which fish the Labrador seas in the summer. It needed only the doctor’s word to get the boon. Once a fisherman brought his consumptive son aboard—a young lad, with but a few weeks of life left. The boy wanted his mother, who was at home in Newfoundland.
“Ay, he’s fair sick for his mother,” said the father to the doctor. “I’m askin’ you, zur, t’ take un home on the mail-boat.”
The doctor was in a perverse mood that day. He would not take the boy.
“Sure, zur,” said the fisherman, “the schooner’s not goin’ ’til fall, an’ I’ve no money, an’ the lad’s dyin’.”
But still the doctor would not.
“I’m thinkin’, zur,” said the fisherman, steadily, “that you’re not quite knowin’ that the lad wants t’ see his mother afore he dies.”
The doctor laughed.
“We’ll have a laugh at you,” cried the indignant fisherman, “when you comes t’ die!”
Then he cursed the doctor most heartily and took his son ashore. He was right—they did have a laugh at the doctor; the whole coast might have laughed when he came to die. Being drunk on a stormy night, he fell down the companion way and broke his neck.
Deep in the bays and up the rivers south of Hamilton Inlet, which is itself rather heavily timbered, there is wood to be had for the cutting; but “down t’ Chidley”—which is the northernmost point of the Labrador coast—the whole world is bare; there is neither tree nor shrub, shore nor inland, to grace the naked rock; the land lies bleak and desolate. But, once, a man lived there the year round. I don’t know why; it is inexplicable; but I am sure that the shiftless fellow and his wife had never an inkling that the circumstance was otherwise than commonplace and reasonable; and the child, had he lived, would have continued to dwell there, boy and man, in faith that the earth was good to live in. One hard winter the man burnt all his wood long before the schooners came up from the lower coast. It was a desperate strait to come to; but I am sure that he regarded his situation with surprising phlegm; doubtless he slept as sound, if not as warm, as before. There was no more wood to be had; so he burnt the furniture, every stick of it, and when that was gone, began on the frame of his house—a turf hut, builded under a kindly cliff, sheltered somewhat from the winds from the frozen sea. As, rafter by rafter, the frame was withdrawn, he cut off the roof and folded in the turf walls; thus, day by day, the space within dwindled; his last fire was to consume the last of his shelter—which, no doubt, troubled him not at all; for the day was not yet come. It is an ugly story. When they were found in the spring, the woman lay dying on a heap of straw in a muddy corner—she was afflicted with hip-disease—and the house was tumbling about her ears; the child, new born, had long ago frozen on its mother’s breast.
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