Dr. Grenfell's Parish: The Deep Sea Fisherman

Jared was young, lusty, light-hearted; but he lived in the fear and dread of hell. I had known that for two days.

“The flies, zur,” said he to the sportsman, whose hospitality I was enjoying, “was wonderful bad the day.”

We were twelve miles inland, fishing a small stream; and we were now in the “tilt,” at the end of the day, safe from the swarming, vicious black-flies.

“Yes,” the sportsman replied, emphatically. “I’ve suffered the tortures of the damned this day!”

Jared burst into a roar of laughter – as sudden and violent as a thunderclap.

“What you laughing at?” the sportsman demanded, as he tenderly stroked his swollen neck.

“Tartures o’ the damned!” Jared gasped. “Sure, if that’s all ’tis, I’ll jack ’asy about it!”

He laughed louder – reckless levity; but I knew that deep in his heart he would be infinitely relieved could he believe – could he only make sure – that the punishment of the wicked was no worse than an eternity of fighting with poisonous insects.

“Ay,” he repeated, ruefully, “if that’s all ’twas, ’twould not trouble me much.”

The graveyard at Battle Harbour is in a sheltered hollow near the sea. It is a green spot – the one, perhaps, on the island – and they have enclosed it with a high board fence. Men have fished from that harbour for a hundred years and more – but there are not many graves; why, I do not know. The crumbling stones, the weather-beaten boards, the sprawling ill-worded inscriptions, are all, in their way, eloquent:

There is another, better carved, somewhat better spelled, but quite as interesting and luminous:

In

Memory of John

Hill who Died

December 30 1890

Aged 34

These things are, indeed, eloquent – of ignorance, of poverty; but no less eloquent of sorrow and of love. The Labrador “liveyere” is kin with the whole wide world.

VIII – WITH The FLEET

In the early spring – when the sunlight is yellow and the warm winds blow and the melting snow drips over the cliffs and runs in little rivulets from the barren hills – in the thousand harbours of Newfoundland the great fleet is made ready for the long adventure upon the Labrador coast. The rocks echo the noise of hammer and saw and mallet and the song and shout of the workers. The new schooners – building the winter long at the harbour side – are hurried to completion. The old craft – the weather-beaten, ragged old craft, which, it may be, have dodged the reefs and out-lived the gales of forty seasons – are fitted with new spars, patched with new canvas and rope, calked anew, daubed anew and, thus refitted, float brave enough on the quiet harbour water. There is no end to the bustle of labour on ships and nets – no end to the clatter of planning. From the skipper of the ten-ton First Venture, who sails with a crew of sons bred for the purpose, to the powerful dealer who supplies on shares a fleet of seventeen fore-and-afters manned from the harbours of a great bay, there is hope in the hearts of all. Whatever the last season, every man is to make a good “voyage” now. This season —this season – there is to be fish a-plenty on the Labrador!

The future is bright as the new spring days. Aunt Matilda is to have a bonnet with feathers – when Skipper Thomas gets home from the Labrador. Little Johnny Tatt, he of the crooked back, is to know again the virtue of Pike’s Pain Compound, at a dollar a bottle, warranted to cure – when daddy gets home from the Labrador. Skipper Bill’s Lizzie, plump, blushing, merry-eyed, is to wed Jack Lute o’ Burnt Arm – when Jack comes back from the Labrador. Every man’s heart, and, indeed, most men’s fortunes, are in the venture. The man who has nothing has yet the labour of his hands. Be he skipper, there is one to back his skill and honesty; be he hand, there is no lack of berths to choose from. Skippers stand upon their record and schooners upon their reputation; it’s take your choice, for the hands are not too many: the skippers are timid or bold, as God made them; the schooners are lucky or not, as Fate determines. Every man has his chance. John Smith o’ Twillingate provisions the Lucky Queen and gives her to the penniless Skipper Jim o’ Yellow Tickle on shares. Old Tom Tatter o’ Salmon Cove, with plea and argument, persuades the Four Arms trader to trust him once again with the Busy Bee. He’ll get the fish this time. Nar a doubt of it! He’ll be home in August – this year – loaded to the gunwale. God knows who pays the cash when the fish fail! God knows how the folk survive the disappointment! It is a great lottery of hope and fortune.

