Part 21

He led me a little way down from his cottage to the store, and pointing up at the big bold sign, which Grenfell had nailed there, he announced proudly:

"'Tis our co-operative store, the first on the whole coast. Doctor Grenfell starts un for us."

Then after a pause:

"Doctor Grenfell be a wonderful man! He be a man of God."

As expected, there was a furore among the little traders when the news was spread that a co-operative store had been opened in Red Bay. The big Newfoundland traders and merchants were heartily in favor of it, and even stood ready to give the experiment their support.

But the little traders who had dealt with the Red Bay settlement for so long, and had bled the people and grown fat upon their labors, were bitterly hostile. They began a campaign of defamation against Doctor Grenfell and his whole field of work. They questioned his honesty, and criticised the conduct of his hospitals. They even enlisted the support of a Newfoundland paper in their opposition to him. They did everything in their power to drive him from the coast, so that they would have the field again in their own greedy hands. It was a dastardly exhibition of selfishness, but there are people in the world who will sell their own souls for profit.

Grenfell went on about his business of making people happier. He was in the right. If the traders would fight he would give it to them. He was never a quitter. He was the same Grenfell that beat up the big boy at school, years before. He was going to have his way about it, and do what he went to Labrador to do. He was going to do more. He was determined now to improve the trading conditions of the people of Labrador and northern Newfoundland, as well as to heal their sick.

From the day the co-operative store was opened in Red Bay not one fish and not one pelt of fur has ever gone to market from that harbor through a trader. The store has handled everything and it has prospered and the people have prospered beyond all expectation. Every one at Red Bay lives comfortably now. The debt to Doctor Grenfell was long since paid and cancelled. And it is characteristic of him that he would not accept one cent of interest. Shares of stock in the store, originally issued at five dollars a share, are now worth one hundred and four dollars a share, the difference being represented by profits that have not been withdrawn. Every share is owned by the people of the prosperous little settlement.

Up and down the Labrador coast and in northern Newfoundland nine co-operative stores have been established by Doctor Grenfell since that autumn evening when he met the Red Bay folk in conference and they voted to stake their all, even their life, in the venture that proved so successful. Two or three of the stores had to discontinue because the people in the localities where they were placed lived so far apart that there were not enough of them to make a store successful.

Every one of these stores was a great venture to the people who cast their lot with it. True they had little in money, but the stake of their venture was literally in each case their life. The man who never ventures never succeeds. Opportunity often comes to us in the form of a venture. Sometimes, it is a desperate venture too.

Doctor Grenfell had to fight the traders all along the line. They even had the Government of Newfoundland appoint a Commission to inquire into the operation of the Missions as a "menace to honest trade." A menace to honest trade! Think of it!

The result of the investigation proved that Grenfell and his mission was doing a big self-sacrificing work, and the finest kind of work to help the poor folk, and were doing it at a great cost and at no profit to the mission. So down went the traders in defeat.

The fellow that's right is the fellow that wins in the end. The fellow that's wrong is the fellow that is going to get the worst of it at the proper time. Grenfell only tried to help others. He never reaped a penny of personal gain. He always came out on top.

It's a good thing to be a scrapper sometimes, but if you're a scrapper be a good one. Grenfell is a scrapper when it is necessary, and when he has to scrap he goes at it with the best that's in him. He never does things half way. He never was a quitter. When he starts out to do anything he does it.

A LAD OF THE NORTH

The needs of the children attracted Dr. Grenfell's attention from the beginning. A great many of them were neglected because the parents were too poor to provide for them properly. Those who were orphaned were thrown upon the care of their neighbors, and though the neighbors were willing they were usually too poor to take upon themselves this added burden.

There were no schools save those conducted by the Brethren of the Moravian missions among the Eskimos to the northward, and these were Eskimo schools where the people were taught to read and write in their own strange language, and to keep their accounts. But for the English speaking folk south of the Eskimo coast no provision for schools had ever been made.

