Into the Deep

This short story is one of my earliest memories of living in French Harbour. I was about five years old and was playing on a dock in the harbor. One of the workers at that dock where I was at, caught a small fish for me to play with and he tied it onto one of the posts of the dock.

I was playing around with the little fish, watching it swim in and around the posts of the dock, then all of a sudden I fell overboard! Once in the water, I could feel myself going down, down, down. Drowning! I would come back up, then down, down, down again. I was just thrashing in the water.

Then, it so happened that the little fish swam by me and in an instant, I grabbed on to the line, pulled myself into the dock, and grabbed onto one of the posts. Once holding on, I hollered for help and one of the boys working nearby came over and pulled me out.

It wasn't until I was about seven years old that I learned to swim. One would think that living on an island, I would have learned to swim at a much younger age, but in those days we did not have too many things to help us learn. One of the things they did was take two coconuts and put a strip of canvas between them. Then we could put that under our arms to float. They used big, dry coconuts, with the husks and everything for good flotation. Later on, one of my aunts, who lived in the US, brought an inflatable swimming ring and with that, I finally learned to swim.

Nowadays, swimming in the ocean or "bathing in the sea", as we say around here, is still one of my favorite things to do!

For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.

Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. Jonah 2:3-4

Here is a photo of me at round the age that this incident happened. I'm siting on Daddy's left leg, my sister Judy on the other leg, my brother Meade in the center, and my brother Allan next to him.