“It’ll be a massive job,” Lake said gravely. “He’ll need every support.” The other members of the relief expedition nodded and murmured “yes.”

“It’s a great relief that almost no breadwinners were killed,” Squires said, looking out the window now.

“It is, sir,” Mosdell said. “But it is an extremely serious situation all the same because hundreds of fishermen are in no position to earn a living this coming fishing season.”

“Literally thousands of fishing outbuildings are destroyed, completely flattened,” Lake added. “It is no easy task to rebuild them, especially in winter and without easy access to lumber.”

“Quite a few of them are grief-stricken, too,” Campbell said. “Having lost relatives, wives even, to the tidal wave.”

Squires turned away from the window and nodded. For a moment, a white cast returned to his face. Then he said, “That may be so. But our people are tough and resourceful, especially those in the outports. And the committee will give them the means to rebuild. I have great faith that everything is in hand.”

He glanced around the ornate room.

“I thank you all, gentlemen, for the service you have rendered to our country as members of the relief expedition.”

Mosdell had been about to ask Squires about further assistance from the Newfoundland government, but the prime minister had already disappeared from his office and was dashing down the hallway.

Some of the tension in Magistrate Hollett’s shoulders was finally released when he received news that the South Coast Disaster Committee had been formed and had begun receiving public donations from all over the country. His heart leapt when he heard that money had begun to trickle in from the United States, Canada, and England as well. It was all badly needed, he knew, and he would make sure it would be put to good use.

One of the villages Hollett was most concerned about was Port au Bras, another peninsula community with French roots. Migratory fishermen from St. Malo, France, christened the village “port of arms,” which might have been an indication of the sporadic ethnic conflicts over cod that marked Newfoundland history. By the late 1700s, both English and French settlers had made Port au Bras their permanent home, living in a collection of houses that seemed to tumble onto the rocks and almost into the sea. By 1900, three hundred people lived in the village. Known for its skilled fishing captains and masters of foreign-going trading vessels, there was something of the invincible about Port au Bras.

That ended on the night of November 18, as Port au Bras native Ern Cheeseman wrote in a letter to his brother, Jack:

Fifty-three-year-old Tom Fudge had been in his stores with his two sons, John and Job, when the ground began to tremble. John, just entering his twenties, laughed at the unexpected sensation. Job, at thirteen, blanched and looked to his father for words of comfort.

“You’re not scared, are you, Job?” John teased.

Before Tom could answer, his wife, Jessie, appeared at the door, followed by the couple’s three daughters, Gertie, fifteen, Harriet, eleven, and Hannah, only nine. The two youngest girls held hands and Tom noticed that Hannah was walking on her tiptoes as if to protect herself from the rumbling of the earth.

“What’s going on, Tom?” Jessie asked urgently.

“I don’t really know,” her husband answered. “It must be some kind of earthquake, though they’re not generally known in Newfoundland. Usually they happen in warmer parts.”

“God save us!” said Jessie.

He looked at his daughters and then at white-faced Job.

“It won’t last long,” he said. “And it won’t be a powerful one like they have in the West Indies. Don’t fret now.”

Little Hannah looked up from under her chestnut curls and smiled at him. Tom winked at her. As the tremor died away, Jessie shooed her girls back to the house. Tom watched their long skirts swish as his wife and daughters went inside.

Not long afterwards, a wall of seawater rushed into the Fudges’ garden and pulled the family’s house away with it. Tom was still working in the nearby store with his sons. Oddly, the smell of kelp and salt filled Tom’s nostrils before he heard the roar of the wave. The smell jolted him and he jumped to the doorway to see rushing grey water where his house had been. He let out a deep cry and froze. Then he shouted at John and Job, “Get to high ground! Move! Quick!”

The boys ran from the store toward the hills, joining their panicked neighbours. At one point John turned around and called, “Come on, Dad!”

But he could no longer see his father.

From the high land, Ern Cheeseman and dozens of other people saw Tom Fudge’s store swallowed by the tail end of the wave. They could hear the screams of women and children trapped in houses borne on the tidal wave, Jessie Fudge and her three daughters, among them. In short order, the first wave had torn eleven houses from the ground. It drove Bill and Mary Clarke’s twostorey, eight room house into Path End, a neighbouring inlet, where it would have to be towed down. It destroyed the house of Gus and Jessie Abbott and their six children and that of their kin, John and Annie Abbott, and their seven children. It swept away the house of eighty-one-year-old pensioner William Allen. Tom Fudge’s brother Job, after whom his younger son had been named, was in poor health; now his house was gone. John Dibbon, who lived alone, was homeless. So was sixty-seven-year-old Mary Dibbon, who was widowed by the tsunami. The house Thomas Brenton was building for his new wife, Alice, was engulfed by the tidal wave. Four of the Cheeseman households lost their homes to the violent water that night: those of fifty-five-year-old widower Thomas; twenty-three-year-old bachelor Joseph; and married couple, Jeremiah and Harriet, both fifty-seven.

As the first wave emptied the harbour, Ern Cheeseman and the others tried to follow what was happening, though their eyes could scarcely comprehend it. They tried to count the houses that were hauled up, and then to figure out who was on the high ground and who wasn’t. Ern saw young Job Fudge shivering on the hill not far away. Though he was well-dressed for a November evening, Ern realized the boy must be in shock. He approached young Job.

“Where’s the rest of your family, Job?” he asked gently.

“John is near the bottom of the hill trying to find Dad,” Job answered, his eyes staring at the dot below that represented his brother.

“And where did you last see your father?” Ern persisted quietly.

“Our house is gone and Dad’s gone to get it,” Job said. “Mommy and Gertie and Harriet and Hannah are in it. Dad’s gone to rescue them.”

“Take my jacket, Job,” Ern said, laying his coat over the boy’s shoulders. “It’s getting a little chilly.”