got from the animals which the boys caught in their traps. In the
summer, Grenfell took the pelts to the nearest cash buyer, and with
the money supplies were bought in St. John's. The poor fisherman found
that he had more food than he needed, so he sold the surplus, at a
fair profit, to his neighbor.
Year after year this was kept up, and when the father died he left
Grenfell $200 in cash to be divided among the children.
Thus the Doctor had the satisfaction of bringing this family up from a
blanketless poverty, on the flat brink of starvation, to something
like wealth in a land where a man with fire-wood, lettuce, dogs,
codfish in the sea and a few dollars in hand thinks he is well off and
piously thanks Heaven for his good fortune.
As for the sealers--the men who stand a chance to make anything are
those who buy what they call a ticket to the ice--that is to say, a
share in a sealing venture--and go out from St. John's in the steamers
or sailing vessels at the beginning of March. The ship has sheathed
wooden sides a foot and a half thick, and is bound with iron at the
bow, to aid in battering the ice-pack. For the auxiliary engine 500
tons of coal are carried: and a crew of 300 men will use 500 gallons
of water in a day--but the easy way to get more is to boil the ice, so
nobody worries about that. Tragedies of the sealing fleet are without
number. The worst have happened when blizzards caught the men out on
the ice-floes far from their ship. One captain saved all his men by
having them pile up their gaffs and lie down on them for cat-naps.
Then he would make them get up and dance like mad for five minutes,
while he crooned "chin-music" to them. Thus he saved them from
freezing to death. In that storm the _Greenland_ of Harbor Grace lost
52 of her 100 men. Grenfell tells of sixteen fishermen on Trinity Bay
who, without fire or food or sufficient clothing, after thirty-six
hours of suffering dragged their boats ten miles across the ice to the
land.
_The Southern Cross_ in 1914 was coming from the banks with 174 men
and a full load. She was lost with all hands, and her fate remains a
mystery. A life-belt picked up on the Irish coast was all that was
ever recovered from the doomed ship. In the same year the men of the
_Newfoundland_ were caught out on the ice and unable to get back to
the ship. Of the company seventy-seven lost their lives and forty-two
were crippled.
Two boys and two men were tending seal nets when a "divey" or
snowstorm blew them helplessly to sea. They crashed on an island, but
ere they could land they were blown off again. During the night and
the morning that followed, both men and one of the boys died. The
other boy dressed himself in the clothes of the three who died, and
kept their bodies in the boat.
They had caught an old harp seal, and he ate its flesh and drank its
blood. On the third day he gaffed another seal as it floated past on a
cake of ice. Then he had another drink of warm blood. Two days later
he killed another seal.
By that time he began "seeing things." He thought he saw a ship in the
distance. He clambered out of his boat and hobbled five miles over the
ice, only to find that it was not a sail that he had seen, but a
hummock of ice. The only thing to do was to make his way back over the
weary miles to the boat he left.
On the seventh day, with despair gnawing at his heart, one of the
sealing fleet, the _Flora_, came in sight.
It was dark, and this was his one chance of rescue. He shouted with
all his might. But the boat immediately backed as if to leave him.
He screamed again, and the merciful wind caught up his voice and
carried it to the vessel.
He shouted once more: "For God's sake, don't leave me with my dead
father here!"
Then the ship hove to, and when the brave boy was lifted aboard the
watch explained to him:
"Ye see, lad, the first time we heard ye call we thought it was
sperrits."
They picked up the boat as well as the boy, and finally put them
aboard another vessel that was going toward the lad's fatherless home.
Grenfell went out with the sealing fleet and took his full share of
all the hardships of the mariners who from boyhood look on sealing as
life's great adventure. While they are still tiny tads, the boys of
St. John's and the outposts practise leaping across rain-barrels and
mud-puddles. They are looking forward to the time when a running jump
from one cake of ice to another may be the means of saving their
lives. To "copy" is to play the game of follow-my-leader: and so the
boys use the phrase "a good big copy from pan to pan" when they mean
it is a long leap between.
There is uncontrollable excitement aboard a sealer when the prize is
in sight at last. Perhaps the ship has been buffeting the ice for
many weary days, bucking the floes and backing away again with the
lookout in the crow's nest scanning the horizon in vain with powerful
spy-glasses.
But at last the joyful cry is heard: "Whitecoats!" or "Dere'm de
whitey jackets!" In less time than it takes to tell the men swarm over
the bulwarks with their gaffs and knives and are deployed among the
seals.
