VI

_FAITH and DUTY_

When Dr. Grenfell first appeared on the coast, I am told, the folk

thought him a madman of some benign description. He knew nothing of

the reefs, the tides, the currents, cared nothing, apparently, for the

winds; he sailed with the confidence and reckless courage of a

Labrador skipper. Fearing at times to trust his schooner in unknown

waters, he went about in a whale-boat, and so hard did he drive her

that he wore her out in a single season. She was capsized with all

hands, once driven out to sea, many times nearly swamped, once blown

on the rocks; never before was a boat put to such tasks on that coast,

and at the end of it she was wrecked beyond repair. Next season he

appeared with a little steam-launch, the _Princess May_--her beam was

eight feet!--in which he not only journeyed from St. Johns to

Labrador, to the astonishment of the whole colony, but sailed the

length of that bitter coast, passing into the gulf and safely out

again, and pushing to the very farthest settlements in the north. Late

in the fall, upon, the return journey to St. Johns in stormy weather,

she was reported lost, and many a skipper, I suppose, wondered that

she had lived so long; but she weathered a gale that bothered the

mail-boat, and triumphantly made St. Johns, after as adventurous a

voyage, no doubt, as ever a boat of her measure survived.

"Sure," said a skipper, "I don't know how she done it. The Lord," he

added, piously, "must kape an eye on that man."

* * * * *

There is a new proverb on the coast. The folk say, when a great wind

blows, "This'll bring Grenfell!" Often it does. He is impatient of

delay, fretted by inaction; a gale is the wind for him--a wind to take

him swiftly towards the place ahead. Had he been a weakling, he would

long ago have died on the coast; had he been a coward, a multitude of

terrors would long ago have driven him to a life ashore; had he been

anything but a true man and tender, indeed, he would long ago have

retreated under the suspicion and laughter of the folk. But he has

outsailed the Labrador skippers--out-dared them--done deeds of courage

under their very eyes that they would shiver to contemplate,--never in

a foolhardy spirit; always with the object of kindly service. So he

has the heart and willing hand of every honest man on the

Labrador--and of none more than of the men of his crew, who take the

chances with him; they are wholly devoted.

One of his engineers, for example, once developed the unhappy habit of

knocking the cook down.

"You must keep your temper," said the doctor. "This won't do, you

know."

But there came an unfortunate day when, being out of temper, the

engineer again knocked the cook down.

"This is positively disgraceful!" said the doctor. "I can't keep a

quarrelsome fellow aboard the mission-ship. Remember that, if you

will, when next you feel tempted to strike the cook."

The engineer protested that he would never again lay hands on the

cook, whatever the provocation. But again he lost his temper, and down

went the poor cook, flat on his back.

"I'll discharge you," said the doctor, angrily, "at the end of the

cruise!"

The engineer pleaded for another chance. He was denied. From day to

day he renewed his plea, but to no purpose, and at last the crew came

to the conclusion that something really ought to be done for the

engineer, who was visibly fretting himself thin.

"Very well," said the doctor to the engineer; "I'll make this

agreement with you. If ever again you knock down the cook, I'll put

you ashore at the first land we come to, and you may get back to St.

Johns as best you can."

It was a hard alternative. The doctor is not a man to give or take

when the bargain has been struck; the engineer knew that he would

surely go ashore somewhere on that desolate coast, whether the land

was a barren island or a frequented harbour, if ever again the cook

tempted him beyond endurance.

"I'll stand by it, sir," he said, nevertheless; "for I don't want to

leave you."

* * * * *

In the course of time the _Princess May_ was wrecked or worn out. Then

came the _Julia Sheridan_, thirty-five feet long, which the mission

doctor bought while she yet lay under water from her last wreck; he

raised her, refitted her with what money he had, and pursued his

venturesome and beneficent career, until she, too, got beyond so hard

a service. Many a gale she weathered, off "the worst coast in the

world"--often, indeed, in thick, wild weather, the doctor himself

thought the little craft would go down; but she is now happily

superannuated, carrying the mail in the quieter waters of Hamilton

Inlet. Next came the _Sir Donald_--a stout ship, which in turn

disappeared, crushed in the ice. The _Strathcona_, with a hospital

amidships, is now doing duty; and she will continue to go up and down

the coast, in and out of the inlets, until she in her turn finds the

ice and the wind and the rocks too much for her.

"'Tis bound t' come, soon or late," said a cautious friend of the

mission. "He drives her too hard. He've a right t' do what he likes

with his own life, I s'pose, but he've a call t' remember that the

crew has folks t' home."

