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[Illustration: A FORD CAR CAN'T DO THIS]
Grenfell:
Knight-Errant of the North
By
FULLERTON WALDO
Author of "With Grenfell on the Labrador,"
"Down the Mackenzie," etc.
[Illustration]
PHILADELPHIA
GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1924, by
GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
Printed in U.S.A.
_To
MARY CASTLEMAN DAVIS_
_December 15, 1923._
DEAR WALDO:
You who have sampled the salt breezes of the North on board my boat,
have, I know, imbibed the spirit that actuates the belief that in a
world like ours we can all be knights. I know that like ourselves, you
look upon the world as a field of honor, and its only durable prizes
the things that we can accomplish in it. You see the fun in it
all--the real joie de vivre.
Well, we are doing our best, and it is giving us a great return. We
haven't lost the capacity to enjoy soft things, but we have learned
the joys of trying to endure hardness as good soldiers. Would to God
that every American boy would realize that the only real great prize
of life is to be won by being willing to take blows and willing to
suffer misunderstanding and opposition, so long as he may follow in
the footsteps of that most Peerless Knight that ever lived; He who saw
that the meaning of life was, that in it we might, wherever we are, be
always trying to do good.
Ever your friend,
WILFRED T. GRENFELL.
CONTENTS
I. A BOY AND THE SEA 11
II. SCHOOL--AND AFTER 22
III. WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR 35
IV. HAULED BY THE HUSKIES 74
V. SOME REAL SEA-DOGS 97
VI. HUNTING WITH THE ESKIMO 114
VII. LITTLE PRINCE POMIUK 137
VIII. CAPTURED BY INDIANS 147
IX. ALONE ON THE ICE 162
X. A FIGHT WITH THE SEA 183
XI. THE KIDNAPPERS 201
XII. WHEN THE BIG FISH "STRIKE IN" 230
XIII. BIRDS OF MANY A FEATHER 238
XIV. BEASTS BIG AND LITTLE 249
XV. THE KEEPER OF THE LIGHT 264
XVI. THROUGH THE BLIZZARD 284
XVII. WHY THE DOCTOR WAS LATE 296
The incidents of the first chapter are founded strictly on fact,
but slight liberties have been taken with minor details here and
elsewhere. For example, the Doctor is sometimes represented as
talking with persons whose names stand for types rather than
individuals; and it is the spirit rather than the letter of the
conversations that is reported.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
A Ford Car Can't Do This _Frontispiece_
Map of Labrador _Facing p._ 36
Castles and Cathedrals of Ice Afloat " " 94
Let's Go! " " 110
"Who Said Halt?" " " 198
Off Duty " " 242
Where Four Feet Are Better Than Two " " 290
Grenfell: Knight-Errant of the North
I
A BOY AND THE SEA
"I wonder if Jim is ever going to get back! My, isn't it an awful
storm!"
Wilfred Grenfell, then a small boy, stood at the window of his home in
Cheshire, England, looking out across the sea-wall at the raging,
seething waters of the Irish Sea.
The wind howled and the snowflakes beat against the window-panes as if
they were tiny birds that wanted to get in.
"Mother," he pleaded, "can I put on my sweater and my rubber boots and
go down on the beach and see if I can find Jim?"
"Yes," said his mother. "But wrap yourself up warmly, and don't stay
long--and don't take any risks, will you, dear?"
Almost before the words were out of her mouth, Wilf was down the
stairs and out in the roadway, where fishermen watched their little
boats as they tossed at anchor riding out the storm.
Wilf stepped up to a big, grizzled mariner he knew, whom every one
called Andy.
"Andy, have you seen Jim?"
"Jim who?"
"Jim Anderson."
"Was he the chap that went out in the _Daisy Bell_ about four hours
ago?"
"Yes," said Wilf, trying to control himself, "and he wanted me to go
with him, but----"
His words were cut short by a great wave that hurled itself against
the wall. The spray leapt high over the stones and drenched Andy and
the boy.
"It's lucky ye didn't go, boy," said Andy, solemnly. "We're watchin'
for the boat now. My brother was on her, and two cousins o' my wife.
She was a little craft, and a leaky one. We were goin' to patch her up
an' make her fit. But we waited too long. An' now----" He drew his
rough sleeve across his eyes.
The wind howled round their ears and the hail was smiting and stinging
as though the storm had a devilish mind to drive them away.
"Why don't you go out in a boat and get them?" pleaded Wilf.
Andy shook his head. "It ain't that we're afraid," he said. "But there
ain't a boat we have here that could ride those waves. The coast-guard
tried--and now look!" He pointed to a heap of broken, white-painted
timbers lying in the roadway, half-hidden from them by the whooping
blizzard that threw its dizzying veils of snow before their eyes.
"That's the coast-guard's boat!" exclaimed Andy. "The sea picked her
up, she did, and threw her right over the sea-wall as if she was an
egg, an' mashed her flat. That shows how much of a chance there'd be
for us to get through an' get back, supposin' we could find 'em. No,
boy, we've got to wait."
"Look!" cried the lad, excitedly. "Please look, Andy. What's that
bobbing up and down in the surf?"
The fisherman put to his eyes his worn and rusted spy-glass.
Then he gritted his teeth and bit his lip. "You stay up here on the
road, boy. I got to climb down there and make sure."
Wilf stood at the sea-wall. He was barely tall enough to look over it.
He watched Andy clamber painfully down over the great rocks piled high
against the outer face of the wall.
Every now and then a big wave would rise up, a green monster of
hissing foam and fury, and throw itself on him like a wild animal
trying to scare him back.
