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+Project Gutenberg's Grenfell: Knight-Errant of the North, by Fullerton Waldo
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Grenfell: Knight-Errant of the North
+
+Author: Fullerton Waldo
+
+Release Date: April 19, 2010 [EBook #32052]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GRENFELL: KNIGHT-ERRANT OF NORTH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jeannie Howse, Roger Frank and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has     |
+    | been preserved.                                           |
+    |                                                           |
+    | This work has dialect and unusual spellings.              |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For     |
+    | a complete list, please see the end of this document.     |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+    [Illustration: A FORD CAR CAN'T DO THIS]
+
+
+
+
+Grenfell:
+Knight-Errant of the North
+
+By
+FULLERTON WALDO
+
+Author of "With Grenfell on the Labrador,"
+"Down the Mackenzie," etc.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+PHILADELPHIA
+GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY
+PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1924, by
+GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY
+
+_All rights reserved_
+Printed in U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+_To
+MARY CASTLEMAN DAVIS_
+
+
+
+
+                                             _December 15, 1923._
+
+DEAR WALDO:
+
+You who have sampled the salt breezes of the North on board my boat,
+have, I know, imbibed the spirit that actuates the belief that in a
+world like ours we can all be knights. I know that like ourselves, you
+look upon the world as a field of honor, and its only durable prizes
+the things that we can accomplish in it. You see the fun in it
+all--the real joie de vivre.
+
+Well, we are doing our best, and it is giving us a great return. We
+haven't lost the capacity to enjoy soft things, but we have learned
+the joys of trying to endure hardness as good soldiers. Would to God
+that every American boy would realize that the only real great prize
+of life is to be won by being willing to take blows and willing to
+suffer misunderstanding and opposition, so long as he may follow in
+the footsteps of that most Peerless Knight that ever lived; He who saw
+that the meaning of life was, that in it we might, wherever we are, be
+always trying to do good.
+
+                                 Ever your friend,
+                                             WILFRED T. GRENFELL.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+   I. A BOY AND THE SEA                                        11
+
+  II. SCHOOL--AND AFTER                                        22
+
+ III. WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR                                35
+
+  IV. HAULED BY THE HUSKIES                                    74
+
+   V. SOME REAL SEA-DOGS                                       97
+
+  VI. HUNTING WITH THE ESKIMO                                 114
+
+ VII. LITTLE PRINCE POMIUK                                    137
+
+VIII. CAPTURED BY INDIANS                                     147
+
+  IX. ALONE ON THE ICE                                        162
+
+   X. A FIGHT WITH THE SEA                                    183
+
+  XI. THE KIDNAPPERS                                          201
+
+ XII. WHEN THE BIG FISH "STRIKE IN"                           230
+
+XIII. BIRDS OF MANY A FEATHER                                 238
+
+ XIV. BEASTS BIG AND LITTLE                                   249
+
+  XV. THE KEEPER OF THE LIGHT                                 264
+
+ XVI. THROUGH THE BLIZZARD                                    284
+
+XVII. WHY THE DOCTOR WAS LATE                                 296
+
+   The incidents of the first chapter are founded strictly on fact,
+   but slight liberties have been taken with minor details here and
+   elsewhere. For example, the Doctor is sometimes represented as
+   talking with persons whose names stand for types rather than
+   individuals; and it is the spirit rather than the letter of the
+   conversations that is reported.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+A Ford Car Can't Do This                           _Frontispiece_
+
+Map of Labrador                                    _Facing p._ 36
+
+Castles and Cathedrals of Ice Afloat                  "    "   94
+
+Let's Go!                                             "    "  110
+
+"Who Said Halt?"                                      "    "  198
+
+Off Duty                                              "    "  242
+
+Where Four Feet Are Better Than Two                   "    "  290
+
+
+
+
+Grenfell: Knight-Errant of the North
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+A BOY AND THE SEA
+
+
+"I wonder if Jim is ever going to get back! My, isn't it an awful
+storm!"
