Chapter 8

"Well," he observed, in a dull, slow voice, "we got a sick man over there t' Wreck Cove."

"Ay?" said I.

"An' we was sort o' wonderin', wasn't we, Skipper Tom," another put in, "how much this doctor would be askin' t' go over an' cure un?"

"Well, ay," the skipper admitted, taking off his sou'wester to scratch his head, "we _did_ kind o' have that idea."

"'Tis a wild night," said I: in my heart doubting--and that with shame--that the doctor would venture out upon the open sea in a gale of wind.

"'Tis _not_ very civil," said the skipper frankly. "I'm free t' say," in a drawl, "that 'tis--well--rather--dirty."

"An' he isn't got used t' sailin' yet. But----"

"No?" in mild wonder. "Isn't he, now? Well, we got a stout little skiff. Once she gets past the Thirty Devils, she'll maybe make Wreck Cove, all right--if she's handled proper. Oh, she'll maybe make it if----"

"Davy!" my sister called from above. "Do you take the men through t' the kitchen. I'll rouse the doctor an' send the maids down t' make tea."

"Well, now, thank you kindly, miss," Skipper Tom called up to the landing. "That's wonderful kind."

It was a familiar story--told while the sleepy maids put the kettle on the fire and the fury of the gale increased. 'Twas the schooner _Lucky Fisherman_, thirty tons, Tom Lisson master, hailing from Burnt Harbour of the Newfoundland Green Bay, and fishing the Labrador at Wreck Cove, with a tidy catch in the hold and four traps in the water. There had been a fine run o' fish o' late; an' Bill Sparks, the splitter--with a brood of ten children to grow fat or go hungry on the venture--labouring without sleep and by the light of a flaring torch, had stabbed his right hand with a fish bone. The old, old story--now so sadly threadbare to me--of ignorance and uncleanliness! The hand was swollen to a wonderful size and grown wonderful angry--the man gone mad of pain--the crew contemplating forcible amputation with an axe. Wonderful sad the mail-boat doctor wasn't nowhere near! Wonderful sad if Bill Sparks must lose his hand! Bill Sparks was a wonderful clever hand with the splittin'-knife--able t' split a wonderful sight o' fish a minute. Wonderful sad if Bill Sparks's family was to be throwed on the gov'ment all along o' Bill losin' his right hand! Wonderful sad if poor Bill Sparks----

The doctor entered at that moment. "Who is asking for me?" he demanded, sharply.

"Well," Skipper Tom drawled, rising, "we was thinkin' we'd sort o' like t' see the doctor."

"I am he," the doctor snapped. "Yes?" inquiringly.

"We was wonderin', doctor," Skipper Tom answered, abashed, "what you'd charge t' go t' Wreck Cove an'--an'--well, use the knife on a man's hand."

"Charge? Nonsense!"

"We'd like wonderful well," said the skipper, earnestly, "t' have you----"

"But--_to-night_!"

"You see, zur," said the skipper, gently, "he've wonderful pain, an' he've broke everything breakable that we got, an' we've got un locked in the fo'c's'le, an'----"

"Where's Wreck Cove?"

"'Tis t' the s'uth'ard, zur," one of the men put in. "Some twelve miles beyond the Thirty Devils."

The doctor opened the kitchen door and stepped out. There was no doubt about the weather. A dirty gale was blowing. Wind and rain drove in from the black night; and, under all the near and petty noises, sounded the great, deep roar of breakers.

"Hear that?" he asked, excitedly, closing the door against the wind.

"Ay," the skipper admitted; "as I was tellin' the young feller, it _isn't_ so _very_ civil."

"Civil!" cried the doctor.

"No; not so civil that it mightn't be a bit civiller; but, now----"

"And twelve miles of open sea!"

"No, zur--no; not accordin' t' my judgment. Eleven an' a half, zur, would cover it."

The doctor laughed.

"An', as I was sayin', zur," the skipper concluded, pointedly, "we just come through it."

My sister and I exchanged anxious glances: then turned again to the doctor--who continued to stare at the floor.

"Just," one of the crew repeated, blankly, for the silence was painful, "come through it."

The doctor looked up. "Of course, you know," he began, quietly, with a formal smile, "I am not--accustomed to this sort of--professional call. It--rather--takes my breath away. When do we start?"

