets of the fish,
he gave a quick, violent push, one hand against the other, and
removed the head before throwing it back in the water. Here the
raucous seagulls swooped and dipped and fought over the offal,
their cries filling the narrow cove.
    The tall, clean-faced man was next to grasp the fish. Using a
shorter, slightly curved knife, he removed the long backbone in
three clean sweeps of his blade. The red man’s curiosity knew no
bounds. More than anything, the Beothuk was fascinated with
the knives and their unbelievable sharpness. He leaned so far out
of his hiding place to better see the wondrous knives that, if the
strangers had been watching, he would have been seen.
    For more than two hours he watched these strange men with
the pale skin clean the huge catch of fish. When they had finished
and had thrown all the entrails into the sea at their feet, they
removed the fish, glistening with sea water, from the great round,
wooden, water-filled vat.
    As he watched, the men carried layers of the split cod into
a three-walled lean-to nearby. From his position he could see
inside this crude structure, which was close to his hiding place.
Placing the fish on the lungered floor, one of the men brought
forth, from a small barrel inside, buckets of a white, granular
substance which he proceeded to fling over the bodies of the
spread cod without cease until they were completely covered.
    Their rough voices came to him easily, some of them high-pitched and squeaky and others deep and growly. Not at all like
the language of the true people.
    Why would men in heavy, smelly clothes do such a thing?To catch and carefully clean more cod than he had ever seen in
one place, only to cover them with a coarse white sand? The cod
his people managed to catch they hung over the smoke fires and
cured to a delicious taste that always gave them energy and full
bellies. Looking at the gulls screaming and feeding on the guts of
the fish, Buka’s mouth watered for all the sweet-tasting hearts the
white men had so carelessly discarded. They were a delicacy and
were