+
+Wilfred Grenfell, then a small boy, stood at the window of his home in
+Cheshire, England, looking out across the sea-wall at the raging,
+seething waters of the Irish Sea.
+
+The wind howled and the snowflakes beat against the window-panes as if
+they were tiny birds that wanted to get in.
+
+"Mother," he pleaded, "can I put on my sweater and my rubber boots and
+go down on the beach and see if I can find Jim?"
+
+"Yes," said his mother. "But wrap yourself up warmly, and don't stay
+long--and don't take any risks, will you, dear?"
+
+Almost before the words were out of her mouth, Wilf was down the
+stairs and out in the roadway, where fishermen watched their little
+boats as they tossed at anchor riding out the storm.
+
+Wilf stepped up to a big, grizzled mariner he knew, whom every one
+called Andy.
+
+"Andy, have you seen Jim?"
+
+"Jim who?"
+
+"Jim Anderson."
+
+"Was he the chap that went out in the _Daisy Bell_ about four hours
+ago?"
+
+"Yes," said Wilf, trying to control himself, "and he wanted me to go
+with him, but----"
+
+His words were cut short by a great wave that hurled itself against
+the wall. The spray leapt high over the stones and drenched Andy and
+the boy.
+
+"It's lucky ye didn't go, boy," said Andy, solemnly. "We're watchin'
+for the boat now. My brother was on her, and two cousins o' my wife.
+She was a little craft, and a leaky one. We were goin' to patch her up
+an' make her fit. But we waited too long. An' now----" He drew his
+rough sleeve across his eyes.
+
+The wind howled round their ears and the hail was smiting and stinging
+as though the storm had a devilish mind to drive them away.
+
+"Why don't you go out in a boat and get them?" pleaded Wilf.
+
+Andy shook his head. "It ain't that we're afraid," he said. "But there
+ain't a boat we have here that could ride those waves. The coast-guard
+tried--and now look!" He pointed to a heap of broken, white-painted
+timbers lying in the roadway, half-hidden from them by the whooping
+blizzard that threw its dizzying veils of snow before their eyes.
+
+"That's the coast-guard's boat!" exclaimed Andy. "The sea picked her
+up, she did, and threw her right over the sea-wall as if she was an
+egg, an' mashed her flat. That shows how much of a chance there'd be
+for us to get through an' get back, supposin' we could find 'em. No,
+boy, we've got to wait."
+
+"Look!" cried the lad, excitedly. "Please look, Andy. What's that
+bobbing up and down in the surf?"
+
+The fisherman put to his eyes his worn and rusted spy-glass.
+
+Then he gritted his teeth and bit his lip. "You stay up here on the
+road, boy. I got to climb down there and make sure."
+
+Wilf stood at the sea-wall. He was barely tall enough to look over it.
+
+He watched Andy clamber painfully down over the great rocks piled high
+against the outer face of the wall.
+
+Every now and then a big wave would rise up, a green monster of
+hissing foam and fury, and throw itself on him like a wild animal
+trying to scare him back.
+
+But men of that breed are not afraid. The stalwart figure, though
+often knocked down and half drowned, would struggle to his feet again
+and go on.
+
+Wilf saw Andy pick up the--yes, it was a body--and put it on his
+shoulder, and come staggering toward the rocks. Then he clambered
+tediously over the stones, and Wilf saw whose body it was that Andy
+was carrying.
+
+It was his boy friend Jim, who had gone out only a few hours before,
+with the sun on his fair hair, laughing and whistling and shouting his
+gay farewell. "Be back in a little while, Wilf! Bring you a nice big
+fish for your supper. You want to have a good hot fire ready to cook
+it Better change your mind and come along." Never again would he hear
+that cheery hail of invitation to adventure.
+
+Andy laid the little half-frozen figure down, carefully, tenderly,
+beside the wall.