But men of that breed are not afraid. The stalwart figure, though
often knocked down and half drowned, would struggle to his feet again
and go on.
Wilf saw Andy pick up the--yes, it was a body--and put it on his
shoulder, and come staggering toward the rocks. Then he clambered
tediously over the stones, and Wilf saw whose body it was that Andy
was carrying.
It was his boy friend Jim, who had gone out only a few hours before,
with the sun on his fair hair, laughing and whistling and shouting his
gay farewell. "Be back in a little while, Wilf! Bring you a nice big
fish for your supper. You want to have a good hot fire ready to cook
it Better change your mind and come along." Never again would he hear
that cheery hail of invitation to adventure.
Andy laid the little half-frozen figure down, carefully, tenderly,
beside the wall.
"Too bad!" he said, "too bad! But the sea can be terrible cruel to the
sons o' men. I wonder we keep goin' back to her as we do. Now I got to
take the poor boy to his mother."
He picked up the body, and trudged off into the storm, toward the
fishing-huts.
Wilf went back to his own house, thinking about the sea and how cruel
it had been.
"Mother," he said, as they sat together talking over the tragedy,
"isn't it queer that you can have such fun with the sea sometimes,
swimming in it and rowing on it, and then all of a sudden it gets mad
and kills somebody you love? Just suppose I'd gone out in the boat
with Jim!"
Wilf thought it fine fun to go swimming, with the strong salt breeze
to dry him off like a towel afterwards. In his ears the crying of
sea-birds against grey clouds was the sweetest of music. He loved to
have the surf knock him about, and the sun burn him red, and he didn't
mind if pink jellyfish stung him now and then or a crab got hold of
his toes. The roar of the surf sang him to sleep at night like an old
nurse.
One day when the spring came, Wilf went out on the salt marshes, his
gun over his shoulder, to shoot wild ducks.
He was a regular water-baby.
Round about him all sorts of sea-birds were wheeling and crying. The
swift tidal currents found their way up-stream through the marshes.
Wilf, hot and tired, threw the gun on the sand, took off his clothes,
and plunged into the clear, cold water.
It carried him along like a boat, and he clambered out on a green
island.
"It's just like Robinson Crusoe!" he told himself. "Here I am, all
alone, and nobody in sight. I can do just as I please!"
He ran up and down in the sunlight, laughing and shouting in the wind
and throwing his arms about.
How good it felt to be alive!
"Guess I'll go back and get the gun," he said, "and see if I can't
shoot one of those wild ducks. I'll make mother a present of it for
dinner to-night."
It wasn't so easy to swim back. He had to fight against the current
that had carried him to the little green island.
It was less effort to leave the stream and scramble through the reeds
along the muddy bank.
Sometimes a stone or a shell hurt his foot, but he only laughed and
went on.
"You just wait, you ducks," he said. "You'd better look out when I
begin to shoot!"
He came to where the gun lay on his clothes, where he had been careful
to place it so that no sand would get into the muzzle.
He loaded it and fired, and it kicked his bare shoulder like a mule.
But he had the satisfaction of seeing one of the ducks fall into the
water, where the stream was at its widest, perhaps a hundred feet from
the bank.
Here the water ran swift and deep, and it was going to be a hard fight
to get that bird.
"I wish I had Rover with me now!" he told himself. Usually the dog
went with him and was the best of company,--but this time he must be
his own retriever.
He plunged into the stream again and swam with all his might toward
the bird.
If he had been getting it for himself, he would have been tempted to
give up. But he couldn't bear to quit when he thought of what a treat
it would be for the whole family--a nice, fat, juicy, wild duck.
The bird was being carried rapidly up-stream by the force of the
waters.
"No, sir!" said Wilf to something inside him that wanted to go back.
"We're going to get that bird if we have to swim half-way across
England!"
It was almost as if the bird had come back to life. It seemed to be
swimming away from him.
Painfully, inch by inch, he began to gain on it. At last, when his
strength was all but gone, he caught up with it, and clutched the
feathery prize. Then he swam with it to the shore.
Panting and happy, he lay down on the bank a moment to rest.
"The family won't have to go without dinner after all!" he laughed.
He grabbed the duck by the feet, flung it over his shoulder, and
trotted back to his clothes and the gun. It was fun to go home with
the bird that he had shot himself. But if there had been no bird, he
would have been whistling or singing just as happily.
On one of his birthdays he was out in the wide, lonely marshes five
miles from home. It was more fun for him to go hunting, barefoot, than
to have a party with a frosted cake and twinkling candles. So, as the
nicest kind of birthday present, he had been given the whole day, to
do just as he pleased.
To-day, as there was still on the ground the snow of early spring, he
wore shoes, but it was cold work plashing about in those slimy pools
and the slippery mud among the sedges.
The birds he was after especially were the black-and-white "oyster
catchers," which when it was low tide would always be found making a
great racket above the patches of mussels which formed their favorite
food.
They were handsome birds, with gay red bills, and a bunch of them made
a fine showing when the little hunter carried them home over his
shoulder.
This time he had shot several of the birds, and then the problem was
to get them and bring them in.
There they lay--away off yonder, on a little tuft of, the coarse green
meadow-grasses, but between the hunter and the game was a swirling
inlet of salt water, and he couldn't tell by looking at it how deep it
was.
So, gun over shoulder, he started cautiously to wade out toward that
birthday dinner he meant to bring home.
First it was calf-deep--then knee-deep--then nearly waist-deep.
The cold water made his teeth chatter, but he didn't care about that.
