The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador Part 13

Then he heard some one say his father was dead. Dazed with grief he was taken to one of the Eskimo tupeks where he was to make his home.

All that day and for days afterward, days of deep, unspoken sorrow, the thought that he would never again hear his father's dear voice was in his mind and forcing itself upon him. The world had grown suddenly dark for the crippled boy. All of his fine plans were vanished.

One day late that fall Dr. Grenfell found Pomiuk lying helpless and naked upon the rocks near the tupek of the Eskimo who had taken him in. The little lad was carried aboard the hospital ship. He was washed and his diseased hip dressed, he was given clean warm clothing to wear, and altogether he was made more comfortable than he had been in many months. Then, with Pomiuk as a patient on board, the ship steamed away.

Thus Pomiuk bade goodbye to his home, to the towering cliffs and rugged st.u.r.dy mountains that he loved so well, and to his people. The dear days when he was so jolly and happy in health were only a memory, though he was to know much happiness again. Perhaps, lying helpless upon the deck of the hospital ship, he shed a tear as he recalled the fine trips he used to have when his father took him to the post with dogs and komatik in winter, or he and his father went cruising in the boat along the coast in summer. And now he would never see his dear father again, and could never be a great hunter like his father, as he had once dreamed he would be.

But the cruise was a pleasant one, with every moment something new to attract his attention. Dr. Grenfell was as kind and considerate as a father. Pomiuk had never known such care and attention. His diseased hip was dressed regularly, and had not been so free from pain since it was injured. Appetizing, wholesome meals were served him. Everyone aboard ship did everything possible for his comfort and entertainment.

Pomiuk was taken to the Indian Harbor Hospital where he remained until the cold of winter settled, and the hospital was closed for the winter season. Then he was removed to a comfortable home up the Bay. Under careful surgical treatment his hip improved until he was able to get about well on crutches.

There was never a happier boy in the world than this little Eskimo cripple in his new surroundings and with his new friends. He laughed and played about quite as though he had the use of his limbs, and had forgotten his affliction. During the winter one of the good missionaries from the Moravian Mission at Hopedale visited him and baptized him "Gabriel"--the angel of comfort. He was a comfort indeed and a joy to those who had his care.

XVI

MAKING A HOME FOR THE ORPHANS

The next winter Pomiuk was taken to the hospital at Battle Harbor where he could receive more constant surgical treatment. He was a joy to the doctors and nurses. His face was always happy and smiling. He never complained, and his amiable disposition endeared him not only to the doctors and nurses but to the other patients as well.

But Pomiuk was never to be well again. The diseased hip was beyond control, and was wearing down his const.i.tution and his strength. One day he fell suddenly very ill. For a week he lay in bed, at times unconscious, and then early one morning pa.s.sed away.

Many shed tears for Pomiuk when he was gone. They missed his joyous laughter and his smiling face. Doctor Grenfell missed him sorely. He could not forget the suffering, naked little boy that he had rescued from the rocks of Nachvak Bay, and he decided that some provision should be made to care for the other orphaned, homeless, neglected children of Labrador. In some way, he decided, the funds for such a home had to be found, though he had no means then at his disposal for the purpose. He further decided that the home must not be an inst.i.tution merely but a real home made pleasant for the boys and girls, where they would have motherly care and sympathy, and where they should have a school to go to like the children of our own favoured land.

With cheerful optimism and heroic determination Doctor Grenfell set for himself the task of establishing such a home. And in the end great things grew out of the suffering and death of Gabriel Pomiuk. The splendid courage and cheerfulness of the little Eskimo lad was to result in happiness for many other little sufferers. Now, as always it was, with Doctor Grenfell, "I can if I will,"--none of the uncertainty of, "I will if I can." He pitched into the work of raising money to build that children's home. He lectured, and wrote, and talked about it in his usual enthusiastic way, and money began to come to him from good people all over the world. At length enough was raised and the home was built.

