So he was
left behind. But after the ship had sailed away he slowly mended, grew
well and strong, and cultivated eagerly his little garden. For food he
ate the whelks, mussels, and oysters that were so abundant on the
shore. Occasionally ships (then as now) were wrecked on Sable Island
in stormy weather, and the good monk ministered to the mariners who
reached the shore. Also he was visited, ever and again, by the Breton
fishing boats, which brought him supplies of necessaries and the bread
and wine for celebrating Mass. Long after his death his spirit was
thought to haunt the desolate island.
Champlain and his companions passed on from Sable Island to the
south-east coast of Nova Scotia, noticing as they landed here and
there the abundance of rabbits[10] and sea birds, especially the Great
Auk, of which they killed numbers with sticks, cormorants (whose fishy
eggs they ate with enjoyment), puffins, guillemots, gulls, terns,
scissorbills, divers, ospreys, buzzards, and falcons; and no doubt the
typical American white-tailed sea eagles, ravens, ducks, geese,
curlews, herons, and cranes. Here and there they found the shore
"completely covered with sea wolves"--seals, of course, probably the
common seal and the grey seal. Of these they captured as many as they
wanted, for the seals, like most of the birds, were quite unafraid of
man.
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