Dr. Grenfell's Parish: The Deep Sea Fisherman

The joke was losing its point. But the man blustered that he, too, had a crew.

“You must make sure,” said the doctor, “that they love you well enough to fight for you. On Sunday evening,” he continued, “you will appear at the church at seven o’clock and confess your sin before the congregation; and next week you will pay the money as I have said.”

“I’ll see you in h – ll first!” replied the man, defiantly.

At the morning service the doctor announced that a sinful man would confess his sin before them all that night. There was great excitement. Other men might be prevailed upon to make so humiliating a confession, the folk said, but not this one – not this rich man, whom they hated and feared, because he had so long pitilessly oppressed them. So they were not surprised when at the evening service the sinful man did not show his face.

“Will you please to keep your seats,” said the doctor, “while I go fetch that man.”

He found the man in a neighbour’s house, on his knees in prayer, with his friends. They were praying fervently, it is said; but whether or not that the heart of the doctor might be softened I do not know.

“Prayer,” said the doctor, “is a good thing in its place, but it doesn’t ‘go’ here. Come with me.”

The man meekly went with the doctor; he was led up the aisle of the church, was placed where all the people could see him; and then he was asked many questions, after the doctor had described the great sin of which he was guilty.

“Did you do this thing?”

“I did.”

“You are an evil man, of whom the people should beware?”

“I am.”

“You deserve the punishment of man and God?”

“I do.”

There was much more, and at the end of it all the doctor told the man that the good God would forgive him if he should ask in true faith and repentance, but that the people, being human, could not. For a whole year, he charged the people, they must not speak to that man; but if at the end of that time he had shown an honest disposition to mend his ways, they might take him to their hearts.

The end of the story is that the man paid the money and left the place.

This relentless judge, on a stormy day of last July, carried many bundles ashore at Cartwright, in Sandwich Bay of the Labrador. The wife of the Hudson Bay Company’s agent exclaimed with delight when she opened them. They were Christmas gifts from the children of the “States” to the lads and little maids of that coast. With almost all there came a little letter addressed to the unknown child who was to receive the toy; they were filled with loving words – with good wishes, coming in childish sincerity from the warm little hearts. The doctor never forgets the Christmas gifts. He is the St. Nicholas of that coast. If he ever weeps at all, I should think it would be when he hears that despite his care some child has been neglected. The wife of the agent stowed away the gifts against the time to come.

“It makes them very happy,” said the agent’s wife.

“Not long ago,” I chanced to say, “I saw a little girl with a stick of wood for a dolly. Are they not afraid to play with these pretty things?”

“They are,” she laughed. “They use them for ornaments. But that doesn’t matter. It makes them happy just to look at them.”

We all laughed.

“And yet,” she continued, “they do play with them, sometimes, after all. There is a little girl up the bay who has kissed the paint off her dolly!”

Thus and all the time, in storm and sunshine, summer and winter weather, Grenfell of the Deep-sea Mission goes about doing good; if it’s not in a boat, it’s in a dog-sled. He is what he likes to call “a Christian man.” But he is also a hero – at once the bravest and the most beneficently useful man I know. If he regrets his isolation, if the hardship of the life sometimes oppresses him, no man knows it. He does much, but there is much more to do. If the good people of the world would but give a little more of what they have so abundantly – and if they could but know the need, they would surely do that – joy might be multiplied on that coast; nor would any man be wronged by misguided charity.

“What a man does for the love of God,” the doctor once said, “he does differently.”

notes

1

A “tickle” is a narrow passage to a harbour or between two islands.

2

A quintal is, roughly, a hundred pounds. One hundred quintals of green fish are equal, roughly, to thirty of dry, which, at $3, would amount to $90.

3

A “clever hand” can split – that is, clean – thirty fish in a minute.

4

A scolding.

5

Some miles distant.

6

Sealing.