A Labrador Doctor Part 19

Shortly before I had opened a box containing some old football clothes which I had not seen for twenty years. I was wearing this costume at the time; and though my cap, coat, and gloves were gone, as I stood there in a pair of my old Oxford University running shorts, and red, yellow, and black Richmond football stockings, and a flannel shirt, I remembered involuntarily the little dying girl who asked to be dressed in her Sunday frock so that she might arrive in heaven properly attired.

Forcing my biggest dog to lie down, I cuddled up close to him, drew the improvised dogskin rug over me, and proceeded to go to sleep. One hand being against the dog was warm, but the other was frozen, and about midnight I woke up shivering enough, so I thought, to shatter my frail pan to atoms. The moon was just rising, and the wind was steadily driving me toward the open sea. Suddenly what seemed a miracle happened, for the wind veered, then dropped away entirely leaving it flat calm. I turned over and fell asleep again. I was next awakened by the sudden and persistent thought that I must have a flag, and accordingly set to work to disarticulate the frozen legs of my dead dogs. Cold as it was I determined to sacrifice my shirt to top this rude flagpole as soon as the daylight came. When the legs were at last tied together with bits of old harness rope, they made the crookedest flagstaff that it has ever been my lot to see. Though with the rising of the sun the frost came out of the dogs' legs to some extent, and the friction of waving it made the odd pole almost tie itself in knots, I could raise it three or four feet above my head, which was very important.

Once or twice I thought that I could distinguish men against the distant cliffs--for I had drifted out of the bay into the sea--but the objects turned out to be trees. Once also I thought that I saw a boat appearing and disappearing on the surface of the water, but it proved to be only a small piece of ice bobbing up and down. The rocking of my cradle on the waves had helped me to sleep, and I felt as well as I ever did in my life. I was confident that I could last another twenty-four hours if my boat would only hold out and not rot under the sun's rays. I could not help laughing at my position, standing hour after hour waving my shirt at those barren and lonely cliffs; but I can honestly say that from first to last not a single sensation of fear crossed my mind.

My own faith in the mystery of immortality is so untroubled that it now seemed almost natural to be pa.s.sing to the portal of death from an ice-pan. Quite unbidden, the words of the old hymn kept running through my head:

"My G.o.d, my Father, while I stray Far from my home on life's rough way, Oh, help me from my heart to say, Thy will be done."

I had laid my wooden matches out to dry and was searching about on the pan for a piece of transparent ice which I could use as a burning-gla.s.s. I thought that I could make smoke enough to be seen from the land if only I could get some sort of a light. All at once I seemed to see the glitter of an oar, but I gave up the idea because I remembered that it was not water which lay between me and the land, but slob ice, and even if people had seen me, I did not imagine that they could force a boat through. The next time that I went back to my flag-waving, however, the glitter was very distinct, but my snow-gla.s.ses having been lost, I was partially snow-blind and distrusted my vision. But at last, besides the glide of an oar I made out the black streak of a boat's hull, and knew that if the pan held out for another hour I should be all right. The boat drew nearer and nearer, and I could make out my rescuers frantically waving. When they got close by they shouted, "Don't get excited. Keep on the pan where you are." They were far more excited than I, and had they only known as I did the sensations of a bath in the icy water, without the chance of drying one's self afterwards, they would not have expected me to wish to follow the example of the Apostle Peter.

As the first man leaped on my pan and grasped my hand, not a word was spoken, but I could see the emotions which he was trying to force back. A swallow of the hot tea which had been thoughtfully sent out in a bottle, the dogs hoisted on board, and we started for home, now forging along in open water, now pushing the pans apart with the oars, and now jumping out on the ice and hauling the boat over the pans.

It seems that the night before four men had been out on the headland cutting up some seals which they had killed in the fall. As they were leaving for home, my ice-raft must have drifted clear of Hare Island, and one of them, with his keen fisherman's eyes, had detected something unusual on the ice. They at once returned to their village, saying that something living was adrift on the floe. The one man on that section of coast who owned a good spy-gla.s.s jumped up from his supper on hearing the news and hurried over to the lookout on the cliffs. Dusk though it was, he saw that a man was out on the ice, and noticed him every now and again waving his hands at the sh.o.r.e. He immediately surmised who it must be; so little as I thought it, when night was closing in the men at the village were trying to launch a boat. Miles of ice lay between them and me, and the angry sea was hurling great blocks against the land. While I had considered myself a laughing-stock, bowing with my flag at those unresponsive cliffs, many eyes were watching me.