The "whitecoats" are the helpless young ones, mild and innocent as
puppies, with great tears in their eyes and as pettable as woolly
lambs if the sealers did not have to steel their hearts and think of
their own young ones at home. Can you blame the man with the knife,
any more than you blame the butcher who serves your household with
lamb chops, if he goes to the red-handed slaughter with might and
main? Those "whitey jackets" may spell to his family the difference
between starvation and sufficiency if not plenty. He cannot afford to
let sentiment interfere with his grim business.
The young seals are gaffed without trouble: the old ones are shot. The
adult males are called "dogs"--and a "dog" hood seal, brought to bay
and standing up on his flippers like a bear, is an ugly customer. It
needs two men to tackle him, and if they are not careful he will bite
off an arm or a leg in a jiffy. Yet the "dog" takes to the water, if
he can get there, without paying the slightest heed to what becomes of
the mother seal or the young one. He is generally a poor defender of
his own family.
For the hood seal family consists of but the three. Father--the "dog"
hood--blows a big skin bag over his head when he is attacked, and the
blows of the gaff rain upon it harmlessly. So terrific is his bite,
when he gets a chance at his assailant, that the Newfoundlanders say
the carcass itself can bite after the head has been cut off. A mature
"dog" seal weighs from 600 to 900 pounds.
Bucking the ice to get at the main herd is a big part of the battle.
Sometimes the skipper shouts: "Bombs out!" Then the blasting powder is
produced, and the cry comes: "Hot poker for the blasts!" The fuse is
then touched off with the red-hot implement. The bomb is thrust into
an ice-crevice, whereupon all hands "beat it" as fast as ever they
can--and a little bit faster.
Then comes a deafening explosion that rocks the ship: and the ice
rains on the deck in chunks, like bursting shells in an artillery
bombardment.
With all the watchfulness, and the desperate risks the skipper takes
as he drives the vessel into the pack ice, there is an excellent
chance of missing the main herd entirely. An "Aerial Observation
Company," started by a plucky Australian flyer at Botswood, was
successful in showing the sealers of 1922 where to go, by dropping
letters on or near the ships--but they could not make their way
through the ice to the place indicated. During 1923 the fog was so
dense that the sealing-season was almost a failure.
On his first voyage to the sealing grounds Grenfell saw the seals like
black dots by the thousands, all over the floes as far as the horizon.
The ships butted and rammed their way into the thick of the herd, the
men overjoyed at the prospect of plenty. As soon as the engines
stopped they were over the side, booted and sweatered, in a jiffy.
There was plenty of work for Dr. Grenfell. Many a man twisted his leg
or his ankle as he slipped between the blocks of ice. Presently there
were thirty or forty at a time surrounding him begging him to put some
liniment in their eyes to cure the snow-blindness due to the fierce
glare of the sun upon the ice-fields.
The Eskimos, not having glasses, use spectacles of wooden discs with
narrow slits, and do not suffer so much--but very few of the sealers
from "the Old Rock," as Newfoundland is called, think to provide
themselves with smoked glasses.
One day Grenfell was kept busy for a long time rubbing arms and legs
and anointing smarting eyes. The men were nearly all scattered about
on the ice, near and far, when he got through--so he thought he would
drop over the side and watch them at their work. By this time it was
late afternoon.
Till now, a strong wind had been blowing, and this had kept the ice
packed together. The wind died down and the bits of ice began to "run
abroad" as the sailors say. Grenfell and a dozen men with whom he
found himself were far from the ship, and darkness was fast coming
on.
Of course they had no boat, and the only way they could get back to
the ship was to float on one piece of ice to another. They had no oars
with which to propel themselves--all they could do was to beat the
water with the seal-gaffs.
This was so slow a process that by and by they gave it up, and decided
to wait for the ship to come and find them. The ship by this time was
out of sight.
It grew colder and colder after the red sun went down. They had a
little sugar and oatmeal. This they mixed with snow and devoured. Then
they took their "seal bats" and cut them up with their big knives.
They dipped the pieces in the fat of the dead seals, and with these
they made bonfires to let the ship know where they were.
In the light of the occasional blaze of their beacon fires they played
games to keep from freezing. "Leap-frog" and "one old cat" were the
favorites. Men not accustomed to the toughening Northern life might
have been whimpering with the piercing cold and the fear of the sea's
anger by this time. Not so with these men.
