Chapter 12

"That," said Grenfell, "is the lighthouse-keeper at Greenley Island, just west of the line that divides Canadian Labrador from Newfoundland Labrador. He has a big job on his hands. He has two fog-horns, each with a twelve horse-power Fairbanks gasoline engine, so that if one's put out of business he can use the other. He's had fog all summer--and a sub-tonsillar abscess, too. The big Canadian Pacific ships go by his place. It's a bad spot. The light-keeper at Forteau tried to bring out his wife and five children--and lost all but one child on the rocks. Another keeper at Belle Isle tried to bring out a family of about the same size--and they all were lost. A doctor stopped in on Captain Coté on the down trip from Battle Harbor, on his way back to Baltimore. Evidently whatever he did wasn't enough. Looks as if I must go and finish the job."

As if to settle the question, even while he spoke there came another messenger--like the first, a volunteer--bringing another telegram.

This time, as in those messages sent from Cape Norman about the woman, the tone was sharper, more imperative and anxious.

"Please come as fast as you can to operate me in the throat and save my life."

The shade of concern in the Doctor's grave face deepened.

"Coté doesn't cry out for nothing," he said. "He's a real man. We must go. Would you rather stay here and rest a few days, or will you go with me?" Who would care to toast his toes and dally with a book, while Grenfell was abroad on such a mission? I had a quick vision of the gallant run the _Strathcona_ would be called on to make--squirming through the rocks and bucking the headwinds and the heavy seas, to save that lighthouse-keeper and keep the big, proud ships from Montreal and Quebec from running blind in the dark. Not far from that spot a British man-of-war ran aground in 1922 and was a total loss, though happily her men were saved. I have been in the wireless cabin on the topmost crags of Belle Isle when the Straits all round about, fog-bound, were clamorous with the ships, anchor-down, calling to one another and whimpering like little lost children trying to clasp hands and afraid in the dark together.

It would be a run of a hundred miles from St. Anthony to Captain Coté's strangling throat--and what miles they were! Not until the middle of June had the mail-boat--that poor, doomed _Ethie_ of the dog's rescue--been able to pierce the ice. Where those ice-pans met at Cape Bauld the grinding, rending and heaving of their battle was worse to hear and see than all the polar bears or the tusked walruses that ever rose up and fought together.

Dr. Grenfell could be perfectly sure that he would have to run a gauntlet all the way--picking and choosing between crags on the one hand and bergs on the other: just such a risky, "chancy" course as he most relishes. While he crumpled the telegram in his hand I could see his eyes light up again with that flash they showed when I asked him if he was ever tired.

His pockets at that moment were full of pleading, piteous letters from White Bay, meant to pull him to the other side of the island. One of them, from a desperate woman, after saying her husband had caught but eleven dollars' worth of fish all season, wound up with an appeal for oddments of clothes to put on the children, for "We are all as naked as birds."

It was hard to say no to the heart-throbs of those begging letters in his pocket. But Captain Coté's life was not one life. It was the lives of thousands--men, women and children--going down to the sea in ships, faring through the St. Lawrence, and the Gulf, and then those terrible Straits of Belle Isle, to the Old Country.

So we started. But was Mrs. Grenfell going to stay home with the piano, and French verbs, and her fancy-work, while the _Strathcona_ nosed the seething waters? Not on your life! Wilfred and Pascoe had a perfectly good governess, and while it was hard on them to remain behind with their books, their turn with Father was coming.

The big black dog, named Fritz, had no French verbs to study, and no measly sums in arithmetic to do, so--at one running jump--he was added to the passenger-list. His berth was chiefly out on the end of the bowsprit--he was more ambitious than a figurehead. There he could sniff the breeze, and see the shore, even when there wasn't any, and bark defiance at all the dogs and the sea-pusses.