By daybreak a fine volunteer crew had been organized, and the boat, with such a force behind it, would, I believe, have gone through anything. After seeing the heavy breakers through which we were guided, as at last we ran in at the harbour mouth, I knew well what the wives of that crew had been thinking when they saw their loved ones depart on such an errand.

Every soul in the village was waiting to shake hands as I landed; and even with the grip that one after another gave me, I did not find out that my hands were badly frostburnt--a fact which I have realized since, however. I must have looked a weird object as I stepped ash.o.r.e, tied up in rags, stuffed out with oak.u.m, and wrapped in the b.l.o.o.d.y dogskins.

The news had gone over to the hospital that I was lost, so I at once started north for St. Anthony, though I must confess that I did not greatly enjoy the trip, as I had to be hauled like a log, my feet being so frozen that I could not walk. For a few days subsequently I had painful reminders of the adventure in my frozen hands and feet, which forced me to keep to my bed--an unwelcome and unusual interlude in my way of life.

In our hallway stands a bronze tablet:

"To the Memory of Three n.o.ble Dogs Moody Watch Spy Whose lives were given For mine on the ice April 21st, 1908."

The boy whose life I was intent on saving was brought to the hospital a day or so later in a boat, the ice having cleared off the coast temporarily; and he was soon on the highroad to recovery.

We all love life, and I was glad to have a new lease of it before me.

As I went to sleep that night there still rang through my ears the same verse of the old hymn which had been my companion on the ice-pan:

"Oh, help me from my heart to say, Thy will be done."

CHAPTER XIX

THEY THAT DO BUSINESS IN GREAT WATERS

Contrary to her ungenerous reputation, even if vessels are lost on the Labrador, her almost unequalled series of harbours--so that from the Straits of Belle Isle to those of Hudson Bay there is not ten miles of coast anywhere without one--enables the crew to escape nearly every time.

In 1883, in the North Sea in October, a hurricane destroyed twenty-five of our stout vessels on the Dogger Bank, cost us two hundred and seventy good lives, and left a hundred widows to mourn on the land. In 1889 a storm hit the north coast of Newfoundland, but too late in the season to injure much of the fishing fleet, which had for the most part gone South. But it caused immense damage to property and the loss of a few lives. As one of the testimonials to its fury, I saw the flooring and seats of the church in the mud of the harbour at St.

Anthony at low tide even though that church had been founded entirely on a rock. We now concede that it is good economy on our coast to have wire stays to ringbolts leaded into rocky foundations, to anchor small buildings. Our storms are mostly cyclones with wide vortices, and coming largely from the southwest or northwest, are offsh.o.r.e, and therefore less felt.

We were once running along at full speed in a very thick fog, framing a course to just clear some nasty shoals on our port bow. There was nothing outside us and we had seen no ice of late, so I went below for some lunch, telling the mate to report land as soon as he saw any, and instructing the man at the wheel, if he heard a shout, to port his helm hard. The soup was still on the table when a loud shouting made us leap on the deck to see the ship going full tilt into an enormous iceberg, which seemed right at the end of the bowsprit. This unexpected monster was on our starboard bow, and the order to avoid the shoal was putting us headfirst into it. Our only chance was full speed and a starboard helm, and we actually grazed along the side of the berg. It seemed almost ludicrous later to pick up a large island and run into a harbour with gra.s.sy, sloping sides, out of which the fog was shut like a wall, and then to go ash.o.r.e and bargain over buying a couple of cows, which were being sold, as the settler was moving to the mainland.