+
+"Too bad!" he said, "too bad! But the sea can be terrible cruel to the
+sons o' men. I wonder we keep goin' back to her as we do. Now I got to
+take the poor boy to his mother."
+
+He picked up the body, and trudged off into the storm, toward the
+fishing-huts.
+
+Wilf went back to his own house, thinking about the sea and how cruel
+it had been.
+
+"Mother," he said, as they sat together talking over the tragedy,
+"isn't it queer that you can have such fun with the sea sometimes,
+swimming in it and rowing on it, and then all of a sudden it gets mad
+and kills somebody you love? Just suppose I'd gone out in the boat
+with Jim!"
+
+Wilf thought it fine fun to go swimming, with the strong salt breeze
+to dry him off like a towel afterwards. In his ears the crying of
+sea-birds against grey clouds was the sweetest of music. He loved to
+have the surf knock him about, and the sun burn him red, and he didn't
+mind if pink jellyfish stung him now and then or a crab got hold of
+his toes. The roar of the surf sang him to sleep at night like an old
+nurse.
+
+One day when the spring came, Wilf went out on the salt marshes, his
+gun over his shoulder, to shoot wild ducks.
+
+He was a regular water-baby.
+
+Round about him all sorts of sea-birds were wheeling and crying. The
+swift tidal currents found their way up-stream through the marshes.
+
+Wilf, hot and tired, threw the gun on the sand, took off his clothes,
+and plunged into the clear, cold water.
+
+It carried him along like a boat, and he clambered out on a green
+island.
+
+"It's just like Robinson Crusoe!" he told himself. "Here I am, all
+alone, and nobody in sight. I can do just as I please!"
+
+He ran up and down in the sunlight, laughing and shouting in the wind
+and throwing his arms about.
+
+How good it felt to be alive!
+
+"Guess I'll go back and get the gun," he said, "and see if I can't
+shoot one of those wild ducks. I'll make mother a present of it for
+dinner to-night."
+
+It wasn't so easy to swim back. He had to fight against the current
+that had carried him to the little green island.
+
+It was less effort to leave the stream and scramble through the reeds
+along the muddy bank.
+
+Sometimes a stone or a shell hurt his foot, but he only laughed and
+went on.
+
+"You just wait, you ducks," he said. "You'd better look out when I
+begin to shoot!"
+
+He came to where the gun lay on his clothes, where he had been careful
+to place it so that no sand would get into the muzzle.
+
+He loaded it and fired, and it kicked his bare shoulder like a mule.
+
+But he had the satisfaction of seeing one of the ducks fall into the
+water, where the stream was at its widest, perhaps a hundred feet from
+the bank.
+
+Here the water ran swift and deep, and it was going to be a hard fight
+to get that bird.
+
+"I wish I had Rover with me now!" he told himself. Usually the dog
+went with him and was the best of company,--but this time he must be
+his own retriever.
+
+He plunged into the stream again and swam with all his might toward
+the bird.
+
+If he had been getting it for himself, he would have been tempted to
+give up. But he couldn't bear to quit when he thought of what a treat
+it would be for the whole family--a nice, fat, juicy, wild duck.
+
+The bird was being carried rapidly up-stream by the force of the
+waters.
+
+"No, sir!" said Wilf to something inside him that wanted to go back.
+"We're going to get that bird if we have to swim half-way across
+England!"
+
+It was almost as if the bird had come back to life. It seemed to be
+swimming away from him.
+
+Painfully, inch by inch, he began to gain on it. At last, when his
+strength was all but gone, he caught up with it, and clutched the
+feathery prize. Then he swam with it to the shore.
+
+Panting and happy, he lay down on the bank a moment to rest.
+
+"The family won't have to go without dinner after all!" he laughed.
+
+He grabbed the duck by the feet, flung it over his shoulder, and
+trotted back to his clothes and the gun. It was fun to go home with
+the bird that he had shot himself. But if there had been no bird, he
+would have been whistling or singing just as happily.
