AN HEROIC ADVENTURE.
When we had come to anchor in Trinity Bay and all the sails were
safely stowed, the captain of our yacht proposed we should go ashore
and see the celebrated Comeau _fils_.
Bob, my companion asked, "Celebrated for what?"
"Oh! for several things," replied the captain. "He is a most
extraordinary man in his many acquirements and knowledge. Born and
brought up on this coast, he has passed all his life here, with the
exception of the three years his father was able to send him to
school, but those three years he made use of to lay the foundation of
a wonderful store of practical knowledge. His schooling, as I have
said, was but the foundation; by reading and observation he has added
to it in a marvelous way.
"From his early training and the life of every one on the coast, it
would go without saying that he knows how to shoot, but he is more
than a good shot, he is a 'deadly' shot. Anything he aims his gun at
that is within shooting distance is dead. As a salmon fisher, no
crack angler who visits these rivers can hope to compete with him.
"As a linguist he can speak, read and write in French, English, Latin
and Indian; besides this, he can talk rapidly in the dumb alphabet.
He holds the position of telegraph operator at Trinity, also of
postmaster and fishery overseer, and besides, when anything goes
wrong with the line for two hundred miles east or west, the
department immediately wires him to go and fix them up.
"He has more than a fair knowledge of medicine for one who derived
all his insight from reading alone. Last summer there was an epidemic
of measles all along the coast, among both whites and Indians. Here,
with a population of 150, two-thirds of whom were down Comeau, who
attended them, did not lose one patient, while at Bersimis, where the
department sent a full-fledged M. D., there were thirty-nine burials
out of a population of 450.
"You may be sure the poor people all along the coast love him."
So the boat was lowered away, and the Captain, Bob and I were rowed
ashore to see this paragon. From the outside look of the place I
could see the man was one of good taste and orderly. The knock at the
door was answered by Comeau himself. The Captain was personally
acquainted with him and introduced us before we entered. I must say I
was disappointed. One always is when he has pictured a person in his
mind's eye and finds that in reality he is quite a different kind of
person.
I had looked for Comeau to be a large man and a boisterous one from
his position of superiority over others. On the contrary, I found him
below the medium, a quiet, low-voiced man, reserved almost to
shyness. I saw at once he was a great observer, one who would make
deductions from specks invisible to ordinary people; or, in other
words, he could put two and two together and dovetail them better
than most men.
We were ushered into a large, clean, airy room, in the middle of
which sat a very good looking lady in a roomy rocker, with a child on
each knee. If Comeau himself is reserved and not inclined to talk,
his wife can do enough for both. She excused herself for not rising
when her husband introduced us. Nodding down at her babies, she said,
"You see I am fixed." One could see she is a proud mother--they are
twins; this she told us before we were well seated, and she further
informed us that they were the only twins on the Labrador. So she is
celebrated also.
When we got fairly settled in Comeau's den, the conversation
naturally drifted into hunting and fishing. Bob made some inquiries
about the pools on the Trinity. To make his explanations clear,
Comeau pulled out a drawer of photographic views of the river. In
rummaging these over, he cast aside a gold medal. "Excuse me," I
said, reaching over and taking up the medal. On it I read engraved:
"PRESENTED TO N. A. COMEAU BY THE R. H. S. FOR BRAVERY IN SAVING
LIFE."
Upon my asking him to recount the circumstances, he blushed and
looked quite confused, and said: "Oh! it was nothing worth speaking
of, but I suppose people talked so much about it that they gave me
that token. It was nothing more than any man would have done," and
this was all we could get from him unless we had carried persistency
to an ungentlemanly degree.
After having spent a very pleasant hour, we returned on board, and
the Captain told us the story that the hero himself would not:
Two years before, one day in January Comeau arrived home from the
back country to find that two men had that day while seal hunting off
shore been driven off the coast toward the ice pack in the gulf. One
of the men was Comeau's own brother-in-law, and the other a
half-breed. In spite of the supplications of his wife and the
persuasions of the other individuals of the place, Comeau set about
preparations to follow them out to sea. He asked no one to accompany
him.
The wind all the afternoon had been steadily off shore and was now
moderately calm. He took with him some restoratives, provisions, a
lantern, a couple of blankets, his rifle and ammunition and what else
useful he could think of in his hurry. The ice pack was then about
ten miles off the land, and he reasoned the men must be on the ice,
if large and strong enough, or in among it if in small cakes, the
latter being much more dangerous.
