Later in the evening they again felt their way landward through the fog.  To their delight they presently found themselves in a harbor, and that night they rested in a safe and snug anchorage sheltered from wind and pounding sea.

There was adventure enough on that voyage to satisfy anybody.  The sun did not set that the voyagers had not experienced at least one good thrill during the daylight hours.  On the seventh day from St. Johns the Princess May crossed the Straits of Belle Isle, and drew alongside the Albert at Battle Harbor.

The new hospital was nearly ready to receive patients, the first of the hospitals to be built as a result of the visit to the Albert the previous summer of the ragged man in the rickety boat.  The other hospital was in course of building at Indian Harbor, and Doctor Grenfell dispatched the Albert, with Doctor Curwin and Miss Williams to assist in preparing it for patients, while Doctor Bobart and Miss Cawardine remained in charge of the Battle Harbor hospital.

Away Doctor Grenfell steamed again in the Princess May nothing daunted by his many difficulties with the little craft in his voyage from St. John’s.  It was necessary that he know the headlands and the harbors, the dangerous places and the safe ones along the whole coast.  The only way to do this was by visiting them, and the quickest and best way to learn them was by finding them out for himself while navigating his own craft.  Now, light houses stand on two or three of the most dangerous points of the coast, but in those days there were none, and there were no correct charts.  The mariner had to carry everything in his head, and indeed he must still do so.  He must know the eight hundred miles of coast as we know the nooks and corners of our dooryards.

Doctor Grenfell wished also to make the acquaintance of the people.  He wished to visit them in their homes that he might learn their needs and troubles and so know better how to help them.  He was not alone to be their doctor.  He was to clothe and feed the poor so far as he could and to put them in a way to help themselves.

To do this it was necessary that he know them as a man knows his near neighbors.  He must needs know them as the family doctor knows his patients.  He was no preacher, but, to some degree, he was to be their pastor and look after their moral as well as their physical welfare.  In short, he was to be their friend, and if he were to do his best for them, they would have to look upon him as a friend and not only call upon him when they were in need, but lend him any assistance they could.  To this end they would have to be taught to accept him as one of themselves, come to live among them, and not as an occasional visitor or a foreigner.

With the exception of a few small settlements of a half-dozen houses or so in each settlement, the cabins on the Labrador coast are ten or fifteen and often twenty or more miles apart.  If all of them were brought together there would scarcely be enough to make one fair-sized village.