He had already picked up and taken into his mission family so many boys and girls, orphans or otherwise, that were without home or shelter, and that he could not leave behind him to suffer and die, that he had nearly enough on his hands to populate the new building before it was ready for them. Indeed he soon found himself almost in the position of the "old woman that lived in a shoe," and "had so many children she didn't know what to do." His big kind fatherly heart would never permit him to abandon a homeless child, and so he took them under his care, and somehow always managed to provide for them.

It was about the time of Pomiuk's death, I believe, that the first of these children came to him. One day, when cruising north in the _Strathcona_, he was told that a family living in an isolated and lonely spot on the Labrador coast required the attention of a doctor.

He answered the call at once.

When he approached the bleak headland where the cabin stood, and his vessel hove her anchor, he was quite astonished that no one came out of the cabin to offer welcome, as is the custom with Labradormen everywhere when vessels anchor near their homes. He and his mate were put ash.o.r.e in a boat, and as they walked up the trail to the cabin still no one appeared and no smoke issued from the stovepipe, which, rising through the roof, served as a chimney. When he lifted the latch he was quite decided no one, after all, was at home.

Upon entering the cabin a shocking scene presented itself. The mother of the family lay upon the bed with wide-open stare. Doctor Grenfell's practiced eye told him she was dead. The father, a Scotch fisherman and trapper, was stretched upon the floor, helplessly ill, and a hasty examination proved that he was dying. Five frightened, hungry, cold little children were huddled in a corner.

That night the father died, though every effort was made to revive him and save his life. Grenfell and his crew gave the man and woman as decent a Christian burial as the wilderness and conditions would permit, and when all was over the Doctor found five small children on his hands.

An uncle of the children lived upon the coast and this uncle volunteered to take one of them into his home. The other four Doctor Grenfell carried south on the hospital ship. There was no proper provision for their care at St. Anthony, his headquarters hospital, and he advertised in a New England paper for homes for them. One response was received, and this from the wife of a New England farmer, offering to provide for two. The Doctor sent two to the farm, the other two remaining at St. Anthony hospital.

The next child to come to him was a baby of three years. The child's father had died and the mother married a widower with a large family of his own. He was a hard-hearted rascal, and the mother was a selfish woman with small love for her baby. The man declined to permit her to take it into his home and she left it in a mud hut, a cellar-like place, with no other floor than the earth. A kind-hearted woman, who lived near by, ran in now and again to see the baby and to take it sc.r.a.ps of food and give it some care. She could not adopt it, for she and her husband were scarce able to feed the many mouths in their own family.

So alone this tiny little girl of three lived in the mud hut through the long days and the longer and darker nights. There was no mother's knee at which to kneel; no one to teach her to lisp her first prayer; no one to tuck her snugly into a little white bed; no one to kiss her before she slept. O, how lonely she must have been! Think of those chilly Labrador nights, when she huddled down on the floor in the ragged blanket that was her bed! How many nights she must have cried herself to sleep with loneliness and fear!

Here, in the mud hut, Doctor Grenfell found her one day. She was sitting on the earthen floor, talking to herself and playing with a bit of broken crockery, her only toy. He gathered her into his big strong arms and I have no doubt that tears filled his eyes as he looked into her innocent little face and carried her down to his boat.

In a locker on his ship, the _Strathcona_, there were neat little clothes that thoughtful children in our own country had sent him to give to the dest.i.tute little ones of Labrador. He turned the baby girl over to his big mate, who had babies of his own at home. The mate stroked her tangled hair with a brawney hand, and talked baby talk to her, and as she snuggled close in his fatherly arms, he carried her below decks. The baby's mother would not have known her little daughter if, two hours later, she had gone aboard the _Strathcona_ and heard the peals of laughter and seen the happy little thing, bathed, dressed in neat clean clothes, and well fed, playing on deck with a pretty doll that Doctor Grenfell had somewhere found.

It was on his last cruise south late one fall, and not long before navigation closed, that Doctor Grenfell learned that a family of liveyeres encamped on one of the coastal islands was in a dest.i.tute condition, without food and practically unsheltered and unclothed.

