Tsunami

That year, 1929, Mary was late going back to St. Pierre, so on a November night she saw the rocky harbour bottom for the first time in her life.

“Pop!” she called out from the front porch. “There’s no water in the cove. It’s all rocks.”

“What?” her father, Jim, answered incredulously.

“Come and see!” Mary insisted.

As soon as her father joined her in the doorway, they saw the first wave coming. All around them, people were ru

Mary’s head spun round when her father ran back into the house and upstairs. She fought back panic. Everyone else was ru

Then Jim rushed back down the stairs, his footfalls heavy on the steps. In his hands was the candle that had led Mary’s mother to the afterlife. Mary’s eyes glistened with moisture, the roar of the wave outside almost forgotten. Wordlessly, Jim jumped into his boots and went out to the bank where the capstan was and stuck the candle down in a piece of chain. Mary watched him light it and back away. Then he turned and ran, grabbed his daughter, and rushed her to the hills above the village.

As the second wave hit Lord’s Cove, the candle remained lit, a tiny fleck of light surrounded by wild waves that somehow did not come close to it. The little light did not go out even as the third wave roared into the beach and demolished flakes, stages, dories, skiffs, and houses.

The tsunamidid untold damage in Lord’s Cove, affecting virtually every family. The men wondered how they would fish next spring. Tusa Chappalla, John Collier, Francis Ferrie, David Fitzpatrick, James Fitzpatrick, Thomas Hodge, and William Lamb were among the many whose stages were ripped to bits by the waves. Other fishermen—Martin Fitzpatrick, Clement Harnett, John Herlidan, Frederick He

The women saw that from now on even curing fish would be a problem, since some of beaches were washed away. One of these belonged to Prosper Walsh, who had done so much to warn people of the coming disaster. Prosper, with a wife and four dependent children, had built up his eight foot high beach with a wooden and rock breakwater, costing him $150.00. The tsunamiwashed it all away. Even more worrying, the giant waves seemed to have robbed the forty-six-year-old man of his eyesight. As the last wave receded, so did Prosper’s vision, so that from then on he saw everything through a blur.

Upstairs in the Re

The three waves that slammed into Lord’s Cove were between sixteen and fifty feet high. They hit the harbour at almost 130 kilometres an hour, clearing the little cove of everything it had held.

The Re

After the third wave the sea returned to its pre- tsunamicalmness, the very state that had deceived them so. The moon enveloped the still cove in a light that seemed strangely protective, though it revealed the splinters that had been stages and flakes and now clogged up the harbour. When an hour had passed with no sign of another wave, Patrick’s friend, John Joe Fitzpatrick, turned to him and said, “I think we’ll try and get to your house.”

Another neighbour, Herb Fitzpatrick, nodded in agreement.

“It’s calm now, Pat,” he said. “And I expect it’ll stay that way.”

“We’ll do what we can, Pat,” John Joe added.

He patted Martin and Albert on the shoulders as he began to move down the hill, Herb by his side.

“Mind your old man, boys,” he called back.

Martin and Albert closed in on their father. They were still numb with shock themselves.

As they neared The Pond, the men met Jim Walsh, who had lost virtually nothing to the waves, thanks to his wife’s death candle. Jim had just come from Fred He

Jim was desperate to help his neighbours, but was at a loss as to how. Herb and John Joe told him they needed a boat to put in The Pond to go out to the Re

“Mine is all in one piece,” Jim said. “We just have to get it hauled over there.”

Adrenalin pumped through the men’s veins as they lugged the dory across the beach and over the scrap of land to The Pond. Other fishermen carried the oars. Then the three of them, John Joe, Jim, and Herb, jumped into the dory and rowed to the house tilting in the water, their hearts galloping in fear. When they reached it they saw that the cold water came up to the ceiling of the first floor. From the shore of The Pond, they heard a woman scream.

Suddenly, the house rose up as if to make their task easier. Pond and sea water drained out of it, followed by pots, pans, and even table legs. Then they saw the high chair, horizontal and still holding baby Bernard. John Joe reached in the broken window and pulled the chair toward the dory, trying to keep as steady as he could. The sound of his own breathing was all he could hear as he cut the child from the chair and passed him to Herb, who had removed his coat to wrap little Bernard in. They found Rita next, and then her brother, Patrick. Their mother, Sarah, was under the kitchen table, next to the sewing machine—it seemed she did not even have time to move away from her perch.

Only young Margaret was missing. The men could see clearly through the first floor of the house and she was not there. They decided to row back to shore with their sad, sad cargo.

As villagers carried the Re

Patrick Re

“Where’s Margaret?” he said.

John Joe, Herb, and Jim looked at each other, not knowing what to say.

“We have to have Margaret,” Patrick persisted.

Wordlessly, the three men re-entered Jim’s dory and rowed back out to the house. The moon seemed even brighter now, if that were possible. They circled the Re

“She might be at the bottom of The Pond, the poor little thing,” Herb said.