Читать книгу Grenfell: Knight-Errant of the North - Fullerton Leonard Waldo - Страница 8

"In eighteen hundred and ninety-two

Grenfell sailed the ocean blue——"

from Yarmouth to Labrador in a ninety-ton ketch-rigged schooner.

This wasn't such an abrupt change of base as it sounds, for it meant that the Royal Mission to the Deep Sea Fishermen, which works in the North Sea, had decided to send a "Superintendent" to the coast of the North Atlantic, east of Canada and north of Newfoundland, where many ships each summer went in quest of the cod.

If you will look on the map, you will readily see how Labrador lies in a long, narrow strip along the coast from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to Cape Chidley. This strip belongs to the crown colony of Newfoundland, the big triangular island to the south of the Straits of Belle Isle, and Newfoundland is entirely independent of the Dominion of Canada. Fishermen when they go to this region always speak of going to "the Labrador," and they call it going "down," not "up," when it is a question of faring north.

The tract that lies along the north shore of the St. Lawrence, west of the narrow strip, is also called Labrador—but it belongs to Canada. Generally "Labrador" is used for the part that belongs to Newfoundland.

"Labrador" itself is a queer word. It is Portuguese. It means a yeoman farmer. The name was given to Greenland in the first half of the sixteenth century by a farmer from the Azores who was first to see that lonesome, chilly country. Thence the name was moved over to the peninsula between Hudson Bay and the Atlantic.

Cabot sailed along the coast in 1498, but the interior remained unseen by white men till the Hudson's Bay Company began to plant their trading-stations and send their agents for furs in 1831.

Jacques Cartier said Labrador was "the land God gave to Cain," and that there was "not one cartload of earth on the whole of it." Along the coast are mountains rising to 7,000 or even 8,000 feet. There are many lakes inland, 50 to 100 miles in length. Hamilton Inlet is 150 miles long, and from two to 30 miles wide. The Hamilton River which empties into it, in twelve miles descends 760 feet, with a single drop of 350 feet at the Grand Falls, the greatest in North America, surpassing even Niagara.

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The population is about 14,500 in more than half a million square miles. There are some 3,500 Indians, 2,000 Eskimos, and 9,000 whites (along the coast and at the Hudson's Bay posts).

It was to such a "parish" that Grenfell came in 1892, that he might give the fishermen the benefit of his surgical knowledge and practical experience acquired not only on the land but aboard the tossing ships in the North Sea.

A ninety-ton boat is a tiny craft in which to make the voyage across the Atlantic. Grenfell must have known just how Columbus felt, four hundred years ago, when he said to the sailors of his tiny caravels "Sail on! sail on!"

First there were head winds for eleven days.

"Wonder if the wind's ever goin' to quit blowin' against us!" muttered a sailor, as he coiled a rope to make a bed for a dog in the stern. "I'm about fed up with this kind o' thing."

The man to whom he spoke was in his bare feet, washing the deck with the hose. "What does anybody ever wanna go to Labrador for, anyhow?" he grumbled back. "It's a lot better in the North Sea. More sociable. You get letters from home an' tobacco regular. An' you can see somebody once in a while."

"Shore leave's no good to a fellow in Labrador," the first man went on, as he watched the dog turn round and round before lying down. "Ain't no place to go. No movies nor nuthin', just fish an' rocks an' people lookin' thin an' half-starved."

"You ever been there?"

"No, but I was talkin' with fellows that got shipwrecked there once. Gee whiz, what's that?"

"That? That's an iceberg. Didn't you ever see an iceberg before?"

"No. Looks like a ship under full sail, don't she?"

To the north out of the grey mist on the water loomed a mountain of ice.

"Glad we didn't run into the old thing," the dog's friend went on. "They say what you see stickin' out o' the water's only a small part of it."

"Yes, that's right. 'Bout six-sevenths is under water. Lemme tell you, the fellers that sail a schooner like this up to the fishin' grounds have gotta know what they're about. Ever hear about the Queen an' how she got wrecked?"

"No."

"Well, it was a fog like it is over yonder, an' the Queen was off Gull Island, close to Cape St. John. She didn't know where she was. They didn't have no lighthouse in them days.