When, at last, word comes south that the ice is clearing from the coast, the vessels spread their little wings to the first favouring winds; and in a week – two weeks or three – the last of the Labradormen have gone “down north.”

Dr. Grenfell and his workers find much to do among these men and women and children.

At Indian Harbour where the Strathcona lay at anchor, I went aboard the schooner Jolly Crew. It was a raw, foggy day, with a fresh northeast gale blowing, and a high sea running outside the harbour. They were splitting fish on deck; the skiff was just in from the trap – she was still wet with spray.

“I sails with me sons an’ gran’sons, zur,” said the skipper, smiling. “Sure, I be a old feller t’ be down the Labrador, isn’t I, zur?”

He did not mean that. He was proud of his age and strength – glad that he was still able “t’ be at the fishin’.”

“’Tis a wonder you’ve lived through it all,” said I.

He laughed. “An’ why, zur?” he asked.

“Many’s the ship wrecked on this coast,” I answered.

“Oh no, zur,” said he; “not so many, zur, as you might think. Down this way, zur, we knows how t’ sail!”

That was a succinct explanation of very much that had puzzled me.

“Ah, well,” said I, “’tis a hard life.”

“Hard?” he asked, doubtfully.

“Yes,” I answered; “’tis a hard life – the fishin’.”

“Oh no, zur,” said he, quietly, looking up from his work. “’Tis just – just life!”

They do, indeed, know how “t’ sail.” The Newfoundland government, niggardly and utterly independable when the good of the fisherfolk is concerned, of whatever complexion the government may chance to be, but prodigal to an extraordinary degree when individual self-interests are at stake – this is a delicate way of putting an unpleasant truth, – keeps no light burning beyond the Strait of Belle Isle; the best it does, I believe, is to give wrecked seamen free passage home. Under these difficult circumstances, no seamen save Newfoundlanders, who are the most skillful and courageous of all, could sail that coast: and they only because they are born to follow the sea – there is no escape for them – and are bred to sailing from their earliest years.

“What you going to be when you grow up?” I once asked a lad on the far northeast coast.

He looked at me in vast astonishment.

“What you going to be, what you going to do,” I repeated, “when you grow up?”

Still he did not comprehend. “Eh?” he said.

“What you going to work at,” said I, in desperation, “when you’re a man?”

“Oh, zur,” he answered, understanding at last, “I isn’t clever enough t’ be a parson!”

And so it went without saying that he was to fish for a living! It is no wonder, then, that the skippers of the fleet know “how t’ sail.” The remarkable quality of the sea-captains who come from among them impressively attests the fact – not only their quality as sailors, but as men of spirit and proud courage. There is one – now a captain of a coastal boat on the Newfoundland shore – who takes his steamer into a ticklish harbour of a thick, dark night, when everything is black ahead and roundabout, steering only by the echo of the ship’s whistle! There is another, a confident seaman, a bluff, high-spirited fellow, who was once delayed by bitter winter weather – an inky night, with ice about, the snow flying, the seas heavy with frost, the wind blowing a gale.

“Where have you been?” they asked him, sarcastically, from the head office.

The captain had been on the bridge all night.

“Berry-picking,” was his laconic despatch in reply.

There is another – also the captain of a coastal steamer – who thought it wise to lie in harbour through a stormy night in the early winter.

“What detains you?” came a message from the head office.

“It is not a fit night for a vessel to be at sea,” the captain replied; and thereupon he turned in, believing the matter to be at an end.

The captain had been concerned for his vessel – not for his life; nor yet for his comfort. But the underling at the head office misinterpreted the message.

“What do we pay you for?” he telegraphed.