Out of the Fog
Ober, C. K.
English
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OUT OF THE FOG
A Story of the Sea
C. K. OBER
Introduction By Dr. Wilfred T. Grenfell
FOREWORD
Since I am permitted to consider myself in some way responsible for this
narrative's being put on record, it is with the very heartiest good will
that I accept the publishers' kind invitation to write a brief foreword
to it.
I have, during twenty years, been working against a problem that I
recognized called for all--yes, and more, than--I had to give it. For I
have been endeavoring, through my own imperfect attainments, to
translate into undeniable language on the Labrador Coast, the message of
God's personal fatherhood over and love for the humblest of His
creatures. During these years, often of overwork, I have considered it
worth while to lay aside time and energy and strength to improve the
charting and pilot directions of our devious and sometimes dangerous
waterways.
How much more gladly shall I naturally avail myself of any chance by
which to contribute to the knowledge of that seemingly ever evasive
pathway leading to that which to me is the supreme motive power of human
life--faith in the divine Redeemer and Master. The best helps to reach
the haven we are in search of, over the unblazed trails of Labrador, are
ever the tracks of those who have found the way before us. Just such to
me is this simple and delightful story of Mr. Ober's. It has my most
hearty prayers for its unprecedented circulation.
WILFRED T. GRENFELL.
[Illustration]
OLD SALTS
The lure of the sea prevailed, and at nineteen I shipped for a
four-months' fishing trip on the Newfoundland Banks. These banks are not
the kind that slope toward some gentle stream where the weary fisherman
can rest between bites, protected from the sun by the shade of an
overhanging tree; they are thirty to forty fathoms beneath the surface
of the Atlantic Ocean, a thousand miles out from the Massachusetts
coast.
The life that had long appealed to my imagination now came in with a
shock and a realism that was in part a disillusionment and in part an
intense satisfaction of some of my primal instincts and cravings. Old
salts are more picturesque and companionable spinning yarns about the
stove in a shoemaker's shop than they are when one is obliged to live,
eat and sleep with them for four months in the crowded forecastle of a
fishing schooner. An ocean storm is a sublime spectacle, witnessed from
a position of safety on the land; but a storm on the ocean, experienced
in its very vortex from the deck of a tiny fishing boat, is thrilling
beyond description. "Ships that pass in the night" make interesting
reading; but if they pass near you, in a foggy night, on the Banks, they
are better than the muezzin of the Moslem in reminding a man that it is
time to pray. I recall with vividness the scene on such a night, and
still feel the compelling power of the panic in the voice of the
mild-mannered old sea dog on anchor watch, as he yelled down the
companionway, "All hands on deck." In six seconds we were all there; and
there was the great hulk of a two-thousand-ton ship looming up out of
the night. She had evidently sighted our little craft just in time to
change her course, and was passing us with not more than a hundred and
fifty feet to spare. I can see them tonight, as they vanished into the
fog--three men and a big Newfoundland dog, looking over the rail and
down on us who, a moment before, were about to die.
Storm, fog, icebergs, cold, exposure, the alert and strenuous life, with
his own life the forfeit of failure, are a part of the normal experience
of a deep sea fisherman. Two members of our crew were father and son,
Uncle Ike Patch and his son, Frank. The old man had been a fisherman in
his youth, but had been on shore for thirty years. When we were making
up our crew, Frank caught the fishing fever and wanted to go, and his
father decided to go along with him. They were out in their dory, one
foggy day, and when the boats came back to the vessel from hauling their
trawls, Uncle Ike and Frank were missing. We rang the bell, fired our
small cannon, shouted and sent boats out after them. As night came on,
we were huddled together in the forecastle, wondering about their fate,
while the old fishermen told stories of the fog and its fearful toll of
human life. It seemed a terrible thing for the old man and his boy to be
out there, drifting no one knew where; and though we were accustomed to
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