Chapter 10

Darkness was shutting down--and it was an awful place to pass the night.

Then a schooner's lights flashed out. "Hurrah!" cried Grenfell's men. "We're all right now!"

They lashed the hurricane light on their boat-hook and waved it to and fro like mad. They MUST make those fellows on the schooner take notice and stop for them. The sea would probably get them if they failed.

The water was so rough, the night so dark, that even their precious motor-boat was nothing, if only they could clamber aboard that schooner. At almost any time, those Straits offer stretches of the most perilous sailing-water in the world. Sailors who have rounded Cape Horn would say yes to that.

But just then--to their horror, the schooner which had been close to them put about and hurried off like a startled caribou. Soon the powerless motor-boat was left far, far behind, wallowing in the trough of waves much too big for her size.

They shouted with all their might, but the whistling wind threw away their outcry instead of carrying it across the tossing waves, which threatened to swamp the boat at any instant.

They shot off their guns.

They yelled again.

They lit flares such as are used in the navy for signal lights.

But it was all in vain.

They almost began to believe they had dreamed of rescue--that a phantom ship had come to them in a nightmare.

They waved their hurricane light again and again, as high as they could hold it.

The engineer, a willing amateur, all this while had been toiling away till his hands bled, at his motor, drenched with the spray. He had torn the machinery limb from limb, and patiently refitted the parts. Suddenly one cylinder gave a weak kick, and then came a spasmodic succession of sputters, with long waits between. But with the aid of the oars the boat was now able to make slow and tedious progress in the schooner's wake.

At last--at last--along toward midnight they crept into the harbor where the schooner had also taken refuge.

Tired as they were, they wouldn't turn in at a fisherman's cottage without boarding the ship to rebuke the sailors for their unhandsome behavior.

How could they leave men in a tiny boat in distress, perhaps to be swamped and to drown in those cruel waters out yonder in the blind dark?

The skipper made solemn reply. "Them cliffs is haunted," he announced. "More'n one light's been seen there than ever any man lit. When us saw youse light flashing round right in on the cliffs, us knowed it was no place for Christian men that time o' night. Us guessed it was just fairies or devils tryin' to toll us in."

Many of the little boats on the Labrador are not fit to spend a night at sea, and often it is an anxious business to get into a safe harbor before sundown. Dr. Grenfell has a reputation as a daredevil skipper, because so often, on an errand of mercy, he has steamed right out in the teeth of the storm when hardened, ancient mariners shook their heads and hugged the land. But the Doctor does not take chances for the sake of the risk itself--his daring always has behind it the good reason that he wants to go somewhere in a great hurry in time of need.

A hundred miles north of Indian Tickle, where there was no light, Grenfell was caught one night when he was coming south with the fishing fleet.

All of a sudden the fog fell on the whole group of ships like a thick wet blanket, before they could make the harbor. There were many reefs between their position and the open sea: the only thing to do was to anchor then and there. When a rift came in the fog, Dr. Grenfell saw the riding-lights of eleven vessels round about him. A northeaster grew in violence as night came swiftly on, and a heavy sea arose. The ships tugged at their anchors. The great waves swept the decks from end to end.

In the hold of the _Strathcona_ were patients lying in the cots, on their way to Battle Harbor Hospital. As the Doctor would say, there was less than an inch of iron between them and eternity.

They were dressed, and the boats were prepared to take them ashore.

One after another in the mad waters the neighbor lights went out. All night the _Strathcona_ fought the sea. When day came, only one of the other boats was left--a ship much bigger than the _Strathcona_, named the _Yosemite_.

The _Yosemite_ was drifting down upon the smaller vessel, and it seemed as if in a moment more there must be a collision.

But just then the _Yosemite_ struck a reef. She turned over on her side. In that position the sea drove the vessel ashore, through the breakers, with the crew clinging to the bridge.

The fact that the _Strathcona_ kept steam up and was "steaming to her anchors" all night long had saved her, the only survivor of the entire fleet. Every vessel that went ashore was smashed to kindling.

As they were about to weigh anchor, the main steam pipe began to leak. It was necessary to "blow down" the boilers.

