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 hardsh.e.l.l 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 ma.s.s 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 sh.o.r.eward. 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.
IV
_DESPERATE NEED_
It was to these rough waters that Dr. Grenfell came when the need of the folk reached his ears and touched his heart. Before that, in the remoter parts of Newfoundland and on the coast of Labrador there were no doctors. The folk depended for healing upon traditional cures, upon old women who worked charms, upon remedies ingeniously devised to meet the need of the moment, upon deluded persons who prescribed medicines of the most curious description, upon a rough-and-ready surgery of their own, in which the implements of the kitchen and of the splitting-stage served a useful purpose. For example, there was a misled old fellow who set himself up as a healer in a lonely cove of the Newfoundland coast, where he lived a hermit, verily believing, it may be, in the glory of his call and in the blessed efficacy of his ministrations; his cure for consumption--it was a tragic failure, in one case, at least--was a bull"s heart, dried and powdered and administered with faith and regularity. Elsewhere there was a man, stricken with a mortal ailment, who, upon the recommendation of a kindly neighbour, regularly dosed himself with an ill-flavoured liquid obtained by boiling cast-off pulley-blocks in water. There was also a father who most hopefully attempted to cure his little lad of diphtheria by wrapping his throat with a split herring; but, unhappily, as he has said, "the wee feller choked hisself t" death,"
notwithstanding. There was another father--a man of grim, heroic disposition--whose little daughter chanced to freeze her feet to the very bone in midwinter; when he perceived that a surgical operation could no longer be delayed, he cut them off with an axe.
An original preventative of sea-boils--with which the fishermen are cruelly afflicted upon the hands and wrists in raw weather--was evolved by a frowsy-headed old Labradorman of serious parts.
"_I_ never has none," said he, in the fashion of superior fellows.
"No?"
"Nar a one. No, _zur_! Not _me_!"
A glance of interested inquiry elicited no response. It but prolonged a large silence.
"Have you never _had_ a sea-boil?" with the note and sharp glance of incredulity.
"Not me. Not since I got my cure."
"And what might that cure be?"
"Well, zur," was the amazing reply, "I cuts my nails on a Monday."
It must be said, however, that the Newfoundland government did provide a physician--of a sort. Every summer he was sent north with the mail-boat, which made not more than six trips, touching here and there at long intervals, and, of a hard season, failing altogether to reach the farthest ports. While the boat waited--an hour, or a half, as might be--the doctor went ash.o.r.e to cure the sick, if he chanced to be in the humour; otherwise the folk brought the sick aboard, where they were painstakingly treated or not, as the doctor"s humour went. The government seemed never to inquire too minutely into the qualifications and character of its appointee. The inc.u.mbent for many years--the folk thank G.o.d that he is dead--was an inefficient, ill-tempered, cruel man; if not the very man himself, he was of a kind with the Newfoundland physician who ran a flag of warning to his masthead when he set out to get very drunk.
The mail-boat dropped anchor one night in a far-away harbour of the Labrador, where there was desperate need of a doctor to ease a man"s pain. They had waited a long time, patiently, day after day. I am told; and when at last the mail-boat came, the man"s skipper put out in glad haste to fetch the government physician.
"He"ve turned in," they told him aboard.
What did _that_ matter? The skipper roused the doctor.
"We"ve a sick man ash.o.r.e, zur," said he, "an" he wants you t"
come----"
"What!" roared the doctor. "Think I"m going to turn out this time of night?"
"Sure, zur," stammered the astounded skipper. "I--I--s"pose so. He"s very sick, zur. He"s coughin"----"
"Let him cough himself to death!" said the doctor.
Turn out? Not he! Rather, he turned over in his warm berth. It is to be a.s.sumed that the sick man died in pain; it is to be a.s.sumed, too, that the physician continued a tranquil slumber, for the experience was not exceptional.
"Let "em die!" he had said more than once.
The government had provided for the transportation of sick fishermen from the Labrador coast to their homes in Newfoundland; these men were of the great Newfoundland fleet of cod-fishing schooners, which fish the Labrador seas in the summer. It needed only the doctor"s word to get the boon. Once a fisherman brought his consumptive son aboard--a young lad, with but a few weeks of life left. The boy wanted his mother, who was at home in Newfoundland.
"Ay, he"s fair _sick_ for his mother," said the father to the doctor.
"I"m askin" you, zur, t" take un home on the mail-boat."
The doctor was in a perverse mood that day. He would not take the boy.
"Sure, zur," said the fisherman, "the schooner"s not goin" "til fall, an" I"ve no money, an" the lad"s dyin"."
But still the doctor would not.
"I"m thinkin", zur," said the fisherman, steadily, "that you"re not quite knowin" that the lad wants t" see his mother afore he dies."