Skipper Tom took a look at the weather. "Blowin' up wonderful," he observed, quietly, smoothing his long hair, which the wind had put awry. "Gets real dirty long about the Thirty Devils in the dark. Don't it, Will?"

Will said that it did--indeed, it did--no doubt about that, _what_ever.

"I s'pose," the skipper drawled, in conclusion, "we'd as lief get underway at dawn."

"Very good," said the doctor. "And--you were asking about my fee--were you not? You'll have to pay, you know--if you can--for I believe in--that sort of thing. Could you manage three dollars?"

"We was 'lowin'," the skipper answered, "t' pay about seven when we sold the v'y'ge in the fall. 'Tis a wonderful bad hand Bill Sparks has got."

"Let it be seven," said the doctor, quickly. "The balance may go, you know, to help some poor devil who hasn't a penny. Send it to me in the fall if----"

The skipper looked up in mild inquiry.

"Well," said the doctor, with a nervous smile, "if we're all here, you know."

"Oh," said the skipper, with a large wave of the hand, "_that's God's_ business."

They put out at dawn--into a sea as wild as ever I knew an open boat to brave. The doctor bade us a merry good-bye; and he waved his hand, shouting that which the wind swept away, as the boat darted off towards South Tickle. My sister and I went to the heads of Good Promise to watch the little craft on her way. The clouds were low and black--torn by the wind--driving up from the southwest like mad: threatening still heavier weather. We followed the skiff with my father's glass--saw her beat bravely on, reeling through the seas, smothered in spray--until she was but a black speck on the vast, angry waste, and, at last, vanished altogether in the spume and thickening fog. Then we went back to my father's house, prayerfully wishing the doctor safe voyage to Wreck Cove; and all that day, and all the next, while the gale still blew, my sister was nervous and downcast, often at the window, often on the heads, forever sighing as she went about the work of the house. And when I saw her thus distraught and colourless--no warm light in her eyes--no bloom on her dimpled cheeks--no merry smile lurking about the corners of her sweet mouth--I was fretted beyond description; and I determined this: that when the doctor got back from Wreck Cove I should report her case to him, whether she liked it or not, with every symptom I had observed, and entreat him, by the love and admiration in which I held him, to cure her of her malady, whatever the cost.

* * * * *

On the evening of the third day, when the sea was gone down and the wind was blowing fair and mild from the south, I sat with my sister at the broad window, where was the outlook upon great hills, and upon sombre water, and upon high, glowing sky--she in my mother's rocker, placidly sewing, as my mother used to do, and I pitifully lost in my father's armchair, covertly gazing at her, in my father's way.

"Is you better, this even, sister, dear?" I asked.

"Oh, ay," she answered, vehemently, as my mother used to do. "Much better."

"You're wonderful poorly."

"'Tis true," she said, putting the thread between her white little teeth. "But," the strand now broken, "though you'd not believe it, Davy, dear, I'm feeling--almost--nay, quite--well."

I doubted it. "'Tis a strange sickness," I observed, with a sigh.

"Yes, Davy," she said, her voice falling, her lips pursed, her brows drawn down. "I'm not able t' make it out, at all. I'm feelin'--so wonderful--queer."

"Is you, dear?"

"Davy Roth," she averred, with a wag of the head so earnest that strands of flaxen hair fell over her eyes, and she had to brush them back again, "I never felt so queer in all my life afore!"

"I'm dreadful worried about you, Bessie."

"Hut! as for that," said she, brightly, "I'm not thinkin' I'm goin' t' _die_, Davy."

"Sure, you never can tell about sickness," I sagely observed.

"Oh, no!" said she. "I isn't got that--kind o'--sickness."

"Well," I insisted, triumphantly, "you're wonderful shy o' eatin' pork."

She shuddered.

"I wished I knowed what you had," I exclaimed impatiently.

"I wished you did," she agreed, frankly, if somewhat faintly. "For, then, Davy, you'd give me a potion t' cure me."

She drew back the curtain--for the hundredth time, I vow--and peered towards South Tickle.

"What you lookin' for?" I asked.

"I was thinkin', Davy," she said, still gazing through the window, "that Skipper Zach Tupper might be comin' in from the Last Chance grounds with a fish for breakfast."