+
+On one of his birthdays he was out in the wide, lonely marshes five
+miles from home. It was more fun for him to go hunting, barefoot, than
+to have a party with a frosted cake and twinkling candles. So, as the
+nicest kind of birthday present, he had been given the whole day, to
+do just as he pleased.
+
+To-day, as there was still on the ground the snow of early spring, he
+wore shoes, but it was cold work plashing about in those slimy pools
+and the slippery mud among the sedges.
+
+The birds he was after especially were the black-and-white "oyster
+catchers," which when it was low tide would always be found making a
+great racket above the patches of mussels which formed their favorite
+food.
+
+They were handsome birds, with gay red bills, and a bunch of them made
+a fine showing when the little hunter carried them home over his
+shoulder.
+
+This time he had shot several of the birds, and then the problem was
+to get them and bring them in.
+
+There they lay--away off yonder, on a little tuft of, the coarse green
+meadow-grasses, but between the hunter and the game was a swirling
+inlet of salt water, and he couldn't tell by looking at it how deep it
+was.
+
+So, gun over shoulder, he started cautiously to wade out toward that
+birthday dinner he meant to bring home.
+
+First it was calf-deep--then knee-deep--then nearly waist-deep.
+
+The cold water made his teeth chatter, but he didn't care about that.
+All he thought of was the precious gun. That was his chief treasure,
+and his first joy in life.
+
+Deeper he went, and nearer he got--the gun now held in both hands high
+over his head, as he floundered along.
+
+And just then a dreadful thing happened.
+
+He stepped into a hole, and it suddenly let him down so that the water
+was over his head, and his up reached arms, and the precious gun too!
+
+In the shock and the surprise, he let go of the weapon, and it sank
+out of sight. He had no fear of drowning, and he struck out manfully
+when he found himself in the deep water.
+
+But he had to give up the idea of finding the gun, and the birds were
+left where they lay on the farther side of the treacherous channel.
+
+It was a long, hard run home, over those five wet and freezing miles,
+and the boy's heart was heavy because of the loss of that pet gun.
+
+All the while he was learning everything that outdoors could teach
+him, and he owes to that breezy, sun-shot, storm-swept gipsying during
+the summer vacations the beginning of the stock of good health that
+has made him such a strong, useful, happy man, able to do no end of
+hard work without getting tired, and always finding it fun to live.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+SCHOOL--AND AFTER
+
+
+This Robin Hood kind of life in the open went on till Wilf was
+fourteen. Then he was sent away to Marlborough College--a boy's school
+which had 600 pupils. Marlborough is in the Chalk Hills of the
+Marlborough Downs, seventy-five miles west of London. The building,
+dating from 1843, is on the site of a castle of Henry I.
+
+The first day Wilf landed there he looked about him and felt pretty
+forlorn.
+
+"I wonder if I'll ever get to know all those boys?" he asked himself.
+
+When he was at home, he had a room all his own or shared one with his
+brother. Here it was so different.
+
+He counted the beds in his dormitory. There were twenty-five of them.
+"How can a fellow ever get to sleep in such a crowd?" he wondered.
+"Perhaps they'll toss me in a blanket, the way they did in 'Tom Brown
+at Rugby.' Well, if they try anything like that, they'll find I'm
+ready for them!"
+
+He felt the mattress. "Pretty hard compared with the beds at home, but
+no matter. Let's see what the schoolroom is like."
+
+So he went into the "Big School" as it was called. Three hundred boys
+were supposed to study there.
+
+"Gracious!" exclaimed Wilf. "Don't see how a fellow ever gets his
+lessons in a place like this."
+
+It was as busy and as noisy as a bear-garden. Here and there a boy
+with his hands over his ears was really looking at a book. But most of
+the boys were talking, laughing, singing as if there were no such
+thing as lessons.
+
+Sometimes a master might look in, or a monitor would wander down the
+aisle. But most of the time there was nothing to keep a boy from
+following his own sweet will.
