5
The village of Lawn rises out of a lush valley on the southern end of the Burin Peninsula. According to the local families, the first Europeans to over-winter there were Irish and they enjoyed one of the best fishing harbours on the South Coast. The people fished cod, caplin, salmon, herring, and lobster, which they processed in a factory that employed eight people in 1891. They also ran a seal fishery.
As six-year-old Anna Tarrant lay frozen with fear on the kitchen day bed in her Lawn home, her mother came rushing in from the root cellar, the family tabby behind her. Hilda Murphy Tarrant, a native of St. John’s who had married a local man, dropped her carrots and blue potatoes with a great thud. Beneath her the ground shook.
“Mommy!” Anna cried, in spite of her sore throat. Anna’s little sister, Elizabeth, and brother, Charles, only two, toddled in. Baby Joe was upstairs in the crib his father had made long ago for the Tarrants’ first child. Elizabeth and Charles were too young to be scared of the rumbling itself but they caught sight of the whitening of their mother’s face.
“Where’s Isadore?” Hilda asked of her oldest child.
Anna shrugged. “I don’t know,” she whispered. She had been sick all day, drifting in and out of sleep, and hadn’t paid too much attention to the comings and goings of her sister and brothers.
Hilda put her hand to her mouth.
“Where’s your father?” she cried, looking around the kitchen, seemingly oblivious to the shaking stacks of dishes.
As soon as the rumbling stopped, Pat Tarrant appeared. At forty-three, he was ten years older than his wife. He had been in the Royal Navy as a young man and had witnessed an earthquake in the crystal waters of the Indian Ocean.
“Hilda, get the children in warm clothes and get them to high ground,” he ordered. “There’s a tidal wave on the way.”
“I’m sick, Daddy,” Anna said feebly.
“I know, child,” her father answered, bending down so that he was face to face with her. “But you have to be brave now. You have to get dressed and put on your winter coat. Then you have to go up the hill with Mommy because there’s going to be a big wave come in.”
“Pat, what do you mean?” Hilda said. “Will it come all the way in to the houses?”
“It might, maid,” her husband answered. “We have to be prepared. I’ve seen it happen when I was overseas.”
Hilda shuddered. Anna hiccupped in fear.
“We have to find Isadore,” Hilda said, shoving a fingernail between her teeth.
“Don’t worry,” Pat said. “I’ll get him. I’m going to alert the neighbours anyway. You bundle up the children and take them to the top of the hill as quickly as you can.”
In a flash he was gone. Then, as Anna was getting out of her pajamas and into a dress Hilda had fetched from upstairs, her father rushed back into the house. Holding his hand was ten-yearold Isadore, ashen-faced.
“Mommy!” he said, running to Hilda and wrapping his arms around her.
“He was just next door at Victoria and Nick’s,” Pat said. “He was too afraid to move with the tremors.” He turned to his eldest. “You’re safe now. Just do what your mother says and help her with the other children.” Then he was gone again.
Pat Tarrant went from one house to another on the low land that ringed the harbour, banging on doors and shouting, “There’s a tidal wave coming! Get to high ground!” Men and women came out of their houses and watched him knock on their neighbours’ doors
“Do you think so, Pat?” they called.
“I do!” he replied, still walking. “I do, I saw it in the Indian Ocean.”
He was a respected man and they believed him. They raced back into their houses and pulled babies out of cribs, toddlers out of beds, and wrapped their children in their winter coats. They slammed their doors shut and fixed their eyes on the high land as they made for it as quickly as they could, ignoring the stillness of the water below. There was no wind in the air but Pat Tarrant’s words held sway.
With everyone except Kate and Tom Tarrant, an old couple who refused to leave their home which abutted the beach. Distant relatives of Pat’s, they did not believe their house was in any danger.
“It’s a clear night,” sixty-seven-year-old Tom told Anna’s father. “I think everything’s all right.”
“That rumbling is all over now,” his sixty-three-year-old wife echoed him. “Everything’s fine now.”
Pat shook his head; he was certain the old couple was in danger. But there were others to warn, more doors to bang on. He moved on. He looked up from the beach and saw dozens of people streaming out of their houses to the higher ground. Some of them went into dwellings built on the hills around Lawn; others went beyond the houses to even higher land.
As Hilda Tarrant led her children out the door, with her youngest in her arms, she looked behind at a sponge cake on the kitchen counter. She had baked it for Pat’s birthday, which was today.
At seven-thirty the water drained out of Lawn harbour, revealing a mass of seaweed over endless grey and blue beach rocks. By now Pat had rejoined his wife and children who were climbing up the hill to the Tarrants’ barn.
“Don’t look back,” Pat told them.
But Anna did and she saw her neighbours’ homes go out to sea when a hundred foot wave came in and took them. Then the water withdrew again, leaving two-masted schooners high and dry in the harbour. Around them were splinters of wood from dories, flakes and stages. Pat realized that old Tom and Kate Tarrant had remained in their home. Even in the dimness of the evening light he could see that their house remained intact. Pat pulled away from Hilda and the children and confided his worry to the men he fished with. With a squeeze of Hilda’s shoulder, he hurried down the hill with his dory mates.
“Will you be all right?” she asked.
“I will!” he called. “I think that’s the last of it! I’ll be back— stay there with the little ones!”
Anna shivered as the darkness drew in. Her throat ached; how she wished for some molasses.
Down below, Pat and the other fishermen waded through icy sea water and debris to reach Tom and Kate Tarrant. Oddly, the fence surrounding the old couple’s garden remained standing and the men had to climb over it in their soaking wet clothes. When they opened the Tarrants’ door, Kate said, “Thank God!” Then the cries she had been holding in came out full force. Pat picked her up and laid her over his shoulders. The other men carried Tom. The hardest part was getting them over the fence, which they tried to kick down but could not since the water was so heavy. Once they were clear of the sea water, the Tarrants walked up the hill to join the neighbours in the barn. But before he returned, Pat dashed into his own house and retrieved his birthday cake.
There was no loss of life in Lawn, due largely to the efforts of Pat Tarrant. But the property damage was considerable, especially for those families who lived near the beach. Pat Tarrant’s own fishing enterprise suffered considerably. His stage was swept away, and his wharf and flake were badly damaged. He lost his trap moorings, five trap kegs, a leader for his trap, a buoy rope, a herring net, and thirty hogsheads of salt. In addition, two tons of coal meant to keep his brood warm over the winter were swept away. As he stood on the shore in the morning, on the spot where his stage had been, he was dumbstuck at his losses. He had been fishing since he was a boy and now, thirty years later, with a wife and five children, it was as if he was starting all over.
The house of Pat’s neighbours, Celestine and Jane Edwards, was so badly damaged it would have to be entirely rebuilt. The parents of five young children, the Edwards’ food stores were completely gone as well. Jane lamented the loss of the organ she loved to play every evening; getting another one would have to wait—her prized possession had cost $135—and would be hard to come by in any case.
Frederick and Margaret Edwards’ house was also beyond repair. The first wave had ripped it from its foundation. Assessing the damage in the dark after the sea had returned to its normal state that night, Fred saw that all the house’s concrete pillars were broken. So was the chimney, which lay flat on the soaking ground, ripped right off the rest of the dwelling.