For the whole of that short day the engineers tinkered at the damage, knowing that the lives of all on board might depend on their success ere nightfall.

Suddenly, to the inexpressible relief of everyone, the engineer shouted:

"Right for'ard!"

Then came the sweet music of the engine-room bell, and presently they were under way again, so nightfall found them safe at last in the harbor, with those eleven wrecks pounding on the rocks outside.

Sometimes the fishermen expected miracles of healing. One day a big "husk" of a fisherman clambered aboard, saying that his teeth hurt him.

"Sit down on that wood-pile," said the Doctor.

The man obeyed. The Doctor pried his mouth open, and saw the tooth that was making the trouble. Then he fetched the forceps.

Up started the patient in wide-eyed alarm.

"Bees you a-goin' to haul it, Doctor?"

"Of course I'm going to pull it out. What did you want me to do?"

"I wouldn't have you touch it! Not for all the fish in the sea!"

"Well then, why did you come to me? You're just wasting my time."

"I wanted you to charm her, Doctor."

"But my dear fellow, I'm not an Eskimo medicine-man. I don't know how, and I don't believe in it anyway."

Mr. Fisherman looked very much put out. "I knows why youse won't charm un. It's because I'm a Roman Catholic."

"Nonsense. That wouldn't make the slightest difference. But if you really think it would do any good,--come on, I'll try. Only--you'll have to pay twenty-five cents, just as though I had 'hauled' it."

"That I will, Doctor, and glad to do it. Go ahead!"

He perched on the rail like a great sea-bird. The Doctor to carry out the farce put his finger in the gaping mouth and touched the tooth. While he kept his finger in place he uttered the solemn words:

"Abracadabra Tiddlywinkum Umslopoga."

That last word must have come from a hazy memory of the name of the wonderful big black man in H. Rider Haggard's "Alan Quatermain," who after a long, hard run beside a horse that carries his master, defends a stairway against their enemies and splits a magic stone with an axe and so brings the foe to grief.

At any rate, the combination worked. Grenfell pulled out his finger quickly so that his patient wouldn't bite him.

The fisherman got up in silence. Then he slowly made the circuit of the deck. In the course of the brief journey, he thrust his hand deep into his jeans and pulled out a quarter.

"Thank you, Doctor. Many thanks." He solemnly handed the coin to his benefactor. "All the pain has gone."

Dr. Grenfell stood holding the coin in his hand, wondering how he came to make such a fool of himself, while the fisherman's broad back bent to the oars of the little boat that took him ashore.

A month later, in the same harbor, the same man swung his leg over the rail with a hearty greeting.

"Had any more trouble?" asked the Doctor.

"No--sir! Not an ache out of her since!" came the jovial answer.

The Doctor had much trouble with patients who wanted to drink at one draught all the medicine he gave them. They thought that if a teaspoonful of the remedy was good for you, the whole bottle must be ever so much better.

A haddock's fin-bone was a "liveyere's" charm against rheumatism--but you must get hold of the haddock and cut off the fin before he touches the boat. So you don't often get a fin that is good for anything.

If you want to avoid a hemorrhage, the best plan is to tie a bit of green worsted round your wrist.

Both Protestants and Catholics write prayers on pieces of paper and wear them in little bags about their necks to drive off evil things.

The constant battle against wind and wave develops heroes and heroines, and the tales told of golden deeds such as might earn a Carnegie medal or pension are beyond number.

One man started south for the winter in his fishing-boat, with his fishing partner, his wife, four children and a servant girl. A gale of wind came up. On the Labrador a gale is a gale: they do not use the word lightly. Grenfell tells of a new church that was blown into the sea with its pulpit, pews and communion-table. In a storm like that, the mainsail, jib and mast of this luckless smack went over the side. The boat was driven helplessly before the wind, for three days and nights. Then the wind changed, and they could put up a small foresail, which in two more awful days brought them to the land. But they were running ashore with such violence that they would have been lost beyond a doubt, if six brave "liveyeres" had not put out to rescue them. Their boat was smashed to flinders.