The _Strathcona_ used both steam and sail. She was ketch-rigged, with six sails--mainsail, foresail, two jibs, two topsails. One of those topsails was a fancy, oblong thing which Dr. Grenfell's crew mistrusted as though it were witchcraft. He had brought it from the North Sea; they had never seen the likes of it before, and their minds are likely to be sternly set against anything new. But the Doctor, who is restless on shipboard, climbed to the crow's nest now and then to adjust the strange contraption, and make sure that it was using the wind in such a way as to develop the last ounce of pulling power. This was no pleasure cruise. It was a run for life.

The sea was a vast blue smile as we swaggered out of St. Anthony Harbor. What a fickle creature is that northern ocean! This was the first clear day in ever so long--and now the sun and the water were in conspiracy to pretend it had always been this gay, fair weather.

The only blemish on the seascape was a troop of bergs, six in number, out yonder to starboard. But they were dim and distant as we bore in toward the headland at Quirpon Tickle. Quirpon is called "Carpoon" by the fishermen because that isn't the way to pronounce it. And Tickle has nothing to do with making you laugh. Quite the contrary. It means a very serious business of creeping and twisting snakewise through a channel that winds among the rocks. You are perfectly sure you are about to ram the face of a wall--and then, lo and behold! there is a way out at the last minute, and it leads you to another wall and another rift that suddenly and impossibly opens to let you through. You have to think of the pirates who used to run and hide in places like that, and give the slip to honest sailor men from France and England who were trying to run them down. If they didn't meet the pirates they met and fought each other, which was vastly diverting to the pirates and perhaps just as satisfying to themselves.

There were fishermen's dories bouncing about like happy children in the shallower waters near the shore. I happened to be at the wheel, and my one idea was not to hit those sharp and cruel rocks, not to strike a fisherman, and to give the widest berth I could to the distant menace of those icebergs.

Grenfell, red-booted and brown-sweatered, put his head in at the wheel-house door, and the wind ruffled his silver hair as he cried: "Run her so close to those rocks that you all but skin her!"

You see, his mind was only on Captain Coté, with the choke in his throat, strangling and struggling, but going on with his duty as the keeper of the light with the beams outflashing to the long, far bellow of his mighty horn.

In our race against time, we were burning coal, that precious commodity, then twenty-four dollars a ton,--and much more costly to-day. Spruce and fir and juniper were piled on deck--some of the wood across the barrels of whale-meat, in a vain attempt to shut off the rotten smell of the food so loved by the dogs. But, hasten as we might, the night closed down like a lid on a box as we sounded our gingerly way through the perilous twistings of the Tickle. The wind was rising, and as we looked back we saw the waves, running white and high at a mad dance in cold moonlight. If we went on, and came out into the Straits, the wind would hold us there without an inch of gain, though we had the full power of the engines going and all sails set. The _Strathcona_, a tiny steamer of less than fifty tons, was no match for the sea aroused in opposition. It is a miracle that this small boat, the _Strathcona_, lived so long, with so many attempts of ice and rock to punch the life out of her wherever she went.

Dr. Grenfell, as his habit is on shipboard, rose at two, at three and at four to study his charts and lay out his course, and at twenty minutes to five his strong hands were at the wheel, on which are the words "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."

The dog Fritz had been sleeping all night on a thick blue woolen blanket in the bunk below mine. He had no business there, and he knew it, but as regularly as I turned him out into the nipping air and the frosty starlight he would return indignantly. "What's the matter with you?" his wrinkled face seemed to say. "You're just a visitor on this boat, and I belong here. What right have you to keep me out of a nice warm bed? You don't need this whole cabin, you selfish man." Finally my patience gave out and I let him have his way.

Under the red edges of the dawn, a fresh breeze blowing, we came within hail of that ugly rock named the Onion. "In that bay over there," laughed Grenfell, "we were blown across the ice--sled and dogs and all--when we were trying to round up the reindeer herd. We had the time of our lives!

"You see, we had brought a bunch of reindeer all the way from Lapland, and Lapp herders came with them, to keep off the dogs and prevent the natives from shooting them as if they were caribou. On one occasion we had a real 'Night before Christmas' celebration, and St. Nick delighted the children at the Orphanage where he came with his gifts on a big sled behind a real team of reindeer.

