Doctor Luke of the Labrador by Norman Duncan (color ebook reader .txt) 📖

the fury of the gale increased. 'Twas the schooner _Lucky Fisherman_, 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. The old, old story--now so sadly threadbare to me--of ignorance and uncleanliness! The hand was swollen to a wonderful size and grown wonderful angry--the man gone mad of pain--the crew contemplating forcible amputation with an axe. Wonderful sad the mail-boat doctor wasn't nowhere near! Wonderful sad if Bill Sparks must lose his hand! Bill Sparks was a wonderful clever hand with the splittin'-knife--able t' split a wonderful sight o' fish a minute. Wonderful sad if Bill Sparks's family was to be throwed on the gov'ment all along o' Bill losin' his right hand! Wonderful sad if poor Bill Sparks----

The doctor entered at that moment. "Who is asking for me?" he demanded, sharply.

"Well," Skipper Tom drawled, rising, "we was thinkin' we'd sort o' like t' see the doctor."

"I am he," the doctor snapped. "Yes?" inquiringly.

"We was wonderin', doctor," Skipper Tom answered, abashed, "what you'd charge t' go t' Wreck Cove an'--an'--well, use the knife on a man's hand."

"Charge? Nonsense!"

"We'd like wonderful well," said the skipper, earnestly, "t' have you----"

"But--_to-night_!"

"You see, zur," said the skipper, gently, "he've wonderful pain, an' he've broke everything breakable that we got, an' we've got un locked in the fo'c's'le, an'----"

"Where's Wreck Cove?"

"'Tis t' the s'uth'ard, zur," one of the men put in. "Some twelve miles beyond the Thirty Devils."

The doctor opened the kitchen door and stepped out. There was no doubt about the weather. A dirty gale was blowing. Wind and rain drove in from the black night; and, under all the near and petty noises, sounded the great, deep roar of breakers.

"Hear that?" he asked, excitedly, closing the door against the wind.

"Ay," the skipper admitted; "as I was tellin' the young feller, it _isn't_ so _very_ civil."

"Civil!" cried the doctor.

"No; not so civil that it mightn't be a bit civiller; but, now----"

"And twelve miles of open sea!"

"No, zur--no; not accordin' t' my judgment. Eleven an' a half, zur, would cover it."

The doctor laughed.

"An', as I was sayin', zur," the skipper concluded, pointedly, "we just come through it."

My sister and I exchanged anxious glances: then turned again to the doctor--who continued to stare at the floor.

"Just," one of the crew repeated, blankly, for the silence was painful, "come through it."

The doctor looked up. "Of course, you know," he began, quietly, with a formal smile, "I am not--accustomed to this sort of--professional call. It--rather--takes my breath away. When do we start?"

Skipper Tom took a look at the weather. "Blowin' up wonderful," he observed, quietly, smoothing his long hair, which the wind had put awry. "Gets real dirty long about the Thirty Devils in the dark. Don't it, Will?"

Will said that it did--indeed, it did--no doubt about that, _what_ever.

"I s'pose," the skipper drawled, in conclusion, "we'd as lief get underway at dawn."

"Very good," said the doctor. "And--you were asking about my fee--were you not? You'll have to pay, you know--if you can--for I believe in--that sort of thing. Could you manage three dollars?"

"We was 'lowin'," the skipper answered, "t' pay about seven when we sold the v'y'ge in the fall. 'Tis a wonderful bad hand Bill Sparks has got."

"Let it be seven," said the doctor, quickly. "The balance may go, you know, to help some poor devil who hasn't a penny. Send it to me in the fall if----"

The skipper looked up in mild inquiry.

"Well," said the doctor, with a nervous smile, "if we're all here, you know."

"Oh," said the skipper, with a large wave of the hand, "_that's God's_ business."

They put out at dawn--into a sea as wild as ever I knew an open boat to brave. The doctor bade us a merry good-bye; and he waved his hand, shouting that which the wind swept away, as the boat darted off towards South Tickle. My sister and I went to the heads of Good Promise to watch the little craft on her way. The clouds were low and black--torn by the wind--driving up from the southwest like mad: threatening still heavier weather. We followed the skiff with my father's glass--saw her beat bravely on, reeling through the seas, smothered in spray--until she was but a black speck on the vast, angry waste, and, at last, vanished altogether in the spume and thickening fog. Then we went back to my father's house, prayerfully wishing the doctor safe voyage to Wreck Cove; and all that day, and all the next, while the gale still blew, my sister was nervous and downcast, often at the window, often on the heads, forever sighing as she went about the work of the house. And when I saw her thus distraught and colourless--no warm light in her eyes--no bloom on her dimpled cheeks--no merry smile lurking about the corners of her sweet mouth--I was fretted beyond description; and I determined this: that when the doctor got back from Wreck Cove I should report her case to him, whether she liked it or not, with every symptom I had observed, and entreat him, by the love and admiration in which I held him, to cure her of her malady, whatever the cost.