"Well sir, it was December, long toward Christmas an' the wind was howlin' like a pack o' wolves. The poor little ship—she wa'n't much bigger'n this here boat o' ours—drove plumb on the rocks.

"There was six passengers, one of 'em a lady. One of the men was a doctor—he was her brother.

"They got off the boat when she drove ashore an' they climbed up onto the top o' the island. They didn't have nothin' with 'em 'ceptin' only an old piece of a sail. What was that to feed on, all winter? They knew there wouldn't be anybody comin' that way till the nex' spring.

"The crew, they stayed on board: they said they was goin' to get off some o' the stuff for 'em all to eat while they was cooped up on the island waitin' for spring.

"But the storm done 'em dirt. The wind came on to blow harder'n ever, an' pretty soon the sea she just picked up the ship an' hauled her off and—crickety-crack!—she went slam-bang to pieces on the Old Harry Shoals. Didn't have no more chance than a paper bag at a picnic. No sir, there weren't one man saved out o' the whole crowd.

"So there was them six people stuck up on top o' the rock."

"Did they have to stay there all winter?"

"Now you wait a minute. I'm a-tellin' you. Some time 'long in April there was a hunter come that way duck-shootin'.

"He shot a duck an' it dropped in the big waves runnin' and jumpin' on the beach.

"He got out o' the boat to get it—an' it weren't there!

"'Mercy on us!' says he. 'I shot that duck just as sure as I'm soaked clean through. It musta fell right here. What's become o' it? Where's it gone to?'

"He looked round and looked round like Robinson Crusoe huntin' fer somebody. He looked up an' he looked down, an' it wa'n't no use. Wa'n't no duck there.

"'It musta been magic,' he says. 'Magic. Somethin' queer about this place!'

"Then he sees little pieces o' wood churnin' around in the foam.

"'What's happened here?' he says to himself. 'Musta been a ship went to pieces here some time.' 'Cause he found some o' the splinters had letters on 'em showin' they used to be parts o' boxes, an' pretty soon he finds a life-preserver that says on it 'The Queen, St. John's.'

"'Guess I'll climb up to the top o' the rock an' take a look,' says he. So up he climbs, the birds flappin' round him an' screamin' 'cause they're afraid maybe he's goin' to hurt their eggs.

"Up an' up he clumb, an' he gets up to the top. The grass is long an' green an' the soft yellow buttercups is pretty—but what he sees lyin' there in the buttercups ain't pretty at all.

"Six dead bodies lyin' there stretched out, with the piece o' the old torn sail over 'em. The bodies is fallin' to pieces, but in the fingers o' one is some flesh torn out o' the next one to it.

"Then he finds a little book with writin' in it where one of 'em had been writin' down as long as he could what happened.

"Well sir, what the writin' said was this. He couldn't hardly make it out it was so faint. It said by an' by they drew lots to see who was to be killed for the rest to eat."

Here the man with the dog drew a long sigh and said: "That's a fine kind of a country to be comin' to, ain't it, where things like that can happen? I'm glad I ain't in Doc Grenfell's rubber boots. He's goin' to stay. I thank my lucky stars I don't have to. I'll sure be glad to get back to Yarmouth once more. I used to think it was a hole in the ground, but it's heaven compared to what we're comin' to."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute!" said the other, "I ain't finished tellin' you. Lemme get through. I was sayin', they drew lots, an'—the lot fell to the lady."

"They was goin' to eat the lady!" exclaimed his comrade, in horror.

"Yes, sir, that's what they would 'a' done. But her brother he said he'd take her place."

"An' then what happened?"

"They don't know no more after that. The writin' stops there."

"Say," said the dog-fancier, disgusted, "that's no place to have the story stop. Get a fellow all strung up and then dump him off that way without knowin' how it ended."

The man with the hose began to bind up a leak with a bit of tarpaulin. "I ain't made it up outa my head," he said. "I'm just tellin' you what happened. An' it seems to me the story did have an end, all right, 'cause there they were all lyin' stretched out cold the way the hunter found 'em."

The listener shivered. "Say, can't you tell us a more cheerful yarn?"