From Trinity to Matane in a direct line the distance is forty-five
miles, and to push out in a frail, wooden canoe alone and the
darkness coming on in the black gulf in mid-winter required a brave
man with extraordinary nerve to dare it, and this Comeau did.
Three minutes after pushing out from the beach, canoe and man were
swallowed up in the darkness. The next the people of Trinity heard of
him was a telegraphic message on the second day after. It read:
"Matane. All three alive. Joseph, hands frozen; Simon, both feet
frozen badly."
This message was to his family, but the Matane people sent a much
longer one to the government, giving the facts, describing the
hardships these men had come through, and a special train was sent
down with the best surgeon from Quebec. On the surgeon's arrival at
Matane a consultation was held with the county practitioner, when it
was decided that the man Joseph would have to lose two fingers on
each hand and Simon both feet.
The amputation was successfully carried out next day, and shortly
after, when Comeau saw both men well on to recovery, he started for
his home, not, however, by the way he had come, but up to Quebec by
the south shore and down the north shore from Quebec, a distance of
nearly 700 miles. The last hundred he made on snowshoes.
The Captain told us that the description of this very venturesome
trip he had heard from Comeau's own brother as the elder one had
described it in the heart of his own family. He had reached the ice
pack, to the best of his judgment, about fifteen miles from the land,
and had remained on his oars and hallowed once or twice without
receiving an answer. He suddenly bethought himself of the lantern.
This he lit and lashed to the blade of one of his oars, and erected
it aloft. Immediately a faint cry was heard to the eastward, and he
lowered his light and pulled away in the direction whence the call
appeared to come. After rowing for a short time the lantern was waved
above again, and this time an answering shout came from close at
hand.
The two poor fellows were some distance in the pack, and had got on
the largest cake they could find. They were sitting there helpless,
holding on each by one hand to the rough surface of the ice, and with
the other to their canoe to keep it from being washed off.
By the aid of the lantern held aloft, Comeau saw there was a much
larger cake of ice some distance further in the pack. To this they
made their way with laborious trouble. Pushing one canoe as far ahead
among the ice as possible, they would all three get into this, shove
the other in advance in the same way, and so repeating the process
till they reached the solid field. Once safely on this, for the
meantime, secure place, food was partaken of and daylight waited for.
Soon, however, the intense cold began to make itself felt, and
drowsiness was fast taking hold of the two men, and their great wish
was to be left alone and allowed to sleep. This Comeau knew if
indulged meant death, and it took all his efforts to keep them awake
and moving about. Once while attending to the half-breed, his
brother-in-law dropped down and was fast asleep in an instant. Comeau
boxed him, kicked him, without having the desired effect of rousing
him from his stupor. At last he bethought him of what an old Indian
had done to him under somewhat similar circumstances. He caught the
man's nose between the thumb and finger and tweaked it severely. This
brought him to his feet and mad to fight.
Day was now breaking, and they could see the south shore at a
computed distance of ten miles. Comeau also saw that the ice pack was
drifting steadily east, and this, if they remained on the ice, would
carry them past Cap Chat, the most northern point of the south coast,
and this meant death to a certainty.
A rapid train of thought went through Comeau's brain. He decided that
if saved they were to be, it must be by passing over that ten miles
of moving, grinding ice. He forced some food on the others and gave
each a small dram of spirits; how much rather would he have given
them tea or coffee. But even if he had had it, water was wanting to
make it. They abandoned the roll of blankets, which had been of no
use to them, and started, using the canoes see-saw fashion as they
had done the night before. They left the cake of ice upon which they
had passed the night at 8 A. M. and only got ashore at the extreme
point of Cap Chat at daylight next morning. At times they would come
across narrow lanes of water, but these lanes always ran at right
angles to the direction in which they were going. Several times, when
stepping upon what was considered a strong piece of ice, one of the
party would be immersed in the cold, cruel water, and be rescued with
great trouble and danger to the others.
What a picture of heartfelt prayer offering it must have been, to
have seen those men kneeling on the ice-bound shore, pouring out
their thanks to the ever-watchful Almighty who had brought them
safely through such dangers.
* * *
Bob, who had taken down the Captain's narrative in shorthand, gave me
his notes, and I give the story of adventure and heroism to the
public.
Comeau is well known by most of the members of the Forest and Stream
clubs of New York and Montreal.