“My own poor darling,” he said.  “I am afraid that the sea has ‘ketched’ me, and that I shall never make that cove again.”

Then he was still again, so very still that I was afraid, and the tears came and my head went down in my lap, between my hands, and the world became so full of bitterness that I did not feel as if I could stand it for another minute.  The dear little parson put his hand on my shoulder, in that curiously gentle way of his.

“We must be strong,” he told me, “and we must pray for power to endure.”

He then rose, quietly, and moistened the doctor’s lips and his brow while I looked on, feeling that I was the most desolate and helpless thing in the world, and as if I could weep for ever.  And then all of a sudden, through the recurring booming voices of the waves breaking on the cliffs outside, burst out the shrill voice of the Snowbird’s siren and I rushed to the door.  Frenchy followed me, and I was so weak that I hung upon his big arm.  In the sodden blur of everything I saw our boat coming in, like a great white ghost, and there were more blasts of her whistle.  She knew what a welcome awaited her and how we had despaired of her arrival.

In the darkness I could see that people were rushing out of their houses, cheering, and I heard piercing cries of women.

“Th’ white ship she’ve come back,” some of them were screaming.

They were scrambling down towards the landing, just hoping that they might in some way be of service.  The yacht had lost her headway but the propeller was still churning, and I could see that she was turning around to her mooring.  Then I heard them putting the yawl overboard.  Lights were breaking out of some of the fish-house windows, and lanterns swung on the little dock, and at last I dimly saw the rowboat coming.  I ran down also, with Frenchy, and met Stefansson.

“I got all of that stuff there was in St. John’s,” he said, “and this gentleman is the doctor.  We hunted high and low for a nurse but couldn’t get one right off.”

But what cared I for nurses just then?  Was I not ready to do all that a woman possibly could?  Was there a nurse in the world as ready as I to lay down her very life for her patient?

I seized the doctor’s hand.  I had never been so glad in all my life to see any one.  He looked just like a big boy, but he represented renewed hope, the possibility of the achievement of a longing so shrewd that it was a bitter pain to endure it.

“You are going to help us save him!” I cried.

“I will most gladly do all I possibly can,” he answered, very simply and quietly.

These doctors are really very nice people, Aunt Jennie dear.  They speak to you so hopefully, and there seems to be something in them that makes you feel that you want to lean upon them and trust them.

When I had a better look at this one he appeared to be really very young, and perhaps just a little gawky, and he wore the most appreciably store-clothes, and the funniest little black string of a neck-tie.  Isn’t it queer that silly things should enter one’s head at such times?  But he looked like a fine, strong, honest boy, and I liked him for coming, and when he smiled at me I really thought he had a very nice face, and one that gave one the impression that he knew things, too.