+
+"I say, Smith!" one called out, "lend me a shilling, will you? I want
+to buy Grisby's white rat, and I haven't got enough." A fat boy who
+looked as if he thought mostly of meal-times was telling everybody in
+his neighborhood: "I've just got a box from home. Jam and fruitcake
+and gooseberry tarts. Come and see me to-night in the dormitory, you
+fellows."
+
+Somebody else called out: "My knife's so dull I'll never get my name
+carved on this desk. Give me your knife, Willoughby: it's sharper."
+
+There were boys having fencing-matches with rulers across the aisle.
+There were others who took no end of pains to make paper arrows, or
+spitballs that would stick to the ceiling. In the corners of their
+desks might be bird's eggs in need of fresh air. Some of the boys were
+reading adventure stories, covered up to look like school-books.
+
+In the midst of this Babel, you were expected to get your lessons as
+well as you could.
+
+When it came to meal-times, you went into what was called "Big Hall,"
+where four hundred boys ate together.
+
+The beef was tough enough to make a suitcase: the milk was like chalk
+and water: the potatoes would have done to plaster a ceiling or cement
+a wall. How different it all was from the good though simple fare at
+home!
+
+"Want to join a brewing company?" asked the boy across the table.
+
+"What's a brewing company?" inquired Wilf.
+
+"We buy sausages and cook 'em in saucepans over the fire--when we can
+find a fire."
+
+"Yes, you can count me in," said Wilf. So it didn't make so much
+difference after that, if he couldn't eat what was set before him at
+the table.
+
+But usually the boys brought robust appetites to their meals, for they
+went in heavily for all forms of athletics. The boys who didn't make
+the teams had to drill in the gymnasium or run round and round an open
+air track a mile and a half long. If you shirked, the boys themselves
+saw to it that you got punished.
+
+When Wilf came home to Cheshire for the long vacations he found some
+poor little ragamuffins who had no fun in their lives, and started a
+club for them in his own house. There were no boy scouts in those
+days, when Sir Robert Baden-Powell and Ernest Thompson Seton were
+little boys themselves. It was just taken for granted that boys would
+be boys, and it was hoped that they would grow up to be good men, if
+after school hours they were allowed to run loose in the streets. But
+Grenfell had a different idea.
+
+He turned the dining-room on Saturday evenings into a gymnasium.
+
+He pushed aside the table and chucked the chairs out of the window.
+
+"Now any of you fellows who want to can get busy on the parallel
+bars," he told them, "or if you like you can go out into the back yard
+and pitch quoits. I'll take on anybody who wants to box with me."
+
+The boys thought it was heaps of fun. They could hardly wait for
+Saturday night to come, because it meant the rare sport of banging
+another boy in the nose, which was much more satisfactory than
+throwing stones at a policeman.
+
+After he was big enough, he used to go to lodging-houses where men
+slept who were down and out. He knew that drink had brought them low,
+and he wanted to show them better things to do.
+
+The saloon-keepers were against him from the start. He was depriving
+them of some of their best customers.
+
+"You're spoiling our business," they grumbled.
+
+At last they made up their minds they would "get" him.
+
+They collected a "gang" and one night they locked the door, backed up
+against it, and shouted:
+
+"Come on, young feller! We're goin' to fix you!"
+
+They rolled up their sleeves, clenched their fists, and sailed into
+him full-tilt like a big, angry crowd of human bees.
+
+Grenfell was ready for them. It was like a fight in the movies.
+
+He had kept himself in fine condition, for he was in training to play
+football and he was known to be a first-rate boxer.
+
+They flew at him, roaring to encourage one another. There were six or
+eight of them, but they were afraid of his fists.
+
+"Come on, boys!"
+
+"Hit 'im a good 'un, Bill! 'E's spoilin' our business, that's what
+'e's doin'."
+
+"Push in his face. 'Ammer 'im good 'n' proper!"
