Doctor Luke of the Labrador

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[Illustration: "I've a bad son, the day, Skipper Tommy," said my
Mother.--Page 23.]

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DOCTOR LUKE OF THE LABRADOR

BY
NORMAN DUNCAN

GROSSET & DUNLAP

Publishers--New York

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Copyright, 1904, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 63 Washington Street
Toronto: 27 Richmond Street, W
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 30 St. Mary Street

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To
My Own Mother
and to
her granddaughter
Elspeth
my niece

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To the Reader

However bleak the Labrador--however naked and desolate that
shore--flowers bloom upon it. However bitter the despoiling sea--however
cold and rude and merciless--the gentler virtues flourish in the hearts
of the folk.... And the glory of the coast--and the glory of the whole
world--is mother-love: which began in the beginning and has continued
unchanged to this present time--the conspicuous beauty of the fabric of
life: the great constant of the problem.

N. D.

College Campus,
Washington, Pennsylvania,
October 15, 1904.

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CONTENTS

I. Our Harbour 13
II. The World from the Watchman 17
III. In the Haven of Her Arms 29
IV. The Shadow 35
V. Mary 48
VI. The Man on the Mail Boat 57
VII. The Woman from Wolf Cove 70
VIII. The Blind and the Blind 79
IX. A Wreck on the Thirty Devils 89
X. The Flight 102
XI. The Women at the Gate 110
XII. Doctor and I 115
XIII. A Smiling Face 125
XIV. In the Watches of the Night 133
XV. The Wolf 138
XVI. A Malady of the Heart 150
XVII. Hard Practice 167
XVIII. Skipper Tommy Gets a Letter 182
XIX. The Fate of the Mail-Boat Doctor 191
XX. Christmas Eve at Topmast Tickle 202
XXI. Down North 219
XXII. The Way from Heart's Delight 222
XXIII. The Course of True Love 239
XXIV. The Beginning of the End 258
XXV. A Capital Crime 265
XXVI. Decoyed 287
XXVII. The Day of the Dog 305
XXVIII. In Harbour 320

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[Illustration: SKETCH MAP of OUR HARBOR]

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DOCTOR LUKE of THE LABRADOR

I

OUR HARBOUR

A cluster of islands, lying off the cape, made the shelter of our
harbour. They were but great rocks, gray, ragged, wet with fog and surf,
rising bleak and barren out of a sea that forever fretted a thousand
miles of rocky coast as barren and as sombre and as desolate as they;
but they broke wave and wind unfailingly and with vast unconcern--they
were of old time, mighty, steadfast, remote from the rage of weather and
the changing mood of the sea, surely providing safe shelter for us folk
of the coast--and we loved them, as true men, everywhere, love home.

"'Tis the cleverest harbour on the Labrador!" said we.

When the wind was in the northeast--when it broke, swift and vicious,
from the sullen waste of water beyond, whipping up the grey sea, driving
in the vagrant ice, spreading clammy mist over the reefs and rocky
headlands of the long coast--our harbour lay unruffled in the lee of
God's Warning. Skull Island and a shoulder of God's Warning broke the
winds from the north: the froth of the breakers, to be sure, came
creeping through the north tickle, when the sea was high; but no great
wave from the open ever disturbed the quiet water within. We were fended
from the southerly gales by the massive, beetling front of the Isle of
Good Promise, which, grandly unmoved by their fuming rage, turned them
up into the black sky, where they went screaming northward, high over
the heads of the white houses huddled in the calm below; and the seas
they brought--gigantic, breaking seas--went to waste on Raven Rock and
the Reef of the Thirty Black Devils, ere, their strength spent, they
growled over the jagged rocks at the base of the great cliffs of Good
Promise and came softly swelling through the broad south tickle to the
basin. The west wind came out of the wilderness, fragrant of the far-off
forest, lying unknown and dread in the inland, from which the mountains,
bold and blue and forbidding, lifted high their heads; and the mist was
then driven back into the gloomy seas of the east, and the sun was out,
shining warm and yellow, and the sea, lying in the lee of the land, was
all aripple and aflash.

