“My eyes!” said Captain Higgles.  “Measles!  ’Tis a wonderful dangerous complaint.  I minds when th’ folks cotched un one summer in Black Run Harbor, and most every one that cotched un died!  Oh, my eyes!”

“Aye, ‘tis like t’ be a dangerous complaint down here on The Labrador, where we folk have poor means for caring for our sick,” agreed Skipper Ed, dropping into the dialect of the people, as he often did when conversing with them.  “But you have a schooner, and you’re not so badly off as we are in our tents.”

“My eyes!” repeated Captain Higgles.  “Measles!  ‘Tis like t’ ruin th’ v’yage!”

The Good and Sure spread her canvas and sailed away that morning, and quite as though nothing had occurred to disturb the even tenor of their every-day existence Abel Zachariah and Skipper Ed and Bobby and Jimmy turned their attention to jigging cod, and Mrs. Abel to splitting the fish and spreading them to dry, and all worked from morning until night each day, that none of the harvest might be lost, for that year there was a plentiful run of fish.

But Skipper Ed had something on his mind.  After the departure of the Good and Sure his face looked troubled, and more than once he murmured, “Better luck, I hope.  Better luck.”  And as the days passed his anxiety increased, and Bobby and Jimmy frequently surprised him looking intently at them.

Then came a morning when Bobby complained of feeling ill, and Skipper Ed directed that he must not go with the others of them to jig, but must remain in the tent, and he prepared a hot drink for Bobby, and wrapped the lad warmly in blankets.  That very day Jimmy, too, fell ill, and Abel fell ill, and a day later Mrs. Abel also complained.  “Measles,” said Skipper Ed.

And measles it was, and a serious condition of affairs confronted Skipper Ed. He gave up his fishing and devoted his whole attention to his four patients, and he thanked the Lord that he himself had passed through the ordeal as a child, and was immune.

Because the people on the Labrador can seldom be brought to understand that a patient with this ailment must be kept warm and free from exposure or chill until the period of rash is passed, it is too often a fatal disease there—­and an epidemic is sure to result in many deaths.  In tent life, in time of gales and driving storms, it is frequently difficult, and sometimes indeed impossible, to properly care for the patients, for the tents of the people are seldom stormproof or rainproof.

And so it was that Skipper Ed, who was not only nurse but cook, was more than occupied.  There were times when confinement grew irksome to his patients, and at those times he was compelled to resort even to force to prevent one or another from going out into the chilling sea breeze.  And one morning Bobby did evade him and go out, and became chilled, and the following day lay, as Skipper Ed verily believed, at the door of death.