Sweetapple Cove | Page 6

I told him.
"There is really good salmon fishing in Sweetapple River," he began,
excitedly, "and you can get caribou within a day's walk, and there are
lots of trout, and..."
I could see that he was eager to find some redeeming points for
Sweetapple Cove.
"Behold the tempter," I laughed.
"Dear me! Of course I did not mean to tempt you," he said, flushing
like a girl. "And I'm afraid you would have to live in some fisherman's
house, and to furnish medicines as well as your services. Of course they
might pay you something if the fishing happened to be good. It
sometimes is, you know."
As soon as we arrived in St. John's I made many and sundry purchases,
with a proper discount for cash, and three days later we sailed out of the
harbor on a tiny schooner laden with salt, barrels of flour and various
other provisions. In less than forty-eight hours we arrived in
Sweetapple Cove. The delighted reception I received from Mrs. Barnett,
a sweet lovable woman, exalted my ideas of the value of my profession.
She simply gloated over me and patted her husband on the back as if
his superior genius had been the true cause of my arrival. At once she
made arrangements for my living with Captain Sammy Moore, an
ancient of the sea whose nice old wife accepted with tremulous pride
the honor of sheltering me. The inhabitants and their offspring, the
dogs and the goats, the fowls and the solitary cow, trooped about me
for closer inspection, and my practice became at once established.
I have taken some formidable walks over the barrens back inland, and
have angled with distinguished success. The days are becoming fairly
crowded ones.
Shortly after sunrise, the day before yesterday, I was called upon to go
to a little island several miles out at sea. Captain Sammy and a man
called Frenchy took me out there. Their little fishing smack is the cab I

use for running my remoter errands. I found a man nearly dying from a
bad septic wound of his right arm. I judged that he might possibly
survive an amputation, but that the loss of the breadwinner's limb
would have been just as bad, as far as his family was concerned, as the
death of the patient. There was nothing to do but grit one's teeth and
take chances. I remained with him throughout the night, and in the
morning was glad to detect some slight improvement.
The keen breeze that expanded my lungs as I sat on the rocks did me a
great deal of good. It rested me after the dreary vigil and presently I
returned to my patient. I'm afraid that we men are poor nurses. We can
keep on fighting and struggling and trying, but when we have to sit still
and watch with folded arms the iron enters our souls, while the
consciousness of helpless waiting is after all the bitterest thing we can
contend against. Women are far more patient and enduring.
Constantly I renewed the dressings, and bathed the limb in antiseptics,
and gave a few stimulating drugs. Then I would watch the man's
hurried breathing and feverish pulse. But I could not remain with idle
hands very long at a time, and frequently strolled out to breathe the
sea-scented air, in some place well to windward of the poor little
fishhouses that reeked infamously with the scattered offal of cod. A
disconsolate man was trying to mend a badly frayed net and a few
ragged children, gaunt and underfed, followed me about, curiously,
whispering among themselves.
The sick man's wife sat most of the time, near the bed, hour after hour,
a picture of intense, stolid misery. From time to time she wailed
because there was no more tea. Always she hastened to obey my
slightest request, clumsily, faithfully, like some humble dog to which
some hard and scarcely understood task might have been given. One
could see that she really had no hope. The usual way was for the men to
fail to return, some day, when they went out and were caught in a bad
storm, or when the ice-floes drifted out to sea, and then the women
would wait, patiently, until the certainty of their bereavement had
entered their souls. This one had the sad privilege of witnessing the
tragedy. It was all happening in the little house of disjointed planks,

and perhaps she took some comfort in the idea that she would be there
at the last moment. It was easy to see, however, that she considered my
efforts as some sort of rite which, at most, might comfort the dying.
Before noon, when the haze had lifted before the sweep of a north east
wind, one of