Then they found that all this time they had been going due north, for a hundred and fifty miles. They had to stay till the next summer. Their friends, when they got back to Newfoundland, had given them up for dead.

A fisherman said to Grenfell, in explaining why he couldn't swim: "You see, we has enough o' the water without goin' to bother wi' it when we are ashore." This man had barely escaped drowning on no less than four occasions. Once he saved himself by clinging to a rope with his teeth, after his hands were too numb to serve him, till they hauled him aboard.

The shore of one of the Labrador bays had a total adult population of just one man. As the ice was breaking up in the spring, he had sent his two young sons out on the ice-pans in pursuit of seals.

But the treacherous flooring gave way, and the father from the shore saw his boys struggling in the water.

He tied a long fishing-line round his body, and gave the other end to his daughter. While she held it he crawled out over the pans. Then he jumped into the bitter water, like a deep-sea diver going down to examine a wreck, and stayed between and below the pans till he had recovered both bodies--but the last spark of life was extinct.

Almost under the windows of Dr. Grenfell's hospital at Battle Harbor two men started with sled and dogs to get fire-wood. They were rounding a headland, when the sled went into the water, taking not merely the dogs but the drivers with it. One man got under the ice, and was seen no more. The other clung to the edge of the ice, too weak to crawl out.

His sister saw what happened, and came running over the ice. Men further away who were bringing a boat shouted to her: "For God's sake, don't go near the hole." She did not heed their warning. Instead, she threw herself flat, so as to distribute her weight, and dragged herself along till she was close enough to reach her brother's hand.

She could not quite pull him out. He was so benumbed that he could not help in the rescue. She lifted his body part way over the edge of the ice-sheet and held on.

Nearer and nearer the boat came with the rescuers shouting encouragement. "We're a-comin', girl.' Don't let go!" Her strength was almost gone. But she was bound to be faithful unto death--if the sea claimed her brother it must take her too.

She did not cry out. She wasted no energy in words upon the frosty air. The boat seemed ages in coming, though the rowers plied the oars with might and main.

One of her legs had broken through the ice. At any instant she might find herself struggling in the sea, and her agony of effort would have been in vain.

At what seemed the last second of the last moment for the pair, the brawny arms of the fishermen hauled them over the gunwale.

She told the story simply, and as though it were all in the day's work.

"What made you go on?" Grenfell asked her.

"I couldn't see him drown, could I?" was all her reply.

XII

WHEN THE BIG FISH "STRIKE IN"

"Doctor, how do you catch the codfish? Do you use a hook and line, the same as father and I do when we go fishing in Long Island Sound?"

The speaker was a New York boy who hadn't been north of Boston, until one summer his father let him go to St. John's for the sea-trip. There by great good luck he ran into the Doctor, who had come from St. Anthony in his little steamer the _Strathcona_.

"You can catch codfish with a hook and line," explained the Doctor, "but it would take too long for the fishermen who have to get their living from the sea.

"Most of the time they use a great big net, called a 'cod-trap.'

"It's like a room of network without a roof. It has a door, and the cod are steered in at the door by another net which reaches from the cod-trap to the rocks."

"I should think the whole business would float away out to sea the minute it got the least bit rough," said Harry.

"It might," the Doctor admitted. "But you see they have heavy anchors, or they tie big stones to the net at the bottom to hold it down."

"I'd love to see those cod coming in!" exclaimed Harry. "They must push and shove like anything. But what do they want to go in for? I s'pose o' course they must use some kind of bait."

"They use the squid, or octopus," said the Doctor.

"Are those the funny things that wave their arms around and throw out ink when they get mad?" asked Harry.

"Yes."

"Are they very big?"

"They come in all sizes. There's even such a thing as a giant squid. For a long time people laughed at the idea that there was any such monster. They thought he was a myth, like the sea-serpent.

"But one day two fishermen were plying their trade when two great arms rose out of the sea and clasped their boat and tried to drag it under.

"Luckily, they had a big knife, and they hacked away at the arms till they cut them off.

"The cuttlefish--that's another name for it--made the sea about them as black as tar. But it did not try again.