The night wore on--and suddenly out of the darkness they heard the
welcome sound of the little steamer crunching her way through the
ice-pack.
The wrath of the skipper leaning over the bow was almost more terrible
to face than any ice-storm would have been.
Did he respect the Doctor of the Deep Sea Mission? He did not. His
tongue-lashing included them all.
"It was the worst blowing-up I ever received since my father spanked
me," says Grenfell with a laugh, remembering that anxious night.
Later, the skipper came to him. "Doctor," he said, "the truth is I was
that torn in my mind while ye were gone, and that relieved of worry
when I came on ye in the ice-pack, that I do not know the words I may
have used. If I was wicked or profane--the good God forgive me. It was
my upside-down way of saying my gratitude to God for His salvation."
The Doctor's day's work was not yet ended. He clambered down into the
hold, a man ahead of him carrying a candle and matches. In his hand
was a bottle of cocaine solution, for some of the men were suffering
such agonies with the snow-blindness that they were all but out of
their minds. They would moan and toss in frenzy, hardly knowing when
the Doctor came to them.
"It hurts something wonderful!" they would cry, brave men as they
were. "Can't ye give me something to stop it? 'Twere better dead than
this!"
It was hard to get down into the hold at all, for the ladders were
gone, and as the vessel rocked the seals and the coal were sloshing
about below-decks where the men lay sprawled among them.
"Is anybody here?" the Doctor would call, as he poked into a dark
angle.
No answer.
He would try again. "Any one in here?" There might be a fitful wail
from a far corner. Then the Doctor would have to clamber over and
round the casks and throw aside potato sacks and boxes. Sometimes his
patients, in a sodden stupor, hidden away at the bottom of
everything, could not be found at all.
In these filthy, reeking holds, enduring all discomforts for the sake
of perhaps a hundred dollars payable weeks hence, the men somehow
recovered from their ailments and throve and grew fat on pork and seal
meat, fried with onions. Whenever the rats were especially noisy, the
wise ones said it meant a gale: but sometimes the rats and the wise
men were wrong. It was no place for a man with a weak stomach, that
gallant little sealing-steamer!
On Sunday the men religiously refused to go out on the ice, though the
seals tantalizingly frolicked all about them. The seals seemed to know
how the pious Newfoundlander observes the Lord's Day. The animals
stared at the ship and the ship stared back at them. Then in great
glee the seals took to their perpetual water-sports, in which they are
as adept as the penguins of the Antarctic.
"I have marveled greatly," Grenfell says, "how it is possible for any
hot-blooded creature to enjoy so immensely this terribly cold water as
do these old seals. They paddle about, throw themselves on their
backs, float and puff out their breasts, flapping their flippers like
paws over their chests."
While they lay off Fogo Island, watching the seals, the great pans of
ice, rising and falling with the heaving of the sea, beat on the stout
sides of the _Neptune_ as on a drum-head. Sometimes to avoid an awful
drubbing the _Neptune_ would steam a little ahead, very much as a
swimmer dives into a breaker to cleave it before it combs over and
carries him off his feet. Grenfell himself, loving a bout with "the
bright eyes of danger," left the ship and went out on the ice and
tried to climb one of the bergs, stranded in the midst of the
ice-pack. It was like a living thing striving to fight its way
out--something like a polar bear surrounded by "husky" dogs worrying
him and trying to pull him down.
As a sky-scraper gives to the wind, the berg was rocked to and
fro--eight feet or so with every wave that struck it. It fell on the
pans like a great trip-hammer, backed away and came on again, the ice
groaning as though it were a living creature in mortal agony. As
pieces fell off into the sea the waves leapt up, the way wolves might
leap about a running caribou. In such a battle of the ice with the
ice, a man knows what a pigmy he is, measured against the mightiest
natural forces.
The _Neptune_ escaped a ramming--but her neighbor, the _Wolf_, was not
so lucky. The _Wolf_ had rounded Fogo Island in an offshore wind that
treacherously offered her a clear channel close to the land. As soon
as she got round, the north wind, as though a demon impelled it,
brought the ice crashing back and pinned her fast. An immense floe of
ice, massing in upon the doomed ship, piled higher and higher above
the bulwarks.
"Get the boats onto the pans!" Captain Kean shouted to his men. It is
just what they have had to do on many an Arctic expedition when the
ice has nipped them.