+
+"We'll show 'im what's what!"
+
+"'E's a noosance. Le's get rid of 'im. Lemme get at 'im once. I'll
+show 'im!"
+
+So they came on, clumsy with drink, but their maudlin outcries didn't
+scare Grenfell a bit.
+
+He was waiting for them,--cool, quiet, determined.
+
+Their diet was mostly bad ale and beer, or whiskey: Grenfell was all
+muscle, from constant exercise and wholesome diet--the roast beef of
+old England, whole wheat bread, plenty of rich milk.
+
+They were no match for him.
+
+On they came, one after another. The first lunged out heavily;
+Grenfell parried the blow with his right hand and landed his left on
+the jaw. The ruffian fell to the floor like a log of wood and lay
+there. As he fell, he clutched at the corner of the table and
+overturned it with a mighty crash on top of him.
+
+The second man got a blow on the nose that sent him over to the corner
+to wipe away the blood. The rest Grenfell laid out flat on the floor
+in one, two, three order.
+
+They came at him again, those who were able to go on. They got their
+arms around him but he threw them off. They kicked him and he knocked
+them down again. They bit and clawed and scratched and used all the
+foul tactics that they knew.
+
+They tried to get him from both sides--they rushed at him from the
+front and the rear at the same time.
+
+Agile as a cat he turned and faced them whichever way they came, and
+those quick, hard fists of his shot out and hit them on the chin or on
+the nose till they bled like stuck pigs and bawled for mercy.
+
+Grenfell stood there amid the wrecked furniture, his clothes torn,
+bleeding and triumphant. "Want any more?" he smiled.
+
+When they saw that all combined they were no match for this wildcat
+they had roused to action, they said:
+
+"Well, le's call it quits. Le's have peace."
+
+They never tackled him again. They didn't know much, to be sure, but
+they knew when they had had enough of "a first-class fighting man."
+
+Then Grenfell started camping-parties with poor boys who hadn't any
+money to spend for holidays. The first summer he had thirteen at the
+seashore.
+
+A boy had to take a sea-bath before he got his breakfast. No one could
+go in a boat unless he could swim. The beds were hay-stuffed burlap
+bags. A lifeboat retired from service was more fun than Noah's Ark to
+keep the happy company afloat for a fishing-party or a picnic.
+
+Next year there were thirty boys: then the number grew to a hundred,
+and more. Not one life was lost. How they loved it all! Especially
+when the boat, twelve boys at the oars, came plunging in, on the
+returning tide, with the boys all singing at the top of their voices:
+
+    "Here we come rejoicing,
+     Pulling at the sweeps"
+
+to the rhythmic tune of "Bringing in the Sheaves." Then, when the
+boat's keel slid into the sand, it was a mad rush for the best supper
+boys ever ate.
+
+His school days over, instead of going to Oxford University, Grenfell
+chose to enter the London Hospital, so as to take his examinations at
+London University later, and become a doctor.
+
+While Grenfell was in the hospital, murder was quite the fashion in
+London. Many a time his patients had a policeman sitting behind a
+screen at the foot of the bed, ready to nab them if they got up and
+tried to climb out of a window.
+
+One day, Sir Frederick Treves said to him: "Go to the North Sea, where
+the deep-sea fishermen need a man like you. If you go in January, you
+will see some fine seascapes, anyway. Don't go in summer when all of
+the old ladies go for a rest."
+
+Grenfell turned the idea over and over in his mind. He had always
+loved the sea and been the friend of sailors and fishermen. He liked
+the thought of the help he could be as a doctor among them. So he
+decided to cast in his lot with the fishermen who go from England's
+East Coast into the brawling North Sea.
+
+Yarmouth, about 120 miles northeast of London, is the headquarters of
+the herring fisheries, which engage about 300 vessels and 3,000 men.
+A short distance off the shore are sandbanks, and between these and
+the mainland Yarmouth Roads provides a safe harbor and a good
+anchorage for ships drawing eighteen or nineteen feet of water.
