CHAPTER XVI 



The life of a missionary. 



CNG years ago, when the missionaries 

 first came to Labrador, their life was as 

 lonely as life can well be. 



The ship brought them in the summer-time, 

 and then sailed away and left them to their 

 long, cold winter. 



When the winter ice had broken, and the 

 great sea was once more open for the ship 

 to return, they began to look forward to the 

 greatest day of all their year, the Coming of 

 the Ship. And so, once a year, the ship came, 

 bringing news from home, and stores of meat 

 and flour so that there should be no want 

 through the next winter. Lonely it must have 

 seemed, to live shut off from the world by 

 the ice and the storms and the dreadful cold of 

 the Labrador winter, locked in because the sea is 

 frozen all alongthe coast, and no ship can venture. 



But in spite of all, those old-time mis 

 sionaries were happy. Lonely they must have 

 felt, far from their friends and their home, 

 hearing no voices but the strange rough sounds 



208 



