Norman Duncan

“ And Skipper Tommy Lovejoy this day lies dying....
I sit, a man grown, in my mother’s room, which now is mine. It is springtime. To-day I found a flower on the Watchman. Beyond the broad window of her room, the hills of Skull Island and God’s Warning stand yellow in the sunshine, rivulets dripping from the ragged patches of snow which yet linger in the hollows; and the harbour water ripples under balmy, fragrant winds from the wilderness; and workaday voices, strangely unchanged by the years that are passed, come drifting up the hill from my father’s wharves ”

“ From the Strait to Chidley, our folk and their kin from Newfoundland with hook and net reaped the harvest from the sea—a vast, sullen sea, unwilling to yield: sourly striving to withhold the good Lord’s bounty from the stout and merry fellows who had with lively courage put out to gather it. ’Twas catch and split and stow away! In the dawn of stormy days and sunny ones—contemptuous of the gray wind and reaching seas—the skiffs came and went. From headland to headland—dodging the reefs, escaping the shifting peril of ice, outwitting the drifting mists—little schooners chased the fish. ”

“ But we managed to get the crew ashore, and no man lost his life at that time. And Skipper Tommy, sitting bowed in my father’s house, told us in a dull, slow way—made tragic, from time to time, by the sweet light in his eye, by the flitting shadow of a smile—told us, thus, that Jagger of Wayfarer’s Tickle lay at the point of death, in fear of hell, crying for the help of his enemy: and then put his arm about Jacky, and went with him to the Rat Hole, there to bury his sorrow, that it might not distress us the more, who sorrowed, also. ”

“ I protest that I love my land, and have from that hour, barren as it is and as bitter the sea that breaks upon it; for I then learned—and still know—that it is as though the dear God Himself made harbours with wise, kind hands for such as have business in the wild waters of that coast. And I love my life—and go glad to the day’s work—for I have learned, in the course of it and by the life of the man who came to us, that whatever the stress and fear of the work to be done there is yet for us all a refuge, which, by way of the heart, they find who seek. ”

“ If the sea is a northern sea, full of ice and swept by big gales, if the adventures are real, if the hero is not a prig, if the tale concerns itself with heroic deeds and moves like a full-rigged ship with all sail spread to a rousing breeze, the boy will say “Bully!” and read the story again. “The Adventures of Billy Topsail” is a book to be chummy with. It is crowded with adventure, every page of it, from the time young Billy is nearly drowned by his dog, until in a big blizzard, lost on an ice-floe, he rescues Sir Archibald’s son, and the old Dictator weathers the gale. ”

“ The Watchman was the outermost headland of our coast and a landmark from afar—a great gray hill on the point of Good Promise by the Gate; our craft, running in from the Hook-an’-Line grounds off Raven Rock, rounded the Watchman and sped thence through the Gate and past Frothy Point into harbour. It was bold and bare—scoured by the weather—and dripping wet on days when the fog hung thick and low. It fell sharply to the sea by way of a weather-beaten cliff, in whose high fissures the gulls, wary of the hands of the lads of the place, wisely nested ”

“ Then I rowed the doctor to North Tickle, and let the punt lie in the swell of the open sea, where it was very solemn and quiet. The sky was heavy with drifting masses of cloud, aflare with red and gold and all the sunset colours, from the black line of coast, lying in the west, far into the east, where sea and sky were turning gray. ”

“ Fresh and cool they were—grateful enough, indeed, blowing through the thick, dead dusk—but sure warning, too, of great gusts to come. We were to have weather—a gale from the northeast, by all the lore of the coast—and it would be a wild night, with the breakers of Raven Rock and the Thirty Black Devils leaping high and merrily in the morning. As I ran down the last hill, with an eye on the light glowing in the kitchen window of Skipper Tommy Lovejoy’s cottage, I made shift to hope that the old man had made harbour from Wolf Cove, but thought it most unlikely. ”

“ No man of our harbour put to sea. With the big wind coming, ’twas no place for punt, schooner or steamer. The waters off shore were set with traps for the unwary and the unknowing—the bluffs veiled by mist, the drift ice hidden, the reefs covered up. In a gale of wind from the east there would be no escape. ”

“ We were to chance hospitality for the night; and this must be (they told us) at the cottage of a man of the name of Jonas Jutt, which is at Topmast Tickle. There was a lusty old wind scampering down the coast, with many a sportive whirl and whoop, flinging the snow about in vast delight—a big, rollicking winter’s wind, blowing straight out of the north, at the pitch of half a gale. ”