* * * * *


On the evening of the third day, when the sea was gone down and the wind was blowing fair and mild from the south, I sat with my sister at the broad window, where was the outlook upon great hills, and upon sombre water, and upon high, glowing sky--she in my mother's rocker, placidly sewing, as my mother used to do, and I pitifully lost in my father's armchair, covertly gazing at her, in my father's way.

"Is you better, this even, sister, dear?" I asked.

"Oh, ay," she answered, vehemently, as my mother used to do. "Much better."

"You're wonderful poorly."

"'Tis true," she said, putting the thread between her white little teeth. "But," the strand now broken, "though you'd not believe it, Davy, dear, I'm feeling--almost--nay, quite--well."

I doubted it. "'Tis a strange sickness," I observed, with a sigh.

"Yes, Davy," she said, her voice falling, her lips pursed, her brows drawn down. "I'm not able t' make it out, at all. I'm feelin'--so wonderful--queer."

"Is you, dear?"

"Davy Roth," she averred, with a wag of the head so earnest that strands of flaxen hair fell over her eyes, and she had to brush them back again, "I never felt so queer in all my life afore!"

"I'm dreadful worried about you, Bessie."

"Hut! as for that," said she, brightly, "I'm not thinkin' I'm goin' t' _die_, Davy."

"Sure, you never can tell about sickness," I sagely observed.

"Oh, no!" said she. "I isn't got that--kind o'--sickness."

"Well," I insisted, triumphantly, "you're wonderful shy o' eatin' pork."

She shuddered.

"I wished I knowed what you had," I exclaimed impatiently.

"I wished you did," she agreed, frankly, if somewhat faintly. "For, then, Davy, you'd give me a potion t' cure me."

She drew back the curtain--for the hundredth time, I vow--and peered towards South Tickle.

"What you lookin' for?" I asked.

"I was thinkin', Davy," she said, still gazing through the window, "that Skipper Zach Tupper might be comin' in from the Last Chance grounds with a fish for breakfast."

The Last Chance grounds? 'Twas ignorance beyond belief! "Bessie," I said, with heat, "is you gone mad? Doesn't you know that no man in his seven senses would fish the Last Chance grounds in a light southerly wind? Why----"

"Well," she interrupted, with a pretty pout, "you knows so well as me that Zach Tupper haven't _got_ his seven senses."

"Bessie!"

She peeked towards South Tickle again; and then--what a wonder-worker the divine malady is!--she leaned eagerly forward, her sewing falling unheeded to the floor; and her soft breast rose and fell to a rush of sweet emotion, and her lips parted in delicious wonderment, and the blood came back to her cheeks, and her dimples were no longer pathetic, but eloquent of sweetness and innocence, and her eyes turned moist and brilliant, glowing with the glory of womanhood first recognized, tender and pure. Ah, my sister--lovely in person but lovelier far in heart and mind--adorably innocent--troubled and destined to infinitely deeper distress before the end--brave and true and hopeful through all the chequered course of love! You had not known, dear heart, but then discovered, all in a heavenly flash, what sickness you suffered of.

"Davy!" she whispered.

"Ay, dear?"

"I'm knowin'--now--what ails me."

I sat gazing at her in love and great awe. "'Tis not a wickedness, Bessie," I declared.

"No, no!"

"'Tis not that. No, no! I knows 'tis not a sin."

"'Tis a holy thing," she said, turning, her eyes wide and solemn.

"A holy thing?"

"Ay--holy!"

I chanced to look out of the window. "Ecod!" I cried. "The Wreck Cove skiff is in with Doctor Luke!"

Unfeeling, like all lads--in love with things seen--I ran out.

* * * * *


The doctor came ashore at the wharf in a state of wild elation. He made a rush for me, caught me up, called to the crew of the skiff to come to the house for tea--then shouldered me, against my laughing protest, and started up the path.

"I'm back, safe and sound," cried he. "Davy, I have been to Wreck Cove and back."

"An' you're wonderful happy," cried I, from the uncertain situation of his shoulder.

"Happy? That's the word, Davy. I'm happy! And why?"

"Tell me."

"I've done a good deed. I've saved a man's right hand. I've done a good deed for once," he repeated, between his teeth, "by God!"

There was something contagious in all this; and (I say it by way of apology) I was ever the lad to catch at a rousing phrase.

"A good deed!" I exclaimed. "By God, you'll do----"

He thrashed me soundly on the spot.


XVII

HARD PRACTICE

I bore him no grudge--the chastisement had been fairly deserved: for then, being loosed from parental restraint, I was by half too fond of aping the ways and words of full-grown men; and I was not unaware of the failing. However, the prediction on the tip of my tongue--that he would live to do many another good deed--would have found rich fulfillment had it been spoken. It was soon noised the length of the coast that a doctor dwelt in our harbour--one of good heart and skill and courage: to whom the sick of every station might go for healing. In short