"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 ash.o.r.e, 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 ash.o.r.e 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.