"They took the arms ashore, and sold them to a man named Dr. Harvey. Everybody had been making fun of Dr. Harvey because he said there was such a thing as the giant squid.

"The Doctor hated strong drink, and so the clerks at the store of Job Brothers here in St. John's were very much surprised when Dr. Harvey rushed in and shouted: 'I want a barrel of rum!'

"Then he told them what he wanted it for--he wanted to send the giant squid to the Royal Society in London. The parts of the arms cut off were nineteen feet long.

"Later on, somebody who heard about it brought him an octopus that was lying dead on the water, whose reach was forty feet from tip to tip."

"How do they catch the octopus for bait?" asked Harry.

"It's exciting work. You see, besides having arms like a windmill, with curious sucking saucers on them, the octopus has a beak like a parrot, with awful teeth, and it can bite like anything.

"You'll see a cluster of rowboats anchored close together, and the fishermen are jigging up and down a little bright red leaden weight, bristling with spikes.

"Suddenly there's a stir. The squids have come rushing in, and they bite at those jiggers like a terrier after a rat.

"When the squids get those spiked weights in their mouths and are being hauled aboard--look out!

"All of a sudden--just the way people squirt things in the movies--they shoot out jets of ink at the fishermen.

"It stings like anything if it gets into your eyes and it ruins your clothes."

"How much do the squid cost when you buy them for bait?" asked Harry, who had a practical mind.

"Fifteen or twenty cents a hundred for the little ones."

"That isn't much for all that work," said Harry.

Dr. Grenfell smiled. "You'll find that the fishermen do lots of hard work for very little pay, Harry," he answered.

"What other kind of bait do they use for the cod?"

"Caplin--a small fish like a sardine--and herring. Sand eels and white-fish sometimes. Bits of sea-gulls, and even rubber fish with hooks. Mussels don't hold well on the hooks."

Harry looked thoughtful. "I suppose it makes a lot o' difference, having just the right kind o' bait."

"All the difference in the world," the Doctor agreed. "If a man can't please the fish, he might as well burn his nets and boats and leave the sea.--But I was telling you about the cod-traps.

"While the fish are following their leader, like so many sheep, in at the door of the trap, along comes the man they call the trap-master. He has a tube with plain glass in the bottom, and he puts it down over the side of the boat and looks through it to see if the trap is full.

"When he thinks it's full enough, the door is pulled up so the fish can't get out, and the floor of the trap is hauled to the surface.

"As it is lifted, a big dipper is put in, and the fish are ladled into the boat.

"When the boat is full, the rest of the fish are put into big net bags. These are tied to buoys, so the fishermen may come back later and get them."

"I suppose the fishermen like to pick out the best places," said Harry.

"Yes--there's a mad race on the day the season opens. You've got to get your cod-trap anchored in four days, with the net that leads from the shore put in place: and it's a big job to do it in that time.

"Then there's what they call the cod-seine. That's worked by seven men. The seine-master, fish-glass in hand, stands in the bow: and the minute he sights the school of fish he gives orders for the nets to be dropped.

"The men row in a circle and return to a buoy, paying out the net as they go.

"The bottom rope is weighted, and they gather it round a central anchor into a bag as they row. It's not so easy as it sounds, but 'practice makes perfect.' When they've got the fish bagged in this way they may scoop them up whenever they like.

"Other kinds of nets, as well as lines, are used.

"While those who use the lines generally take great pains to put on them the bait they think Mr. and Mrs. Cod will like, some fishermen make the others very angry by 'jigging' with unbaited hooks.

"This means that two hooks, joined back to back with a bit of lead that sinks them, are dropped where the fish are most thickly crowded.

"Then the line is jerked up and down. Half a dozen fish may be hurt for one that is hooked."

"What becomes of the one that gets hurt?" asked Harry.

"Oh, the rest of the cod rush at the poor fellow and eat him up!"

"They're not good sports!" was the boy's comment. "Neither are the fishermen that hurt the fish without catching them. That's like hunters that shoot more animals than they can use for food. But I suppose fishing just for fun is a very different thing from fishing to make a living."