+
+So one pitch-black and rainy night Grenfell packed his bag and went to
+Yarmouth. At the railway-station he found a retired fisherman with a
+cab that threatened to fall apart if you looked at it too hard. They
+drove a couple of miles alongshore in the darkness, and found what
+looked like two posts sticking out of the sand.
+
+"Where's the ship?" asked Grenfell.
+
+"Those are her topmasts," answered the sea-dog. "Tide's low. The rest
+of her is hidden by the wharf."
+
+Grenfell scrambled over a hillock and a dim anchor-lantern showed him
+the tiny craft that for many days and nights was to be his tossing
+home in the great waters.
+
+In answer to his hail, a voice called back cheerily: "Mind the
+rigging; it's just tarred and greased."
+
+But Grenfell was already sliding down it, nimble as a cat, though it
+was so sticky he had to wrench his hands and feet from it now and
+then.
+
+The boat was engaged in peddling tobacco among the ships of the North
+Sea fishing-fleet, and for the next two months no land was seen,
+except two distant islands: and the decks were never free from ice and
+snow.
+
+Aboard many of the boats to which they came the entire crew, skipper
+and all, were 'prentices not more than twenty years old. These lads
+got no pay, except a little pocket-money. Many of the crew were hard
+characters, and the young skippers were harder still. Often they had
+been sent to sea from industrial schools and reformatories.
+
+One awkward boy had cooked the "duff" for dinner and burned it. So the
+skipper made him take the ashes from the cook's galley to the
+fore-rigging, climb to the cross-tree with the cinders one by one, and
+throw them over the cross-tree into the sea, repeating the act till he
+had disposed of the contents of the scuttle.
+
+A boy who had not cleaned the cabin as he should was given a
+bucketful of sea water, and was made to spend the whole night emptying
+it with a teaspoon into another bucket, and then putting it back the
+same way.
+
+Most of the boys were lively and merry, and always ready for a lark.
+
+Grenfell, who has never been able to forget that he was once a boy,
+got along famously with them, and was hail-fellow-well-met wherever he
+went.
+
+Once, when he was aboard a little sailing-vessel, he was playing
+cricket on the deck, and the last ball went over the side.
+
+He dived after it at once, telling the helmsman to "tack back." When
+the helmsman saw Grenfell struggling in the water, he got so rattled
+that it was a long time before he could bring the boat near him.
+
+At last Grenfell managed to catch hold of the end of a rope that was
+thrown to him and climb aboard.
+
+But the cricket ball was in his hand!
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR
+
+
+    "In eighteen hundred and ninety-two
+     Grenfell sailed the ocean blue----"
+
+from Yarmouth to Labrador in a ninety-ton ketch-rigged schooner.
+
+This wasn't such an abrupt change of base as it sounds, for it meant
+that the Royal Mission to the Deep Sea Fishermen, which works in the
+North Sea, had decided to send a "Superintendent" to the coast of the
+North Atlantic, east of Canada and north of Newfoundland, where many
+ships each summer went in quest of the cod.
+
+If you will look on the map, you will readily see how Labrador lies in
+a long, narrow strip along the coast from the mouth of the St.
+Lawrence to Cape Chidley. This strip belongs to the crown colony of
+Newfoundland, the big triangular island to the south of the Straits of
+Belle Isle, and Newfoundland is entirely independent of the Dominion
+of Canada. Fishermen when they go to this region always speak of
+going to "the Labrador," and they call it going "down," not "up," when
+it is a question of faring north.
+
+The tract that lies along the north shore of the St. Lawrence, west of
+the narrow strip, is also called Labrador--but it belongs to Canada.
+Generally "Labrador" is used for the part that belongs to
+Newfoundland.