The Last Chance grounds? 'Twas ignorance beyond belief! "Bessie," I said, with heat, "is you gone mad? Doesn't you know that no man in his seven senses would fish the Last Chance grounds in a light southerly wind? Why----"

"Well," she interrupted, with a pretty pout, "you knows so well as me that Zach Tupper haven't _got_ his seven senses."

"Bessie!"

She peeked towards South Tickle again; and then--what a wonder-worker the divine malady is!--she leaned eagerly forward, her sewing falling unheeded to the floor; and her soft breast rose and fell to a rush of sweet emotion, and her lips parted in delicious wonderment, and the blood came back to her cheeks, and her dimples were no longer pathetic, but eloquent of sweetness and innocence, and her eyes turned moist and brilliant, glowing with the glory of womanhood first recognized, tender and pure. Ah, my sister--lovely in person but lovelier far in heart and mind--adorably innocent--troubled and destined to infinitely deeper distress before the end--brave and true and hopeful through all the chequered course of love! You had not known, dear heart, but then discovered, all in a heavenly flash, what sickness you suffered of.

"Davy!" she whispered.

"Ay, dear?"

"I'm knowin'--now--what ails me."

I sat gazing at her in love and great awe. "'Tis not a wickedness, Bessie," I declared.

"No, no!"

"'Tis not that. No, no! I knows 'tis not a sin."

"'Tis a holy thing," she said, turning, her eyes wide and solemn.

"A holy thing?"

"Ay--holy!"

I chanced to look out of the window. "Ecod!" I cried. "The Wreck Cove skiff is in with Doctor Luke!"

Unfeeling, like all lads--in love with things seen--I ran out.

* * * * *

The doctor came ashore at the wharf in a state of wild elation. He made a rush for me, caught me up, called to the crew of the skiff to come to the house for tea--then shouldered me, against my laughing protest, and started up the path.

"I'm back, safe and sound," cried he. "Davy, I have been to Wreck Cove and back."

"An' you're wonderful happy," cried I, from the uncertain situation of his shoulder.

"Happy? That's the word, Davy. I'm happy! And why?"

"Tell me."

"I've done a good deed. I've saved a man's right hand. I've done a good deed for once," he repeated, between his teeth, "by God!"

There was something contagious in all this; and (I say it by way of apology) I was ever the lad to catch at a rousing phrase.

"A good deed!" I exclaimed. "By God, you'll do----"

He thrashed me soundly on the spot.

XVII

HARD PRACTICE

I bore him no grudge--the chastisement had been fairly deserved: for then, being loosed from parental restraint, I was by half too fond of aping the ways and words of full-grown men; and I was not unaware of the failing. However, the prediction on the tip of my tongue--that he would live to do many another good deed--would have found rich fulfillment had it been spoken. It was soon noised the length of the coast that a doctor dwelt in our harbour--one of good heart and skill and courage: to whom the sick of every station might go for healing. In short space the inevitable came upon us: punts put in for the doctor at unseasonable hours, desperately reckless of weather; schooners beat up with men lying ill or injured in the forecastles; the folk of the neighbouring ports brought their afflicted to be miraculously restored, and ingenuously quartered their dying upon us. A wretched multitude emerged from the hovels--crying, "Heal us!" And to every varied demand the doctor freely responded, smiling heartily, God bless him! spite of wind and weather: ready, active, merry, untiring--sad but when the only gift he bore was that of tender consolation.

* * * * *

One night there came a maid from Punch Bowl Harbour. My sister sent her to the shop, where the doctor was occupied with the accounts of our business, myself to keep him company. 'Twas a raw, black night; and she entered with a gust of wind, which fluttered the doctor's papers, set the lamp flaring, and, at last, escaped by way of the stove to the gale from which it had strayed.

"Is you the doctor?" she gasped.

She stood with her back against the door, one hand still on the knob and the other shading her eyes--a slender slip of a girl, her head covered with a shawl, now dripping. Whisps of wet black hair clung to her forehead, and rain-drops lay in the flushed hollows of her cheeks.

"I am," the doctor answered, cheerily, rising from his work.

"Well, zur," said she, "I'm Tim Hodd's maid, zur, an' I'm just come from the Punch Bowl in the bait-skiff, zur--for healin'."

"And what, my child," asked the doctor, sympathetically, "may be the matter with you?"