* * * * *

But the mission doctor is not inconsiderate; he is in a hurry--the

coast is long, the season short, the need such as to wring a man's

heart. Every new day holds an opportunity for doing a good deed--not

if he dawdles in the harbours when a gale is abroad, but only if he

passes swiftly from place to place, with a brave heart meeting the

dangers as they come. He is the only doctor to visit the Labrador

shore of the Gulf, the Strait shore of Newfoundland, the populous east

coast of the northern peninsula of Newfoundland, the only doctor known

to the Esquimaux and poor "liveyeres" of the northern coast of

Labrador, the only doctor most of the "liveyeres" and green-fish

catchers of the middle coast can reach, save the hospital physician at

Indian Harbour. He has a round of three thousand miles to make. It is

no wonder that he "drives" the little steamer--even at full steam,

with all sail spread (as I have known him to do), when the fog is

thick and the sea is spread with great bergs.

"I'm in a hurry," he said, with an impatient sigh. "The season's late.

We must get along."

* * * * *

We fell in with him at Red Ray in the Strait, in the thick of a heavy

gale from the northeast. The wind had blown for two days; the sea was

running high, and still fast rising; the schooners were huddled in the

harbours, with all anchors out, many of them hanging on for dear life,

though they lay in shelter. The sturdy little coastal boat, with four

times the strength of the _Strathcona_, had made hard work of it that

day--there was a time when she but held her own off a lee shore in the

teeth of the big wind.

It was drawing on towards night when the doctor came aboard for a

surgeon from Boston, a specialist, for whom he had been waiting.

"I see you've steam up," said the captain of the coastal boat. "I hope

you're not going out in _this_, doctor!"

"I have some patients at the Battle Harbour Hospital, waiting for our

good friend from Boston," said the doctor, briskly. "I'm in a hurry.

Oh, yes, I'm going out!"

"For God's sake, don't!" said the captain earnestly.

The doctor's eye chanced to fall on the gentleman from Boston, who was

bending over his bag--a fine, fearless fellow, whom the prospect of

putting out in that chip of a steamer would not have perturbed, though

the doctor may then not have known it. At any rate, as though

bethinking himself of something half forgotten, he changed his mind of

a sudden.

"Oh, very well," he said. "I'll wait until the gale blows out."

He managed to wait a day--no longer; and the wind was still wild, the

sea higher than ever; there was ice in the road, and the fog was

dense. Then out he went into the thick of it. He bumped an iceberg,

scraped a rock, fairly smothered the steamer with broken water; and at

midnight--the most marvellous feat of all--he crept into Battle

Harbour through a narrow, difficult passage, and dropped anchor off

the mission wharf.

Doubtless he enjoyed the experience while it lasted--and promptly

forgot it, as being commonplace. I have heard of him, caught in the

night in a winter's gale of wind and snow, threading a tumultuous,

reef-strewn sea, his skipper at the wheel, himself on the bowsprit,

guiding the ship by the flash and roar of breakers, while the sea

tumbled over him. If the chance passenger who told me the story is to

be believed, upon that trying occasion the doctor had the "time of his

life."

"All that man wanted," I told the doctor subsequently, "was, as he

says, 'to bore a hole in the bottom of the ship and crawl out.'"

"Why!" exclaimed the doctor, with a laugh of surprise. "He wasn't

_frightened_, was he?"

[Illustration: "THE HOSPITAL SHIP, STRATHCONA"]

Fear of the sea is quite incomprehensible to this man. The passenger

was very much frightened; he vowed never to sail with "that devil"

again. But the doctor is very far from being a dare-devil; though he

is, to be sure, a man altogether unafraid; it seems to me that his

heart can never have known the throb of fear. Perhaps that is in part

because he has a blessed lack of imagination, in part, perhaps,

because he has a body as sound as ever God gave to a man, and has used

it as a man should; but it is chiefly because of his simple and

splendid faith that he is an instrument in God's hands--God's to do

with as He will, as he would say. His faith is exceptional, I am

sure--childlike, steady, overmastering, and withal, if I may so

characterize it, healthy. It takes something such as the faith he has

to move a man to run a little steamer at full speed in the fog when

there is ice on every hand. It is hardly credible, but quite true, and

short of the truth: neither wind nor ice nor fog, nor all combined,

can keep the _Strathcona_ in harbour when there comes a call for help

from beyond. The doctor clambers cheerfully out on the bowsprit and

keeps both eyes open. "As the Lord wills," says he, "whether for wreck

or service. I am about His business."

It is a sublime expression of the old faith.