Shortly after sunrise, the day before yesterday, I was called upon to go to a little island several miles out at sea.  Captain Sammy and a man called Frenchy took me out there.  Their little fishing smack is the cab I use for running my remoter errands.  I found a man nearly dying from a bad septic wound of his right arm.  I judged that he might possibly survive an amputation, but that the loss of the breadwinner’s limb would have been just as bad, as far as his family was concerned, as the death of the patient.  There was nothing to do but grit one’s teeth and take chances.  I remained with him throughout the night, and in the morning was glad to detect some slight improvement.

The keen breeze that expanded my lungs as I sat on the rocks did me a great deal of good.  It rested me after the dreary vigil and presently I returned to my patient.  I’m afraid that we men are poor nurses.  We can keep on fighting and struggling and trying, but when we have to sit still and watch with folded arms the iron enters our souls, while the consciousness of helpless waiting is after all the bitterest thing we can contend against.  Women are far more patient and enduring.

Constantly I renewed the dressings, and bathed the limb in antiseptics, and gave a few stimulating drugs.  Then I would watch the man’s hurried breathing and feverish pulse.  But I could not remain with idle hands very long at a time, and frequently strolled out to breathe the sea-scented air, in some place well to windward of the poor little fishhouses that reeked infamously with the scattered offal of cod.  A disconsolate man was trying to mend a badly frayed net and a few ragged children, gaunt and underfed, followed me about, curiously, whispering among themselves.

The sick man’s wife sat most of the time, near the bed, hour after hour, a picture of intense, stolid misery.  From time to time she wailed because there was no more tea.  Always she hastened to obey my slightest request, clumsily, faithfully, like some humble dog to which some hard and scarcely understood task might have been given.  One could see that she really had no hope.  The usual way was for the men to fail to return, some day, when they went out and were caught in a bad storm, or when the ice-floes drifted out to sea, and then the women would wait, patiently, until the certainty of their bereavement had entered their souls.  This one had the sad privilege of witnessing the tragedy.  It was all happening in the little house of disjointed planks, and perhaps she took some comfort in the idea that she would be there at the last moment.  It was easy to see, however, that she considered my efforts as some sort of rite which, at most, might comfort the dying.

Before noon, when the haze had lifted before the sweep of a north east wind, one of the children called.  The mother went out, hurriedly, while I stood at the open door.  About a mile away a stunning white schooner was steaming towards the entrance of Sweetapple Cove.