Читать книгу Northern Neighbours: Stories of the Labrador People - Wilfred T. Grenfell - Страница 8

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“Whatever is that schooner bound south for at this time of year, skipper?” I asked a fisherman who had just come aboard the mission ship with a “kink” (a sprain) in his back, as I looked up and saw a large, white-winged vessel bowling along to the south’ard with every inch of canvas spread to the spanking breeze. “Her decks seem as crowded as if they were Noah’s Ark.”

He looked at her for a long time, and then replied in his deliberate way: “I guess, Doctor, that that’s the Yankee what’s been down north after some Huskies. What does they do with ’em, Doctor, when they get ’em?” he asked in a tone of voice that implied that they might be going to make them into sausages.

“Why, put them in a cage, like a lot of monkeys, and get people to pay ten cents a head to look at them,” I replied. “They are going to the World’s Fair, and it’s very little good the poor souls will get there. The Moravian Brethren at the Mission station have tried all they can to prevent their going, but they make such big promises that the poor creatures think they will never have to work again—and that’s true, unless they work in heaven, for most of them will never come back to the Labrador.”

“Well! May God keep ’em,” he replied reverently.

The schooner soon disappeared over the horizon, and with her vanished from our minds all thoughts of her unfortunate occupants.

The Eskimo encampment at the World’s Fair was a popular sideshow. Sightseers of every sort crowded in to see the “Eskimos from Labrador,” just as they did the jumping elephants or the Ferris wheel.

Most popular among them was a little boy—son of a chief from the north whose name was Kaiachououk; the “trippers” liked him especially for his merry laughing manner, his striking dark face, jet-black hair, and far-away, deep brown eyes. Active as a squirrel, rejoicing in the strength of youth that had been perfected by a life in God’s out-of-doors, he would make the enclosure ring with the crack of his thirty-foot dog whip and the buoyancy of his merry laughter. Many a nickel was thrown in, that little Prince Pomiuk might show his dexterity with the weapon which not a single grown man in all the crowd could wield. He could make the coin dance on the ground as his whirling lash fell on it from thirty feet away, with a loud crack that eclipsed the rifle shots from the shooting gallery hard by. It would seem that there was no more popular figure in all that vast exhibition than this child of the far north. There was certainly no one more light-hearted in all that throng than little Prince Pomiuk, of the Labrador Eskimos.

At that time the shadow of the evil days to come had not yet fallen on him, and with boyish unconsciousness of all that the city in summer was costing a constitution only acclimatized to the Northern frost, no one was enjoying more than he “all the fun of the Fair.”

But among the masses of sightseers, for whom these humble folk were only as the attraction of a Roman holiday, was a man no longer young; a man who, in the prime of life, had given of his best years for the dwellers of those very “regions beyond,” from which the child had been lured.

Though still young enough to enjoy the countless attractions and appreciate the educational opportunities of the many exhibits from the ends of the earth, it was yet only a veritable call from the wild that had brought this one man all the long way to the Fair from his New England home.

There were sure to be some children of North Labrador. God would permit him the joy once again of giving in his own person yet another message to them. For many years he had been able to serve them only as one of the Lord’s remembrancers, his health having forced him to return from his chosen work forty years previously.

Day after day this privileged man had the opportunity of visiting the Eskimos—day after day he reveled in the enjoyment of it.

The good days for Pomiuk, however, went all too quickly, and then came a day when his friend found him in one of the dark huts, lying on a bed of sickness. An injury to his thigh had ended by the insidious onset of disease of the hip joint, and the merry child had already commenced the living agony of the victim of tuberculosis.

A little later the Exhibition closed, and the poor Eskimos commenced their long journey to their far-off northern fortresses. Alas! the promises of wealth and personal conduct home were never realized, and the remnant of them straggled back as best they could, penniless and unfriended.

During the whole of the following winter the little party to which Pomiuk belonged was ice-bound on the northeast coast of Newfoundland. Here they passed a tolerable time in a house kindly loaned them by a Christian postmaster. Alas, Prince Pomiuk could only hobble about on a pair of crutches, and play with Evelina, a little girl born at the Exhibition.