"But the reindeer spread all over the peninsula, and the Lapps couldn't keep track of their charges. The hunters and the dogs were hard on the trail of the herd. You couldn't blame hungry men and famished animals.

"I meant in time to persuade the people to give up their dogs and use reindeer instead. The reindeer could draw sleds, and would give milk, and meat too, if necessary, and their furs would be valuable. There wouldn't be any risk of their hurting children, or strangers, or sick people, and they wouldn't make night hideous with their howling.

"But at last, in order to save the remnant, it was necessary to move them, and I decided to load them on a fishing-vessel and take them across the Straits to the St. Augustine River country, where they could increase in peace, and the dogs would not bother them, and the Canadian Government could protect them from any Indian hunters who might come along.

"It was a fine plan, on paper. But it was like the old recipe for making a rabbit pie--'first catch your hare.' The reindeer having had the run of the open spaces so long saw no reason why they should be caught and put on a boat and carried off.

"So they gave us a run for it, I can tell you! All over the place we rushed, shouting and trying to lasso or corner the terrified animals. I never laughed so hard in my life. The wind was blowing great guns, and you simply couldn't stand up against it. We caught a great many of the reindeer. But a lot of them romped off into the woods and took to the hills and we never saw them again. Since they were moved to Canada they have done well--and some day, when the people are ready to have them, I want to move them back and see if we can't replace the dog-teams with them."

Meanwhile the little ship had turned her head away from the unsavory Onion, and was running on, over a long diagonal, to cross the straits in the bared teeth of the green and yeasty waves. That she was top-heavy was plainly to be seen, with her barrels of whale-meat and her high-piled fire-wood on deck, and almost no ballast or cargo below.

As we stood out into the middle of the channel, I thought of the great boats that must feel their way through the dense fog in evil weather. They would have to be honking like wild geese, even though the straits at their narrowest between Flower's Cove and Greenley Island are ten miles wide. Fog is a terrible deceiver. I remember coming up the East Coast on the mail-steamer _Invermore_ in 1913. In a day after leaving Twillingate we were nearly wrecked three times. First, when we thought we were ten miles offshore, we found a tiny skiff, with two persons aboard, in our path--we nearly ran it down. Father and small son, fourteen, were fishing for cod, and had their meagre catch in a tin pail. Captain Kane had stopped our boat--we were going at quarter speed--and he had the man come up on the bridge to show us where the land lay. "Out yonder!" The ancient mariner pointed to the northwest. A rowboat was manned: in a few minutes its crew came back and reported that the rocks were not more than two hundred yards away. So we backed off, and steamed hard in the opposite direction. But only an hour or so later,--pulled steadily on and on toward the shore, by the strong, insetting tide,--we saw the grey edge of the fog lifting like a table-cloth, and there were those cruel rocks again, dragons in a lair, waiting to receive us, crush our bones and drink our blood. Again we backed away--and before long the fierce jangle of the bell in the engine room and the captain's sharp accent of command from the bridge once more halted us suddenly. There, directly before our prow, was a great white wall of ice, which had taken almost the color of the mist. It was an iceberg that barred our path, and if we had been speeding like the _Titanic_ instead of creeping like a snail, it would doubtless have been the end of the _Invermore_. Only one more tragedy of a missing ship.

At four in the afternoon, when the great rock bastion of Belle Isle loomed across our bows, we gave up for the night: and next morning, between seven and eight, no fewer than eight enormous icebergs crossed our bows in a glittering processional.

But to-day, mid-stream, there was no fog, and despite the roughness of the water the cool air and clear sunlight were cause for rejoicing. "Isn't it fun to live?" exclaimed the Doctor, as he swung the wheel; and the _Strathcona_, feeling her master's hand, trembled and obeyed.

Fritz, out yonder on the prow, was staring toward the bleak Labrador coast. Was he thinking of dogs to fight, and fish to eat, and a snooze on the beach, after the run was over and the anchor was down? No--he was looking at something near at hand--and his ears were even quicker than ours to catch over the voice of waves or wind the cry of men in a power-boat off the starboard bow.

