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 thisnarrative's being put on record, it is with the very heartiest good willthat I accept the publishers' kind invitation to write a brief forewordto it.
I have, during twenty years, been working against a problem that Irecognized called for all--yes, and more, than--I had to give it. For Ihave been endeavoring, through my own imperfect attainments, totranslate into undeniable language on the Labrador Coast, the message ofGod's personal fatherhood over and love for the humblest of Hiscreatures. During these years, often of overwork, I have considered itworth while to lay aside time and energy and strength to improve thecharting and pilot directions of our devious and sometimes dangerouswaterways.
How much more gladly shall I naturally avail myself of any chance bywhich to contribute to the knowledge of that seemingly ever evasivepathway leading to that which to me is the supreme motive power of humanlife--faith in the divine Redeemer and Master. The best helps to reachthe haven we are in search of, over the unblazed trails of Labrador, areever the tracks of those who have found the way before us. Just such tome is this simple and delightful story of Mr. Ober's. It has my mosthearty prayers for its unprecedented circulation.
WILFRED T. GRENFELL.
OLD SALTS
The lure of the sea prevailed, and at nineteen I shipped for afour-months' fishing trip on the Newfoundland Banks. These banks are notthe kind that slope toward some gentle stream where the weary fishermancan rest between bites, protected from the sun by the shade of anoverhanging tree; they are thirty to forty fathoms beneath the surfaceof the Atlantic Ocean, a thousand miles out from the Massachusettscoast.
The life that had long appealed to my imagination now came in with ashock and a realism that was in part a disillusionment and in part anintense satisfaction of some of my primal instincts and cravings. Oldsalts are more picturesque and companionable spinning yarns about thestove 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 afishing schooner. An ocean storm is a sublime spectacle, witnessed froma position of safety on the land; but a storm on the ocean, experiencedin its very vortex from the deck of a tiny fishing boat, is thrillingbeyond description. "Ships that pass in the night" make interestingreading; but if they pass near you, in a foggy night, on the Banks, theyare better than the muezzin of the Moslem in reminding a man that it istime to pray. I recall with vividness the scene on such a night, andstill feel the compelling power of the panic in the voice of themild-mannered old sea dog on anchor watch, as he yelled down thecompanionway, "All hands on deck." In six seconds we were all there; andthere was the great hulk of a two-thousand-ton ship looming up out ofthe night. She had evidently sighted our little craft just in time tochange her course, and was passing us w