A Labrador Doctor / The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

by Sir Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

THE LABRADOR DOCTOR IN SUMMER[ToList]

Once that summer we were eleven days stuck in the ice, and while there the huge mail steamer broke her propeller, and a boat was sent up to us through the ice to ask for our help. The truck on my mastheads was just up to her deck. The ice was a lot of trouble, but we got her into safety. On board were the superintendent of the Moravian Missions and his wife. They were awfully grateful. The great tub rolled about so in the Atlantic swell that the big ice-pans nearly came on deck. My dainty little lady took no notice of anything and picked her way among the pans like Agag "treading delicately." We had five hours' good push, however, to get into Battle Harbour. It was calm in the ice-field, only the heavy tide made it run and the little "alive" steamer with human skill beat the massive mountains of ice into a cocked hat.

At Indian Tickle there is a nice little church which was built by subscription and free labour the second year we came on the coast. There is one especially charming feature about this building. It stands in such a position that you can see it as you come from the north miles away from the harbour entrance, and it is so situated that it leads directly into the safe anchorage. There are no lights to guide sailors on this coast at all, and yet during September, October, and November, three of the most dangerous months in the year, hundreds of schooners and thousands of men, women, and children are coming into or passing through this harbour on their way to the southward. By a nice arrangement the little east window points to the north—if that is not Irish—and two large bracket lamps can be turned on a pivot, so that the lamps and their reflectors throw a light out to sea. The good planter, at his own expense, often maintains a light here on stormy or dark nights, and "steering straight for it" brings one to safety.

While cruising near Cape Chidley, a schooner signalling with flag at half-mast attracted our attention. On going aboard we found a young man with the globe of one eye ruptured by a gun accident, in great pain, and in danger of losing the other eye sympathetically. Having excised the globe, we allowed him to go back to his vessel, intensely grateful, but full of apprehension as to how his girl would regard him on his return South. It so happened that we had had a gift of false eyes, and we therefore told him to call in at hospital on his way home and take his chance on getting a blue one. While walking over the hill near the hospital that fall I ran into a crowd of young fishermen, whose schooner was wind-bound in the harbour, and who had been into the country for an hour's trouting. One asked me to look at his eye, as something was wrong with it. Being in a hurry, I simply remarked, "Come to hospital, and I'll examine it for you"; whereupon he burst out into a merry laugh, "Why, Doctor, I'm the boy whose eye you removed. This is the glass one you promised. Do you think it will suit her?"

Another time I was called to a large schooner in the same region. There were two young girls on board doing the cooking and cleaning, as was the wont in Newfoundland vessels. One, alas, was seriously ill, having given birth to a premature child, and having lain absolutely helpless, with only a crew of kind but strange men anywhere near. Rolling her up in blankets, we transferred her to the Sir Donald, and steamed for the nearest Moravian station. Here the necessary treatment was possible, and when we left for the South a Moravian's good wife accompanied us as nurse. The girl, however, had no wish to live. "I want to die, Doctor; I can never go home again." Her physical troubles had abated, but her mind was made up to die, and this, in spite of all our care, she did a few days later. The pathos of the scene as we rowed the poor child's body ashore for interment on a rocky and lonely headland, looking out over the great Atlantic, wrapped simply in the flag of her country, will never be forgotten by any of us—the silent but unanswerable reproach on man's utter selfishness. Many such scenes must rise to the memory of the general practitioner; at times, thank God, affording those opportunities of doing more for the patients than simply patching up their bodies—opportunities which are the real reward for the "art of healing." Some years later I revisited the grave of this poor girl, marked by the simple wooden cross which we had then put up, and bearing the simple inscription:

Suzanne
"Jesus said, Neither do I condemn thee."

The fall trip lasted till late into November, without our even realizing the fact that snow was on the ground. Indeed the ponds were all frozen and we enjoyed drives with dog teams on the land before we had finished our work and could think of leaving. We had scarcely left Flowers Cove and were just burying our little steamer—loaded to the utmost with wood, cut in return for winter clothing—in the dense fog which almost universally maintains in the Straits, and were rounding the hidden ledges of rock which lie half a mile offshore, when we discovered a huge trans-Atlantic liner racing up in our wake. We instantly put down our helm and scuttled out of the way to avoid the wash, and almost held our breath as the great steamer dashed by at twenty miles an hour, between us and the hidden shoal. She altered her helm as she did so, no doubt catching her first sight of the lighthouse as she emerged from the fog-bank, but as it was, she must have passed within an ace of the shoal. We expected every minute to see her dash on the top of it, and then she passed out of sight once more, her light-hearted passengers no doubt completely unconscious that they had been in any danger at all.

The last port of call was Henley, or Château, where formerly the British had placed a fort to defend it against the French. We had carried round with us a prospective bridegroom, and we were privileged to witness the wedding, a simple but very picturesque proceeding. A parson had been fetched from thirty miles away, and every kind of hospitality provided for the festive event. But in spite of the warmth of the occasion the weather turned bitterly cold, the harbour "caught over," and for a week we were prisoners. When at last the young ice broke up again, we made an attempt to cross the Straits, but sea and wind caught us halfway and forced us to run back, this time in the thick fog. The Straits' current had carried us a few miles in the meanwhile—which way we did not know—and the land, hard to make out as it was in the fog, was white with snow. However, with the storm increasing and the long dark night ahead, we took a sporting chance, and ran direct in on the cliffs. How we escaped shipwreck I do not know now. We suddenly saw a rock on our bow and a sheer precipice ahead, twisted round on our heel, shot between the two, and we knew where we were, as that is the only rock on a coast-line of twenty miles of beach—but there really is no room between it and the cliff.