All he thought of was the precious gun. That was his chief treasure,
and his first joy in life.
Deeper he went, and nearer he got--the gun now held in both hands high
over his head, as he floundered along.
And just then a dreadful thing happened.
He stepped into a hole, and it suddenly let him down so that the water
was over his head, and his up reached arms, and the precious gun too!
In the shock and the surprise, he let go of the weapon, and it sank
out of sight. He had no fear of drowning, and he struck out manfully
when he found himself in the deep water.
But he had to give up the idea of finding the gun, and the birds were
left where they lay on the farther side of the treacherous channel.
It was a long, hard run home, over those five wet and freezing miles,
and the boy's heart was heavy because of the loss of that pet gun.
All the while he was learning everything that outdoors could teach
him, and he owes to that breezy, sun-shot, storm-swept gipsying during
the summer vacations the beginning of the stock of good health that
has made him such a strong, useful, happy man, able to do no end of
hard work without getting tired, and always finding it fun to live.
II
SCHOOL--AND AFTER
This Robin Hood kind of life in the open went on till Wilf was
fourteen. Then he was sent away to Marlborough College--a boy's school
which had 600 pupils. Marlborough is in the Chalk Hills of the
Marlborough Downs, seventy-five miles west of London. The building,
dating from 1843, is on the site of a castle of Henry I.
The first day Wilf landed there he looked about him and felt pretty
forlorn.
"I wonder if I'll ever get to know all those boys?" he asked himself.
When he was at home, he had a room all his own or shared one with his
brother. Here it was so different.
He counted the beds in his dormitory. There were twenty-five of them.
"How can a fellow ever get to sleep in such a crowd?" he wondered.
"Perhaps they'll toss me in a blanket, the way they did in 'Tom Brown
at Rugby.' Well, if they try anything like that, they'll find I'm
ready for them!"
He felt the mattress. "Pretty hard compared with the beds at home, but
no matter. Let's see what the schoolroom is like."
So he went into the "Big School" as it was called. Three hundred boys
were supposed to study there.
"Gracious!" exclaimed Wilf. "Don't see how a fellow ever gets his
lessons in a place like this."
It was as busy and as noisy as a bear-garden. Here and there a boy
with his hands over his ears was really looking at a book. But most of
the boys were talking, laughing, singing as if there were no such
thing as lessons.
Sometimes a master might look in, or a monitor would wander down the
aisle. But most of the time there was nothing to keep a boy from
following his own sweet will.
"I say, Smith!" one called out, "lend me a shilling, will you? I want
to buy Grisby's white rat, and I haven't got enough." A fat boy who
looked as if he thought mostly of meal-times was telling everybody in
his neighborhood: "I've just got a box from home. Jam and fruitcake
and gooseberry tarts. Come and see me to-night in the dormitory, you
fellows."
Somebody else called out: "My knife's so dull I'll never get my name
carved on this desk. Give me your knife, Willoughby: it's sharper."
There were boys having fencing-matches with rulers across the aisle.
There were others who took no end of pains to make paper arrows, or
spitballs that would stick to the ceiling. In the corners of their
desks might be bird's eggs in need of fresh air. Some of the boys were
reading adventure stories, covered up to look like school-books.
In the midst of this Babel, you were expected to get your lessons as
well as you could.
When it came to meal-times, you went into what was called "Big Hall,"
where four hundred boys ate together.
The beef was tough enough to make a suitcase: the milk was like chalk
and water: the potatoes would have done to plaster a ceiling or cement
a wall. How different it all was from the good though simple fare at
home!
"Want to join a brewing company?" asked the boy across the table.
"What's a brewing company?" inquired Wilf.
"We buy sausages and cook 'em in saucepans over the fire--when we can
find a fire."
"Yes, you can count me in," said Wilf. So it didn't make so much
difference after that, if he couldn't eat what was set before him at
the table.
But usually the boys brought robust appetites to their meals, for they
went in heavily for all forms of athletics. The boys who didn't make
the teams had to drill in the gymnasium or run round and round an open
air track a mile and a half long. If you shirked, the boys themselves
saw to it that you got punished.
When Wilf came home to Cheshire for the long vacations he found some
poor little ragamuffins who had no fun in their lives, and started a
club for them in his own house. There were no boy scouts in those
days, when Sir Robert Baden-Powell and Ernest Thompson Seton were
little boys themselves. It was just taken for granted that boys would
be boys, and it was hoped that they would grow up to be good men, if
after school hours they were allowed to run loose in the streets. But
Grenfell had a different idea.
He turned the dining-room on Saturday evenings into a gymnasium.
He pushed aside the table and chucked the chairs out of the window.
"Now any of you fellows who want to can get busy on the parallel
bars," he told them, "or if you like you can go out into the back yard
and pitch quoits. I'll take on anybody who wants to box with me."
The boys thought it was heaps of fun. They could hardly wait for
Saturday night to come, because it meant the rare sport of banging
another boy in the nose, which was much more satisfactory than
throwing stones at a policeman.
After he was big enough, he used to go to lodging-houses where men
slept who were down and out. He knew that drink had brought them low,
and he wanted to show them better things to do.
The saloon-keepers were against him from the start. He was depriving
them of some of their best customers.
"You're spoiling our business," they grumbled.
At last they made up their minds they would "get" him.
They collected a "gang" and one night they locked the door, backed up
against it, and shouted:
"Come on, young feller! We're goin' to fix you!"
They rolled up their sleeves, clenched their fists, and sailed into
him full-tilt like a big, angry crowd of human bees.
Grenfell was ready for them. It was like a fight in the movies.
