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Read Ebook: Sämtliche Werke 9-10: Die Brüder Karamasoff by Dostoyevsky Fyodor Merezhkovsky Dmitry Sergeyevich Contributor Moeller Van Den Bruck Arthur Editor Rahsin E K Translator
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Ebook has 5215 lines and 396498 words, and 105 pages
Illustrator: Wilfred T. Grenfell
LE PETIT NORD
Annals of a Labrador Harbour
ANNE GRENFELL and KATIE SPALDING
FOREWORD
A friend from the Hub of the Universe, in a somewhat supercilious manner, not long ago informed one of our local friends that his own home was hundreds of miles to the southward. "'Deed, sir, how does you manage to live so far off?" with a scarcely perceptible twinkle of one eye, was the answer.
If home is the spot on earth where one spends the larger part of one's prime, and where one's family comes into being, then for over a quarter of a century "Le Petit Nord" of this book has been my home. With the authors I share for it and its people the love which alone keeps us here. Necessity has compelled me to perform, however imperfectly, functions usually distributed amongst many and varied professions, and the resultant intimacy has become unusual. As, therefore, I read the amusing experiences herein narrated, I feel that the "other half," who know us not, will love us better even if we are not exactly as they. That is not our fault. They should not live "so far off."
The incidents told are all actual, but the name of every single person and place has been changed to afford any hypersensitive among the actors the protection which pseudonymity confers. We here who have been permitted a glimpse of these pages feel that we really owe the authors another debt beyond the love for the people to which they have testified by the more substantial offering of long and voluntary personal service.
WILFRED T. GRENFELL, M.D.
SAD SEASICK SOULS STREWN AROUND 20
THE HERRING OF HIGH ESTATE 29
"HAVE YOU A PLUG OF BACCY, SKIPPER?" 40
RHODA'S RANDY 42
TOPSY'S AMBITION IS TO BECOME LIKE A FAT PIG 53
TOPSY WAS CREEPING FROM BED TO BED WITH THE CARVING-KNIFE 54
THE PROPHET OF DOOM 59
ANANIAS HAS BROKEN YET ANOTHER WINDOW 61
NOT FAT, BUT FINE AND HEARTY 68
DELILAH BAWLING 70
MRS. UNCLE LIFE FOUND THE LEADER OF THE TEAM IN HER BED 92
"TEACHER, I HAVE A PAIN" 95
THE YOHO 100
THEY ATE THE ENTIRE BOOT 108
HE HAD TAKEN THE STRANGER IN 117
HE FROZE HIS TOE IN BED 127
A LONG WAY ON THE HEAVENWARD ROAD 131
THE SEVENTH SON 140
ITS ACTION WAS PROMPT AND POWERFUL 141
IT WAS HIS LAST BULLET 153
A PUFFIN GHETTO 180
THE BEAR BIT HIS LEG OFF 189
P.S. 199
LE PETIT NORD
ANNALS OF A LABRADOR HARBOUR
DEAR JOAN
Why write as if I had taken a lifelong vow of separation from the British Isles and all things civilized, when after all it is only one short year out of my allotted span of life that I have promised to Mission work? Your steamer letter, with its Machiavellian arguments for returning immediately and directly from St. John's, was duly received. Of my unfitness for the work there is no possible doubt, no shadow of doubt whatever, and therein you and I are at one. But you will do me the justice to admit that I put very forcibly before those in charge of the Mission the delusion under which they were labouring; the responsibility now lies with them, and I "go to prove my soul." What awaits me I know not, but except when the mighty billows rocked me, not soothingly with gentle motion, but harshly and immoderately. I have never wavered in my decision; and even at such times it was to the bottom of Father Neptune that I aspired to travel rather than to the shores of "Merrie England."
The voyage so far has been uneventful, and we are now swaying luxuriously at anchor in a dense fog. This I believe is the usual welcome accorded to travellers to the island of Newfoundland. There is no chart for icebergs, and "growlers" are formidable opponents to encounter at any time. Therefore it behoves us to possess our souls in patience, and only to indulge at intervals in the right to grumble which is by virtue of tradition ours. We have already been here a day and a half, and we know not how much longer it will be before the curtain rises and the first act of the drama can begin.
I landed on the wharf at St. John's to be met with the cheering information that the steamer had left for the north two days before. This necessitated a delay of twelve days at least. Will all the babies at the Orphanage be dead before I arrive on the scene of action? Shall I take the next boat back and be in England before the coastal steamer comes south to claim me? Conflicting emotions disturb my troubled soul, but "on and always on!"
