recover the bodies of Hennebury’s sheep. The animals had been swept away by one of the waves and then pushed under a fishing store on the next incoming wave. They were barred in by a boat that got jammed there by the final wave. All the sheep drowned.
Jim was desperate to help his neighbours, but was at a loss as to how. Herb and John Joe told him they needed a boat to put in The Pond to go out to the Rennie house.
“Mine is all in one piece,” Jim said. “We just have to get it hauled over there.”
Adrenalin pumped through the men’s veins as they lugged the dory across the beach and over the scrap of land to The Pond. Other fishermen carried the oars. Then the three of them, John Joe, Jim, and Herb, jumped into the dory and rowed to the house tilting in the water, their hearts galloping in fear. When they reached it they saw that the cold water came up to the ceiling of the first floor. From the shore of The Pond, they heard a woman scream.
Suddenly, the house rose up as if to make their task easier. Pond and sea water drained out of it, followed by pots, pans, and even table legs. Then they saw the high chair, horizontal and still holding baby Bernard. John Joe reached in the broken window and pulled the chair toward the dory, trying to keep as steady as he could. The sound of his own breathing was all he could hear as he cut the child from the chair and passed him to Herb, who had removed his coat to wrap little Bernard in. They found Rita next, and then her brother, Patrick. Their mother, Sarah, was under the kitchen table, next to the sewing machine—it seemed she did not even have time to move away from her perch.
Only young Margaret was missing. The men could see clearly through the first floor of the house and she was not there. They decided to row back to shore with their sad, sad cargo.
As villagers carried the Rennie family bodies out of Jim Walsh’s dory, sobs rang through the harbour. In the hall on top of the hill that marks the western entrance to Lord’s Cove, women were already preparing a long table to receive the bodies of Sarah and her children for waking. Their husbands would gather enough planks to make one large and four smaller coffins.
Patrick Rennie had joined the crowd on the shore of The Pond by now. He covered his mouth as he saw the remains of his wife and children lovingly placed in blankets to be taken to the hall.
“Where’s Margaret?” he said.
John Joe, Herb, and Jim looked at each other, not knowing what to say.
“We have to have Margaret,” Patrick persisted.
Wordlessly, the three men re-entered Jim’s dory and rowed back out to the house. The moon seemed even brighter now, if that were possible. They circled the Rennie dwelling, contemplating their next move.
“She might be at the bottom of The Pond, the poor little thing,” Herb said.
“I don’t think so,” said Jim, though he didn’t know where this thought came from.
Then John Joe’s face lit up.
“I know! She’s upstairs!” he cried. “She’s upstairs!”
Over the next half hour, they got another dory into The Pond and used pressure to sink the house again so that the floor of the second storey was level with the water. Then they saw the cot where Margaret would surely be found. It was covered in chocolate-coloured mud and seaweed.
“I’ll go in and get her little body,” Jim said.
“Tread carefully,” Herb cautioned. “Or the whole house will go topsy-turvy.”
Jim reached into the crib, pushed away the debris the ocean had churned up, and took the little girl’s body. As he carried her to the dory, he thought he heard her sigh. He looked at her face and thought she was a bit pink for a child who had drowned. Perhaps… He rushed her to the small boat and the waiting men.
“I think she might be alive!” he said excitedly.
Herb and John Joe crowded in on Margaret. They peeled off their coats and wrapped them around the child as tightly as they could. Jim rocked her and blew hot air on her face as the other two men rowed as fast as they could. Once onshore he ran with her in his arms to John Joe’s house.
“I think she’s alive!” he cried, hurrying past a row of anxious people in the hallway. “Get some warm water! Quick!”
When Alberta Fitzpatrick eased Margaret into the tub of warm water the child suddenly woke and screamed. At the sound of her voice, everyone in the house, and then Lord’s Cove itself, made the joyful noise their hearts had longed to make. Their child had been saved.
11
Ben and Beatrice Hollett had watched open-mouthed on the shore of Kelly’s Cove as the giant wave reached in and picked up their neighbour’s house and carried it out to sea. Inside, Carrie Brushett and her five children felt as if the house were flying and Carrie had somehow gathered her brood together and shielded them behind a window curtain she kept tightly closed. The men on the beach were still slack-jawed when, as they stood immobile in shock, the Brushett house returned on another wave—intact, its curtains still pulled together, displaying Carrie’s usual neat housekeeping. Then, plop! The rush of seawater plunked it on the beach a hundred yards in front of them. Their chests heaved great sighs of relief when they heard Carrie’s cries for help and the wails of her youngest. Ben bolted and ran to the nearest house for a ladder; he knew the first floor would be full of frigid water and that they’d be on the second floor. The men had also watched the first great wave snatch the Kelly home. Vincent Kelly had built the white two-storey home for his bride, Frances, some fifteen years before. It was near the water on a rocky, exposed patch of land. Since then, the Kellys had had four children: Marion, who was thirteen in November, 1929; Curtis, twelve; Dorothy, and the smallest child, Elroy. Like many Burin Peninsula women, Frances kept chickens, eggs being a good source of protein and essential for the cakes that everyone looked forward to at Christmas and for their birthdays; she had six hens in her chicken house.
Like most men in the area, forty-five-year-old Vincent had done well in the shore fishery the past few years. The Kellys were able to buy eight gallons of molasses, which the children loved to spread on the bread their mother made every day. They also had twelve quintals of salt fish stored in their pantry, a barrel of flour, a hogshead of salt, and a quarter barrel of beef, a favourite meat that they didn’t get to eat too often. Alongside the house, Vincent had built a barn to store hay—he had plenty cut in 1929—for his few head of cattle in the winter, and the coal he’d got for the coming cold months.
With Vincent’s extra earnings from the successful shore fishery of the past few years, Frances had bought another Singer sewing machine. She had two now; one for her and one for her daughters, Marion and Dorothy. Already Marion was becoming an accomplished seamstress, while Dorothy was eagerly turning her hand to learning the skills from her mother and sister. She was working on pillow cases, a project that would allow her to master straight lines before she tackled more complicated tasks. She looked forward to making dresses like her mother did. Dorothy marvelled when she thought of how Frances had made her own wedding dress. Once in awhile, Frances took her daughters upstairs to her bedroom closet and released the dress from its wrapping and mothballs so that the girls could ooh and aah at it. Frances smiled at their wide eyes; she knew it gave them something to aim for.
Meanwhile, she made sure her family had the finest wardrobe in the harbour; nothing suited a lady better than lovely clothes, as her own mother had told her. Making them was an act of artistry. With the cottons, flannels, and even muslin she collected, she made fine clothes for her children and the sons and daughters of her neighbours in the cove. Little Marjorie Willis, five now, was christened in a white lace gown that Frances had sewn. Ben Hollett’s teenage daughters had long, full skirts that Frances made for them. The skirts made their debut at Lady Day in Oderin that August, when the whole bay, Catholic and Protestant alike, gathered to celebrate the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary and share food, drink, laughter, and stories. Frances had made a Lady Day hat for Martha Cooper, another Kelly’s Cove teenager, who had confided to Frances her affection for one of the Oderin boys. Martha had gone into Path End, where she’d bought a straw hat; then Frances sewed layers of violet lace onto the brim. Frances made cotton shirts for the five children of her friend, Carrie Brushett, too; she knew Carrie had her hands full, and for the young son of her neighbours, the Footes. Thus, on Sunday, all the children of Kelly’s Cove wore something made by Frances Kelly.
Like Sarah Rennie in Lord’s Cove, Frances Kelly had been hard at work with her Singer sewing machine when