He had kept himself in fine condition, for he was in training to play
football and he was known to be a first-rate boxer.
They flew at him, roaring to encourage one another. There were six or
eight of them, but they were afraid of his fists.
"Come on, boys!"
"Hit 'im a good 'un, Bill! 'E's spoilin' our business, that's what
'e's doin'."
"Push in his face. 'Ammer 'im good 'n' proper!"
"We'll show 'im what's what!"
"'E's a noosance. Le's get rid of 'im. Lemme get at 'im once. I'll
show 'im!"
So they came on, clumsy with drink, but their maudlin outcries didn't
scare Grenfell a bit.
He was waiting for them,--cool, quiet, determined.
Their diet was mostly bad ale and beer, or whiskey: Grenfell was all
muscle, from constant exercise and wholesome diet--the roast beef of
old England, whole wheat bread, plenty of rich milk.
They were no match for him.
On they came, one after another. The first lunged out heavily;
Grenfell parried the blow with his right hand and landed his left on
the jaw. The ruffian fell to the floor like a log of wood and lay
there. As he fell, he clutched at the corner of the table and
overturned it with a mighty crash on top of him.
The second man got a blow on the nose that sent him over to the corner
to wipe away the blood. The rest Grenfell laid out flat on the floor
in one, two, three order.
They came at him again, those who were able to go on. They got their
arms around him but he threw them off. They kicked him and he knocked
them down again. They bit and clawed and scratched and used all the
foul tactics that they knew.
They tried to get him from both sides--they rushed at him from the
front and the rear at the same time.
Agile as a cat he turned and faced them whichever way they came, and
those quick, hard fists of his shot out and hit them on the chin or on
the nose till they bled like stuck pigs and bawled for mercy.
Grenfell stood there amid the wrecked furniture, his clothes torn,
bleeding and triumphant. "Want any more?" he smiled.
When they saw that all combined they were no match for this wildcat
they had roused to action, they said:
"Well, le's call it quits. Le's have peace."
They never tackled him again. They didn't know much, to be sure, but
they knew when they had had enough of "a first-class fighting man."
Then Grenfell started camping-parties with poor boys who hadn't any
money to spend for holidays. The first summer he had thirteen at the
seashore.
A boy had to take a sea-bath before he got his breakfast. No one could
go in a boat unless he could swim. The beds were hay-stuffed burlap
bags. A lifeboat retired from service was more fun than Noah's Ark to
keep the happy company afloat for a fishing-party or a picnic.
Next year there were thirty boys: then the number grew to a hundred,
and more. Not one life was lost. How they loved it all! Especially
when the boat, twelve boys at the oars, came plunging in, on the
returning tide, with the boys all singing at the top of their voices:
"Here we come rejoicing,
Pulling at the sweeps"
to the rhythmic tune of "Bringing in the Sheaves." Then, when the
boat's keel slid into the sand, it was a mad rush for the best supper
boys ever ate.
His school days over, instead of going to Oxford University, Grenfell
chose to enter the London Hospital, so as to take his examinations at
London University later, and become a doctor.
While Grenfell was in the hospital, murder was quite the fashion in
London. Many a time his patients had a policeman sitting behind a
screen at the foot of the bed, ready to nab them if they got up and
tried to climb out of a window.
One day, Sir Frederick Treves said to him: "Go to the North Sea, where
the deep-sea fishermen need a man like you. If you go in January, you
will see some fine seascapes, anyway. Don't go in summer when all of
the old ladies go for a rest."
Grenfell turned the idea over and over in his mind. He had always
loved the sea and been the friend of sailors and fishermen. He liked
the thought of the help he could be as a doctor among them. So he
decided to cast in his lot with the fishermen who go from England's
East Coast into the brawling North Sea.
Yarmouth, about 120 miles northeast of London, is the headquarters of
the herring fisheries, which engage about 300 vessels and 3,000 men.
A short distance off the shore are sandbanks, and between these and
the mainland Yarmouth Roads provides a safe harbor and a good
anchorage for ships drawing eighteen or nineteen feet of water.
So one pitch-black and rainy night Grenfell packed his bag and went to
Yarmouth. At the railway-station he found a retired fisherman with a
cab that threatened to fall apart if you looked at it too hard. They
drove a couple of miles alongshore in the darkness, and found what
looked like two posts sticking out of the sand.
"Where's the ship?" asked Grenfell.
"Those are her topmasts," answered the sea-dog. "Tide's low. The rest
of her is hidden by the wharf."
Grenfell scrambled over a hillock and a dim anchor-lantern showed him
the tiny craft that for many days and nights was to be his tossing
home in the great waters.
In answer to his hail, a voice called back cheerily: "Mind the
rigging; it's just tarred and greased."
But Grenfell was already sliding down it, nimble as a cat, though it
was so sticky he had to wrench his hands and feet from it now and
then.
The boat was engaged in peddling tobacco among the ships of the North
Sea fishing-fleet, and for the next two months no land was seen,
except two distant islands: and the decks were never free from ice and
snow.
Aboard many of the boats to which they came the entire crew, skipper
and all, were 'prentices not more than twenty years old. These lads
got no pay, except a little pocket-money. Many of the crew were hard
characters, and the young skippers were harder still. Often they had
been sent to sea from industrial schools and reformatories.
One awkward boy had cooked the "duff" for dinner and burned it. So the
skipper made him take the ashes from the cook's galley to the
fore-rigging, climb to the cross-tree with the cinders one by one, and
throw them over the cross-tree into the sea, repeating the act till he
had disposed of the contents of the scuttle.
