IX

_On The FRENCH SHORE_

Doctor Grenfell appears to have a peculiar affection for the

outporters of what is locally known as the "French Shore"--that

stretch of coast lying between Cape John and the northernmost point of

Newfoundland: it is one section of the shore upon which the French

have fishing rights. This is the real Newfoundland; to the writer

there is no Newfoundland apart from that long strip of rock against

which the sea forever breaks: none that is not of punt, of wave, of

fish, of low sky and of a stalwart, briny folk. Indeed, though he has

joyously lived weeks of blue weather in the outports, with the sea all

a-ripple and flashing and the breeze blowing warm, in retrospect land

and people resolve themselves into a rocky harbour and a sturdy little

lad with a question--the harbour, gray and dripping wet, a cluster of

whitewashed cottages perched on the rocks, towards which a tiny,

red-sailed punt is beating from the frothy open, with the white of

breakers on either hand, while a raw wind lifts the fog from the black

inland hills, upon which ragged patches of snow lie melting; the lad,

stout, frank-eyed, tow-headed, browned by the wind, bending over the

splitting-table with a knife in his toil-worn young hand and the blood

of cod dripping from his fingers, and looking wistfully up, at last,

to ask a question or two concerning certain old, disquieting

mysteries.

"Where do the tide go, zur, when 'e runs out?" he plainted. "Where do

'e go, zur? Sure, zur, _you_ is able t' tell me that, isn't you?"

* * * * *

So, in such a land--where, on some bleak stretches of coast, the

potatoes are grown in imported English soil, where most gardens, and

some graveyards, are made of earth scraped from the hollows of the

hills, where four hundred and nineteen bushels of lean wheat are grown

in a single year, and the production of beef-cattle is insignificant

as compared with the production of babies--in such a land there is

nothing for the young man to do but choose his rock, build his little

cottage and his flake and his stage, marry a maid of the harbour when

the spring winds stir his blood, gather his potato patch, get a pig

and a goat, and go fishing in his punt. And they do fish, have always

fished since many generations ago the island was first settled by

adventurous Devon men, and must continue to fish to the end of time.

Out of a total male population of one hundred thousand, which includes

the city-folk of St. Johns and an amazing proportion of babies and

tender lads, about fifty-five thousand men and grown boys catch fish

for a living.

"Still an' all, they's no country in the world like this!" said the

old skipper. "Sure, a man's set up in life when he haves a pig an' a

punt an' a potato patch."

"But have you ever seen another?" I asked.

"I've been so far as Saint Johns, zur, an' once t' the waterside o'

Boston," was the surprising reply, "an' I'm thinkin' I knows what the

world's like."

So it is with most Newfoundlanders: they love their land with an

intolerant prejudice; and most are content with the life they lead.

"The Newfoundlander comes back," is a significant proverb of the

outports; and, "White Bay's good enough for me," said a fishwife to me

once, when I asked her why she still remained in a place so bleak and

barren, "for I've heered tell 'tis wonderful smoky an' n'isy 't Saint

Johns." The life they live, and strangely love, is exceeding toilsome.

Toil began for a gray-haired, bony-handed old woman whom I know when

she was so young that she had to stand on a tub to reach the

splitting-table; when, too, to keep her awake and busy, late o'

nights, her father would make believe to throw a bloody cod's head at

her. It began for that woman's son when, at five or six years old, he

was just able to spread the fish to dry on the flake, and continued in

earnest, a year or two later, when first he was strong enough to keep

the head of his father's punt up to the wind. But they seem not to

know that fishing is a hard or dangerous employment: for instance, a

mild-eyed, crooked old fellow--he was a cheerful Methodist, too, and

subject to "glory-fits"--who had fished from one harbour for sixty

years, computed for me that he had put out to sea in his punt at least

twenty thousand times, that he had been frozen to the seat of his punt

many times, that he had been swept to sea with the ice-packs, six

times, that he had weathered six hundred gales, great and small, and

that he had been wrecked more times than he could "just mind" at the

moment; yet he was the only old man ever I met who seemed honestly to

wish that he might live his life over again!

