Dreamer and doer live side by side in amity in Dr. Grenfell’s make-up. At the animated dinner-table of the nurses and the doctors in the Battle Harbour hospital, after asking a blessing, he was talking eagerly about the League of Nations, the industrial situation in England and America and the future for Russia while brandishing the knife above the meat pie and letting no plate but his own go neglected.
Dr. Grenfell is happy and his soul is free at the wheel of the Strathcona. That wheel bears the words, “Jesus saith, Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” At the peak of the mainmast is likely to be the blue pennant bearing the words, “God is Love.” The Strathcona is ketch-rigged. Her mainmast, that is to say, is in the foremast’s place; and above the mainsail is a new oblong topsail that is the Doctor’s dear delight. The other sail has above it a topsail of orthodox pattern, and there are two jibs. So that when she has her full fuel-saving complement of canvas spread, the Strathcona displays six sails at work. Could the Doctor always have his way, all the sails would be up whenever a breeze stirs. With a good wind the ship is capable of eight knots and even more an hour: five knots or so is her average speed under steam alone. In the bow, his paws on the rail, or out on the bowsprit sniffing the air and seeing things that only he can see, is the incomparable dog Fritz—Fritz of “57 varieties”—brown and black, like toast that was burned in the making. No one knows the prevailing ancestry of Fritz, but a strain of Newfoundland is suspected. He will take a chance on swimming ashore if we cast anchor within half a mile of it, though the water is near congealment, and he knows that a pack of his wolfish brethren is ready to dispute the shoreline with him when he clambers out dripping upon the stony beach with seaweed in his hair. When he swims back to the ship again his seal-like head is barely above the waves as he paddles about, a mute appeal in his brown eyes for a bight of rope to be hitched about his body to help him aboard.
Dr. Grenfell keeps unholy hours, and dawn is one of his favourite out-door sports. He may nominally have retired at twelve—which is likely to mean that he began to read a book at that hour. He may have risen at two, three and four to see how the wind lay and the sea behaved: and perhaps five o’clock will find him at the wheel, bareheaded, the wind ruffling the silver locks above his ruddy countenance, his grey-brown eyes—which are like the stone labradorite in the varying aspects they take on—watching the horizon, the swaying bowsprit, the compass, and the goodness of God in the heavens.
The Doctor is a great out-of-doors man. He scorns a hat, and in his own element abjures it utterly. He wears a brown sweater, high in the neck, and above it he smokes a briarwood pipe that is usually right side up but appears to give him just as much satisfaction when the bowl is inverted. The rest of his costume is a symphony of grey or brown, patched or threadbare but neat always, ending in boots high or low of red rubber or of leather.
You may think that the dog Fritz out on the bowsprit is enjoying all the morning there is, but the Doctor is transformed.
“I love these early mornings,” he says—and he is innocent of pose when he says it: it is not a mere literary emotion. “It’s a beautiful sight in autumn with the ice when the banks are red with the little hills clear-cut against the sky and the sea a deep, deep blue. Isn’t it a beautiful world to live in? Isn’t it fun to live?”
You have to admit that it is.
“A man can’t think just of stomachs all the time. Sometimes I have to go away for a day or two. But I can’t say when I’ve ever been tired.
“A great little ship she is. She is very human to me. She has done her bit—she has carried her load. On that small deck and down below we once took 56 Finns from the wreck of the Viking off Hamilton Inlet. We had nothing but biscuit and dry caplin on which to feed them. Once we were caught in a storm with seven schooners. We had 60 fathoms out on two chains for our anchors. Six of the other seven ships went ashore. Then the seventh overturned—ours was the only ship that stood. All of a sudden our main steampipe burst. We had to use cold sea-water. It was a hard struggle to bring our ship into shallow water at 1½ fathoms. Another time we had to tow 19 small boats at once.
“We always have something up our sleeve to get out of trouble.”