A boy who had not cleaned the cabin as he should was given a
bucketful of sea water, and was made to spend the whole night emptying
it with a teaspoon into another bucket, and then putting it back the
same way.
Most of the boys were lively and merry, and always ready for a lark.
Grenfell, who has never been able to forget that he was once a boy,
got along famously with them, and was hail-fellow-well-met wherever he
went.
Once, when he was aboard a little sailing-vessel, he was playing
cricket on the deck, and the last ball went over the side.
He dived after it at once, telling the helmsman to "tack back." When
the helmsman saw Grenfell struggling in the water, he got so rattled
that it was a long time before he could bring the boat near him.
At last Grenfell managed to catch hold of the end of a rope that was
thrown to him and climb aboard.
But the cricket ball was in his hand!
III
WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR
"In eighteen hundred and ninety-two
Grenfell sailed the ocean blue----"
from Yarmouth to Labrador in a ninety-ton ketch-rigged schooner.
This wasn't such an abrupt change of base as it sounds, for it meant
that the Royal Mission to the Deep Sea Fishermen, which works in the
North Sea, had decided to send a "Superintendent" to the coast of the
North Atlantic, east of Canada and north of Newfoundland, where many
ships each summer went in quest of the cod.
If you will look on the map, you will readily see how Labrador lies in
a long, narrow strip along the coast from the mouth of the St.
Lawrence to Cape Chidley. This strip belongs to the crown colony of
Newfoundland, the big triangular island to the south of the Straits of
Belle Isle, and Newfoundland is entirely independent of the Dominion
of Canada. Fishermen when they go to this region always speak of
going to "the Labrador," and they call it going "down," not "up," when
it is a question of faring north.
The tract that lies along the north shore of the St. Lawrence, west of
the narrow strip, is also called Labrador--but it belongs to Canada.
Generally "Labrador" is used for the part that belongs to
Newfoundland.
"Labrador" itself is a queer word. It is Portuguese. It means a yeoman
farmer. The name was given to Greenland in the first half of the
sixteenth century by a farmer from the Azores who was first to see
that lonesome, chilly country. Thence the name was moved over to the
peninsula between Hudson Bay and the Atlantic.
Cabot sailed along the coast in 1498, but the interior remained unseen
by white men till the Hudson's Bay Company began to plant their
trading-stations and send their agents for furs in 1831.
Jacques Cartier said Labrador was "the land God gave to Cain," and
that there was "not one cartload of earth on the whole of it." Along
the coast are mountains rising to 7,000 or even 8,000 feet. There are
many lakes inland, 50 to 100 miles in length. Hamilton Inlet is 150
miles long, and from two to 30 miles wide. The Hamilton River which
empties into it, in twelve miles descends 760 feet, with a single drop
of 350 feet at the Grand Falls, the greatest in North America,
surpassing even Niagara.
[Illustration: LABRADOR]
The population is about 14,500 in more than half a million square
miles. There are some 3,500 Indians, 2,000 Eskimos, and 9,000 whites
(along the coast and at the Hudson's Bay posts).
It was to such a "parish" that Grenfell came in 1892, that he might
give the fishermen the benefit of his surgical knowledge and practical
experience acquired not only on the land but aboard the tossing ships
in the North Sea.
A ninety-ton boat is a tiny craft in which to make the voyage across
the Atlantic. Grenfell must have known just how Columbus felt, four
hundred years ago, when he said to the sailors of his tiny caravels
"Sail on! sail on!"
First there were head winds for eleven days.
"Wonder if the wind's ever goin' to quit blowin' against us!" muttered
a sailor, as he coiled a rope to make a bed for a dog in the stern.
"I'm about fed up with this kind o' thing."
The man to whom he spoke was in his bare feet, washing the deck with
the hose. "What does anybody ever wanna go to Labrador for, anyhow?"
he grumbled back. "It's a lot better in the North Sea. More sociable.
You get letters from home an' tobacco regular. An' you can see
somebody once in a while."
"Shore leave's no good to a fellow in Labrador," the first man went
on, as he watched the dog turn round and round before lying down.
"Ain't no place to go. No movies nor nuthin', just fish an' rocks an'
people lookin' thin an' half-starved."
"You ever been there?"
"No, but I was talkin' with fellows that got shipwrecked there once.
Gee whiz, what's that?"
"That? That's an iceberg. Didn't you ever see an iceberg before?"
"No. Looks like a ship under full sail, don't she?"
To the north out of the grey mist on the water loomed a mountain of
ice.
"Glad we didn't run into the old thing," the dog's friend went on.
"They say what you see stickin' out o' the water's only a small part
of it."
"Yes, that's right. 'Bout six-sevenths is under water. Lemme tell you,
the fellers that sail a schooner like this up to the fishin' grounds
have gotta know what they're about. Ever hear about the _Queen_ an'
how she got wrecked?"
"No."
"Well, it was a fog like it is over yonder, an' the _Queen_ was off
Gull Island, close to Cape St. John. She didn't know where she was.
They didn't have no lighthouse in them days.
"Well sir, it was December, long toward Christmas an' the wind was
howlin' like a pack o' wolves. The poor little ship--she wa'n't much
bigger'n this here boat o' ours--drove plumb on the rocks.
"There was six passengers, one of 'em a lady. One of the men was a
doctor--he was her brother.
"They got off the boat when she drove ashore an' they climbed up onto
the top o' the island. They didn't have nothin' with 'em 'ceptin' only
an old piece of a sail. What was that to feed on, all winter? They
knew there wouldn't be anybody comin' that way till the nex' spring.