When the spring gales blew--the sea being yet white with drift-ice--the
schooners of the Newfoundland fleet, bound north to the fishing, often
came scurrying into our harbour for shelter. And when the skippers,
still dripping the spray of the gale from beard and sou'wester, came
ashore for a yarn and an hospitable glass with my father, the trader,
many a tale of wind and wreck and far-away harbours I heard, while we
sat by the roaring stove in my father's little shop: such as those which
began, "Well, 'twas the wonderfullest gale o' wind you ever
seed--snowin' an' blowin', with the sea in mountains, an' it as black as
a wolf's throat--an' we was somewheres off Cape Mugford. She were
drivin' with a nor'east gale, with the shore somewheres handy t'
le'ward. But, look! nar a one of us knowed where she were to, 'less
'twas in the thick o' the Black Heart Reefs...." Stout, hearty fellows
they were who told yarns like these--thick and broad about the chest and
lanky below, long-armed, hammer-fisted, with frowsy beards, bushy brows,
and clear blue eyes, which were fearless and quick to look.

"'Tis a fine harbour you got here, Skipper David Roth," they would say
to my father, when it came time to go aboard, "an' here, zur," raising
the last glass, "is t' the rocks that make it!"

"T' the schooners they shelter!" my father would respond.

When the weather turned civil, I would away to the summit of the
Watchman--a scamper and a mad climb--to watch the doughty little
schooners on their way. And it made my heart swell and flutter to see
them dig their noses into the swelling seas--to watch them heel and leap
and make the white dust fly--to feel the rush of the wet wind that drove
them--to know that the grey path of a thousand miles was every league of
the way beset with peril. Brave craft! Stout hearts to sail them! It
thrilled me to watch them beating up the suddy coast, lying low and
black in the north, and through the leaden, ice-strewn seas, with the
murky night creeping in from the open. I, too, would be the skipper of a
schooner, and sail with the best of them!

"A schooner an' a wet deck for me!" thought I.

And I loved our harbour all the more for that.

* * * * *

Thus, our harbour lay, a still, deep basin, in the shelter of three
islands and a cape of the mainland: and we loved it, drear as it was,
because we were born there and knew no kinder land; and we boasted it,
in all the harbours of the Labrador, because it was a safe place,
whatever the gale that blew.

II

The WORLD From The WATCHMAN

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; and within the
harbour it rose from Trader's Cove, where, snug under a broken cliff,
stood our house and the little shop and storehouse and the broad
drying-flakes and the wharf and fish-stages of my father's business.
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,
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."

This I knew to be true, for, once, I had seen the face of a man who came
crawling out.

"The sea is kinder," I thought.

Whether so or not, I was to prove, at least, that the wilderness was
cruel.

* * * * *

One blue day, when the furthest places on sea and land lay in a thin,
still haze, my mother and I went to the Watchman to romp. There was
place there for a merry gambol, place, even, led by a wiser hand, for
roaming and childish adventure--and there were silence and sunlit space
and sea and distant mists for the weaving of dreams--ay, and, upon rare
days, the smoke of the great ships, bound down the Straits--and when
dreams had worn the patience there were huge loose rocks handy for
rolling over the brow of the cliff--and there was gray moss in the
hollows, thick and dry and soft, to sprawl on and rest from the delights
of the day. So the Watchman was a playground for my mother and me--my
sister, my elder by seven years, was all the day long tunefully busy
about my father's comfort and the little duties of the house--and, on
that blue day, we climbed the broken cliff behind our house and toiled
up the slope beyond in high spirits, and we were very happy together;
for my mother was a Boston maid, and, though she turned to right
heartily when there was work to do, she was not like the Labrador born,
but thought it no sin to wander and laugh in the sunlight of the heads
when came the blessed opportunity.

"I'm fair done out," said I, at last, returning, flushed, from a race to
Beacon Rock.

"Lie here, Davy--ay, but closer yet--and rest," said she.

I flung myself at full length beside her, spreading abroad my sturdy
little arms and legs; and I caught her glance, glowing warm and proud,
as it ran over me, from toe to crown, and, flashing prouder yet through
a gathering mist of tears, returned again.

"I knows why you're lookin' at me that way," said I.

"And why?" said she.

"'Tis for sheer love o' me!"

She was strangely moved by this. Her hands, passionately clasped of a
sudden, she laid upon her heart; and she drew a sharp, quivering
breath.