Among the records of events of importance to us I find in 1908 that of the second real hurricane which I have ever seen. It began on Sat.u.r.day, July 28, the height of our summer, with flat calm and sunshine alternating with small, fierce squalls. Though we had a falling barometer, this deceived us, and we anch.o.r.ed that evening in a shallow and unsafe open roadstead about twenty miles from Indian Harbour Hospital. Fortunately our suspicions induced us to keep an anchor watch, and his warning made us get steam at midnight, and we brought up at daylight in the excellent narrow harbour in which the hospital stands. The holding ground there is deep mud in four fathoms of water, the best possible for us. Our only trouble was that the heavy tidal current would swing a ship uneasily broadside against an average wind force.

It was blowing so strongly by this time that the hospital yawl Daryl had already been driven ash.o.r.e from her anchors, but still we were able to keep ours in the water, and getting a line to her, to heave her astern of our vessel with our powerful winch. The fury of the breeze grew worse as the day went on. All the fishing boats in the harbour filled and sank with the driving water. With the increase of violence of the weather we got up steam and steamed to our anchors to ease if possible the strain on our two chains and sh.o.r.e lines--a web which we had been able to weave before it was too late. By Sunday the gale had blown itself entirely away, and Monday morning broke flat calm, with lovely sunshine, and only an enormous sullen ground sea.

This is no uncommon game of Dame Nature's; she seemed to be only mocking at the destruction which she had wrought.

Knowing that there must be many comrades in trouble, we were early away, and dancing like a bubble, we ran north, keeping as close insh.o.r.e as we could, and watching the coast-line with our gla.s.ses. The coast was littered with remains. Forty-one vessels had been lost; in one uninhabited roadstead alone, some forty miles away from Indian Harbour, lay sixteen wrecks. The sh.o.r.e here was lined with rude shelters made from the wreckage of spars and sails, and the women were busy cooking meals and "tidying up" the shacks as if they had lived there always.

We soon set to work hauling off such vessels as would float. One, a large hardwood, well-fastened hull, we determined to save. Her name was Pendragon. The owner was aboard--a young man with no experience who had never previously owned a vessel. He was so appalled at the disaster that he decided to have her sold piecemeal and broken up. We attended the auction on the beach and bought each piece as it came to the hammer. Getting her off was the trouble. We adopted tactics of our own invention. Mousing together the two mastheads with a bight of rope, we put on it a large whoop traveller, and to that fastened our stoutest and longest line. Then first backing down to her on the very top of high water, we went "full speed ahead." Over she fell on her side and b.u.mped along on the mud and shingle for a few yards. By repeated jerks she was eventually ours, but leaking so like a basket that we feared we should yet lose her. Pumps inside fortunately kept her free till we pa.s.sed her topsail under her, and after dropping in sods and peat, we let the pressure from the outside keep them in place. When night fell I was played out, and told the crew they must let her sink. My two volunteer helpers, Albert Gould, of Bowdoin, and Paul Matheson, of Brown, however, volunteered to pump all night.

While hunting for a crew to take her South we came upon the wreck of a brand-new boat, only launched two months previously. She had been the pride of the skipper's life. He was an old friend of mine, and we felt so sorry for him that we not only got him to take our vessel, but we handed it over for him to work out at the cost which we had paid for the pieces. He made a good living out of her for several years, but later she was lost with all hands on some dangerous shoals near St.

Anthony on a journey North.

With fifty-odd people aboard, and a long trail of nineteen fishing boats we eventually got back to Indian Harbour, where every one joined in helping our friends in misfortune till the steamer came and took them South. They waved us farewell, and, quite undismayed, wished for better luck for themselves another season.

The case of one skipper is well worth relating as showing their admirable optimism. He was sixty-seven years old, and had by hard saving earned his own schooner--a fine large vessel. He had arranged to sell her on his return trip and live quietly on the proceeds on his potato patch in southern Newfoundland. His vessel had driven on a submerged reef and turned turtle. The crew had jumped for their lives, not even saving their personal clothing, watches, or instruments. We photographed the remains of the capsized hull floating on the surf.

Yet this man, in the four days during which he was my guest, never once uttered a word of complaint. He had done all he could, and he "'lowed that t' Lord knew better than he what was best."

"But what will you do now, Skipper?" I asked.

"Why, get another," he replied; "I think them'll trust me."