The story-teller shook his head. "Mos' Newfoundland an' Labrador stories is like that, Bill," he said. "Grey, like the fog an' the face o' the sea.—Guess I'll go an' put on some more clothes. This wind sure does bite clear into the middle o' your bones."

"Yes," said the other, "an' the sea's gettin' colder every minute. Say, Jim, I hope the watch'll keep his eyes peeled to-night. I'd sure hate to run into any o' those there bergs. Don't like the looks o' that one we seen just now. One o' those'd be enough to send us all to Davy Jones's locker in a jiffy."

For five days more they ran on, all the time through dense fog. Then—the grey mist lifted, and the lovely green of the land appeared. At least, it looked beautiful after so many days at sea.

But what was that? Over the evergreens a tall plume of black smoke rose.

"The place is burnin' up!" said Bill to Jim.

"I counted thirteen places where she's on fire. What is that anyway?"

"That's St. John's," answered Bill, a little proud of his knowledge. "Capital o' Newfoundland."

"Where're we gonna land, with this fire goin' on this way?"

"Dunno," said Bill. "We'll run in farther, 'n' then we can see."

Grenfell was at the prow, looking at the burning city. Some of the ships had burned down to the water, right at the wharves. Chimneys were standing up out of the ruins like broken, blackened fingers pointing at the sky.

People came running down through the smoke and the flames.

"Got anything to eat?" they cried.

"Not much!" shouted back Grenfell. "But what we've got you're welcome to!"

"Is there a doctor on board?" was the next hail.

"I'm a doctor," called Grenfell.

"Glory be!" came the answer. "There'll be plenty for you to do ashore, Doctor!"

So instead of rest and comfort after the long sea-voyage Grenfell and those with him had to peel off their coats and plunge right in and help with both hands right and left.

It was with heavy hearts a few days later that they said good-by and started north for Labrador where there were people who needed them even more than the burned-out folk of St. John's.

They ran across the Straits of Belle Isle, through which the River St. Lawrence flows to the Atlantic, and the sun flashed on a hundred icebergs at once, in a glorious procession.

The seabirds were fighting and crying over the fish.

The whales were leaping clean out of the sea, as if they were playing a game and having lots of fun.

Grenfell laughed aloud as he watched them. "I say, boys," he said to the sailors, "don't you wish you could jump out of the water like that?"

"I wish we had all the oil there is in all them whales!" said Bill, who had a very practical mind.

Into the very middle of the fishing-fleet they sailed.

Flags of welcome were run up to the mastheads of the schooners. There were about 30,000 Newfoundlanders in the whole fleet, on more than 100 schooners—and Grenfell's boat was a little bit of a thing compared with most of them.

But they all knew that the small boat had sailed clear across the sea to help them, and they all wanted to show how glad and grateful they were that a real doctor had come to their help.

Pretty soon the little boats coming from the schooners were flocking round them like ants about a sugar-bowl.

One man came after all the rest had gone.

His boat was little better than a bunch of boards with a dab of tar here and there.

For a long time the rower sat still, looking up at Dr. Grenfell, who leaned over the rail gazing down at him.

By and by the fisherman broke the silence.

"Be you a real doctor, sir?"

"That's what I call myself," answered Grenfell.

"What's your name?"

"Grenfell."

"Well, Dr. Greenpeel, us hasn't got no money, but——"

He stopped.

"I don't care about the money," Grenfell answered. "What's the trouble?"

"There's a man ashore wonderful sick, Doctor, if so be you'd come 'n' see him."

"Sure I'll come!"

Dr. Grenfell was over the rail and in the fisherman's poor tub in a jiffy.

He was taken to a mean sod hut.

The only furniture was a stove that looked like a big tin can burst open.

The floor was of stones from the beach: the walls were mud. Six children were sitting in a corner, about as dirty as the mud walls, and just as quiet.

A woman in rags was giving spoonfuls of water to a man who lay on the one bed coughing till it seemed the poor fellow must cough himself to pieces.

"Well, well," said the Doctor. "We must fix him up." He didn't tell the woman that her husband had both consumption and pneumonia.

He left medicine and food and told the poor wife what to do. Then he had to go on to others who needed him.

It was two months before he could come back to this lonely spot—and then he found outside the hut a grave, covered with snow.

