Picked up Adrift / Illustrated

by James De Mille

“Well, boys,” said he, “as to visiting Sable Island, all I’ve got to say is, I hope you’ll never begin to try it on Sable Island. Why, Sable Island’s one of the places that seafarin’ men try never to visit, and pray never to get nearer than a hundred miles to. Sable Island! Boys,” he continued, after a pause, “don’t ever speak of that again; don’t even think of it. Give it up at once and forever. I only hope that you won’t be brought to pay a visit there in spite of yourselves, a thing which I’m afraid you’re very likely to do if you go cruisin’ about in an old tub like that much longer. Not but what Sable Island mightn’t be improved—that is, if the inhabitants only had any enterprise, and the government that owns it was alive to the wants of the age.”

“‘Inhabitants!” said Bart; “why, there’s only the keeper and his family.”

The skipper waved his hand.

“Grant all that,” said he. “Very well. They’re a nucleus, at any rate, and can give tone and character to the future Sable Islanders. Now, what your government ought to do with Sable Island is this. They’d ought to make a good breakwater, first and foremost, so as to have decent harbor accommodation for passing vessels. Then they’d ought to connect it with the main land with a submarine cable, so that the place needn’t be quite so isolated, and have regular lines of steamers runnin’ backard and forard. Well, then they ought to get up a judicious emigration scheme, and that thar island would begin to go ahead in a style that would make you fairly open your eyes. Why, in ten years, if this plan was carried out, they’d be building a railroad,—a thing that is needed there more than most anywheres, the island bein so uncommon long and narrow,—and that bein done, why, Sable Island would begin to come abreast of the nineteenth century, instead of hanging back in the middle ages.”

After some further conversation of a similar character, the skipper proposed to show the boys about the country, and introduce them to some of the “aristocracy.”

“And there,” said he, “is one of them, now. It’s the priest—and a precious fine fellow he is, any how, and no mistake. He is priest, governor general, magistrate, constable, policeman, Sunday school teacher, town clerk, schoolmaster, newspaper, lawyer, doctor, notary public, census taker, and fifty other things all rolled into one. He is the factotum of the Magdalen Islands. They come to him for everything: to baptize their infants, to marry their young couples, and to bury their dead. They go to mass on Sundays, and on week days they go to him for advice and assistance in everything. He visits the sick, and administers medicine as doctor, or extreme unction as priest. He settles all their quarrels better than any judge or jury, and there never ain’t any appeal thought of from his decision. Now, all this is what I call a species of despotism,—it’s one man power, but it suits these poor benighted frog-eatin heathen,—and, besides, it’s no more a despotism than the father of a family exercises. It’s patriarchal—that’s what it is. It’s wonderful, too, how much honor the young people hereabouts pay to their fathers, and grandfathers, and elders genrally. I never knowed anythin like it in all my born days. Well, now, boys, mind you, all this is goin to be upset. Some day they’ll be appointin magistrates here, and doctors will come, and lawyers; then this little community will all be sot by the ears, and—and they’ll enter upon a career of boundless progress. They’ll get the ballot-box, and the newspaper, and all the concomitants of modern civilization; the present patriarchal system’ll be played out, and the spirit of the age will reign and rule over them.”

By the time the skipper had given utterance to this, they had approached the priest. He was a mild, venerable man, with a meek face and a genial smile. He spoke English very well, shook hands with all, and listened to the skipper’s explanations about their present visit.

“And now, boys, I’ll leave you for the present,” said the skipper, “to the care of Father Leblanc, who will do the honors of the island. I’ve got to go aboard the Fawn to fix up a few things. We’ll meet again in the course of the day.”

With these words he went down to the beach. The shabbiness of the costume of the boys had already excited the remarks of the skipper, but the good Father Leblanc soon saw that in spite of this they were clever and intelligent.

“We do not often have,” said he, “at this place visitors above the rank of fishermen, and we have never before had any visitors like you. I can assure you a welcome, dear boys, from all the good people here. There is to be a fête to-day in honor of the marriage of two of my flock. Would you like to go? If so, I invite you most cordially, and assure you of a welcome.”