The hook-and-line man has a lonely time of it. From earliest dawn,

while the night yet lies thick on the sea, until in storm or calm or

favouring breeze he makes harbour in the dusk, he lies off shore,

fishing--tossing in the lop of the grounds, with the waves to balk and

the wind to watch warily, while he tends his lines. There is no jolly

companionship of the forecastle and turf hut for him--no new scene, no

hilarious adventure; nor has he the expectation of a proud return to

lighten his toil. In the little punt he has made with his own hands he

is forever riding an infinite expanse, which, in "fish weather," is

melancholy, or threatening, or deeply solemn, as it may chance--all

the while and all alone confronting the mystery and terrible immensity

of the sea. It may be that he gives himself over to aimless musing,

or, even less happily, to pondering certain dark mysteries of the

soul; and so it comes about that the "mad-house 't Saint Johns" is

inadequate to accommodate the poor fellows whom lonely toil has bereft

of their senses--melancholiacs, idiots and maniacs "along o'

religion."

Notwithstanding all, optimism persists everywhere on the coast. One

old fisherman counted himself favoured above most men because he had

for years been able to afford the luxury of cream of tartar; and

another, a brawny giant, confessed to having a disposition so

pertinaciously happy that he had come to regard a merry heart as his

besetting sin. Sometimes an off-shore gale puts an end to all the

fishing; sometimes it is a sudden gust, sometimes a big wave,

sometimes a confusing mist, more often long exposure to spray and

shipped water and soggy winds. It was a sleety off-shore gale, coming

at the end of a sunny, windless day, that froze or drowned thirty men

off Trinity Bay in a single night; and it was a mere puff on a "civil"

evening--but a swift, wicked little puff, sweeping round Breakheart

Head--that made a widow of Elizabeth Rideout o' Duck Cove and took her

young son away. Often, however, the hook-and-line man fishes his

eighty years of life, and dies in his bed as cheerfully as he has

lived and as poor as he was born.

X

_SOME OUTPORT FOLK_

It had been a race against the peril of fog and the discomfort of a

wet night all the way from Hooping Harbour. We escaped the scowl of

the northeast, the gray, bitter wind and the sea it was fast fretting

to a fury, when the boat rounded Canada Head and ran into the shelter

of the bluffs at Englee--into the damp shadows sombrely gathered

there. When the punt was moored to the stage-head, the fog had

thickened the dusk into deep night, and the rain had soaked us to the

skin. There was a light, a warm, yellow light, shining from a window,

up along shore and to the west. We stumbled over an erratic footpath,

which the folk of the place call "the roaad"--feeling for direction,

chancing the steps, splashing through pools of water, tripping over

sharp rocks. The whitewashed cottages of the village, set on the

hills, were like the ghosts of houses. They started into sight, hung

suspended in the night, vanished as we trudged on. The folk were all

abed--all save Elisha Duckworthy, that pious giant, who had been late

beating in from the fishing grounds off the Head. It was Elisha who

opened the door to our knock, and sent a growling, bristling dog back

to his place with a gentle word.

[Illustration: "THE WHITEWASHED COTTAGES ON THE HILLS"]

"Will you not----"

"Sure, sir," said Elisha, a smile spreading from his eyes to the very

tip of his great beard, "'twould be a hard man an' a bad Christian

that would turn strangers away. Come in, sir! 'Tis a full belly you'll

have when you leaves the table, an' 'tis a warm bed you'll sleep in,

this night."

After family prayers, in which we, the strangers he had taken in, were

commended to the care and mercy of God in such simple, feeling phrases

as proved the fine quality of this man's hospitality and touched our

hearts in their innermost parts, Elisha invited us to sit by the

kitchen fire with him "for a spell." While the dogs snored in chorus

with a young kid and a pig by the roaring stove, and the chickens

rustled and clucked in their coop under the bare spruce sofa which

Elisha had made, and the wind flung the rain against the window-panes,

we three talked of weather and fish and toil and peril and death. It

may be that a cruel coast and a sea quick to wrath engender a certain

dread curiosity concerning the "taking off" in a man who fights day by

day to survive the enmity of both. Elisha talked for a long time of

death and heaven and hell. Then, solemnly, his voice fallen to a

whisper, he told of his father, Skipper George, a man of weakling

faith, who had been reduced to idiocy by wondering what came after

death--by wondering, wondering, wondering, in sunlight and mist and

night, off shore in the punt, labouring at the splitting-table, at

work on the flake, everywhere, wondering all the time where souls took

their flight.

