Grenfell: Knight-Errant of the North Part 23

The boys wept a little, silently as they looked their last on their patched and tattered home. The family they left behind them would make a journey of a hundred miles in that rotten boat to a winter hut on the mainland.

But they looked at each other, washed and dressed, with all that wild hair pruned away--and then they began to laugh at each other as the biggest joke in their short lives.

After they reached St. Anthony and were installed in the Orphanage, they were two of the happiest and most popular lads in the place.

They purred like pleased kittens and lost no chance to show how much they liked the people who were doing so much for them. They studied hard, and put the same driving spirit into play. It could be seen that the little "heathen" of the island were in a fair way to become in time the leaders of men who are needed in all walks of life. Dr.

Grenfell felt well rewarded for all the trouble he had taken for Jimmy and Billy and all their family.

The "liveyeres," as those who "live here" are called, may lead rough, hard lives. But for that very reason they welcome books, and music, and all such things.

One day as the _Strathcona_ was scudding southward, her sails swelling with a stiff breeze, and the Doctor in a great hurry to reach a distant coast-line and get to work on some patients who had been waiting a long time for him, a little boat came and planted herself directly in the _Strathcona's_ path.

The _Strathcona_ was a small craft herself, but she seemed a monster compared with this impudent sailboat. The smaller boat had a funny-looking flag, hoisted as a signal to stop. It was almost as if a harbor tug should attempt to hold up the _Leviathan_.

Dr. Grenfell thought it must be some very serious surgical case.

He gave the order at once: "Down sail and heave her to."

Then an old, white-haired man, the only pa.s.senger in the small boat, climbed stiffly over the rail, fairly creaking in his joints.

"Good-day," said Grenfell. "What can we do for you? We're in a hurry."

The old man took off his cap, and held it in his hand as he looked down at the deck. Then he mustered up courage to make his request.

"Please, Doctor," he said slowly, "I wanted to ask you if you had any books you could lend me. We haven't anything to read here."

Dr. Grenfell confesses with shame that his first impulse was to return a sharp, vexed answer, and to ask, "What do you mean by holding up my mission boat for such a reason?" But then he realized his mistake. In a way, it would be as good a deed to put a prop under the old man's spirit with a good book as to take off his leg with a knife.

"Haven't you got any books?"

"Yes, Doctor. I've got two, but I've read 'em through, over and over again, long ago."

"What were they?"

"One is the Works of Josephus, sir, and the other is Plutarch's Lives."

The old fellow was overjoyed when the Doctor put aboard his bobbing skiff a box of fifty books--a mixture of everything from Henty's stories to sermons.

Dr. Grenfell never could tell what a day--or a night--would bring forth. If variety is the spice of life, his life in the north has been one long diet of paprika.

Once late in the fall he was creeping along the Straits of Belle Isle in a motor-boat--the only one in those waters at that time.

It broke down, as the best of motor-boats sometimes will, and the tidal current, with that brutal habit which tidal currents have, began to pull the boat on the rocks as with an unseen hand.

They tied all the lines they had together, attached the anchor, and put it overboard.

The water was so deep they could not reach the bottom.

Darkness was shutting down--and it was an awful place to pa.s.s the night.

Then a schooner's lights flashed out. "Hurrah!" cried Grenfell's men.

"We're all right now!"

They lashed the hurricane light on their boat-hook and waved it to and fro like mad. They MUST make those fellows on the schooner take notice and stop for them. The sea would probably get them if they failed.

The water was so rough, the night so dark, that even their precious motor-boat was nothing, if only they could clamber aboard that schooner. At almost any time, those Straits offer stretches of the most perilous sailing-water in the world. Sailors who have rounded Cape Horn would say yes to that.

But just then--to their horror, the schooner which had been close to them put about and hurried off like a startled caribou. Soon the powerless motor-boat was left far, far behind, wallowing in the trough of waves much too big for her size.

They shouted with all their might, but the whistling wind threw away their outcry instead of carrying it across the tossing waves, which threatened to swamp the boat at any instant.

They shot off their guns.

They yelled again.

They lit flares such as are used in the navy for signal lights.

But it was all in vain.

They almost began to believe they had dreamed of rescue--that a phantom s.h.i.+p had come to them in a nightmare.

They waved their hurricane light again and again, as high as they could hold it.

The engineer, a willing amateur, all this while had been toiling away till his hands bled, at his motor, drenched with the spray. He had torn the machinery limb from limb, and patiently refitted the parts.

Suddenly one cylinder gave a weak kick, and then came a spasmodic succession of sputters, with long waits between. But with the aid of the oars the boat was now able to make slow and tedious progress in the schooner's wake.

At last--at last--along toward midnight they crept into the harbor where the schooner had also taken refuge.

Tired as they were, they wouldn't turn in at a fisherman's cottage without boarding the s.h.i.+p to rebuke the sailors for their unhandsome behavior.

How could they leave men in a tiny boat in distress, perhaps to be swamped and to drown in those cruel waters out yonder in the blind dark?

The skipper made solemn reply. "Them cliffs is haunted," he announced.

"More'n one light's been seen there than ever any man lit. When us saw youse light flas.h.i.+ng round right in on the cliffs, us knowed it was no place for Christian men that time o' night. Us guessed it was just fairies or devils tryin' to toll us in."

Many of the little boats on the Labrador are not fit to spend a night at sea, and often it is an anxious business to get into a safe harbor before sundown. Dr. Grenfell has a reputation as a daredevil skipper, because so often, on an errand of mercy, he has steamed right out in the teeth of the storm when hardened, ancient mariners shook their heads and hugged the land. But the Doctor does not take chances for the sake of the risk itself--his daring always has behind it the good reason that he wants to go somewhere in a great hurry in time of need.

A hundred miles north of Indian Tickle, where there was no light, Grenfell was caught one night when he was coming south with the fis.h.i.+ng fleet.

All of a sudden the fog fell on the whole group of s.h.i.+ps like a thick wet blanket, before they could make the harbor. There were many reefs between their position and the open sea: the only thing to do was to anchor then and there. When a rift came in the fog, Dr. Grenfell saw the riding-lights of eleven vessels round about him. A northeaster grew in violence as night came swiftly on, and a heavy sea arose. The s.h.i.+ps tugged at their anchors. The great waves swept the decks from end to end.

In the hold of the _Strathcona_ were patients lying in the cots, on their way to Battle Harbor Hospital. As the Doctor would say, there was less than an inch of iron between them and eternity.

They were dressed, and the boats were prepared to take them ash.o.r.e.

One after another in the mad waters the neighbor lights went out. All night the _Strathcona_ fought the sea. When day came, only one of the other boats was left--a s.h.i.+p much bigger than the _Strathcona_, named the _Yosemite_.

The _Yosemite_ was drifting down upon the smaller vessel, and it seemed as if in a moment more there must be a collision.