There were three of them. Two of them held up the third man, whose bare head flopped over on his chest. The collar of his overcoat was turned up to shelter that agonizing throat. Yes, it was Captain Coté, the man we came so far to seek.

"Doctor!" they called. "He couldn't wait! We've brought him out to ye!"

A moment more and hands as tender as they were willing were lifting him over the rail. A wee baby would have had no gentler handling.

Captain Coté's face was the greenish white of a boiled potato. It was seamed with deep lines of pain and sleepless nights. He was carried to the brass rungs of the ladder and lowered.

"Easy! easy!" those who let him down were saying to each other. They seemed to fear he would break if they dropped him.

By the light of a battered tin lamp Grenfell ran a needle into his throat with the novocaine that would destroy the pain of the operation.

Then he took his thin scissors a foot long and thrust them into the abscess under the tonsils.

Five minutes later, Captain Coté had found the use of his tongue again, and, waving both hands round his ears as he talked, he was thanking God and Dr. Grenfell, and giving us the full history of the dreadful months he spent before help came.

Next day we landed on his island--Greenley Island. From the small wharf where women were cleaning fish there were two lines of planking laid, on cinders, for perhaps a thousand feet through the long green grass to the red brick lighthouse tower. On these wooden rails was the chassis of a Ford car, and we rode in state. But you had to stick closely to the track, or you came to grief on the rough, shelly soil alongside.

"It's the first automobile ride I ever had in Labrador!" the Doctor gleefully exclaimed.

In the lighthouse was a living-room with a talking-machine, a violin, a typewriter and other things to add to the comfort of a home and make a family happy.

The patient was brought into the room by his beaming wife and two of his children.

"How are you this morning, Captain?" asked Grenfell.

"Feeling fine, Doctor."

"Did you sleep?"

"Slept like a baby. First time in three months."

"And can you eat?"

"I can eat rocks, Doctor."

Then the Captain brought out a pocketbook stuffed with greenbacks. Twelve hundred dollars a year, with nothing to spend it for, since he gets his living, seems a fortune to a man in that part of the world.

"How much do I owe you?" He pulled out three ten-dollar bills.

"One of those will do," said the Doctor, quietly.

It was right for him to take the money. Self-respect on Captain Coté's part demanded that he should pay. Grenfell lets his patients pay in wood or fish or whatever they have, a value merely nominal compared with what they receive. But he wants them to feel--and they, too, wish to feel--that they are not beggars, living on the dole of his charity.

"Now then, Doctor, how about the coal you burned getting here? How much does that come to? The Canadian Government'll give it back to you. We've got some down on the wharf. We can take it out now and put it on your boat."

The emergency run of the _Strathcona_ had used five tons and a quarter. At twenty-four dollars a ton, this would be worth one hundred and twenty-six dollars.

We went down to the wharf, and tried to put the coal, which was soft coal, like dust, on a skiff, to take it two hundred yards in a half-gale to the _Strathcona_.

But the mighty wind blew the coal out of the boat as fast as it was shoveled aboard.

Then Captain Coté said, "We'll send it, when calm weather comes, to Sister Bailey at Forteau." She was a wonderful trained nurse,--a friend of Edith Cavell,--who lived in the near-by village, and had a cow that fought off the dogs and gave milk to the sick babies.

So Captain Coté's life was saved and the great boats from Montreal and Quebec with their hundreds of passengers could enter and traverse the Straits in any weather, because the keeper of the light was at his post once more.

XVI

THROUGH THE BLIZZARD

Another trip was to the north, in January, over the thirty miles from St. Anthony to Cape Norman, to save a woman's life. It all looks so easy when you get out the map and measure it across white space.

But when that white space is snow instead of paper, and there are thirty miles of it to flog through, instead of three inches under your hand--that, as Kipling would say, is another story.

Over the telegraph line from Cape Norman to St. Anthony came a piteous message from a young fisherman. It said his wife was dying. Grenfell telegraphed back, the message running something like this: "My assistant has gone off with the dogs to answer another call. Cannot leave my patients at the hospital and cannot get any dogs till he comes back."

