Another time I was called to a large schooner in the same region.
There were two young girls on board doing the cooking and cleaning, as
was the wont in Newfoundland vessels. One, alas, was seriously ill,
having given birth to a premature child, and having lain absolutely
helpless, with only a crew of kind but strange men anywhere near.
Rolling her up in blankets, we transferred her to the Sir Donald, and
steamed for the nearest Moravian station. Here the necessary
treatment was possible, and when we left for the South a Moravian's
good wife accompanied us as nurse. The girl, however, had no wish to
live. "I want to die, Doctor; I can never go home again." Her physical
troubles had abated, but her mind was made up to die, and this, in
spite of all our care, she did a few days later. The pathos of the
scene as we rowed the poor child's body ashore for interment on a
rocky and lonely headland, looking out over the great Atlantic,
wrapped simply in the flag of her country, will never be forgotten by
any of us--the silent but unanswerable reproach on man's utter
selfishness. Many such scenes must rise to the memory of the general
practitioner; at times, thank God, affording those opportunities of
doing more for the patients than simply patching up their
bodies--opportunities which are the real reward for the "art of
healing." Some years later I revisited the grave of this poor girl,
marked by the simple wooden cross which we had then put up, and
bearing the simple inscription:
Suzanne
"Jesus said, Neither do I condemn thee."
The fall trip lasted till late into November, without our even
realizing the fact that snow was on the ground. Indeed the ponds were
all frozen and we enjoyed drives with dog teams on the land before we
had finished our work and could think of leaving. We had scarcely left
Flowers Cove and were just burying our little steamer--loaded to the
utmost with wood, cut in return for winter clothing--in the dense fog
which almost universally maintains in the Straits, and were rounding
the hidden ledges of rock which lie half a mile offshore, when we
discovered a huge trans-Atlantic liner racing up in our wake. We
instantly put down our helm and scuttled out of the way to avoid the
wash, and almost held our breath as the great steamer dashed by at
twenty miles an hour, between us and the hidden shoal. She altered her
helm as she did so, no doubt catching her first sight of the
lighthouse as she emerged from the fog-bank, but as it was, she must
have passed within an ace of the shoal. We expected every minute to
see her dash on the top of it, and then she passed out of sight once
more, her light-hearted passengers no doubt completely unconscious
that they had been in any danger at all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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