"The crew, they stayed on board: they said they was goin' to get off
some o' the stuff for 'em all to eat while they was cooped up on the
island waitin' for spring.
"But the storm done 'em dirt. The wind came on to blow harder'n ever,
an' pretty soon the sea she just picked up the ship an' hauled her off
and--crickety-crack!--she went slam-bang to pieces on the Old Harry
Shoals. Didn't have no more chance than a paper bag at a picnic. No
sir, there weren't one man saved out o' the whole crowd.
"So there was them six people stuck up on top o' the rock."
"Did they have to stay there all winter?"
"Now you wait a minute. I'm a-tellin' you. Some time 'long in April
there was a hunter come that way duck-shootin'.
"He shot a duck an' it dropped in the big waves runnin' and jumpin' on
the beach.
"He got out o' the boat to get it--an' it weren't there!
"'Mercy on us!' says he. 'I shot that duck just as sure as I'm soaked
clean through. It musta fell right here. What's become o' it? Where's
it gone to?'
"He looked round and looked round like Robinson Crusoe huntin' fer
somebody. He looked up an' he looked down, an' it wa'n't no use.
Wa'n't no duck there.
"'It musta been magic,' he says. 'Magic. Somethin' queer about this
place!'
"Then he sees little pieces o' wood churnin' around in the foam.
"'What's happened here?' he says to himself. 'Musta been a ship went
to pieces here some time.' 'Cause he found some o' the splinters had
letters on 'em showin' they used to be parts o' boxes, an' pretty soon
he finds a life-preserver that says on it '_The Queen_, St. John's.'
"'Guess I'll climb up to the top o' the rock an' take a look,' says
he. So up he climbs, the birds flappin' round him an' screamin' 'cause
they're afraid maybe he's goin' to hurt their eggs.
"Up an' up he clumb, an' he gets up to the top. The grass is long an'
green an' the soft yellow buttercups is pretty--but what he sees
lyin' there in the buttercups ain't pretty at all.
"Six dead bodies lyin' there stretched out, with the piece o' the old
torn sail over 'em. The bodies is fallin' to pieces, but in the
fingers o' one is some flesh torn out o' the next one to it.
"Then he finds a little book with writin' in it where one of 'em had
been writin' down as long as he could what happened.
"Well sir, what the writin' said was this. He couldn't hardly make it
out it was so faint. It said by an' by they drew lots to see who was
to be killed for the rest to eat."
Here the man with the dog drew a long sigh and said: "That's a fine
kind of a country to be comin' to, ain't it, where things like that
can happen? I'm glad I ain't in Doc Grenfell's rubber boots. He's
goin' to stay. I thank my lucky stars I don't have to. I'll sure be
glad to get back to Yarmouth once more. I used to think it was a hole
in the ground, but it's heaven compared to what we're comin' to."
"Wait a minute, wait a minute!" said the other, "I ain't finished
tellin' you. Lemme get through. I was sayin', they drew lots,
an'--the lot fell to the lady."
"They was goin' to eat the lady!" exclaimed his comrade, in horror.
"Yes, sir, that's what they would 'a' done. But her brother he said
he'd take her place."
"An' then what happened?"
"They don't know no more after that. The writin' stops there."
"Say," said the dog-fancier, disgusted, "that's no place to have the
story stop. Get a fellow all strung up and then dump him off that way
without knowin' how it ended."
The man with the hose began to bind up a leak with a bit of tarpaulin.
"I ain't made it up outa my head," he said. "I'm just tellin' you what
happened. An' it seems to me the story did have an end, all right,
'cause there they were all lyin' stretched out cold the way the hunter
found 'em."
The listener shivered. "Say, can't you tell us a more cheerful yarn?"
The story-teller shook his head. "Mos' Newfoundland an' Labrador
stories is like that, Bill," he said. "Grey, like the fog an' the
face o' the sea.--Guess I'll go an' put on some more clothes. This
wind sure does bite clear into the middle o' your bones."
"Yes," said the other, "an' the sea's gettin' colder every minute.
Say, Jim, I hope the watch'll keep his eyes peeled to-night. I'd sure
hate to run into any o' those there bergs. Don't like the looks o'
that one we seen just now. One o' those'd be enough to send us all to
Davy Jones's locker in a jiffy."
For five days more they ran on, all the time through dense fog.
Then--the grey mist lifted, and the lovely green of the land appeared.
At least, it looked beautiful after so many days at sea.
But what was that? Over the evergreens a tall plume of black smoke
rose.
"The place is burnin' up!" said Bill to Jim.
"I counted thirteen places where she's on fire. What is that anyway?"
"That's St. John's," answered Bill, a little proud of his knowledge.
"Capital o' Newfoundland."
"Where're we gonna land, with this fire goin' on this way?"
"Dunno," said Bill. "We'll run in farther, 'n' then we can see."
Grenfell was at the prow, looking at the burning city. Some of the
ships had burned down to the water, right at the wharves. Chimneys
were standing up out of the ruins like broken, blackened fingers
pointing at the sky.
People came running down through the smoke and the flames.
"Got anything to eat?" they cried.
"Not much!" shouted back Grenfell. "But what we've got you're welcome
to!"
"Is there a doctor on board?" was the next hail.
"I'm a doctor," called Grenfell.
"Glory be!" came the answer. "There'll be plenty for you to do ashore,
Doctor!"
So instead of rest and comfort after the long sea-voyage Grenfell and
those with him had to peel off their coats and plunge right in and
help with both hands right and left.