Then another message came from the distracted husband: "Doctor, my wife is dying. For God's sake find another team somewhere and come."

The night, as the island saying is, was as dark as the inside of a cow. Grenfell stumbled out into the blackness to hunt for dogs. The trail to Cape Norman is very rough, and the January snow was deep. The wind blowing over it threw the snow, biting and blinding, in the face of anyone who attempted the trail.

But Grenfell did not hesitate. From house to house he went, to rouse the occupants like another Paul Revere, and beg for dogs that he might use on the desperate journey.

One man let him take four. Another, for pay, gave him a fifth animal. A boy named Walter said he would get four more dogs and would drive the ill-assorted team. By that time it was midnight.

"We'll start at 4:30," said the Doctor. At 4:30 it would still be pitch-black.

Grenfell went back to the hospital, roused the head nurse, and went to every patient to make sure that while he was gone no accident would happen that he could possibly prevent.

At 4:30 he was ready to start. Few men are his match for staying up all night and looking as fresh as a mountain daisy after the vigil.

He opened the door and a blizzard swept in and tried to rush him off his feet. Through the whirling drift staggered Walter, dogless.

"Where are those dogs?" asked the Doctor. He expects men to keep agreements made with him. He couldn't get through the length and breadth of his big day's work if they didn't.

Walter shook his snow-covered head. "I ain't brought 'em, sir. It's too bad a night to be startin' before sun-up. The dogs don't know each other: they comes from here, there an' all over. They'll be fightin' in the traces an' eatin' each other up in the dark. Us must be able to see 'em in order to drive 'em. You know what dogs is like, sir."

"Yes, I do," said Grenfell. "But you're the driver, and I leave it to you. We must get off as soon as we can."

Dr. Grenfell went to his room to snatch a catnap before the start. Another telegram woke him as he was drowsing off.

"Come along soon. Wife worse."

The storm instead of going down was more violent than ever when the grey day came. The sun was not seen at all. On the contrary, the air was filled with a mad whirl of pelting, stinging flakes almost as hard as Indian arrow-heads. The dogs would be no good in the teeth of such a storm--for the team-mates who work with a will are those that are best acquainted, and with an unknown driver this team suddenly thrown together would have pulled as many different ways as there were fierce and headstrong dogs. They would be at each other's throats before they were out of sight of the houses.

As he waited, walking restlessly up and down, in his brown sweater and thick leggins, Grenfell was plagued with the picture of the woman fighting for her life till help should come from the one man who could give it.

Still another of those telegrams! This time the message read: "Come immediately if you can. Wife still holding out."

Just as he read the words, there were voices, and battering hands at the door.

Two men, white as Santa Claus from head to foot, staggered into the room, with the wind whooping at their backs as if in a wild anger that they escaped its clutches.

Grenfell, accustomed as he was to the brave men of a hard country, fairly gasped when he saw them.

"Where did you come from?"

"We comes to fetch you, sir, for the sick woman at Cape Norman."

"Do you think dogs can get me there now?" the Doctor asked, anxiously.

"No, sir. We was blown here most o' the way, wi' the wind at our backs. The wind drove us. The dogs can't make head against it, not till the wind shifts clean round the other way, sir."

Ten miles of their journey had been in the fairly sheltered lee of the land. Twenty miles had been before the pitiless sweep of the wind over the unprotected sea-ice. If the snow had not drifted so heavily, they would have been borne along at a pace so rapid that their sled would have been wrecked.

"When was it you left Cape Norman?" was the Doctor's next question.

"Eight o'clock last night, sir."

So they had been coming on all through the night, without rest or food. Yet the first thing they had done when the sled stopped at last before Grenfell's door was to get something for their dogs to eat. Already, the animals lay snug and tranquil in a drift, as if it were a feather-bed--sleeping the sleep of good dogs who have done their work and earned their daily fish-heads and know of nothing more to want in this life or the next.

The Doctor patted the broad shoulders of the gaunt, shy spokesman. "Go into the hospital and get a good, big, hot dinner," he said. "Then go to bed. We'll wake you when it's time to start."