"You're getting so--so--strong and--and--so _big_!" she cried.

"Hut!" said I. "'Tis nothin' t' cry about!"

"Oh," she sobbed, "I'm _proud_ t' be the mother of a son!"

I started up.

"I'm that proud," she went on, hovering now between great joy and pain,
"that it--it--fair _hurts_ me!"

"I'll not have you cry!" I protested.

She caught me in her arms and we broke into merry laughter. Then to
please her I said that I would gather flowers for her hair--and she
would be the stranded mermaid and I the fisherman whom she besought to
put her back in the sea and rewarded with three wishes--and I sought
flowers everywhere in the hollows and crevices of the bald old Watchman,
where, through years, some soil had gathered, but found only whisps of
wiry grass and one wretched blossom; whereupon I returned to her very
wroth.

"God made a botch o' the world!" I declared.

She looked up in dismay.

"Ay," I repeated, with a stamp of the foot, "a wonderful botch o' the
world He's gone an' made. Why, they's but one flower on the Watchman!"

She looked over the barren land--the great gray waste of naked rock--and
sighed.

"But one?" she asked, softly.

"An I was God," I said, indignantly, "I'd have made _more_ flowers an'
made un _bigger_."

She smiled in the way of one dreaming.

"Hut!" I went on, giving daring wing to my imagination. "I'd have made a
hundred kinds an' soil enough t' grow un all--_every one o' the whole
hundred!_ I'd have----"

She laid a soft hand on my lips. "'Tis a land," she whispered, with
shining eyes, "that grows rosy lads, and I'm well content!"

"'Tis a poor way," I continued, disregarding her caress, "t' gather soil
in buckets. _I'd_ have made enough t' gather it in _barrows_! I'd have
made lots of it--heaps of it. Why," I boasted, growing yet more
recklessly prodigal, "I'd have made a _hill_ of it somewheres handy t'
every harbour in the world--as big as the Watchman--ay, an' handy t' the
harbours, so the folk could take so much as they wanted--t' make
potato-gardens--an'--an' t' make the grave-yards deep enough. 'Tis a
wonderful poor way," I concluded with contempt, "t' have t' gather it in
buckets from the rocks!"

My mother was laughing heartily now.

"'Twould not be a better world, thinks you?" said I. "Ay, but I could
do better than that! Hut!" I cried, at last utterly abandoned to my
imagination, "I'd have more things than potatoes grow in the ground an'
more things than berries grow on bushes. _What_ would I have grow in the
ground, says you? Is you thinkin' I don't _know_? Oh, ay, mum," I
protested, somewhat at a loss, but very knowingly, "_I_ knows!" I was
now getting rapidly beyond my depth; but I plunged bravely on, wondering
like lightning, the while, what else _could_ grow in the ground and on
bushes. "I'd have _flour_ grow in the ground, mum," I cried,
triumphantly, "an' I'd have sea-boots an' sou'westers grow on the
bushes. An', ecod!" I continued, inspired, "I'd have fishes grow on
bushes, already split an' cleaned!"

What other improvements I would have made on the good Lord's handiwork I
do not know. 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. He was a short, marvellously broad, bow-legged
old man--but yet straight and full of strength and fine hope--all the
while dressed in tight white moleskin (much soiled by the slime of the
day's work), long skin boots, tied below the knees, and a ragged cloth
cap, which he kept pulled tight over his bushy grey hair. There was a
mild twinkle forever lying in the depths of his blue eyes, and thence,
at times, overflowing upon his broad brown face, which then rippled with
wrinkles, from the roots of his hair to the fringe of white beard under
his chin, in a way at once to make one laugh with him, though one could
not quite tell why. We lads of the harbour loved him very much, for his
good-humour and for his tenderness--never more so, however, than when,
by night, in the glow of the fire, he told us long tales of the fairies
and wicked elves he had dealt with in his time, twinkling with every
word, so that we were sorely puzzled to know whether to take him in jest
or earnest.

"I've a very bad son, the day, Skipper Tommy," said my mother, laying a
fond hand on my head.

"Have you, now, mum!" cried the skipper, with a wink. "'Tis hard t'
believe. He've been huntin' gulls' nests in parlous places on the cliff
o' the Watchman, I'm thinkin'."

"'Tis worse than that."