The island boasts a railroad of which the rural inhabitants are inordinately proud. Just prior to my arrival a daily service had been inaugurated. Formerly the passenger trains ran only three times a week. There are no Sunday trains. As I had so much time to spare, I decided that I could not do better than spend some of it in going across the island and thus see the Southern part of the country, catching my boat at Come-by-Chance Junction on the return journey. Truth compels me to add that I find myself a sadder and wiser woman. I left St. John's one evening at six o'clock, being due to arrive at our destination at eight o'clock the following night. There is no unpleasant "hustle" on this railway, and you may wait leisurely and humbly for a solid hour while your very simple meal is prepared. If you do not happen to be hungry, this is only a delightful interlude in the incessant rush of modern life, but if perchance Nature has endowed you with a moderate appetite, that one hour seems incurably long.
If you could have been present during the return journey from Run-by-Guess your worst prophecies would have seemed to you justified. The railroad is of the genus known as narrow-gauge; the roadbed was not constructed on the principles laid down by the Romans. In a country where the bones of Mother Earth protrude so insistently, it is beating the devil round the stump to mend the bed with fir branches tucked even ever so solicitously under the ties. That, nevertheless, was an attempt at "safety first" which I saw.
We landed in the same storm at Come-by-Chance Junction. But the next morning broke bright and shining, as if rain and wind were inhabitants of another planet. It is quite obvious that this land is a lineal descendant of Albion's Isle. Now I am aboard the coastal steamer and we are nosing our way gingerly through the packed floe ice, as we steam slowly north for Cape St. John. Yes, I know it is Midsummer's Day, but as the captain tersely put it, "the slob is a bit late."
The storm of two days ago blowing in from the broad Atlantic drove the great field of leftover pans before it, and packed them tight against the cliffs. If we had not had that sudden change in the weather's mind yesterday, we should not be even as far along as we now find ourselves.
You can form no idea of one's sensations as the steamer pushes her way through an ice jam. For miles around, as far as the eye can reach, the sea is covered with huge, glistening blocks. Sometimes the deep-blue water shows between, and sometimes they are so tightly massed together that they look like a hummocky white field. How any one can get a steamer along through it is a never-ending source of amazement, and my admiration for the captain is unstinted. I stand on the bridge by the hour, and watch him and listen to the reports of the man on the cross-trees as to the prospects of "leads" of open water ahead. Every few minutes we back astern, and then butt the ice. If one stays below decks the noise of the grinding on the ship's side is so persistent and so menacing that I prefer the deck in spite of its barrels and crates and boxes and smells. Here at least one would not feel like a rat in a hole if a long, gleaming, icy, giant finger should rip the ship's side open down the length of her. As we grate and scrape painfully along I look back and see that the ice-pan channel we leave behind is lined with scarlet. It is the paint off our hull. The spectacle is all too suggestive for one who has always regarded the most attractive aspect of the sea to be viewed from the landwash.
Of course the scenery is beautiful--almost too trite to write--but the beauty is lonesome and terrifying, and my city-bred soul longs for some good, homely, human "blot on the landscape." There are no trees on the cliffs now. I understand, however, that Nature is not responsible for this oversight. The people are sorely in need of firewood, and not being far-seeing enough to realize what a menace it is to the country to denude it so unscientifically, they have razed every treelet. Nature has done her best to rectify their mistake, and the rocky hills are covered with jolly bright mosses and lichens.
Naturally, there are compensations for even this kind of voyage, for no swell can make itself felt through the heavy ice pack. We steam along for miles on a keel so even that only the throb of our engines, and the inevitable "ship-py" odour, remind one that the North Atlantic rolls beneath the staunch little steamer.
The "staunch little steamer's" whistle has just made a noise out of all proportion to its size. It reminded me of an English sparrow's blatant personality. We have turned into a "tickle," and around the bend ahead of us are a handful of tiny whitewashed cottages clinging to the sides of the rocky shore.
We are out of the ice field and steaming past Cape St. John. This was the dividing line between the English and French in the settlement of their troubles in 1635. North of it is called the French or Treaty Shore, or as the French themselves so much more quaintly named it, "Le Petit Nord." It is at the north end of Le Petit Nord that St. Antoine is located.
I fear in my former letter I made some rather disparaging remarks about certain ocean liners, but I want to take them all back. Life is a series of comparisons and in retrospect the steamer on which I crossed seems a veritable floating palace. I offer it my humble apologies. Of one thing only I am certain--I shall never, never have the courage to face the return journey.
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