“ My window was black; there was no light in the sky—no star shining. Rain pattered on the roof. I heard the rush of wind. ’Twas inevitable that I should contrast the quiet of the room, the security of my place, the comfort of my couch and blankets, with a rain-swept, heaving deck and a tumultuous sea. A gusty night, I thought—thick, wet, with the wind rising. The sea would be in a turmoil on the grounds by dawn: there would be no fishing; and I was regretting this—between sleep and waking—when the bell again clanged dolefully. Roused, in a measure, I got ear of men stumbling up the path. ”

“ Half a gale was blowing from the sea: it broke over the hills; it swooped from the inky sky; it swept past in long, clinging gusts. We breasted it heads down. The twins raised the alarm. Wreck! Wreck! Folk joined us as we ran. They were in anxious haste to save life. They were gleeful with the hope of salvage. What the sea casts up the Lord provides! Wreck! Wreck! Far-off cries answered us. The cottage windows were aglow. Lanterns danced over the flakes. Lights moved over the harbour water. Wreck! Wreck! ”

“ But for this there is some excuse: for not one of us hoped ever again to behold the rocks and placid water of our harbour, to continue the day’s work to the timely close of the day, to sit in quiet places, to dream a fruitful future, to aspire untroubled in security and ease: and surely a man, whatever his disposition and strength of mind, being all at once thus confronted, may without blame do that which, as a reward for noble endeavour, he had hoped in all honour to do in some far-off time. ”

“ Then, all at once—and in the very deepest of the silence—the doctor uttered a startling “Ha!” leaped from his chair with such violence that he overturned it, awkwardly upset Jimmie Jutt’s stool and sent the lad tumbling head over heels (for which he did not stop to apologize) ; and there was great confusion: in the midst of which the doctor jerked the stove door open, thrust in his arm, and snatched a blazing letter straight from the flames—all before Jimmie and Martha and Sammy Jutt had time to recover from the daze into which the sudden uproar had thrown them. ”

“ They said the sloop would not outlive the gale. They said ’twas a glorious death that the doctor and Skipper Thomas Lovejoy had died; thus to depart in the high endeavour to succour an enemy—but shed no tears: for ’tis not the way of our folk to do it.... Rain turned to sleet—sleet to black fog. The smell of winter was in the air. There was a feeling of snow abroad.... Then came the snow—warning flakes, driving strangely through the mist, where no snow should have been. ”

“ No man—rich man, poor man, beggarman nor thief, doctor, lawyer nor merchant chief—ever yet left a Hudson’s Bay Company’s post, stared in the face by the chance of having to seek hospitality of a Christmas Eve—no right-feeling man, I say, ever yet left a Hudson’s Bay Company’s post, under such circumstances, without putting something more than medicine in his pack. ”

“ The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
“Is I right,” pursued my father, his voice rising, “in thinkin’ the gov’ment pays you t’ tend the sick o’ this coast?”
“That’s my business,” flashed the doctor. “That’s my business, sir!”
Jagger looked upon my father’s angry face and smiled.
“Is we right, doctor,” said Skipper Tommy, “in thinkin’ you knows she lies desperate sick?”
“Damme!” cried the doctor. “I’ve heard that tale before. You’re a pretty set, you are, to try to play on a man’s feelings like that. But you can’t take me in. No, you can’t,” he repeated, his loose under-lip trembling. ”

“ From the top there was a far, wide outlook—all sea and rock: along the ragged, treeless coast, north and south, to the haze wherewith, in distances beyond the ken of lads, it melted; and upon the thirty wee white houses of our folk, scattered haphazard about the harbour water,18 each in its own little cove and each with its own little stage and great flake; and over the barren, swelling rock beyond, to the blue wilderness, lying infinitely far away.
I shuddered when from the Watchman I looked upon the wilderness.
“’Tis a dreadful place,” I had heard my father say. “Men starves in there.” ”

“ Skipper Tommy Lovejoy, being on the road to Trader’s Cove from the Rat Hole, where he lived alone with his twin lads, had spied us from Needle Rock, and now came puffing up the hill to wish my mother good-day: which, indeed, all true men of the harbour never failed to do, whenever they came near. ”

