“I’ll discharge you,” said the doctor, angrily, “at the end of the cruise!”
The engineer pleaded for another chance. He was denied. From day to day he renewed his plea, but to no purpose, and at last the crew came to the conclusion that something really ought to be done for the engineer, who was visibly fretting himself thin.
“Very well,” said the doctor to the engineer; “I’ll make this agreement with you. If ever again you knock down the cook, I’ll put you ashore at the first land we come to, and you may get back to St. Johns as best you can.”
It was a hard alternative. The doctor is not a man to give or take when the bargain has been struck; the engineer knew that he would surely go ashore somewhere on that desolate coast, whether the land was a barren island or a frequented harbour, if ever again the cook tempted him beyond endurance.
“I’ll stand by it, sir,” he said, nevertheless; “for I don’t want to leave you.”
In the course of time the Princess May was wrecked or worn out. Then came the Julia Sheridan, thirty-five feet long, which the mission doctor bought while she yet lay under water from her last wreck; he raised her, refitted her with what money he had, and pursued his venturesome and beneficent career, until she, too, got beyond so hard a service. Many a gale she weathered, off “the worst coast in the world”—often, indeed, in thick, wild weather, the doctor himself thought the little craft would go down; but she is now happily superannuated, carrying the mail in the quieter waters of Hamilton Inlet. Next came the Sir Donald—a stout ship, which in turn disappeared, crushed in the ice. The Strathcona, with a hospital amidships, is now doing duty; and she will continue to go up and down the coast, in and out of the inlets, until she in her turn finds the ice and the wind and the rocks too much for her.
“’Tis bound t’ come, soon or late,” said a cautious friend of the mission. “He drives her too hard. He’ve a right t’ do what he likes with his own life, I s’pose, but he’ve a call t’ remember that the crew has folks t’ home.”
But the mission doctor is not inconsiderate; he is in a hurry—the coast is long, the season short, the need such as to wring a man’s heart. Every new day holds an opportunity for doing a good deed—not if he dawdles in the harbours when a gale is abroad, but only if he passes swiftly from place to place, with a brave heart meeting the dangers as they come. He is the only doctor to visit the Labrador shore of the Gulf, the Strait shore of Newfoundland, the populous east coast of the northern peninsula of Newfoundland, the only doctor known to the Esquimaux and poor “liveyeres” of the northern coast of Labrador, the only doctor most of the “liveyeres” and green-fish catchers of the middle coast can reach, save the hospital physician at Indian Harbour. He has a round of three thousand miles to make. It is no wonder that he “drives” the little steamer—even at full steam, with all sail spread (as I have known him to do), when the fog is thick and the sea is spread with great bergs.