He went immediately in search, steaming nearly around the island, and discerning no sign of life he had decided that the people had gone, when a little curl of smoke rising from the center of the island caught his eye. He at once brought his vessel to, let go the anchor, lowered away a boat and accompanied by his mate pulled ash.o.r.e. Making the boat fast the two men scrambled up the rocks and set out in the direction from which they had seen the smoke rise.

Near the center of the island they suddenly brought up before a cliff, against which, supported by poles, was stretched a sheet of old canvas, pieced out by bits of matting and bagging, to form the roof of a lean-to shelter. In front of the lean-to a fire burned, and under the shelter by the fire sat a scantily clad, bedraggled woman. In her arms she held a bundle of rags, which proved to envelop a tiny new born baby, nursing at her breast.

A little girl of five, barefooted and ragged, slunk timidly back as the strangers approached. The woman grunted a greeting, but did not rise.

"Where is your man?" asked Doctor Grenfell.

"He's right handy, huntin' gulls," she answered.

Upon inquiry it was learned that there were three boys in the family and that they were also "somewheres handy about." A search discovered two of them, lads of seven and eight, practically naked, but tough as little bears, feeding upon wild berries. Their bodies were tanned brown by sun and wind, and streaked and splotched with the blue and red stain of berry juice. They were jabbering contentedly and both were as plump and happy in their foraging as a pair of young cubs.

Snow had begun to fall before Doctor Grenfell followed by the two lads returned to the fire at the cliff, soon to be joined by the boys'

father, tall, gaunt and bearded. His hair, untrimmed for many weeks, was long and snarled. He was nearly barefooted and his clothing hung in tatters. In one hand he carried a rusty old trade gun, (a single-barreled, old-fashioned muzzle loading shotgun), in the other he clutched by its wing a gull that he had recently shot. Following the father came an older lad, perhaps fourteen years of age, little better clothed than his two brothers and as wild and unkempt in appearance as the father.

"Evenin'," greeted the man, as he leaned his gun against the cliff and dropped the gull by its side.

It was cold. The now thickly falling snow spoke loudly of the Arctic winter so near at hand. The liveyere and his family, however, seemed not to feel or mind the chill in the least, and apparently gave no more thought to the morrow or the coming winter, upon whose frigid threshold they stood, than did the white-winged gulls flying low over the water.

Fresh wood was placed upon the fire, and Grenfell and the mate joined the family circle around the blaze.

"Do you kill much game here on the island?" asked Doctor Grenfell.

"One gull is all I gets today," announced the man. "They bides too far out. I has no shot. I uses pebbles for shot, and 'tis hard to hit un with pebbles. 'Tis wonderful hard to knock un down with no shot."

"What have you to eat?" inquired the Doctor. "Have you any provisions on hand?"

"All us has is the gull," the man glanced toward the limp bird. "We eats berries."

"'Tis the Gover'me't's place to give us things," broke in the woman in a high key. "The Gov'me't don't give us no flour and nothin'."

"It's snowing and the berries will soon be covered," suggested Grenfell. "You can't live without something to eat and now winter is coming you'll need a house to live in. You haven't even a tent."

"Us would make out and the Gover'me't gave us a bit o' flour and tea and some clodin' (clothing)," harped the woman. "The Gover'me't don't give un to us. The Gover'me't folks don't care what becomes o' we."

"How are you going to take care of these children this winter?" asked Grenfell. "You can't feed them and without clothing they'll freeze.

Let us take them with us. We'll give them plenty to eat and clothe them well."

"Don't be sayin' now you'll let un go!" broke in the mother in a high voice, turning to the man, who stood mute. "Don't be givin' away your own flesh and blood now! Don't let un go."

"You can't keep yourselves and these children alive through the winter. Some of you will starve or freeze," persisted Grenfell.

"Suppose you let us have the two young lads and the little maid. We'll take good care of them and we'll give you some clothing we have aboard the vessel, and some flour and tea to start you."

"And a bit o' shot for my gun?" asked the man, showing interest.

"Don't be givin' away your own flesh and blood!" interjected the woman in the same high key. "'Tis the Gov'me't's place to be givin' us what we needs, clodin' and grub too."