Looking back--with the added knowledge that I have--it seems to me that he had no need to ask the question. The flush and gasp told the story well enough, quite well enough: the maid was dying of consumption.

"Me lights is floatin', zur," she answered.

"Your lights?"

"Ay, zur," laying a hand on her chest. "They're floatin' wonderful high. I been tryin' t' kape un down; but, zur, 'tis no use, at all."

With raised eyebrows the doctor turned to me. "What does she mean, Davy," he inquired, "by her 'lights'?"

"I'm not well knowin'," said I; "but if 'tis what _we_ calls 'lights,' 'tis what _you_ calls 'lungs.'"

The doctor turned sadly to the maid.

"I been takin' shot, zur, t' weight un down," she went on; "but, zur, 'tis no use, at all. An' Jim Butt's my man," she added, hurriedly, in a low voice. "I'm t' be married to un when he comes up from the Narth. Does you think----"

She paused--in embarrassment, perhaps: for it may be that it was the great hope of this maid, as it is of all true women of our coast, to live to be the mother of sons.

"Go on," the doctor quietly said.

"Oh, does you think, zur," she said, clasping her hands, a sob in her voice, "that you can cure me--afore the fleet--gets home?"

"Davy," said the doctor, hoarsely, "go to your sister. I must have a word with this maid--alone." I went away.

* * * * *

We caught sight of the _Word of the Lord_ beating down from the south in light winds--and guessed her errand--long before that trim little schooner dropped anchor in the basin. The skipper came ashore for healing of an angry abscess in the palm of his hand. Could the doctor cure it? To be sure--the doctor could do _that_! The man had suffered sleepless agony for five days; he was glad that the doctor could ease his pain--glad that he was soon again to be at the fishing. Thank God, he was to be cured!

"I have only to lance and dress it," said the doctor. "You will have relief at once."

"Not the knife," the skipper groaned. "Praise God, I'll not have the knife!"

It was the doctor's first conflict with the strange doctrines of our coast. I still behold--as I lift my eyes from the page--his astonishment when he was sternly informed that the way of the Lord was not the way of a surgeon with a knife. Nor was the austere old fellow to be moved. The lance, said he, was an invention of the devil himself--its use plainly a defiance of the purposes of the Creator. Thank God! he had been reared by a Christian father of the old school.

"No, no, doctor!" he declared, his face contorted by pain. "I'm thankin' you kindly; but I'm not carin' t' interfere with the decrees o' Providence."

"But, man," cried the doctor, "I _must_----"

"No!" doggedly. "I'll not stand in the Lard's way. If 'tis His will for me t' get better, I'll get better, I s'pose. If 'tis His blessed will for me t' die," he added, reverently, "I'll have t' die."

"I give you my word," said the doctor, impatiently, "that if that hand is not lanced you'll be dead in three days."

The man looked off to his schooner.

"Three days," the doctor repeated.

"I'm wonderful sorry," sighed the skipper, "but I got t' stand by the Lard."

And he _was_ dead--within three days, as we afterwards learned: even as the doctor had said.

* * * * *

Once, when the doctor was off in haste to Cuddy Cove to save the life of a mother of seven--the Cuddy Cove men had without a moment's respite pulled twelve miles against a switch of wind from the north and were streaming sweat when they landed--once, when the doctor was thus about his beneficent business, a woman from Bowsprit Head brought her child to be cured, incredulous of the physician's power, but yet desperately seeking, as mothers will. She came timidly--her ailing child on her bosom, where, as it seemed to me, it had lain complaining since she gave it birth.

"I'm thinkin' he'll die," she told my sister.

My sister cried out against this hopelessness. 'Twas not kind to the dear Lord, said she, thus to despair.

"They says t' Bowsprit Head," the woman persisted, "that he'll die in a fit. I'm--I'm--not wantin' him," she faltered, "t' die--like that."

"No, no! He'll not!"

She hushed the child in a mechanical way--being none the less tender and patient the while--as though her arms were long accustomed to the burden, her heart used to the pain.

"There haven't ever been no child," said she, looking up, after a moment, "like this--afore--t' Bowsprit Head."

My sister was silent.

"No," the woman sighed; "not like this one."

"Come, come, ma'm!" I put in, confidently. "Do you leave un t' the doctor. _He'll_ cure un."