It was with heavy hearts a few days later that they said good-by and
started north for Labrador where there were people who needed them
even more than the burned-out folk of St. John's.
They ran across the Straits of Belle Isle, through which the River St.
Lawrence flows to the Atlantic, and the sun flashed on a hundred
icebergs at once, in a glorious procession.
The seabirds were fighting and crying over the fish.
The whales were leaping clean out of the sea, as if they were playing
a game and having lots of fun.
Grenfell laughed aloud as he watched them. "I say, boys," he said to
the sailors, "don't you wish you could jump out of the water like
that?"
"I wish we had all the oil there is in all them whales!" said Bill,
who had a very practical mind.
Into the very middle of the fishing-fleet they sailed.
Flags of welcome were run up to the mastheads of the schooners. There
were about 30,000 Newfoundlanders in the whole fleet, on more than 100
schooners--and Grenfell's boat was a little bit of a thing compared
with most of them.
But they all knew that the small boat had sailed clear across the sea
to help them, and they all wanted to show how glad and grateful they
were that a real doctor had come to their help.
Pretty soon the little boats coming from the schooners were flocking
round them like ants about a sugar-bowl.
One man came after all the rest had gone.
His boat was little better than a bunch of boards with a dab of tar
here and there.
For a long time the rower sat still, looking up at Dr. Grenfell, who
leaned over the rail gazing down at him.
By and by the fisherman broke the silence.
"Be you a real doctor, sir?"
"That's what I call myself," answered Grenfell.
"What's your name?"
"Grenfell."
"Well, Dr. Greenpeel, us hasn't got no money, but----"
He stopped.
"I don't care about the money," Grenfell answered. "What's the
trouble?"
"There's a man ashore wonderful sick, Doctor, if so be you'd come 'n'
see him."
"Sure I'll come!"
Dr. Grenfell was over the rail and in the fisherman's poor tub in a
jiffy.
He was taken to a mean sod hut.
The only furniture was a stove that looked like a big tin can burst
open.
The floor was of stones from the beach: the walls were mud. Six
children were sitting in a corner, about as dirty as the mud walls,
and just as quiet.
A woman in rags was giving spoonfuls of water to a man who lay on the
one bed coughing till it seemed the poor fellow must cough himself to
pieces.
"Well, well," said the Doctor. "We must fix him up." He didn't tell
the woman that her husband had both consumption and pneumonia.
He left medicine and food and told the poor wife what to do. Then he
had to go on to others who needed him.
It was two months before he could come back to this lonely spot--and
then he found outside the hut a grave, covered with snow.
On that first voyage Dr. Grenfell had to see nine hundred people who
needed his help!
One was an Eskimo, who had fired off a cannon to celebrate when the
Moravian mission boat came in.
No wonder he felt like celebrating--for the boat only came once a
year!
The gun blew up--and took off both of the poor fellow's arms.
He lay on his back for two weeks, the stumps covered with wet filthy
rags. When Grenfell finally got there, it was too late to save him.
They do queer things on that coast when they have no doctor handy to
tell them what to do.
For instance, a baby had pneumonia, and the mother dosed it with
reindeer-moss and salt water, because that was all she had to give it!
A woman was done up in brown paper so the bugs wouldn't bite her.
One man set up in business as a doctor and gave his patients a bull's
heart dried and powdered for medicine.
Another man said he knew how to get rid of boils. "I cut my nails on a
Monday," was his cure.
They would take pulley-blocks and boil them in water and then drink
the water.
To tell how the wind blew they would hang the head of a fox or wolf or
a seal from the rafters and watch the way it swung. A wolf or fox
would face the wind, they said, but a seal's head would turn away from
it.
For rheumatism you must wear a haddock's fin-bone.
Green worsted tied round your wrist was a sure cure for hemorrhage.
If you had trouble with your eyes, you ought to get somebody to blow
sugar into them.
Little sacks full of prayers tied round your neck were a great help in
any sort of sickness.
A father tied a split herring round his boy's throat for diphtheria.
This shows what Dr. Grenfell was up against when he came to Labrador
with his "scientific notions" about what ought to be done for sick
people.
One day, just as the Doctor had cast anchor between two little islands
far out at sea, a little rowboat came to him from a small Welsh
brigantine.
"Doctor!" a man called out. "Would ye please be so good an' come
ashore an' see a poor girl? She's dyin'!"
The Doctor didn't need to be urged. He went ashore in the rowboat. In
a rough bunk in a dark corner of a fishing-hut lay a very pretty girl,
about eighteen years old.
All summer long, poor thing--the only woman among many men--she had
been cooking, mending, helping to clean and dry and salt the fish.
Nobody asked if she was tired. Nobody asked if she wanted a vacation.
She had done her faithful best--and now, worn out, she was cast aside
like an old shoe.
One look told the Doctor that she was dying.
The captain of the brigantine, who was tender-hearted, and really
cared for her, had decided that this was a case of typhoid. He told
the fishermen to keep away--for the germs might get into the fish they
were preparing to send off to market.
So he had been the nurse. But all he could do was feed her. For two
weeks--during part of which time she was unconscious--she had not been
washed, and her bed had not been changed.
Outside it was a dark night, and the fog hung low and menacing over
the water. The big trap-boat with six men, and the skipper's sons
among them, had been missing since morning.
The skipper had stayed home to take care of the poor little servant
girl. While he sat beside her wretched bunk, his mind was divided
between her plight and his anxiety for the six men out there in the
angry, ugly sea.
"I wonder where the b'ys are now," he muttered.
