Tsunami

Hollett’s face was tight when he finished.

Dalton recalled the villages of which the magistrate spoke. Hollett was right; those little villages and others like them would indeed be particularly vulnerable to the tidal wave of November 18. He wondered what remained of them. He studied Hollett for a moment, seeing the intensity under the magistrate’s bushy eyebrows and hooded eyes. He knew the man was learned; Hollett had been Newfoundland’s Rhodes Scholar and studied at Oxford University. He was no coward either, Dalton reckoned, recalling that he had served in the Royal Newfoundland Regiment and been seriously wounded by shell-fire in France in 1916 before being invalided back to his home country. If Hollett said things were bad here and farther down the coast, then they probably were.

“We should take as many supplies as we can to those communities,” Dalton said. “But you’ll need some, too.”

“Take three-quarters of the food south of here,” Hollett said, meeting the eyes of his fellow committee members. “That’s where the need will be greatest.”

20

Besides some of the food, Captain Dalton and the Meigle left the Burin Committee with three of the physicians on board. Nurses from St. John’s accompanied each of the doctors.

Captain Dalton knew that it was impossible for a vessel of the Meigle’s size to land at Taylor’s Bay and other low lying places at night so he over-nighted in Burin. Early the next morning the Meigle left Burin, but as soon as Burin harbour faded into the distance, snow began falling. Very soon, winds blew out of the northeast, quickly encasing the Meigle in ice. The cold was jarring. The ship inched through the gelid waters of Placentia Bay, a little tub on an angry November sea that would not quit.

Finally, a full twenty-four hours later, the Meigle reached Point au Gaul. Captain Dalton stood on deck and surveyed the harbour. There was not a single wharf standing—nor were there any stages or flakes. The giant waves had destroyed a hundred out-buildings, taking their contents—gear, food, fuel—to the bottom of the sea, or pitching them in a meadow two hundred yards behind the village where they lay in ruins. Over forty boats had been swept away, most of them torn to smithereens.

It took all day but Dalton and his crew lowered food into the Meigle’s lifeboats and then landed them to a grateful populace. One of the Point au Gaul men collecting the food onshore was twenty- eight-year-old William Lockyer, a fisherman who had lost his motor dory, stage, and store to the tsunami. William and his wife, Rebecca, had got their three little daughters to safety as the first wave raced into the harbour.

Dalton shook his head in sympathy as he looked at the harbour and William in one of the lifeboats with the Meigle’s crew, a sack of flour on each slim shoulder. He guessed, rightly, that the young man was pleased to have something useful to do after a week of loss.

“It’s three houses gone, Captain, sir,” William called up. “Three houses.”

“My God,” Dalton responded. “And how many dead?”

“Well, sir, we’ve done nothing but bury people here in Point au Gaul lately,” came the sombre reply. The Meigle crew members laid down their sacks of flour and balanced themselves in the lifeboat to listen.

“Miss Mary Ann Walsh and Mrs. Eliza Walsh, they lived together in a house that was over there,” William said, pointing. “They were washed away. We got their bodies, first one and then the other. And it was the funniest thing—we found a tin box full of money, completely dry mind you, next to Miss Mary Ann’s body. When the women laid it out for counting, it covered a double bed. They gave it to Miss Mary Ann’s church, as she would have wanted.”

“Who else died, son?” Dalton asked, his cheeks pink at the young man’s familiarity.

“Well, poor Thomas Hillier was killed, unaccountably so, really,” William answered.

“How’s that?” one of the crew asked shyly, letting his curiosity get the better of him.

“Well, for one thing, he wasn’t supposed to be home,” William explained. “He worked all over the country as a fish oil inspector and he only came home to celebrate his birthday, first time he ever did. It’s a funny thing, an odd thing.”

“The whole tidal wave is strange,” Dalton said.

“It is, sir,” William answered. “And very sad. But the saddest part of it is those that’s left behind. Lydia Hillier, Thomas’ widow, is expecting a baby any day now and she had two other young children, Caroline and little Benjamin, and she has no one to support her.”

Dalton’s face blanched at the thought. He looked at the clear sea water and his eye took in bread dough in pans sitting on the harbour bottom, as if that’s where they belonged.

William continued. “She was Thomas’ second wife and she lives with his two grown children, Harold and Georgina. Now I don’t know what’s to become of her. That was their family home, the Hilliers’—I suppose the older children can claim the house, Thomas’ grown children. They might—they aren’t too fond of Lydia, never took to her.”

Dalton silently thought of how complicated village life always was, though artists and poets might render it simple and romantic. His own visits to his father’s hometown on the Southern Shore had taught him this. Meanwhile, he wondered how many Lydias he would come across on this sad voyage.

“That’s three deaths so far, young man,” he said gently, trying to prod William on.

“Well, the worst of it is the Hilliers, not the same Hilliers as Thomas, a different family altogether,” Lockyer said. “Mrs. Lizzie Hillier had her four grandchildren with her. Irene was over for a quick visit, her mother, Jemima, said. But her daughter, Jessie Hipditch’s three were there for the night. Their house was just about there, right near the water.”

As William pointed and paused, Dalton and the men stared at the emptiness that now took the place of Lizzie Hillier’s house.

“And now they’re all gone,” William said simply. “David and Jessie Hipditch lost their three children. Poor Jessie is out of her mind with all of them gone. Her sister, Jemima, is not far behind her with the loss of her only daughter, Irene.”

“Who has lost their homes?” Dalton asked after a minute.

“David and Jessie, sir,” William answered. “On top of losing their children, they lost their home, too, though Jessie doesn’t even care about that. They’re staying with Jessie’s sister, Nan. And Henry Hillier, he’s Mrs. Lizzie’s husband—his house is gone. He’s staying with Nan, too. He doesn’t want to rebuild. He thinks he’s too old. He’s sixty-nine. He says his wife is dead and four of his grandchildren are dead. My father thinks he’s lost the will to live. And if you lose that, my father says, you’re finished.”

“Your father’s right, son,” Dalton said, stroking his chin, slowly, still surveying what remained of the Point au Gaul infrastructure. He couldn’t imagine how the people could rebuild in time for next year’s fishing season, not this close to winter, when they had enough to do to get enough wood to heat, repair, and rebuild their homes. In this part of the country they had to travel so far to get wood. He wondered when the tradition of going to winter quarters had died out here and why.

The people here had so much need of wood now, they would have to buy it. Most people didn’t have that kind of extra cash, however. Dalton had been all over the island. If Point au Gaul was like most outports, there’d be a few families with five hundred dollars or a thousand dollars in the bank or salted away in their kitchen somewhere, and another handful with a hundred dollars or two hundred dollars, but the majority would have very little or none at all, maybe twenty dollars here or there. Most of the time there wasn’t much call for money. Fish was the currency of their lives, not dollar notes. In any case, that, too, had been swept away by the big sea.

When William Lockyer and members of the Meigle crew returned in the lifeboat, Dalton walked across the deck to them.

“Lockyer,” he said. “Did you find their bodies?”

“Which bodies, Captain, sir?”