“I’m in a hurry,” he said, with an impatient sigh. “The season’s late. We must get along.”
We fell in with him at Red Ray in the Strait, in the thick of a heavy gale from the northeast. The wind had blown for two days; the sea was running high, and still fast rising; the schooners were huddled in the harbours, with all anchors out, many of them hanging on for dear life, though they lay in shelter. The sturdy little coastal boat, with four times the strength of the Strathcona, had made hard work of it that day—there was a time when she but held her own off a lee shore in the teeth of the big wind.
It was drawing on towards night when the doctor came aboard for a surgeon from Boston, a specialist, for whom he had been waiting.
“I see you’ve steam up,” said the captain of the coastal boat. “I hope you’re not going out in this, doctor!”
“I have some patients at the Battle Harbour Hospital, waiting for our good friend from Boston,” said the doctor, briskly. “I’m in a hurry. Oh, yes, I’m going out!”
“For God’s sake, don’t!” said the captain earnestly.
The doctor’s eye chanced to fall on the gentleman from Boston, who was bending over his bag—a fine, fearless fellow, whom the prospect of putting out in that chip of a steamer would not have perturbed, though the doctor may then not have known it. At any rate, as though bethinking himself of something half forgotten, he changed his mind of a sudden.
“Oh, very well,” he said. “I’ll wait until the gale blows out.”
He managed to wait a day—no longer; and the wind was still wild, the sea higher than ever; there was ice in the road, and the fog was dense. Then out he went into the thick of it. He bumped an iceberg, scraped a rock, fairly smothered the steamer with broken water; and at midnight—the most marvellous feat of all—he crept into Battle Harbour through a narrow, difficult passage, and dropped anchor off the mission wharf.