[VI—FAITH and DUTY]
When Dr. Grenfell first appeared on the coast, I am told, the folk thought him a madman of some benign description. He knew nothing of the reefs, the tides, the currents, cared nothing, apparently, for the winds; he sailed with the confidence and reckless courage of a Labrador skipper. Fearing at times to trust his schooner in unknown waters, he went about in a whale-boat, and so hard did he drive her that he wore her out in a single season. She was capsized with all hands, once driven out to sea, many times nearly swamped, once blown on the rocks; never before was a boat put to such tasks on that coast, and at the end of it she was wrecked beyond repair. Next season he appeared with a little steam-launch, the Princess May—her beam was eight feet!—in which he not only journeyed from St. Johns to Labrador, to the astonishment of the whole colony, but sailed the length of that bitter coast, passing into the gulf and safely out again, and pushing to the very farthest settlements in the north. Late in the fall, upon, the return journey to St. Johns in stormy weather, she was reported lost, and many a skipper, I suppose, wondered that she had lived so long; but she weathered a gale that bothered the mail-boat, and triumphantly made St. Johns, after as adventurous a voyage, no doubt, as ever a boat of her measure survived.
“Sure,” said a skipper, “I don’t know how she done it. The Lord,” he added, piously, “must kape an eye on that man.”
There is a new proverb on the coast. The folk say, when a great wind blows, “This’ll bring Grenfell!” Often it does. He is impatient of delay, fretted by inaction; a gale is the wind for him—a wind to take him swiftly towards the place ahead. Had he been a weakling, he would long ago have died on the coast; had he been a coward, a multitude of terrors would long ago have driven him to a life ashore; had he been anything but a true man and tender, indeed, he would long ago have retreated under the suspicion and laughter of the folk. But he has outsailed the Labrador skippers—out-dared them—done deeds of courage under their very eyes that they would shiver to contemplate,—never in a foolhardy spirit; always with the object of kindly service. So he has the heart and willing hand of every honest man on the Labrador—and of none more than of the men of his crew, who take the chances with him; they are wholly devoted.
One of his engineers, for example, once developed the unhappy habit of knocking the cook down.
“You must keep your temper,” said the doctor. “This won’t do, you know.”
But there came an unfortunate day when, being out of temper, the engineer again knocked the cook down.
“This is positively disgraceful!” said the doctor. “I can’t keep a quarrelsome fellow aboard the mission-ship. Remember that, if you will, when next you feel tempted to strike the cook.”
The engineer protested that he would never again lay hands on the cook, whatever the provocation. But again he lost his temper, and down went the poor cook, flat on his back.