On that first voyage Dr. Grenfell had to see nine hundred people who needed his help!

One was an Eskimo, who had fired off a cannon to celebrate when the Moravian mission boat came in.

No wonder he felt like celebrating—for the boat only came once a year!

The gun blew up—and took off both of the poor fellow's arms.

He lay on his back for two weeks, the stumps covered with wet filthy rags. When Grenfell finally got there, it was too late to save him.

They do queer things on that coast when they have no doctor handy to tell them what to do.

For instance, a baby had pneumonia, and the mother dosed it with reindeer-moss and salt water, because that was all she had to give it!

A woman was done up in brown paper so the bugs wouldn't bite her.

One man set up in business as a doctor and gave his patients a bull's heart dried and powdered for medicine.

Another man said he knew how to get rid of boils. "I cut my nails on a Monday," was his cure.

They would take pulley-blocks and boil them in water and then drink the water.

To tell how the wind blew they would hang the head of a fox or wolf or a seal from the rafters and watch the way it swung. A wolf or fox would face the wind, they said, but a seal's head would turn away from it.

For rheumatism you must wear a haddock's fin-bone.

Green worsted tied round your wrist was a sure cure for hemorrhage.

If you had trouble with your eyes, you ought to get somebody to blow sugar into them.

Little sacks full of prayers tied round your neck were a great help in any sort of sickness.

A father tied a split herring round his boy's throat for diphtheria.

This shows what Dr. Grenfell was up against when he came to Labrador with his "scientific notions" about what ought to be done for sick people.

One day, just as the Doctor had cast anchor between two little islands far out at sea, a little rowboat came to him from a small Welsh brigantine.

"Doctor!" a man called out. "Would ye please be so good an' come ashore an' see a poor girl? She's dyin'!"

The Doctor didn't need to be urged. He went ashore in the rowboat. In a rough bunk in a dark corner of a fishing-hut lay a very pretty girl, about eighteen years old.

All summer long, poor thing—the only woman among many men—she had been cooking, mending, helping to clean and dry and salt the fish.

Nobody asked if she was tired. Nobody asked if she wanted a vacation. She had done her faithful best—and now, worn out, she was cast aside like an old shoe.

One look told the Doctor that she was dying.

The captain of the brigantine, who was tender-hearted, and really cared for her, had decided that this was a case of typhoid. He told the fishermen to keep away—for the germs might get into the fish they were preparing to send off to market.

So he had been the nurse. But all he could do was feed her. For two weeks—during part of which time she was unconscious—she had not been washed, and her bed had not been changed.

Outside it was a dark night, and the fog hung low and menacing over the water. The big trap-boat with six men, and the skipper's sons among them, had been missing since morning.

The skipper had stayed home to take care of the poor little servant girl. While he sat beside her wretched bunk, his mind was divided between her plight and his anxiety for the six men out there in the angry, ugly sea.

"I wonder where the b'ys are now," he muttered.

Then he would go to the door and peer out under his hand into the night. Nothing there but the dark and the mystery.

"'Twas time they were back—long, long ago!" he would say. "'Tis a wonderful bad night for the fog. I doubt they'll find their way in. I should 'a' gone out wi' them. But no, she needed me! Poor girl! The Lord, He gives, an' the Lord He takes away: blessed be the name o' the Lord!"

Wiping his eyes on his rough sleeve, the captain came back and helped the Doctor put clean linen on the bed and wash the poor girl's grimy face.

She was unconscious now: her life was ebbing fast.

The captain went to the door again and again. Outside there was no sound but the low moaning of the night wind in the blackness. The fishermen, afraid of what the mysterious disease might do for them, were keeping their distance.

Suddenly as the captain glanced on the pale face of the girl, he gasped.

"She's dead, Doctor, she's dead!" The Doctor felt her heart. It was true. The spirit of the brave little maid had gone at last beyond the beck and call of men.

It was midnight, and over the dim and smoking lamp the captain and the Doctor decided that the best thing to do was to make a bonfire of the girl's few poor effects.

So they took her meagre clothes and miserable bedding out on the cliffs, piled them, soaked them in oil, and set them afire.

The flames leapt high and made a beacon to be seen afar.