"'Twere wonderin' whether hell do be underground or not," said Elisha,

"that turned un over at last. Sure, sir," with a sigh, "'twere doubt,

you sees. 'Tis faith us must have."

Elisha stroked the nearest dog with a gentle hand--a mighty hand,

toil-worn and misshapen, like the man himself.

"Do your besettin' sin get the best o' you, sir?" he said, looking up.

It may be that he craved to hear a confession of failure that he might

afterwards sustain himself with the thought that no man is

invulnerable. "Sure, we've all besettin' sins. When we do be snatched

from the burnin' brands, b'y, a little spark burns on, an' on, an' on;

an' he do be wonderful hard t' douse out. 'Tis like the eye us must

pluck out by command o' the Lard. With some men 'tis a taste for

baccy. With some 'tis a scarcity o' salt in the fish. With some 'tis

too much water in the lobster cans. With some 'tis a cravin' for

sweetness. With me 'tis worse nor all. Sure, sir," he went on, "I've

knowed some men so fond, so wonderful fond, o' baccy that um smoked

the shoes off their children's feet. 'Tis their besettin' sin,

sir--'tis their besettin' sin. But 'tis not baccy that worries me. The

taste fell away when I were took from sin. 'Tis not that. 'Tis worse.

Sure, with me, sir," he said, brushing his hand over his forehead in a

weary, despairing way, "'tis laughin'. 'Tis the sin of jokin' that puts

my soul in danger o' bein' hove overboard into the burnin' lake. I

were a wonderful joker when I were a sinful man. 'Twas all I lived

for--not t' praise God an' prepare my soul for death. When I gets up

in the marnin', now, sir, I feels like jokin' like what I used t' do,

particular if it do be a fine day. Ah, sir," with a long sigh, "'tis a

great temptation, I tells you--'tis a wonderful temptation. But 'tis

not set down in the Book that Jesus Christ smiled an' laughed, an'

with the Lard's help I'll beat the devil yet. I'll beat un," he cried,

as if inspired to some supreme struggle. "I'll beat un," he repeated,

clinching his great hands. "I will!"

Elisha bade us good-night with a solemn face. A little smile--a poor,

frightened little smile of tender feeling for us--flickered in his

eyes for the space of a breath. But he snuffed it out relentlessly,

expressed his triumph with a flash of his eye, and went away to bed.

In the morning, when the sun called us up, he had come back from the

early morning's fishing, and was singing a most doleful hymn of death

and judgment over the splitting-table in the stage. The sunlight was

streaming into the room, and the motes were all dancing merrily in the

beam. The breeze was rustling the leaves of a sickly bush under the

window--coaxing them to hopeful whisperings. I fancied that the sea

was all blue and rippling, and that the birds were flitting through

the sunlight, chirping their sympathy with the smiling day. But

Elisha, his brave heart steeled against the whole earth's frivolous

mood, continued heroically to pour forth his dismal song.

Twilight was filling the kitchen with strange shadows. "We had

disposed of Aunt Ruth's watered fish and soaked hard-bread with hunger

for a relish. Uncle Simon's glance was mournfully intent upon the bare

platter.

"But," said Aunt Ruth, with obstinate emphasis, "I knows they be. 'Tis

not what we hears we believe, sir. No, 'tis not what we hears. 'Tis

what we sees. An' I've seed un."

"'Tis true, sir," said Uncle Simon, looking up. "They be nar a doubt

about it."

"But where," said I, "did she get her looking-glass?"

"They be many a trader wrecked on this coast, sir," said Uncle Simon.

"'Twere not a mermaid I seed," said Aunt Ruth. "'Twere a mer_man_."

"Sure," said Uncle Simon, mysteriously, "they do be in the sea the

shape o' all that's on the land--shape for shape, sir. They be

sea-horses an' sea-cows an' sea-dogs, Why not the shape o' humans?"