They took their food and clothes--but Captain Kean, the last to leave
the ship, of course--saved nothing of his own except his life. And it
was the closest possible call for him. Just after he jumped, the ice
opened like the Red Sea parting for the hosts of Pharaoh. Down went
the _Wolf_ like a stone, and as she tossed and heaved and gurgled in
her death-throes the ends of her spars caught on the edges of the ice
and were broken off as if they were match-wood. The sea seems to dance
above such a wreck with a personal, malicious vengeance.
It was the old, sad story for the captain and his men. They would have
to walk ashore, three hundred of them, over the miles of cruel ice. At
home, their wives and children would be waiting and hoping for a grand
success and a good time. Instead, after a forced and weary march of
days,--going perhaps three hundred miles,--with much rowing and
camping, father or brother would stagger in, his little pack of poor
belongings on his sore shoulders, and throw it down, and say with a
great sob: "'Tis all I've brought ye!"
It is a pitiful thing indeed for a man to have traveled hundreds of
miles to board a ship, in the hope of a few dollars for the risk of
his life, and then to have the sea swallow up his chance, and turn him
loose to the ice and snow, a ruined man. When a captain loses his
ship, whatever the reason, it is almost impossible for him to obtain a
command again.
IV
HAULED BY THE HUSKIES
There was great excitement at the little village of St. Anthony, on
the far northern tip of Newfoundland.
Tom Bradley was coming back from a seal-hunt, and his big dogs Jim and
Jack were helping him drag a flipper seal big enough to give a slice
of the fat to every man, woman and child in the place.
Tom had a large family, and for nine days they had tasted nothing but
a little roasted seal meat.
Finally Tom took his gun down from the nails over the door. It was a
single-barrel muzzle-loader, meant for a boy, but he was a good shot,
and had often wandered out alone over the frozen sea and come back
with a nice fat bird or even a seal to show for it.
"Where be you goin', Tom?" asked his anxious wife.
"Out yonder." He jerked his thumb toward the wide white space of the
ice-locked ocean.
She ran to get his warm cap and mittens. "When'll you be back?"
"I dunno. Not till I get a seal. Us has got to have somethin' to eat,
an' have it soon."
She found an old flour-bag, and tied up in it a few crusts of bread.
"You'd ought to keep this here," said Tom.
"No, Tom. You can't hunt without nothin' to eat. We'll manage somehow.
We'll borrow."
"Ain't nobody to borrow from," answered Tom. "Ain't nobody round here
got nothin'. We uns is all starvin'. Hope Sandy Maule's letter gits to
that there Dr. Grenfell."
"Who's Dr. Grenfell?"
"He's a doctor comin' out here from England. He's goin' to help us."
"Will he have anythin' to eat?"
"Yes--he'll have suthin'. But he's got lots o' friends in England an'
America--an' he can get 'em to send things."
"What'd Sandy Maule write?"
Tom was poking a bit of greasy cloth through the gun with a ramrod.
Everything depended on the way that gun worked. He mustn't miss a
shot--there was no fun in that long, hard hunt on the ice that lay
ahead of him.
"Sandy Maule wrote, 'Please, Doctor, come and start a station here for
us if you can. My family and I are starvin'. All the folks around us
are starvin' too. The fish hain't struck in and bit like they should.
We're cuttin' pieces outa the sides o' our rubber boots an' tyin' 'em
on for shoes.' Things like that, Sandy writ to the Doctor."
Mrs. Bradley drew the sleeve of her thin, worn calico dress across her
eyes. She was a brave woman, but her strength was nearly gone. She did
not want her husband to see her cry.
"It's all of it true," she said. "If I could only get a little fresh
milk to give the baby! Might as well ask for the moon."
She did not speak bitterly. She would stay by her man and live for her
children to the end.
"Well," said Tom, trying to sound matter-of-fact, "we'll go out with
the ole gun an' see what we get." Not one of the little boys was old
enough to go, but the dogs Jim and Jack leaped up, wagging their tails
and fawning upon their master.
Tom had only part of a dog-team: when he or his neighbors made a long
trip they borrowed from one another. What one had, they all had.
As Tom stood looking at the dogs, he couldn't help thinking: "One of
those dogs would keep the family alive for a while. But I sure would
hate to kill one of the poor brutes. They've been the best friends we
ever had." His wife knew what he was thinking, though the dogs did
not.
Then he spoke. "Gimme a kiss, wifey." He smiled at her brightly.
"Cheer up. This little ole gun and me'll bring ye enough to eat for a
long time."
She kissed him, and off he trudged, the dogs leaping beside him and
trying to lick his mittened hands.