"Dear man! Worse than that, says you? Then he've took the punt beyond
the Gate all by hisself."

"'Tis even worse than that. He's not pleased with the dear Lord's
world."

Skipper Tommy stopped dead and stared me in the eye--but not coldly, you
must know; just in mild wonder, in which, it may be, was mixed some
admiration, as though he, too, deep in his guileless old heart, had had
some doubt which he dared not entertain.

"Ay," said I, loftily, "He've not made flowers enough t' suit _my_
taste."

Skipper Tommy rubbed his nose in a meditative way. "Well," he drawled,
"He haven't made many, true enough. I'm not sayin' He mightn't have made
more. But He've done very well. They's enough--oh, ay, they's enough t'
get along with. For, look you! lad, they's no real _need_ o' any more.
'Twas wonderful kind of Un," he went on, swept away by a flood of good
feeling, as often happened, "t' make even one little flower. Sure, He
didn't _have_ t' do it. He just went an' done it for love of us. Ay," he
repeated, delighting himself with this new thought of his Lord's
goodness, "'twas wonderful kind o' the Lard t' take so much trouble as
that!"

My mother was looking deep into Skipper Tommy's eyes as though she saw
some lovely thing therein.

"Ay," said I, "'twas fair kind; but I'm wishin' He'd been a bit more
free."

My mother smiled at that. Then, "And my son," she said, in the way of
one poking fun, "would have _flour_ grow out of the ground!"

"An' did he say that!" cried Skipper Tommy.

My mother laughed, and Skipper Tommy laughed uproariously, and loudly
slapped his thick thigh; and I felt woefully foolish, and wondered much
what depth of ignorance I had betrayed, but I laughed, too, because
Skipper Tommy laughed so heartily and opened his great mouth so wide;
and we were all very merry for a time. At last, while I wondered, I
thought that, perhaps, flour _did_ grow, after all--though, for the life
of me, I could not tell how--and that my mother and Skipper Tommy knew
it well enough; whereupon I laughed the merrier.

"Come, look you!" then said Skipper Tommy, gently taking the lobe of my
ear between his thick, hard thumb and forefinger. "Don't you go thinkin'
you could make better worlds than the Lard. Why, lad, 'tis but _play_
for _Him_! _He've_ no trouble makin' a world! I'm thinkin' He've made
more than one," he added, his voice changing to a knowing whisper. "'Tis
my own idea, but," now sagely, "I'm thinkin' He did. 'Tis like that this
was the first, an' He done better when He got His hand in. Oh, ay, nar a
doubt He done better with the rest! But He done wonderful well with this
one. When you're so old as me, lad, you'll know that though the Lard
made few flowers He put a deal o' time an' labour on the harbours; an'
when you're beatin' up t' the Gate, lad, in a gale o' wind--an' when you
thinks o' the quiet place t'other side o' Frothy Point--you'll know the
Lard done well by all the folk o' this world when He made safe harbours
instead o' wastin' His time on flowers. Ay, lad, 'tis a wonderful well
built world; an' you'll know it--then!"

We turned homeward--down the long road over the shoulder of the
Watchman; for the evening was drawing near.

"They's times," said Skipper Tommy, giving his nose a puzzled tweak,
"when I wonders how He done it. 'Tis fair beyond me! I wonders a deal,
now, mum," turning to my mother, his face lighting with interest, "about
they stars. Now, mum," smiling wistfully, "I wonders ... I wonders ...
how He stuck un up there in the sky. Ah," with a long sigh, "I'd sure
like t' know that! An' wouldn't you, mum? Ecod! but I _would_ like t'
know that! 'Twould be worth while, I'm thinkin'. I'm wishin' I could
find out. But, hut!" he cried, with a laugh which yet rang strangely sad
in my ears, "'tis none o' my business. 'Twould be a queer thing, indeed,
if men went pryin' into the Lard's secrets. He'd fix un, I 'low--He'd
snarl un all up--He'd let un think theirselves wise an' guess
theirselves mad! That's what He'd do. But, now," falling again into a
wistful, dreaming whisper, "I wonders ... wonders ... how He _does_
stick them stars up there. I'm thinkin' I'll try t' think that out--some
day--so people could know, an' wouldn't have t' wonder no more.
I--wonders--if I could!"