"Well," said Aunt Ruth, "'twas when I were a little maid. An' 'twas in

a gale o' wind. I goes down t' Billy Cove t' watch me father bring the

punt in, an' I couldn't see un anywhere. So I thought he were

drownded. 'Twere handy t' dark when I seed the merman rise from the

water. He were big an' black--so black as the stove. I could see the

eyes of un so plain as I can see yours. He were not good lookin'--no,

I'll say that much--he were not good lookin'. He waved his arms, an'

beckoned an' beckoned an' beckoned. But, sure, sir, I wouldn't go, for

I were feared. ''Tis the soul o' me father,' thinks I. 'Sure, the sea's

cotched un.' So I runs home an' tells me mother; an' she says 'twere a

merman. I _knows_ they be mermans an' mermaids, 'cause I'se seed un.

'Tis what we sees we believes."

"'Tis said," said Uncle Simon, "that if you finds un on the rocks an'

puts un in the water they gives you three wishes; an' all you has t'

do is wish, an'----"

"'Tis said," said Aunt Ruth, with a prodigious frown across the table,

"that the mermaids trick the fishermen t' the edge o' the sea an'

steals un away. Uncle Simon Ride," she went on, severely, "if ever

you----"

Uncle Simon looked sheepish. "Sure, woman," said he, the evidences of

guilt plain on his face, "they be no danger t' me. 'Twould take a

clever mermaid t'----"

"Uncle Simon Ride," said Aunt Ruth, "nar another word. An' if you

don't put my spinnin' wheel t' rights this night I'll give you your

tea in a mug[4] t'-morrow--an' mind that, sir, mind that!"

After we had left the table Uncle Simon took me aside. "She do be a

wonderful woman," said he, meaning Aunt Ruth. Then, earnestly, "She've

no cause t' be jealous o' the mermaids. No, sir--sure, no."

* * * * *

It is difficult to convey an adequate conception of the barrenness of

this coast. If you were to ask a fisherman of some remote

outport what his flour was made of he would stare at you and be mute.

"Wheat" would be a new, meaningless word to many a man of those

places. It may be that the words of the Old Skipper of Black Harbour

will help the reader to an understanding of the high value set upon

the soil and all it produces.

"Come with me," said the Old Skipper, "an' I'll show you so fine a

garden as ever you seed."

The garden was on an island two miles off the mainland. Like many

another patch of ground it had to be cultivated from a distant place.

It was an acre, or thereabouts, which had been "won from the

wilderness" by the labour of several generations; and it was owned by

eleven families. This was not a garden made by gathering soil and

dumping it in a hollow, as most gardens are; it was a real "meadow."

"Look at them potatoes, sir," said the skipper. He radiated pride in

the soil's achievement as he waited for my outburst of congratulation.

The potatoes, owing to painstaking fertilization with small fish, had

attained admirable size--in tops. But the hay!

"'Tis fine grass," said the skipper. "Fine as ever you seed!"

It was thin, and nearer gray than yellow; and every stalk was weak in

the knees. I do it more than justice when I write that it rose above

my shoe tops.

"'Tis sizable hay," said the skipper. "'Tis time I had un cut."

On the way back the skipper caught sight of a skiff-load of hay, which

old John Burns was sculling from Duck Island. He was careful to point

it out as good evidence of the fertility of that part of the world. By

and by we came to a whisp of hay which had fallen from the skiff. It

was a mere handful floating on the quiet water.

"The wastefulness of that dunderhead!" exclaimed the skipper.

He took the boat towards the whisp of hay, puffing his wrath all the

while.

"Pass the gaff, b'y," he said.

With the utmost care he hooked the whisp of hay--to the last

straw--and drew it over the side.

"'Tis a sin," said he, "t' waste good hay like that."

Broad fields, hay and wheat and corn, all yellow, waving to the

breeze--the sun flooding all--were far, far beyond this man's

imagination. He did not know that in other lands the earth yields

generously to the men who sow seed. How little did the harvest mean to

him! The world is a world of rock and sea--of sea and naked rock. Soil

is gathered in buckets. Gardens are made by hand. The return is

precious in the sight of men.

* * * * *

Uncle Zeb Gale--Daddy Gale, who had long ago lost count of his

grandchildren, they were so many--Ol' Zeb tottered up from the sea,

gasping and coughing, but broadly smiling in the intervals. He had a

great cod in one hand, and his old cloth cap was in the other. His

head was bald, and his snowy beard covered his chest. Toil and the

weight of years had bowed his back, spun a film over his eyes and

cracked his voice. But neither toil nor age nor hunger nor cold had

broken his cheery interest in all the things of life. Ol' Zeb smiled

in a sweetly winning way. He stopped to pass a word with the stranger,

who was far away from home, and therefore, no doubt, needed a

heartening word or two.