Then he would go to the door and peer out under his hand into the
night. Nothing there but the dark and the mystery.
"'Twas time they were back,--long, long ago!" he would say. "'Tis a
wonderful bad night for the fog. I doubt they'll find their way in. I
should 'a' gone out wi' them. But no, she needed me! Poor girl! The
Lord, He gives, an' the Lord He takes away: blessed be the name o' the
Lord!"
Wiping his eyes on his rough sleeve, the captain came back and helped
the Doctor put clean linen on the bed and wash the poor girl's grimy
face.
She was unconscious now: her life was ebbing fast.
The captain went to the door again and again. Outside there was no
sound but the low moaning of the night wind in the blackness. The
fishermen, afraid of what the mysterious disease might do for them,
were keeping their distance.
Suddenly as the captain glanced on the pale face of the girl, he
gasped.
"She's dead, Doctor, she's dead!" The Doctor felt her heart. It was
true. The spirit of the brave little maid had gone at last beyond the
beck and call of men.
It was midnight, and over the dim and smoking lamp the captain and the
Doctor decided that the best thing to do was to make a bonfire of the
girl's few poor effects.
So they took her meagre clothes and miserable bedding out on the
cliffs, piled them, soaked them in oil, and set them afire.
The flames leapt high and made a beacon to be seen afar.
Out there on the black face of the deep six hopeless, helpless men in
a trap-boat, groping their way blindly, saw the flames and took heart
again.
"See!" they cried to one another. "Look there! Up yonder on the
cliffs! They're givin' us a light to steer by!"
They drove their oars into the yeasty waves again with strength
renewed. Little did they know what it was that had made the light for
them.
When at last they dragged their boat ashore and hobbled to the hut,
they saw the body of the girl, the lamp, and the captain and the
Doctor making the body ready for the burial. They entered the hut, and
were told what had happened.
"B'ys," said the foremost, "she's dead. Mary's dead. The last thing
she did was to give us a light to show us the way home. Poor girl,
poor little girl!"
Once when a small steamer Grenfell was using had broken down, he found
shelter in a one room hut ashore.
The inmates had few clothes, almost no food, and neither tools nor
proper furniture. There was nothing between them and the Aurora
Borealis but ruin and famine. There were eight children. Five slept in
one bed: three slept with the parents in the other bed: Grenfell in
his sleeping-bag lay on the floor, his nose at the crack of the door
to get fresh air.
They all suffered from the cold, for there was not a blanket in the
house.
"Where's the blanket I sent you last year?" asked the Doctor.
The mother raised her skinny arm and pointed about the room to patched
trousers and coats.
Then she said, with a good deal of feeling, "If youse had five lads
all trying to get under one covering to onct, Doctor, you'd soon know
what would happen to that blanket."
First thing in the morning, Grenfell boiled some cocoa, and took the
two elder boys out for a seal-hunt.
To a boy on the Labrador, a seal-hunt is the biggest kind of a lark.
If it is winter, the seals may be caught near their blow-holes in the
ice, and hit over the head with a stick called a gaff. In summer, they
must be shot from a boat.
One of the boys, when he thought the Doctor was not looking, emptied
the steaming fragrant cocoa from his mug and filled it with water
instead.
"I 'lows I'se not accustomed to no sweetness," was his excuse.
The boys proved the jolliest of comrades and the best of huntsmen. In
the nipping wind they rowed the boat where the Doctor told them, so
that he could shoot. He had on a lined leather coat: but they had only
torn cotton shirts and thin jackets to face the raw dampness of the
early morning.
But they laughed and joked and carried on, and didn't care whether any
seals were found or not. The hunt was unsuccessful. When Grenfell
left, however, he promised the boys they should have a dozen fox traps
for the winter.
Their eyes shone, and they grasped his hands. It was to them a
princely, a magnificent gift.
"Doctor, Doctor!" was all they could say. "What can we do for ye?"
"Go out and catch foxes," said the Doctor. "We'll see what we can get
for them when you catch them."
Next summer the Doctor, true to his word as always, came back and
found the little house as bare and bleak as before. But the boys met
him with the same old broad grins on their faces, cheerful as the
sunrise.
"See, Doctor!" They flourished the precious pelt of a silver fox. "We
kep' it for youse, though us hadn't ne'er a bit in the house. We
knowed you'd do better'n we with he."
So Dr. Grenfell said he would try. He went to an island where Captain
Will Bartlett made his home. This Bartlett was the father of "Bob"
Bartlett who captained Peary's ship, the _Roosevelt_, on the
successful trip to the North Pole in 1909. Father Bartlett was famous
round about for sealing and fishing, and he had not only a thriving
summer trade of his own but a big heart for unfortunate neighbors.
"Do your best for me, Captain Will," said Grenfell, handing over the
skin.
"That I will, Doctor!" answered Bartlett heartily. "Drop in on your
way back."
The Doctor did so--and he found Captain Will had put aside a full
boat-load of provisions of all sorts for the starving family.
Happy in the thought of the good it would do, Grenfell started back
for the promontory at Big River where he had every reason to expect
the family would be watching for him anxiously.
As he neared the land--he saw no one moving. The boat was beached, and
the Doctor went up to the house.
The door was locked: there was no one within hail, though he shouted
again and again.
Grenfell knew this absence must mean that the whole family had gone to
the distant islands for the fishing.
So he broke in the door, piled the things he had brought inside, and
wrote a letter.
"This is the price of your pelt. Put all the fur you catch next winter
in a barrel and sit on the top of the barrel till the spring, when we
are coming back again. Be sure not to let anybody get it from you at a
low price."