_SHIPS in PERIL_
It is to be remarked that a wreck on the Labrador coast excites no
wide surprise. Never a season passes but some craft are cast away. But
that is merely the fortune of sailing those waters--a fortune which
the mission-doctor accepts with a glad heart: it provides him with an
interesting succession of adventures; life is not tame. Most men--I
hesitate to say all--have been wrecked; every man, woman, and child
who has sailed the Labrador has narrowly escaped, at least. And the
fashion of that escape is sometimes almost incredible.
* * * * *
The schooner _All's Well_ (which is a fictitious name) was helpless in
the wind and sea and whirling snow of a great blizzard. At dusk she
was driven inshore--no man knew where. Strange cliffs loomed in the
snow ahead; breakers--they were within stone's throw--flashed and
thundered to port and starboard; the ship was driving swiftly into the
surf. When she was fairly upon the rocks, Skipper John, then a hand
aboard (it was he who told me the story), ran below and tumbled into
his bunk, believing it to be the better place to drown in.
"Well, lads," said he to the men in the forecastle, "we got t' go this
time. 'Tis no use goin' on deck."
But the ship drove through a tickle no wider than twice her beam and
came suddenly into the quiet water of a harbour!
* * * * *
The sealing-schooner _Right and Tight_ struck on the Fish Rocks off
Cape Charles in the dusk of a northeast gale. It is a jagged, black
reef, outlying and isolated; the seas wash over it in heavy weather.
It was a bitter gale; there was ice in the sea, and the wind was wild
and thick with snow; she was driving before it--wrecked, blind,
utterly lost. The breakers flung her on the reef, broke her back,
crunched her, swept the splinters on. Forty-two men were of a sudden
drowned in the sea beyond; but the skipper was left clinging to the
rock in a swirl of receding water.
"Us seed un there in the marnin'," said the old man of Cape Charles
who told me the story. "He were stickin' to it like a mussel, with the
sea breakin' right over un! 'Cod! he were!"
He laughed and shook his head; that was a tribute to the strength and
courage with which the man on the reef had withstood the icy breakers
through the night.
"Look! us couldn't get near un," he went on. "'Twas clear enough t'
see, but the wind was blowin' wonderful, an' the seas was too big for
the skiff. Sure, I _knows_ that; for us tried it.
"'Leave us build a fire!' says my woman. 'Leave us build a fire on the
head!' says she. ''Twill let un know they's folk lookin' on.'
"'Twas a wonderful big fire us set; an' it kep' us warm, so us set
there all day watchin' the skipper o' the _Right an' Tight_ on Fish
Rocks. The big seas jerked un loose an' flung un about, an' many a one
washed right over un; but nar a sea could carry un off. 'Twas a
wonderful sight t' see un knocked off his feet, an' scramble round an'
cotch hold somewheres else. 'Cod! it were--the way that man stuck t'
them slippery rocks all day long!"
He laughed again--not heartlessly; it was the only way in which he
could express his admiration.
"We tried the skiff again afore dark," he continued; "but 'twasn't no
use. The seas was too big. Sure, _he_ knowed that so well as we. So us
had t' leave un there all night.
"'He'll never be there in the marnin',' says my woman.
"'You wait,' says I, 'an' you'll see. I'm thinkin' he will.'
"An' he was, zur--right there on Fish Rocks, same as ever; still
stickin' on like the toughest ol' mussel ever you tasted. Sure, I had
t' rub me eyes when I looked; but 'twas he, never fear--'twas he,
stickin' there like a mussel. But there was no gettin' un then. Us
watched un all that day. 'Twas dark afore us got un ashore.
"'You come nigh it _that_ time,' says I.
"'I'll have t' come a sight nigher,' says he, 'afore _I_ goes!'"
The man had been on the reef more than forty-eight hours!
* * * * *
The _Army Lass_, bound north, was lost in the fog. They hove her to.
All hands knew that she lay somewhere near the coast. The skipper
needed a sight of the rocks--just a glimpse of some headland or
island--to pick the course. It was important that he should have it.
There was an iceberg floating near; it was massive; it appeared to be
steady--and the sea was quiet. From the top of it, he thought (the fog
was dense and seemed to be lying low), he might see far and near. His
crew put him on the ice with the quarter-boat and then hung off a bit.
He clambered up the side of the berg. Near the summit be had to cut
his foothold with an axe. This was unfortunate; for he gave the great
white mass one blow too many. It split under his feet. He fell
headlong into the widening crevice. But he was apparently not a whit
the worse for it when his boat's crew picked him up.