However, this waif of the Northland still lived in the heart of his friend of the Exhibition. He sent after the boy letter after letter, till he heard that the ice of winter had once more gone and the sea was again open to the plucky fishermen, who ply their hazardous calling even among the eternal ice floes of the Arctic seas.

On one of these adventurous craft little Pomiuk had once more begun his wanderings, and it seemed as though again he had disappeared into the unknown. Letters failed to reach him, and no answers came from the silent north. It seemed indeed as if the Lord of the children had forgotten this “little one,” and his friend Mr. Martin was sad of heart.

Meanwhile Pomiuk had reached as far north as the entrance to Hudson Bay. His increasing sufferings had made it impossible for the band to take him farther that year. The good Brethren of the northern Moravian station of Ramah had there done what they could to help him, and but for their kindness he would not have lived the winter through.

Meanwhile our new hospital steamer, which had met with such terrible disaster the previous year, had been put in repair once more. The long tow to St. John’s had been safely managed through the skill and courage of the captain, and in June of 1895 we again steamed out through the Narrows on our journey “down north.” This year we determined to carry out our great desire to push as far north as the farthest family of white settlers, wherever that might be.

Late in the summer we found ourselves off the entrance to that marvelous ravine in the vast mountains of the north named Naknak. Over the frowning cliffs two thousand feet high hung heavy banks of sea fog, hiding their jagged peaks, and roofing the weird opening as if it were the fearsome entrance to some grim ogre’s cavern. Our lead found no bottom when we tried to sound it. There were breakers thundering on hidden reefs across the opening, and as these were not on the chart we were doubtful if this was really the entrance we were searching for.

However, by cautious pushing ahead we at last found ourselves between lofty naked walls, the tops hidden in wet fog; pushing on, we detected light streaming in from above, and found ourselves, as it were, in an endless ravine, closed behind us by a great black gate. Cautiously we crept along till it was dark. We were now twenty miles from the entrance, and uncertain what to do, for we were still unable to get bottom for an anchorage. Yet we knew we might run ashore in the dark if we did not bring up.

At last the watch sang out, “Light on the starboard bow.” The night was still. The sound of our steamer whistle echoed and re-echoed in endless cadences between the mighty cliffs.

Then three rifle shots rang out in answer, followed a little later by a boat bumping into our quarter in the darkness as we lay drifting on the quiet surface of the fjord, and a hearty Englishman jumped over our rail.

“Who on earth are you?” he asked, “and however did you get here? The hospital ship, eh? I’ve heard of her from the captain of the Erik.” The Erik was the steamer of the Hudson’s Bay Fur Company, that comes once a year to take the catch of fur home to market; and this was George Ford, their agent, who, with his family, had for twenty years lived alone at the bottom of this seemingly terrible fjord. During the evening, which we spent together, our friend told us that the Eskimos were nearly all away hunting, but that one group, still farther up the fjord, had with them a dying boy.

It was like looking for a needle in a haystack to search for a tiny tent no bigger than one of the boulders that lay in thousands at the feet of those stupendous cliffs. Next morning, however, we climbed a high promontory and searched the shores of the inlet carefully with our glasses. There it was, sure enough, nestling in near the mouth of a distant mighty torrent that was rushing headlong down the cliffs.

“Get out the jolly-boat!” We now had our bearings of the camp, and were soon peeping into the little skin “tubik,” or tent, of an Eskimo family.

Sitting on a heap at one end of the tent, covered with deerskins, was an Eskimo woman with two tiny girls, while lying on the stones of the beach that served for a floor lay a naked boy of about eleven years, his long jet-black hair cut in a straight frieze across his forehead, his face drawn with pain and neglect, his large, deep, hazel eyes fixed wonderingly on us strangers. He didn’t move, even when I spoke to him, for his hip was broken as well as diseased. A man called Kupah was the owner of the tent. The little boy was Pomiuk.

While he was at the Fair his father, Kaiachououk, had been treacherously murdered by a man called Kalleligak. His mother had married again and was away across the mountains. She had taken with her the rest of the family.