“ In the firelight of that evening—when the maids had cleared the cozy room and carried away the lamp and we three sat alone together in my father’s house—was planned our simple partnership in good works and the fish business. ’Tis wonderful what magic is abroad at such times—what dreams, what sure hopes, lie in the flickering blaze, the warm, red glow, the dancing shadows; what fine aspirations unfold in hearts that are brave and hopeful and kind. ”

“ There was silence in the room—which none of us who waited found the will to break.
“Jagger”—said the doctor.
The voice was low—almost a drawl—but mightily authoritative: being without trace of feeling, but superior to passion, majestic. ”

“ It was a familiar story—told while the sleepy maids put the kettle on the fire and the fury of the gale increased. ’Twas the schooner Lucky Fisherman,158 thirty tons, Tom Lisson master, hailing from Burnt Harbour of the Newfoundland Green Bay, and fishing the Labrador at Wreck Cove, with a tidy catch in the hold and four traps in the water. There had been a fine run o’ fish o’ late; an’ Bill Sparks, the splitter—with a brood of ten children to grow fat or go hungry on the venture—labouring without sleep and by the light of a flaring torch, had stabbed his right hand with a fish bone. ”

“ It came from the north, addressed, in pale, sprawling characters, to Skipper Tommy Lovejoy of our harbour—a crumpled, greasy, ill-odoured missive: little enough like a letter from a lady, bearing (as we supposed) a coy appeal to the tender passion. But———
“Ay, Davy,” my sister insisted. “’Tis from she. Smell it for yourself.” ”

“ Once, when the doctor was off in haste to Cuddy Cove to save the life of a mother of seven—the Cuddy Cove men had without a moment’s respite pulled twelve miles against a switch of wind from the north and were streaming sweat when they landed—once, when the doctor was thus about his beneficent business,172 a woman from Bowsprit Head brought her child to be cured, incredulous of the physician’s power, but yet desperately seeking, as mothers will. ”

“ I would not have you think us unfeeling. God knows, we were not that! ’Twas this way with us: each hid the pain,140 and thus thought to deceive the other into a happier mood. We did well enough in the shop; but we could make neither head nor tail of the books in my father’s safe; and when our bewilderment and heartache came to ears of the doctor he said that he would himself manage the letters and keep the books in the intervals of healing the sick: which, with a medicine chest they had brought ashore from the wreck, he had already begun to practice. ”

“ The doctor mused. “It may be difficult,” he said, by and by, “to fix this wreck upon Jagger.”
“Hist!” Jonas replied, stepping near. “The skipper o’ the Jessie Dodd,” he whispered, pointedly, solemnly closing one eye, “is wonderful weak in the knees.”
Doctor and I went then in the sloop to Wayfarer’s Tickle (the wind favouring us) ; and there we found the handsome Jessie Dodd lying bedraggled and disconsolate on the Ragged Edge, within the harbour: slightly listed, but afloat aft, and swinging with the gentle lift and fall of the water. ”

“ And down the path we sped—along the road—by the turn to Cut-Throat Cove—until, at last, we came to the cottage of Aunt Amanda and Uncle Joe Bow, whom we threw into a fluster with our news. When the doctor was informed of the exigency of the situation, he married them on the spot, improvising a ceremony, without a moment’s hesitation, as though he had been used to it all his life: a family of six meanwhile grinning with delight and embarrassment.
“You sees, zur,” Uncle Joe explained, when ’twas over, “we never had no chance afore. ‘Manda an’ me was down narth when the last parson come this way. ”

“ But the old man soon forgot all about his whales, as he had forgotten to make out the strange way the Lord had discovered to fasten His stars to the sky; moved by a long contemplation of my mother’s frailty, he had a nobler inspiration.
“’Tis sad, lass,” he said, his face aquiver with sympathy, “t’ think that we’ve but one doctor t’ cure the sick, an’ him on the mail-boat. ’Tis wonderful sad t’ think o’ that! ’Tis a hard case,” he went on, “but if a man only thunk hard enough he’d find a way t’ mend it. Sure, what ought t’ be mended can be mended. ’Tis the way o’ the world. ”

“ Doctor Davy, they call me, now. But I have not gone322 lacking. I am not without realization of my largest hope. The decks are often wet—wet and white. They heave underfoot—and are wet and white—while the winds come rushing from the gray horizon. Ah, I love the sea—the sweet, wild sea: loveliest in her adorable rage, like a woman!... And my father’s house is now enlarged, and is an hospital; and the doctor’s sloop is now grown to a schooner, in which he goes about, as always, doing good.... ”