One of our older vessels started a plank in a gale of wind in the Atlantic and went to the bottom without warning. In an open boat for six days with only a little dry bread and no covering of any sort, the crew fought rough seas and heavy breezes. But they handled her with the sea genius of our race; made land safely at last, and never said a word about the incident. On another occasion two men, who had been a fortnight adrift, had rowed one hundred and fifty miles, and had only the smallest modic.u.m of food, came aboard our vessel. When I said, "You are hungry, aren't you?" they merely replied, "Well, not over-much"--and only laughed when I suggested that perhaps a month in the open boat might have given them a real appet.i.te.

One October, south of St. Anthony, we were lying in the arm of a bay with two anchors and two warps out, one to each side of the narrow channel. The wind piled up the waters, much as it did in Pharaoh's day. We were flung astern yard by yard on the top of the seas, and when it was obvious that we must go ash.o.r.e, we reversed our engines, slipped our line, and drove up high and dry to escape the b.u.mping on the beach which was inevitable. There we lay for days. Meanwhile I had taken our launch into the river-mouth and was marooned there. For the launch blew right up on the bank in among the trees, and strive as we would, for days we could not even move her out again.

Another spring we had a very close squeak of losing the Strathcona.

While we were trying one morning to get out of a harbour, a sudden gale of wind came down upon us and pinned us tight, so that we could not move an inch. The pressure of the ice became more severe moment by moment, and meanwhile the ice between us and the sh.o.r.e seemed to be imperceptibly melting away. Naturally we tried every expedient we could think of to keep enough ice between us and the sh.o.r.e rocks to save the vessel being swept over the rocky headland, toward which the irresistible tidal current was steadily forcing us. To make matters worse, we struck our propeller against a pan of ice and broke off one of the f.l.a.n.g.es close to the shaft. It became breathlessly exciting as the ship drew nearer and nearer to the rocks. We abandoned our boat when we saw that by trying to hold on to it any longer we should be jeopardizing the steamer. Twisting round helplessly as in a giant's arms, we were swept past the dangerous promontory and to our infinite joy carried out into the open Atlantic where there is room for all.

Our boat was subsequently rescued from the sh.o.r.e, and we were able to screw on a new blade to the propeller.

Just after the big gale in 1908 His Excellency, Sir William MacGregor, then Governor, was good enough to come and spend a short time surveying on our north coast. He was an expert in this line, as well as being a gold-medallist in medicine. Later he changed over from the Strathcona to the Government steamer Fiona. I acted as pilot among other capacities on that journey, and was unlucky enough to run her full tilt onto one of the only sandbanks on the coast in a narrow pa.s.sage between some islands and the mainland! The little Strathcona, following behind, was in time to haul us off again, but the incident made the captain naturally distrust my ability, and as a result he would not approach the sh.o.r.e near enough for us to get the observations which we needed. Although we went round Cape Chidley into Ungava Bay I could not regain his confidence sufficiently to go through the straits which I had myself sounded and surveyed. So we accomplished it in a small boat, getting good observations. Our best work, however, was done when His Excellency was content to be our guest. The hospital on board was used for the necessary instruments--four chronometers, two theodolites, guns, telescopes, camp furniture, and piles of books and printed forms. Mr. Albert Gould of Bowdoin was my secretary on board that year, and was of very great value to us.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ICEBERGS]

Though the work of an amateur, Sir William's surveying was accepted by the Admiralty and the Royal Geographical Society--his survey in Nigeria having proved to have not one single location a mile out of place when an official survey was run later.

Many a time in the middle of a meal, some desired but unlucky star would cross the prime vertical, and all hands had to go up on deck and shiver while rows of figures were acc.u.mulated. Sir William told us that he would rather shoot a star any time than all the game ever hunted. One night my secretary, after sitting on a rock at a movable table from 5 P.M. till midnight, came in, his joints almost creaking with cold, and loaded with a pile of figures which he a.s.sured us would crush the life out of most men. My mate that year was a stout and very short, plethoric person. When he stated that he preferred surveying to fishing, as it was going to benefit others so much, and that he was familiar with the joys of service, he was taken promptly at his word.