Out there on the black face of the deep six hopeless, helpless men in a trap-boat, groping their way blindly, saw the flames and took heart again.

"See!" they cried to one another. "Look there! Up yonder on the cliffs! They're givin' us a light to steer by!"

They drove their oars into the yeasty waves again with strength renewed. Little did they know what it was that had made the light for them.

When at last they dragged their boat ashore and hobbled to the hut, they saw the body of the girl, the lamp, and the captain and the Doctor making the body ready for the burial. They entered the hut, and were told what had happened.

"B'ys," said the foremost, "she's dead. Mary's dead. The last thing she did was to give us a light to show us the way home. Poor girl, poor little girl!"

Once when a small steamer Grenfell was using had broken down, he found shelter in a one room hut ashore.

The inmates had few clothes, almost no food, and neither tools nor proper furniture. There was nothing between them and the Aurora Borealis but ruin and famine. There were eight children. Five slept in one bed: three slept with the parents in the other bed: Grenfell in his sleeping-bag lay on the floor, his nose at the crack of the door to get fresh air.

They all suffered from the cold, for there was not a blanket in the house.

"Where's the blanket I sent you last year?" asked the Doctor.

The mother raised her skinny arm and pointed about the room to patched trousers and coats.

Then she said, with a good deal of feeling, "If youse had five lads all trying to get under one covering to onct, Doctor, you'd soon know what would happen to that blanket."

First thing in the morning, Grenfell boiled some cocoa, and took the two elder boys out for a seal-hunt.

To a boy on the Labrador, a seal-hunt is the biggest kind of a lark. If it is winter, the seals may be caught near their blow-holes in the ice, and hit over the head with a stick called a gaff. In summer, they must be shot from a boat.

One of the boys, when he thought the Doctor was not looking, emptied the steaming fragrant cocoa from his mug and filled it with water instead.

"I 'lows I'se not accustomed to no sweetness," was his excuse.

The boys proved the jolliest of comrades and the best of huntsmen. In the nipping wind they rowed the boat where the Doctor told them, so that he could shoot. He had on a lined leather coat: but they had only torn cotton shirts and thin jackets to face the raw dampness of the early morning.

But they laughed and joked and carried on, and didn't care whether any seals were found or not. The hunt was unsuccessful. When Grenfell left, however, he promised the boys they should have a dozen fox traps for the winter.

Their eyes shone, and they grasped his hands. It was to them a princely, a magnificent gift.

"Doctor, Doctor!" was all they could say. "What can we do for ye?"

"Go out and catch foxes," said the Doctor. "We'll see what we can get for them when you catch them."

Next summer the Doctor, true to his word as always, came back and found the little house as bare and bleak as before. But the boys met him with the same old broad grins on their faces, cheerful as the sunrise.

"See, Doctor!" They flourished the precious pelt of a silver fox. "We kep' it for youse, though us hadn't ne'er a bit in the house. We knowed you'd do better'n we with he."

So Dr. Grenfell said he would try. He went to an island where Captain Will Bartlett made his home. This Bartlett was the father of "Bob" Bartlett who captained Peary's ship, the Roosevelt, on the successful trip to the North Pole in 1909. Father Bartlett was famous round about for sealing and fishing, and he had not only a thriving summer trade of his own but a big heart for unfortunate neighbors.

"Do your best for me, Captain Will," said Grenfell, handing over the skin.

"That I will, Doctor!" answered Bartlett heartily. "Drop in on your way back."

The Doctor did so—and he found Captain Will had put aside a full boat-load of provisions of all sorts for the starving family.

Happy in the thought of the good it would do, Grenfell started back for the promontory at Big River where he had every reason to expect the family would be watching for him anxiously.

As he neared the land—he saw no one moving. The boat was beached, and the Doctor went up to the house.

The door was locked: there was no one within hail, though he shouted again and again.

Grenfell knew this absence must mean that the whole family had gone to the distant islands for the fishing.

So he broke in the door, piled the things he had brought inside, and wrote a letter.

"This is the price of your pelt. Put all the fur you catch next winter in a barrel and sit on the top of the barrel till the spring, when we are coming back again. Be sure not to let anybody get it from you at a low price."

During the winter, accordingly, the family put by the furs that they 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.