Away out yonder on the ice was a little black speck. He strained his
eyes to see.
"There's one!" he muttered. "Now, how to get up near enough. If the
dogs comes with me they'll sure scare it away--it'll go poppin' into
its old blow-hole afore I kin git it."
Jim and Jack were sitting on the bushy plumage of their tails, their
bright eyes fixed on their master, waiting for orders. They would
have loved it had he told them to chase that black speck far out at
sea. They would have gone on till they dropped, at his lightest word.
"No, boys, you wait here," he said. "You're goin' to help me haul it
back--when I get it. But gettin' it is somethin' I gotta do all by my
lonely. Now, you stay right here an' wait for me. Don't you dast to
come no nearer!" He shook his finger at them solemnly.
They seemed to understand. They curled up and lay down in the thin
powdery snow-blanket.
"Now then," muttered Tom, "I gotta creep an' creep an' crawl an' crawl
till I get near, an' then I gotta lie down an' scrape along on my
tummy same as if I was a seal myself. That's what I gotta do."
Suiting the action to the word, he started on, watching all the time
that little dark spot on which all depended.
He could imagine the children waiting at home and asking their mother
every little while: "When's Papa comin' back? Is he goin' to bring us
somepin' to eat?"
"I wonder if that there Grenfell man is ever goin' to git this far
north?" Tom asked himself as he crept toward the seal. "If us could
only git a chance to sell our fish for better'n two cents a pound,
after us gets 'em salted an' dried! Them traders, they bleeds the life
outa us. They say Grenfell when he comes is a-goin' to fight them
traders an' put 'em outa business!"
The swift wind was throwing stinging bits of ice, sharp as needles, in
his face. He drew his cap about his ears more closely and plodded on.
The further he walked the further away the seal seemed to be. He was
half crouching as he walked: he wished he might cover himself with a
skin and crawl on all fours. But if he started to crawl now--he felt
as though it would be a year before he could get near enough to shoot.
"Please, God"--he spoke to God as naturally as to his family--"bless
this ole gun an' make her shoot straight and he'p me knock that seal
over, the first shot. For it don't look like there's goin' to be
more'n one shot, an' if I don't kill her there's my whole family's
goin' to starve and mebbe a whole lot o' other people that's a-lookin'
for what they think I'm a-goin' to bring back."
Now it was time to flatten himself down on the ice and scrape along,
like another seal. It was hard work--try it yourself, if you don't
think so!--and it took lots of patience.
Now he could see the seal raise its head and look about. He mustn't
give it a chance to ask questions of the wind, because the wind might
say: "Look out, Mr. or Mrs. Seal! There's a man creeping and creeping
toward you with a gun, and in a minute that man is going to shoot, and
you'll be sorry you hung around here and didn't dive through the ice
the very first second your nose told you you'd better!"
He raised his gun, and prayed again--this time a very short prayer: "O
Lord, bless this gun!" And he fired.
The black spot had not vanished. It was motionless. "Did I hit him?"
Tom asked himself. "Better try another shot an' make sure."
He was a long time sighting--and he imagined the spot moved a little
as he did so.
Then he fired again.
There it was still. Now he dared to believe he had hit the seal.
Dragging the gun he crawled nearer and nearer. Still the seal did not
move.
Now he could see the whole animal clearly.
The sight was joyful.
"Glory be!" he shouted. Then he jumped up and capered about madly on
the ice. It was a nice, fat, luscious, flipper seal and dead as a
door-nail. Enough for a banquet for all of the tiny village of St.
Anthony. And if Dr. Grenfell should be there when he and the dogs got
back with it, the Doctor should have the largest, tenderest, juiciest
steak of all.
The wind was setting toward the dogs. He could barely see them there,
far, far behind him--making a black spot where they slept, exactly as
though they were another seal.
So he put two fingers to his lips and blew a long, shrill blast.
It was the signal for which they had been waiting. On they came like
two wild young race-horses, each eager to be first to greet their
master.
They must have known well enough that he had killed the seal. They had
hunted with him so often that if they had been human the man and the
dogs could hardly have spoken to each other and understood better.
"Good old Jim! Good old Jack!" The dogs bounced round him like india
rubber, mad with delight.
"Look what we gotta take back! Ain't that somethin' to make the old
lady's eyes pop outa her head? First big seal's been caught off here
for months! Enough to save the whole village from starvation. An' you
dogs is to have some of it too, all o' you. Here's to begin with!"