[Illustration: "BOUND NORTH"]
* * * * *
A schooner--let her be called the _Good Fortune_--running through
dense fog, with a fair, high wind and all sail set, struck a "twin"
iceberg bow on. She was wrecked in a flash: her jib-boom was rammed
into her forecastle; her bows were stove in; her topmast snapped and
came crashing to the deck. Then she fell away from the ice; whereupon
the wind caught her, turned her about, and drove her, stern foremost,
into a narrow passage which lay between the two towering sections of
the "twin." She scraped along, striking the ice on either side; and
with every blow, down came fragments from above.
"It rained chunks," said the old skipper who told me the story. "You
couldn't tell, look! what minute you'd get knocked on the head."
The falling ice made great havoc with the deck-works; the boats were
crushed; the "house" was stove in; the deck was littered with ice. But
the _Good Fortune_ drove safely through, was rigged with makeshift
sails, made harbour, was refitted by all hands--the Labradormen can
build a ship with an axe--and continued her voyage.
* * * * *
I have said that the Newfoundlanders occasionally navigate by means of
old rhymes; and this brings me to the case of Zachariah, the skipper
of the _Heavenly Rest_. He was a Newf'un'lander. Neither wind, fog nor
a loppy sea could turn his blood to water. He was a Newf'un'lander of
the hardshell breed. So he sailed the _Heavenly Rest_ without a chart.
To be sure, he favoured the day for getting along, but he ran through
the night when he was crowding south, and blithely took his chance
with islands of ice and rock alike. He had some faith in a "telltale,"
had Zachariah, but he scorned charts. It was his boast that if he
could not carry the harbours and headlands and shallows of five
hundred miles of hungry coast in his head he should give up the
_Heavenly Rest_ and sail a paddle-punt for a living. It was well that
he could--well for the ship and the crew and the folk at home. For, at
the time of which I write, the _Rest_, too light in ballast to
withstand a gusty breeze, was groping through the fog for harbour from
a gale which threatened a swift descent. It was "thick as bags," with
a rising wind running in from the sea, and the surf breaking and
hissing within hearing to leeward.
"We be handy t' Hollow Harbour," said Zachariah.
"Is you sure, skipper?" asked the cook.
"Sure," said Zachariah.
The _Heavenly Rest_ was in desperate case. She was running
in--pursuing an unfaltering course for an unfamiliar, rocky shore. The
warning of the surf sounded in every man's ears. It was imperative
that her true position should soon be determined. The skipper was
perched far forward, peering through the fog for a sight of the coast.
"Sure, an' I hopes," said the man at the wheel, "that she woan't break
her nose on a rock afore the ol' man sees un."
"Joe Bett's P'int!" exclaimed the skipper.
Dead ahead, and high in the air, a mass of rock loomed through the
mist. The skipper had recognized it in a flash. He ran aft and took
the wheel. The _Heavenly Rest_ sheered off and ran to sea.
"We'll run in t' Hollow Harbour," said the skipper.
"Has you ever been there?" said the man who had surrendered the wheel.
"Noa, b'y," the skipper answered, "but I'll get there, whatever."
The nose of the _Heavenly Rest_ was turned shoreward. Sang the
skipper, humming it to himself in a rasping sing-song:
"When Joe Bett's P'int you is abreast,
Dane's Rock bears due west.
West-nor'west you must steer,
'Til Brimstone Head do appear.
"The tickle's narrow, not very wide;
The deepest water's on the starboard side
When in the harbour you is shot,
Four fathoms you has got."
The old song was chart enough for Skipper Zachariah. Three times the
_Heavenly Rest_ ran in and out. Then she sighted Dane's Rock, which
bore due west, true enough. West-nor'west was the course she followed,
running blindly through the fog and heeling to the wind. Brimstone
Head appeared in due time; and in due time the rocks of the
tickle--that narrow entrance to the harbour--appeared in vague,
forbidding form to port and starboard. The schooner ran to the
starboard for the deeper water. Into the harbour she shot; and there
they dropped anchor, caring not at all whether the water was four or
forty fathoms, for it was deep enough. Through the night the gale
tickled the topmasts, but the ship rode smoothly at her anchors, and
Skipper Zachariah's stentorian sleep was not disturbed by any sudden
call to duty.
And the doctor of the Deep Sea Mission has had many a similar
experience.