Dr. Grenfell's blue eyes were very serious. "It is," he said. "You have to go out with the fishermen to understand the difference."

XIII

BIRDS OF MANY A FEATHER

Harry had seen and heard many kinds of birds alongshore, of all sizes and colors, some flying in curious ways and some making very queer sounds, so he asked the Doctor to tell him about them.

"The Labrador coast is one of the finest bird-nurseries anywhere," said the Doctor. "You can find about two hundred different kinds--if your eyes are sharp enough and your patience--and your shoes--hold out!

"Of course they don't all live there the year round. Some of them are just summer boarders.

"Maybe in a very lonely spot you'll hear a bird all by himself, with a very sweet song--the hermit thrush.

"Perhaps there will be a chorus of pipits, fox and white-throated sparrows, robins, warblers and buntings.

"You might even come upon a Nashville warbler or a Maryland yellow-throat!

"If eggs are collected in Labrador, the contents aren't wasted.

"You bore a hole in the side of the egg, put in a blowpipe with a rubber bulb, and force the contents into a frying-pan. You can make fine omelet from the eggs of eiders, gulls, puffins and cormorants. Or you can mix flour with the eggs, add salt and butter, and make a nice pancake browned on both sides.

"It tastes rather fishy, of course, but it's very filling, and when you come in after a long, hard run behind the dogs, or soaked to the skin from a boat-ride, it certainly is fine to fill up on cormorant omelet while you pleasantly roast yourself before the leaping flames of a driftwood bonfire.

"A Labrador baby thinks that a gull's egg is as good as a stick of candy.

"Puffins are lots of fun. You've read about the penguins in the Antarctic, where they have almost no other animals--how the penguins dive and swim and carry stones about, looking like solemn old gentlemen at a club in their dress suits. Well, the puffins are to Labrador what penguins are to the South Pole country.

"Their burrows are two or three feet long, and the mother sits on a single dirty white egg in a straw nest. The birds have red, parrot-like bills, and they have pale grey faces with markings that make them look as if they were wearing spectacles.

"Their bodies are chunky, and they shuffle about very clumsily. They don't like it a bit when people come where they have their nests.

"But the razor-billed auk doesn't make any nest--it just lays its egg on the bare rock in the biting cold. There are very few auks left to-day, but there were lots of them when Audubon the naturalist visited Labrador ninety years ago. Audubon tells how a band of 'eggers' started out just like pirates.

"All they cared about was to plunder every nest.

"They went sneaking along from cove to cove, turning in sometimes at the little caves or finding shelter in an angle of the rocks when the sea ran too high.

"While they were waiting they would fight and swear and drink. It's a wonder that the eggers didn't get drowned oftener, for their boats would be mended with strips of sealskin and the sails were patched like an old suit, and it looked as if a puff of wind would blow them over.

"These eggers got out of their sailing ship into a rowboat they towed, so as to go to an island of sea-pigeons, or guillemots--because they couldn't get near enough in the larger vessel.

"As they came to the rocks, the birds rose up in a screaming white cloud. The air was full of them, just as you've seen the gulls creaking and crying about the hull of an ocean steamer, hoping to pick up food thrown overboard.

"But the mother birds stuck faithfully to the nests. It was the fathers and brothers that rose up in the air and made the noisy fuss.

"All of a sudden--bang! the eggers discharged their guns in a volley right into the middle of the wheeling, screaming cloud of feathers overhead.

"Some fell into the water, and the rest in terror flew about not knowing where to go or what to do.

"The eggers picked up the birds that lay in rumpled, bloody heaps on the water. They made toothsome pies, and what they couldn't eat they left behind. They didn't care how many birds they killed, because there were plenty left.

"They weren't shooting just for food--they were shooting mostly for fun. As they trampled about the island they crushed with their heavy boots more eggs than they picked up.

"No one would have blamed hungry men for killing enough birds and taking enough eggs to supply their families. But the eggers saw red, and just went on shooting and trampling without excuse.

"Years of that kind of thing turned many an island into a graveyard.

"Well, when they had gathered some eggs and smashed the rest, they picked up the dead birds they wanted and carried them back to the boat.