The hospitals were overflowing with the sick or injured, and there was no room for children, unless they were in need of medical or surgical attention. There was great need of a home for the orphans where they would be cared for and receive motherly training and attention and could go to school.

Dr. Grenfell had thought about this a great deal. He had made the best arrangements possible for the actually destitute little ones by finding more or less comfortable homes for them, and seeking contributions from generous folk in the United States, Canada and Great Britain to pay for their expense.

But it was not, perhaps, until Pomiuk, a little Eskimo boy, came under his care that he finally decided that the establishment of a children's home could no longer be delayed.

Pomiuk's home was in the far north of Labrador, where no trees grow, and where the seasons are quite as frigid as those of northern Greenland. In summer he lived with his father and mother in a skin tent, or tupek, and in winter in a snow igloo, or iglooweuk.

Pomiuk's mother cooked the food over the usual stone lamp, which also served to heat their igloo in winter. This lamp, which was referred to in an earlier chapter, and described as a hollowed stone in the form of a half moon, was an exceedingly crude affair, measuring eighteen inches long on its straight side and nine inches broad at its widest part. When it was filled with oil squeezed from a piece of seal blubber, the blubber was suspended over it at the back that the heat, when the wick of moss was lighted, would cause the blubber oil to continue to drip and keep the lamp supplied with oil. The lamp gave forth a smoky, yellow flame. This was the only fireside that little Pomiuk knew. You and I would not think it a very cheerful one, perhaps, but Pomiuk was accustomed to cold and he looked upon it as quite comfortable and cheerful enough.

Ka-i-a-chou-ouk, Pomiuk's father, was a hunter and fisherman, as are all the Eskimos. He moved his tupek in summer, or built his igloo of blocks of snow in winter, wherever hunting and fishing were the best, but always close to the sea.

Here, under the shadow of mighty cliffs and towering, rugged mountains, by the side of the great water, Pomiuk was born and grew into young boyhood, and played and climbed among the mountain crags or along the ocean shore with other boys. He loved the rugged, naked mountains, they stood so firm and solid! No storm or gale could ever make them afraid, or weaken them. Always they were the same, towering high into the heavens, untrod and unchanged by man, just as they had stood facing the arctic storms through untold ages.

From the high places he could look out over the sea, where icebergs glistened in the sunshine, and sometimes he could see the sail of a fishing schooner that had come out of the mysterious places beyond the horizon. He loved the sea. Day and night in summer the sound of surf pounding ceaselessly upon the cliffs was in his ears. It was music to him, and his lullaby by night.

But he loved the sea no less in winter when it lay frozen and silent and white. As far as his vision reached toward the rising sun, the endless plain of ice stretched away to the misty place where the ice and sky met. Pomiuk thought it would be a fine adventure, some night, when he was grown to be a man and a great hunter, to take the dogs and komatik and drive out over the ice to the place from which the sun rose, and be there in the morning to meet him. He had no doubt the sun rose out of a hole in the ice, and it did not seem so far away.

Pomiuk's world was filled with beautiful and wonderful things. He loved the bright flowers that bloomed under the cliffs when the winter snows were gone, and the brilliant colors that lighted the sky and mountains and sea, when the sun set of evenings. He loved the mists, and the mighty storms that sent the sea rolling in upon the cliffs in summer. He never ceased to marvel at the aurora borealis, which by night flashed over the heavens in wondrous streams of fire and lighted the darkened world. His father told him the aurora borealis was the spirits of their departed people dancing in the sky. He learned the ways of the wild things in sea and on land and never tired of following the tracks of beasts in the snow, or of watching the seals sunning themselves on rocks or playing about in the water.

The big wolf dogs were his special delight. His father kept nine of them, and many an exciting ride Pomiuk had behind them when his father took him on the komatik to hunt seals or to look at fox traps, or to visit the Trading Post.