She looked at me quickly. "What say?" she said, as though she had not understood.

"I says," I repeated, "that the doctor will cure that one."

"Cure un?" she asked, blankly.

"That he will!"

She smiled--and looked up to the sky, smiling still, while she pressed the infant to her breast. "They isn't nobody," she whispered, "not nobody, ever said that--afore--about my baby!"

Next morning we sat her on the platform to wait for the doctor, who had now been gone three days. "He does better in the air," said she. "He--he-_needs_ air!" It was melancholy weather--thick fog, with a drizzle of rain: the wind in the east, fretful and cold. All morning long she rocked the child in her arms: now softly singing to him--now vainly seeking to win a smile--now staring vacantly into the mist, dreaming dull dreams, while he lay in her lap.

"He isn't come through the tickle, have he?" she asked, when I came up from the shop at noon.

"He've not been sighted yet."

"I'm thinkin' he'll be comin' soon."

"Ay; you'll not have t' wait much longer."

"I'm not mindin' _that_," said she, "for I'm used t' waitin'."

The doctor came in from the sea at evening--when the wind had freshened to a gale, blowing bitter cold. He had been for three days and nights fighting without sleep for the life of that mother of seven--and had won! Ay, she had pulled through; she was now resting in the practiced care of the Cuddy Cove women, whose knowledge of such things had been generously increased. The ragged, sturdy seven still had a mother to love and counsel them. The Cuddy Cove men spoke reverently of the deed and the man who had done it. Tired? The doctor laughed. Not he! Why, he had been asleep under a tarpaulin all the way from Cuddy Cove! And Skipper Elisha Timbertight had handled the skiff in the high seas so cleverly, so tenderly, so watchfully--what a marvellous hand it was!--that the man under the tarpaulin had not been awakened until the nose of the boat touched the wharf piles. But the doctor was hollow-eyed and hoarse, staggering of weariness, but cheerfully smiling, as he went up the path to talk with the woman from Bowsprit Head.

"You are waiting for me?" he asked.

She was frightened--by his accent, his soft voice, his gentle manner, to which the women of our coast are not used. But she managed to stammer that her baby was sick.

"'Tis his throat," she added.

The child was noisily fighting for breath. He gasped, writhed in her lap, struggled desperately for air, and, at last, lay panting. She exposed him to the doctor's gaze--a dull-eyed, scrawny, ugly babe: such as mothers wish to hide from sight.

"He've always been like that," she said. "He's wonderful sick. I've fetched un here t' be cured."

"A pretty child," said the doctor.

'Twas a wondrous kind lie--told with such perfect dissimulation that it carried the conviction of truth.

"What say?" she asked, leaning forward.

"A pretty child," the doctor repeated, very distinctly.

"They don't say that t' Bowsprit Head, zur."

"Well--_I_ say it!"

"I'll tell un so!" she exclaimed, joyfully. "I'll tell un you said so, zur, when I gets back t' Bowsprit Head. For nobody--nobody, zur--ever said that afore--about my baby!"

The child stirred and complained. She lifted him from her lap--rocked him--hushed him--drew him close, rocking him all the time.

"Have you another?"

"No, zur; 'tis me first."

"And does he talk?" the doctor asked.

She looked up--in a glow of pride. And she flushed gloriously while she turned her eyes once more upon the gasping, ill-featured babe upon her breast.

"He said 'mama'--once!" she answered.

In the fog--far, far away, in the distances beyond Skull Island, which were hidden--the doctor found at that moment some strange interest.

"Once?" he asked, his face still turned away.

"Ay, zur," she solemnly declared. "I calls my God t' witness! I'm not makin' believe, zur," she went on, with rising excitement. "They says t' Bowsprit Head that I dreamed it, zur, but I knows I didn't. 'Twas at the dawn. He lay here, zur--here, zur--on me breast. I was wide awake, zur--waitin' for the day. Oh, he said it, zur," she cried, crushing the child to her bosom. "I heared un say it! 'Mama!' says he."

"When I have cured him," said the doctor, gently, "he will say more than that."

"What say?" she gasped.

"When I have taken--something--out of his throat--with my knife--he will be able to say much more than that. When he has grown a little older, he will say, 'Mama, I loves you!'"

The woman began to cry.

* * * * *