The little vessel was crowded, for her accommodation; badly overcrowded. But she was as fine a little sea vessel as money and human skill could make her and through many a gale of wind she had safely carried our friends. It was bitterly cold, the thermometer being actually away below zero, and our weatherwise people knew that something was brewing to windward that boded no good to a small boat however staunch, with only our long miles of harborless coast under her lea. Some at the risk of appearing self-interested, urged the old man to stay right on through the winter, and with that unbounded hospitality that is so universal a characteristic of our northern people were offering him a home, “baby and all.” But Uncle Joe’s philosophy is proof against any fears, indeed his faith is such real simple working material all through his life that the cynic calls it fatalism. So, as from those who saw St. Paul off on his long sea journey from the beach at Ephesus, not a few prayers went up for their friend and his helpless charge, as the little column of smoke once more disappeared into the sullen darkness that hung on the horizon under the southern sky, while the ominous soughing of the sea note on the rocks sent all hands back to make everything fast, even about the small homes on the land.
The storm did not actually break till after dark that night but slow come is long last with us, and it will be still longer before the memory of that Christmas gale ceases to blow in our memories.
The mail steamer was lost in it, violently blown out of the water on that evil coast. But these happenings are not strange in our world and we never got the story till the following year when one fine Sunday morning I happened to drop into young Harry Barney’s home, a little wooden cottage on the glorious sandy beach at L’Anse au Loup in Labrador.
Harry was enjoying a morning pipe of peace, with his darky embryo Vikings playing round the door. This was my reward for a Sunday visit. For it is as easy to catch a weasel asleep as Harry with time to burn from midnight Sunday till the next Day of Rest comes round.
A big liner had run ashore close to us only a week before, and was now an abandoned wreck lying well out of water on the north side of Burnt Island, so we fell to talking of wrecks, and the topic of the loss of our mail steamer came up. To my amazement he said, “Yes, I knows about her, doctor, I was fireman aboard when she was cast away.”
“You? What have you to do with steamers?”
“Oh, they shipped me and poor Cyril Manstock as they couldn’t get men south. I’d acted runner before, but it was Cyril’s first voyage, and he died after of consumption, as you know. They says it was that chill did it.”
“Tell us about it, Harry. We heard that a dog saved all hands by carrying a line ashore. I’ve been crazy to get the facts from an eye witness.”
“I wasn’t much of an eye witness till we were high and dry, but I saw the dog do his bit, doctor, and he certainly did it all right.”
“We knew below decks by six o’clock—that’s just at dark—that it would be a fight for life,” he began. “What was left of our coal was all dust, and we’d had trouble keeping steam with it even in smooth water. We were anchored then, right on the straight shore, landing some freight for the village at Cowhead. The wind was already rising and the sea beginning to make.