“I expect we’ll need twenty or more barrels of cement to rebuild,” Fred told Pat Tarrant in the blackness of the night. “Maybe more.”
“Yes,” Pat nodded. “And a thousand feet of lumber.”
Fred shook his head.
“Don’t worry,” Pat said. “We’ll pull together. You’ll come through it somehow.”
Fred’s heart was like lead. His wharf was also beaten up, as was his store. The giant wave had stolen a hogshead of salt, a barrel of flour, and a ton of coal—in the cold month of November. It had also destroyed his stable.
“I don’t know,” he told Pat.
Young Augustine Murphy was also in need of comfort. At eighteen, he was the sole breadwinner for his thirty-nine-year-old widowed mother, Angela, his fifteen-year-old brother John, and his three little step-siblings. He cracked his knuckles as he paced back and forth on the spot where his flake had been. He hadn’t had a particularly successful fishing season and he really couldn’t afford a loss of any kind. In fact, his family had virtually no provisions. His stage was rendered useless by the first wave; his moorings destroyed. He’d have to get all that sorted out over the winter for the next fishing season.
The second wave had hauled away their half ton of coal and ten planks Augustine had collected to build a little bridge to his stage and flake, which were now gone anyway. He wiped his forehead when he thought of it. After he surveyed the damage the waves had wrought, he headed home to tell Angela and the children what they faced the winter. He lugged in their barrel of flour but about half of it had been ruined by sea water. Stoney-faced at the news of their losses, Angela turned to the flour and picked through it, trying to salvage what she could.
6
In Lamaline, Herbert Hillier had almost convinced his wife, Nan, that the tremor they had felt on the way from their home in Point au Gaul was nothing to be concerned about. Nan tried to enjoy the Orange Lodge supper in Lamaline with her neighbours from home and their friends in other communities on the bottom of the Burin Peninsula. But, in spite of Herbert’s attempts to reassure her, memories of the earth’s rumbling nagged at Nan. It didn’t help matters that the diners at the Orange Hall talked of nothing else.
At the supper Nan sat next to her sister and brother-in-law from Point au Gaul, Jessie and David Hipditch. Jessie told Nan of the strange vision of her baby, Elizabeth, she had experienced just after the tremor. But with her husband’s encouragement she had brushed it off. The Hipditch children, including five-year-old George and three- year-old Henry, were safe with their grandmother, Lizzie Hillier, who was Jessie’s mother.
As people arrived at the hall, they brought the fanciful news that the harbour waters had receded way below the normal low tide mark. In fact, the mark kept falling farther back, as if some giant force was sucking the water out of the harbour, so much so that the bottom of the harbour was now exposed for the first time ever. Jessie, David, and Nan rushed outside to see this remarkable phenomenon. The hall was on the highest point of land in Lamaline and they peered down on the dry harbour bottom, amazed to see the smooth stones, dark sand, and reams of seaweed that lay there.
“I never thought I’d see that,” David said. A small group that had gathered behind him murmured in agreement. But worry lines crossed their faces as well. Their fears were realized when the water that had disappeared so quietly came barrelling in with the force of a canon ball.
“It’s coming in!” Nan heard someone shriek. “It’s coming in!”
She clung to Herbert as dusk drew in and they strained to watch the water rise to twenty feet from almost nothing a few moments before. Then a wall of seawater, icy and swift, raced to the houses that clung to the shore. Nan gasped as she saw men and women run away with screaming children in their arms. The ocean flooded the homes they had vacated just in time and swamped the school which had also been built on lower ground. The roads were buried in water as well.
Nan swallowed her breath as she watched the water rise up the hill toward the Orange Hall where she stood as stiff as a marsh bittern. What would they do if the water came up there? But then it stopped, still two hundred yards away, and began to recede. It carried out chicken houses, dories, and fences. The fence posts reminded Nan of matchsticks as they were swept away. The squawking of the poor drowning birds stuck in her ears. She turned to her husband.
“Oh Herbert, what will we do? What about the children?”
His answer was gruff. “Never mind, never mind now,” he said. “They’ll be all right. Don’t be frightened.”
But Nan’s heart crept up in her chest into her throat and mouth. All around her, women cried and the faces of men grew white as snow. They were deathly afraid for their children in Point au Gaul, High Beach, Taylor’s Bay, and Lord’s Cove. It would be at least an hour before any of them could get home. They walked in and out of the hall, letting their gravy solidify and their potatoes harden, as they waited for the next onslaught from the Atlantic.
It came, as they knew it would from the behaviour of the sea, but it was not as fierce as the first wave and the houses on the lower ground in Lamaline were empty now. When it receded this time, the people in the Orange Lodge were more confident it would not return and they were right.
Jessie Hipditch had watched the whole thing and could not contain the thumping in her chest. By now, she was convinced the sight of baby Elizabeth on the walk to Lamaline from Point au Gaul was a dark omen, maybe even a token. She pulled on her raven hair as she rushed up to Nan.
“Are you going home?” she asked. “We’re going now.”
Nan nodded and Herbert agreed. “Don’t worry,” Herbert told Jessie. “There was enough warning that everyone got out of their houses on time. There’s only been property damage.”
Jessie’s husband, David, joined the trio by now and he gave a quick nod in agreement but Nan could see the worry flush on his face.
“Let’s get going,” she said.
Out of habit, Herbert picked up their suitcase, which contained only one cake by now. The four of them discussed the safest route home and decided they would stick to high land. They said quick good-byes and left the hall. They crossed the bog on high ground, rather than risk walking through Lamaline itself, on the off-chance that the seawater wasn’t done rushing in.
Traversing the bog was hard work and cold in November. All four were soaked to their knees by the time they made it to the road that would take them to Point au Gaul by an inland route. Nan tried to chat, but while Herbert made small talk, she noticed that Jessie and David were silent the whole time. They reached the road first and then walked as fast as they could in bogwatersoaked clothing to their village.
On the way, they passed a Lamaline man with his granddaughter in his arms and his daughter walking wordlessly alongside him. Nan’s mind was cloudy and she did not speak to him; five minutes later, she couldn’t say if he was an apparition or not.
When Nan and Herbert reached Salmonier Bridge, they stopped. Its great wooden piers had been washed away by the
“Well, we’ll have to cross it, too,” Herbert said. Nan nodded. By the time they crossed the creaky bridge, Jessie and David were out of sight. As the harbour came within view, they could see it was chock-a-block with wreckage. It was as if a half dozen ships had gone aground.
“Well, my boat is gone,” Herbert said. He sounded nonchalant; indeed, he had expected this after the events he had witnessed in Lamaline, but Nan felt a catch in her throat.
Than a man appeared out of the darkness and shouted, “Stop!”
Nan hesitated; she wanted to ask him what he wanted, but Herbert said, “Never mind, come on!” He had just felt the weight of a boulder in his belly and he suddenly knew that something much worse than property damage had happened in Point au Gaul.
Then he and Nan passed a woman who was moving slowly and crying.
