Le Petit Nord / or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour

by Anne Grenfell; Katie Spalding

The last boat of the season has come and gone and now we settle down to the real life of the winter. Plans innumerable are under way for winter activities, and the children are on tiptoe over the prospect of approaching Christmastide. Their jubilations fill the house, and writing is even more difficult than usual.

For days before the last steamer finally reached us there were speculations as to her coming. Rumour, a healthy customer in these parts, three times had it that she had gone back, having given up the unequal contest with the ice. As all our Christmas mail was aboard her, the atmosphere was tense. Then came the news from Croque that she was there, busily unloading freight. Six hours later her smoke was sighted, and from the yells my bairns set up, you would have thought that the mythical sea serpent was entering port. She butted her way into the standing harbour ice as far as she could get, and promptly began discharging cargo. Teams of dogs sprang up seemingly out of the snow-covered earth, and in a mere twinkling our frozen and silent harbour was an arena of activity. The freight is dumped on the ice over the ship's side with the big winch, and each man must hunt for his own as it descends. Some of the goods are dropped with such a thud that the packages "burst abroad." This is all very well if the contents are of a solid and resisting nature; but if butter, or beans, or such like receive the shock, most regrettable results ensue.

During the hours of waiting here she froze solidly into the ice, and had to be blasted out before she could commence her journey to the southward. She has taken the mails with her, and this letter must come to you by dog team—your first by that method.

In the early part of this summer three little orphan girls came to us from Mistaken Cove. Their names are Carmen, Selina, and Rachel, and their ages, ten, seven, and five. Their father has been dead for some years, and the mother recently died of tuberculosis. They did look such a pathetic little trio when they first arrived. I went down to the wharf to meet them, and three quaint little figures stepped from the hospital boat, with dresses almost to their feet. Carmen held the hands of her two sisters, and greeted me with "Are you the woman wot's going to look after we?" I assured her that I hoped to perform that function to the best of my ability, and then she confided to me that she had brought with her a box containing her mother's dresses and her mother's hair. I fancy the responsibility of the entire household must have rested on Carmen's tiny shoulders; she is like a little old woman, and even her voice is care-worn. I hunted up some dolls for the two younger kiddies, but had not the courage to offer one to their elder sister. She evidently felt that dolls were altogether too precious for common use, and carefully explained to her charges that they were only for Sundays! When I next went to the playroom it was to find the three little sisters sitting solemnly in a row on the locker with their dolls safely packed away beneath. I persuaded them that dolls were not too good for "human nature's daily food," and since then they have been supremely happy with their babies.

Carmen is so devoted to little Rachel that she cannot bear the thought of her being in trouble. Rachel is very human, and in the brief time she has been with us has had many falls from the paths of rectitude.

One day shortly after their arrival Rachel had been naughty, and I had taken her upstairs to explain to her the enormity of her offence, Carmen standing meanwhile at the bottom of the stairs wringing her hands. When Rachel reappeared and announced that she had not even been punished, Carmen was seen to give her a good slap on her own account, although evidently well pleased that no one else had dared to touch her child. Carmen is extremely religious, and her prayers at night are lengthy and devout. She starts off with the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed; several collects follow, and she concludes with a "Hail Mary!"

You have already made the acquaintance of Billy the Ox, the now dear departed, who constitutes our winter's frozen meat supply. Our allotted portion of him is hung in the balcony outside my window. Being on the second floor it was thought to be sanctuary from marauders. Last night I was awakened by an uneasy feeling of a presence entering my room. Starting up, I made out in the moonlight the great tawny form of one of our biggest dogs. He was in the balcony making so far futile leaps to secure a section of Billy. My shout discouraged him, and he jumped off the roof to the snow beneath. He had managed to scale the side of the house—but how? For some time I was at a loss to discover, till I remembered a ladder which had been placed perpendicularly against the wall on the other side. One of the double windows had broken loose in a recent storm of wind, and the barn man had had to go up and mend it. True to type he had left the ladder in statu quo. Up master dog had climbed straight into the air, along the slippery rungs of the ladder. When he reached the level of the tempting odour, he had alighted on the balcony roof. Then, pursuing the odour to its lair, he had discovered Billy, and me!

At breakfast I told my adventurette, and the story was instantly capped with others. Only one shall you have. The doctor was away on a travel last winter, and late one blustersome night came to a little village. He happened to have a very beautiful leader of which he was inordinately careful, so he asked his host for the night if he had a shed into which he could put Spider out of the weather. "Why, to be sure, just at the left of the door." It was dark and blowing, and the doctor went outside and thrust the beastie into the only building in sight. After breakfast he went with his host to get the dogs. When he started to open the door of the shelter in which Spider was incarcerated, the fisherman burst out in dismay, "You never put him in there? That's where I keeps my only sheep." At that second the dog appeared, a spherical and satisfied specimen. He had taken the stranger in—completely.