"Fine even, zur," said he.

"Tis that, Uncle Zeb. How have the fish been to-day?"

"Oh, they be a scattered fish off the Mull, zur. But 'tis only a

scattered one. They don't run in, zur, like what they used to when I

were young, sure."

"How many years ago, sir?"

[Illustration: "TOIL"]

"'Tis many year, zur," said Uncle Zeb, smiling indulgence with my

youth. "They was fish a-plenty when--when--when I were young. 'Tis not

what it used t' be--no, no, zur; not at all. Sure, zur, I been goin'

t' the grounds off the Mull since I were seven years old. Since I were

seven! I be eighty-three now, zur. Seventy-six year, zur, I has fished

out o' this here harbour."

Uncle Zeb stopped to wheeze a bit. He was out of breath with this long

speech. And when he had wheezed a bit, a spasm of hard coughing took

him. He was on the verge of the last stage of consumption, was Uncle

Zeb.

"'Tis a fine harbour t' fish from, zur," he gasped. "They be none

better. Least-ways, so they tells me--them that's cruised about a

deal. Sure, I've never seen another. 'Tis t' Conch[5] I've wanted t'

go since I were a young feller. I'll see un yet, zur--sure, an' I

will."

"You are eighty-three?" said I.

"I be the oldest man t' the harbour, zur. I marries the maids an' the

young fellers when they's no parson about."

"You have fished out of this harbour for seventy-six years?" said I,

in vain trying to comprehend the deprivation and dull toil of that

long life--trying to account for the childlike smile which had

continued to the end of it.

"Ay, zur," said Uncle Zeb. "But, sure, they be plenty o' time t' see

Conch yet. Me father were ninety when he died. I be only

eighty-three."

Uncle Zeb tottered up the hill. Soon the dusk swallowed his old hulk.

I never saw him again.

* * * * *

We were seated on the Head, high above the sea, watching the fleet of

punts come from the Mad Mull grounds and from the nets along shore,

for it was evening. Jack had told me much of the lore of

lobster-catching and squid-jigging. Of winds and tides and long

breakers he had given me solemn warnings--and especially of that

little valley down which the gusts came, no man knew from where. He

had imparted certain secrets concerning the whereabouts of gulls'

nests and juniper-berry patches, for I had won his confidence. I had

been informed that Uncle Tom Bull's punt was in hourly danger of

turning over because her spread of canvas was "scandalous" great, that

Bill Bludgell kept the "surliest dog t' the harbour," that the "goaats

was wonderful hard t' find" in the fog, that a brass bracelet would

cure salt-water sores on the wrists, that--I cannot recall it all. He

had "mocked" a goat, a squid, a lamb, old George Walker at prayer, and

"Uncle" Ruth berating "Aunt" Simon for leaving the splitting-table

unclean.

Then he sang this song, in a thin, sweet treble, which was good to

hear:

"'Way down on Pigeon Pond Island,

When daddy comes home from swilin',[6]

(Maggoty fish hung up in the air,

Fried in maggoty butter)!

Cakes and tea for breakfast,

Pork and duff for dinner,

Cakes and tea for supper,

When daddy comes home from swilin'."

He asked me riddles, thence he passed to other questions, for he was a

boy who wondered, and wondered, what lay beyond those places which he

could see from the highest hill. I described a street and a pavement,

told him that the earth was round, defined a team of horses, corrected

his impression that a church organ was played with the mouth, and

denied the report that the flakes and stages of New York were the

largest in the world. The boys of the outports do not play

games--there is no time, and at any rate, the old West Country games

have not come down to this generation with the dialect, so I told him

how to play tag, hide-and-go-seek and blind man's buff, and proved to

him that they might be interesting, though I had to admit that they

might not be profitable in certain cases.

"Some men," said I, at last, "have never seen the sea."

He looked at me and laughed his unbelief. "Sure," said he, "not a

hundred haven't?"

"Many more than that."

"'Tis hard t' believe, zur," he said. "Terrible hard."

"We were silent while he thought it over.

"What's the last harbour in the world?" he asked.