hat'll be fine, sir."
Medicine was provided, with directions for taking, and, as the Doctor
had promised, and as he later learned, the man soon recovered his
health and returned to his fishing.
The _Albert_ sailed north. Into every little harbor and settlement
she dropped her anchor for a visit. She called at the trading posts of
the old Hudson's Bay Company at Cartwright, Rigolet and Davis Inlet
and the Moravian Missions among the Eskimos in the North. She was
welcomed everywhere, and everywhere Doctor Grenfell found so many sick
or injured people that the whole summer long he was kept constantly
busy.
The waters of this coast were unknown to him. He knew nothing of their
tides or reefs or currents. But with confidence in himself and a
courage that was well-nigh reckless, he sought out the people of every
little harbor that he might give them the help that he had come to
give. If there was too great a hazard for the schooner, he used a
whale-boat. Once this whale-boat was blown out to sea, once it was
driven upon the rocks, once it capsized with all on board, and before
the summer ended it became a complete wreck.
Nine hundred cases were treated, some trivial though perhaps painful
enough maladies, others most serious or even hopeless. Here was a
tooth to be extracted, there a limb to be amputated,--cases of all
kinds and descriptions, with never a doctor to whom the people could
turn for relief until Doctor Grenfell providentially appeared.
With all the work, the voyage was one of pleasure. Not only the
pleasure of making others happier,--the greatest pleasure any one can
know,--but it was a rattling fine adventure finding the way among
islands that had never appeared on any map and were still unnamed. It
was fine fun, too, cruising deep and magnificent fjords past lofty
towering cliffs, and exploring new channels. And there were the
Eskimos and their great wolfish dogs, and their primitive manner of
living and dressing. It was all interesting and fascinating.
Never, however, since that August night in Domino Run, had the little
mud hut, the dying man, the grief-stricken, miserable mother, and the
neglected and starving little ones been out of Doctor Grenfell's
thoughts, and often enough his big heart had ached for the stricken
ones. He had never before witnessed such awful depths of poverty.
In other harbors that he had visited in his northern voyage similar
heartrending cases had, to be sure, fallen u
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