It was a hot summer. The theodolite was a nine-inch one and weighed many pounds. We had climbed the face of a very steep mountain called Cape Mugford, some three thousand feet high--every inch of which distance we had to mount from dead sea-level. When at last Israel arrived on the summit, he looked worried. He said that he had always thought surveying meant letting things drop down over the ship's side, and not carrying ballast up precipices. For his part he could now see that providing food for the world was good enough for him. He distinctly failed to grasp where the joy of this kind of service came in--and noting his condition as he lay on the ground and panted I decided to let it go at that.

The Governor was a real MacGregor and a Presbyterian, and was therefore quite a believer in keeping Sunday as a day of rest. But after morning prayers on the first fine day, after nearly a week of fog, he decided that he had had physical rest enough, and to get good observations would bring him the recreation of spirit which he most needed. So he packed up for work, and happened to light on the unhappy Israel to row him a mile or so to the land. "Iz" was taken "all aback." He believed that you should not strain yourself ever--much less on Sundays. So from religious scruples he asked to be excused, though he offered to row any one ash.o.r.e if he was only going to idle the hours away. After all, however, our Governor represented our King, and I was personally horrified, intending to correct Israel's position with a round turn, and show him that we are especially enjoined to obey "Governors and Rulers"--as better also than the sacrifice of loafing. But the Governor forbade it, quietly unpacked, put his things away, and stayed aboard. Israel subsequently cultivated the habit of remaining in bed on Sundays--thereby escaping being led into temptation, as even Governors would not be likely to go and tempt him in his bunk.

I have had others refuse to help in really necessary work on Sunday.

One skipper would not get the Strathcona under way in answer to a wireless appeal to come to a woman in danger of dying from hemorrhage forty miles distant. When we prepared to start without him, he told me that he would go, but that it would be at the price of his soul and we would have to be responsible for that loss. We went all the same.

Our charts, such as they were, were subsequently accepted by the Royal Geographical Society of England, who generously invited me to lecture before them. They were later good enough to award me the Murchison Prize in 1911. Much of the work was really due to Sir William, and as much of it as I could put on him to the Sabbatarian "Iz."

In connection with the scientific work on the coast I well remember the eclipse of October, 1905. All along the land it was perfectly visible. A break in the clouds occurred at exactly the right moment: one fisherman, to console the astronomers, said that he was very sorry, but that he supposed it did not much matter, as there would be another eclipse next week. The scientific explorer, who was devoting his attention to the effect on the earth's magnetism, spent the time of the eclipse in a dark cellar. Most wonderful magnetic disturbances had been occurring almost every night, and the night before the event a far from ordinary storm had upset his instruments, so that the effect of the eclipse on the magnetic indicators was scarcely distinguishable. He had just time after the thing was over to peep out and see the light returning. He had watched his thermometer and found that it fell three degrees during totality.

The year 1908 at the mill we had built a new large schooner in honour of that devoted friend of Labrador, our secretary in Boston, and had named the vessel for her, the Emma E. White. She fetched Lloyd's full bounty for an A 1 ship. This was a feather in our caps, since she was designed and built by one of our own men, who was no "scholard,"

having never learned to read or write. Will Hopkins can take an axe and a few tools into the green woods in the fall, and sail down the bay in a new schooner in the spring when the ice goes. To see him steaming the planking in the open in his own improvised boxes on the top of six feet of snow made me stand and take off my hat to him. He is no good at speech-making; he does not own a dress-suit, and he cannot dance a tango; but he is quite as useful a citizen as some who can, and his type of education is one which endears him to all. He gave me the great pleasure of having our friend come sailing into St.

Anthony in the middle of a fine day, seated on the bow of her namesake, the beautiful and valuable product of his skill, just when we were all ready on the wharf to "sketch them both off," as our people call taking a photograph.

Our increasing buildings being all of wood, and as the two largest were full of either helpless sick people or an ever-increasing batch of children, we wanted something safer than kerosene lamps to illuminate the rooms. The people here had never seen electric light "tamed," as it were, and to us it seemed almost too big a venture to install a plant of our own. Home outfits were not common in those days even in the States, and we feared in any case that we could not run it regularly enough. No one except the head of the machine shop, a Labrador boy and Pratt graduate, knew the first thing about electricity, and he would not always be available.