We walked on in silence--down the last slope, and along the rocky path
to Trader's Cove; and never a word was spoken. When we came to the turn
to our house we bade the skipper good-evening.

"Don't you be forgettin'," he said, tipping up my face with a finger
under my chin, "that you'll soon be thinkin' more o' harbours than o'
flowers."

I laughed.

"But, ecod!" he broke out, violently rubbing his nose, until I was
fairly concerned for it, so red did it turn, "that was a wonderful good
idea about the flour!"

My mother looked at him sharply; then her eyes twinkled, and she hid a
smile behind her hand.

"_'Twould_ be a good thing t' have it grow," the old man continued.
"'Twould be far better than--than--well, now--makin' it the way they
does. Ecod!" he concluded, letting his glance fall in bewilderment on
the ground, "I wonders how they _does_ make flour. I wonders ... wonders
... where they gets the stuff an'--an'--how they makes it!"

He went off, wondering still; and my mother and I went slowly home, and
sat in the broad window of our house, which overlooked the harbour and
fronted the flaring western sky; and then first she told me of the kind
green world beyond.

III

IN THE HAVEN of HER ARMS

There was a day not far distant--my father had told my mother with a
touch of impatience that it _must_ come for all sons--when Skipper Tommy
took me with one of the twin lads in the punt to the Hook-an'-Line
grounds to jig, for the traps were doing poorly with the fish, the
summer was wasting and there was nothing for it but to take to hook and
line: which my father's dealers heartily did, being anxious to add what
fish they could to the catch, though in this slower way. And it was my
first time beyond the Gate--and the sea seemed very vast and strange and
sullen when we put out at dawn--and when the long day was near done the
wind blew gray and angry from the north and spread a thickening mist
over the far-off Watchman--and before night closed, all that Skipper
Tommy had said of harbours and flowers came true in my heart.

"We'll be havin' t' beat up t' the Gate," said he, as he hauled in the
grapnel.

"With all the wind she can carry," added little Jacky, bending to lift
the mast into the socket.

In truth, yes--as it seemed to my unknowing mind: she had all the wind
she could carry. The wind fretted the black sea until it broke all
roundabout; and the punt heeled to the gusts and endlessly flung her
bows up to the big waves; and the spray swept over us like driving rain,
and was bitter cold; and the mist fell thick and swift upon the coast
beyond. Jacky, forward with the jib-sheet in his capable little fist and
the bail bucket handy, scowled darkly at the gale, being alert as a cat,
the while; and the skipper, his mild smile unchanged by all the tumult,
kept a hand on the mainsheet and tiller, and a keen, quiet eye on the
canvas and on the vanishing rocks whither we were bound. And forth and
back she went, back and forth, again and again, without end--beating up
to harbour.

"Dear man!" said Skipper Tommy, with a glance at the vague black outline
of the Watchman, "but 'tis a fine harbour!"

"'Tis that," sighed Jacky, wistfully, as a screaming little gust heeled
the punt over; "an'--an'--I wisht we was there!"

Skipper Tommy laughed at his son.

"I does!" Jacky declared.

"I--I--I'm not so sure," I stammered, taking a tighter grip on the
gunwale, "but I wisht we was--there--too."

"You'll be wishin' that often," said Skipper Tommy, pointedly, "if you
lives t' be so old as me."

We wished it often, indeed, that day--while the wind blustered yet more
wildly out of the north and the waves tumbled aboard our staggering
little craft and the night came apace over the sea--and we have wished
it often since that old time, have Jacky and I, God knows! I had the
curious sensation of fear, I fancy--though I am loath to call it
that--for the first time in my life; and I was very much relieved when,
at dusk, we rounded the looming Watchman, ran through the white waters
and thunderous confusion of the Gate, with the breakers leaping high on
either hand, sharply turned Frothy Point and came at last into the
ripples of Trader's Cove. Glad I was, you may be sure, to find my mother
waiting on my father's wharf, and to be taken by the hand, and to be led
up the path to the house, where there was spread a grand supper of fish
and bread, which my sister had long kept waiting; and, after all, to be
rocked in the broad window, safe in the haven of my mother's arms, while
the last of the sullen light of day fled into the wilderness and all the
world turned black.

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