“All we can do, Mr. Ford, is to take the child back with us. It would be kinder to give him a lethal draught than to leave him to suffer here. See what Kupah says about giving him to me for good.”

Mr. Ford explained to Kupah that we were good medicine men, and wanted to make the child well; that he would be no use fishing, and indeed was only a hindrance now. As I watched him narrowly to see what fate awaited Pomiuk, I saw him, in the true Eskimo style, shrug his shoulders and say “Ajauna mat,” the equivalent of “It can’t be helped,” or “Do as you like.”

Having put Pomiuk to sleep we carried him to Mr. Ford’s house on an improvised stretcher. Here he was washed and dressed, and as we steamed south again the child, wrapped in a big white bearskin, was lying on the deck, following with his large pathetic eyes every movement of these strangers.

Only one treasured possession he had when he came to us besides his naked body. It was a letter we had received for him from the Hudson’s Bay agent, which had come from Pomiuk’s friend of the World’s Fair, Mr. Martin of Andover. In it was his photograph, and when I showed it to Pomiuk he said simply: “Me even love him.” So a letter was sent back to the address given, and three months later came an answer.

“Keep him,” it said. “Don’t let him be lost again. I am a poor man myself, but if you will look after the child, I will pay all expenses.”

As our steamer traveled south, visiting the harbors along the way, the heart of one of the brave Moravian missionaries, Brother Schmidt, was touched for the lonely child, and he gave him a little concertina to play. This served to while away many a weary hour till at length Pomiuk could play several simple tunes. Among these was a hymn he had learned at Ramah. It ran thus: “Takpanele, Takpanele, Merngotorvikangilak,”—“Up in heaven, up in heaven, there shall be no sorrow there.” He would sing it for us as his health improved, accompanying himself, and ending always with his merry laughter when he noticed the men on deck were stopping to listen to him.

Out in the Atlantic, on an island, two hundred miles north of the Straits of Belle Isle, we had built one of our little hospitals. Here we left Pomiuk until in November we had to move him up the long bay. For only there are trees, which give some shelter from the terrible blizzards that make life on the outside islands impossible in winter.

During this winter a visiting clergyman saw fit to baptize the boy and gave him as a token the additional name of Gabriel—the angel of comfort.

I had to go home to England that winter, but in spirit I was often in Labrador. On my return almost the first sound to welcome me was the child’s joyful laughter as he told me, “Gabriel Pomiuk, me.” He had hung out of his window a Red Cross flag, tied on the end of his crutch when he heard our ship was in the offing once more. He was just crying with joy when we came tramping up the stairway.

As a true Christian should always be, Pomiuk was happy all the day long, and the tenor of his letters to his far-off friends in America is expressed best in his frequent interpolations of “me very laughing,” till at last he wrote also, “Me walk with crutches now, me very glad.” His affectionate little nature always made him end with “Aukshenai (good-bye), Mr. Martin, very much.”

It was a lovely thing to see this stray child of the Northland blossom out into the simple Christian graces. He had many gifts sent him from American boys and girls. These he loved for their own sakes at first, and treasured closely. But soon he learned to love better the sharing of them with other crippled friends that from time to time found their way into the hospital. His busy fingers, too, put into models of dog sleighs and kajaks (canoes) the affection in his heart for all those who were kind to him.

One day came a letter from the hospital at Battle Harbor, where Pomiuk then was. It told how he had been seized with a kind of fit and kept in bed all the week, at times lapsing into unconsciousness. On Sunday night he asked for a verse of his favorite hymn:

“Jesus bids us shine with a clear, pure light,

Like a little candle burning in the night;

In this world of darkness we must shine,

You in your small corner, and I in mine.”

On Monday morning he went quietly home. In a sheltered hollow in our tiny graveyard where others weary and worn had also been laid, lies the little body of this true Prince, and on the resting-place is carved his new name, Gabriel, which means “God’s man.”

That night the mysterious aurora made bright the vault of heaven, its banners gleaming like the festal illuminations of some royal city. The simple children of the Northland call it “the spirits of the dead at play.” But the doctor-in-charge wrote me that to him it looked a shining symbol, telling that another young soldier had won his way to the palace of the King.