he dark stair when they knocked on the door--standing scared in
the light of their lantern, the door open, before they found time to
hail.

I was addressed by a gray old man in ragged oilskins. "We heared tell,"
said he, mildly, wiping his dripping beard, "that you got a doctor
here."

I said that we had.

"Well," he observed, in a dull, slow voice, "we got a sick man over
there t' Wreck Cove."

"Ay?" said I.

"An' we was sort o' wonderin', wasn't we, Skipper Tom," another put in,
"how much this doctor would be askin' t' go over an' cure un?"

"Well, ay," the skipper admitted, taking off his sou'wester to scratch
his head, "we _did_ kind o' have that idea."

"'Tis a wild night," said I: in my heart doubting--and that with
shame--that the doctor would venture out upon the open sea in a gale of
wind.

"'Tis _not_ very civil," said the skipper frankly. "I'm free t' say," in
a drawl, "that 'tis--well--rather--dirty."

"An' he isn't got used t' sailin' yet. But----"

"No?" in mild wonder. "Isn't he, now? Well, we got a stout little skiff.
Once she gets past the Thirty Devils, she'll maybe make Wreck Cove, all
right--if she's handled proper. Oh, she'll maybe make it if----"

"Davy!" my sister called from above. "Do you take the men through t' the
kitchen. I'll rouse the doctor an' send the maids down t' make tea."

"Well, now, thank you kindly, miss," Skipper Tom called up to the
landing. "That's wonderful kind."

It was a familiar story--told while the sleepy maids put the kettle on
the fire and the fury of the gale increased. 'Twas the schooner _Lucky
Fisherman_, thirty tons, Tom Lisson master, hailing from Burnt Harbour
of the Newfoundland Green Bay, and fishing the Labrador at Wreck Cove,
with a tidy catch in the hold and four traps in the water. There had
been a fine run o' fish o' late; an' Bill Sparks, the splitter--with a
brood of ten children to grow fat or go hungry on the venture--labouring
without sleep and by the light of a flaring torch, had stabbed his right
hand with a fish bone. The old, old story--now so sadly threadbare to
me--of ignorance and uncleanliness! The hand was swollen to a wonderful
size and grown wonderful angry--the man gone mad of pain--the crew
contemplating forcible amputation with an axe. Wonderful sad the
mail-boat doctor wasn't nowhere near! Wonderful sad if Bill Sparks must
lose his hand! Bill Sparks was a wonderful clever hand with the
splittin'-knife--able t' split a w