+
+"Labrador" itself is a queer word. It is Portuguese. It means a yeoman
+farmer. The name was given to Greenland in the first half of the
+sixteenth century by a farmer from the Azores who was first to see
+that lonesome, chilly country. Thence the name was moved over to the
+peninsula between Hudson Bay and the Atlantic.
+
+Cabot sailed along the coast in 1498, but the interior remained unseen
+by white men till the Hudson's Bay Company began to plant their
+trading-stations and send their agents for furs in 1831.
+
+Jacques Cartier said Labrador was "the land God gave to Cain," and
+that there was "not one cartload of earth on the whole of it." Along
+the coast are mountains rising to 7,000 or even 8,000 feet. There are
+many lakes inland, 50 to 100 miles in length. Hamilton Inlet is 150
+miles long, and from two to 30 miles wide. The Hamilton River which
+empties into it, in twelve miles descends 760 feet, with a single drop
+of 350 feet at the Grand Falls, the greatest in North America,
+surpassing even Niagara.
+
+    [Illustration: LABRADOR]
+
+The population is about 14,500 in more than half a million square
+miles. There are some 3,500 Indians, 2,000 Eskimos, and 9,000 whites
+(along the coast and at the Hudson's Bay posts).
+
+It was to such a "parish" that Grenfell came in 1892, that he might
+give the fishermen the benefit of his surgical knowledge and practical
+experience acquired not only on the land but aboard the tossing ships
+in the North Sea.
+
+A ninety-ton boat is a tiny craft in which to make the voyage across
+the Atlantic. Grenfell must have known just how Columbus felt, four
+hundred years ago, when he said to the sailors of his tiny caravels
+"Sail on! sail on!"
+
+First there were head winds for eleven days.
+
+"Wonder if the wind's ever goin' to quit blowin' against us!" muttered
+a sailor, as he coiled a rope to make a bed for a dog in the stern.
+"I'm about fed up with this kind o' thing."
+
+The man to whom he spoke was in his bare feet, washing the deck with
+the hose. "What does anybody ever wanna go to Labrador for, anyhow?"
+he grumbled back. "It's a lot better in the North Sea. More sociable.
+You get letters from home an' tobacco regular. An' you can see
+somebody once in a while."
+
+"Shore leave's no good to a fellow in Labrador," the first man went
+on, as he watched the dog turn round and round before lying down.
+"Ain't no place to go. No movies nor nuthin', just fish an' rocks an'
+people lookin' thin an' half-starved."
+
+"You ever been there?"
+
+"No, but I was talkin' with fellows that got shipwrecked there once.
+Gee whiz, what's that?"
+
+"That? That's an iceberg. Didn't you ever see an iceberg before?"
+
+"No. Looks like a ship under full sail, don't she?"
+
+To the north out of the grey mist on the water loomed a mountain of
+ice.
+
+"Glad we didn't run into the old thing," the dog's friend went on.
+"They say what you see stickin' out o' the water's only a small part
+of it."
+
+"Yes, that's right. 'Bout six-sevenths is under water. Lemme tell you,
+the fellers that sail a schooner like this up to the fishin' grounds
+have gotta know what they're about. Ever hear about the _Queen_ an'
+how she got wrecked?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, it was a fog like it is over yonder, an' the _Queen_ was off
+Gull Island, close to Cape St. John. She didn't know where she was.
+They didn't have no lighthouse in them days.
+
+"Well sir, it was December, long toward Christmas an' the wind was
+howlin' like a pack o' wolves. The poor little ship--she wa'n't much
+bigger'n this here boat o' ours--drove plumb on the rocks.
+
+"There was six passengers, one of 'em a lady. One of the men was a
+doctor--he was her brother.
+
+"They got off the boat when she drove ashore an' they climbed up onto
+the top o' the island. They didn't have nothin' with 'em 'ceptin' only
+an old piece of a sail. What was that to feed on, all winter? They
+knew there wouldn't be anybody comin' that way till the nex' spring.
+
+"The crew, they stayed on board: they said they was goin' to get off
+some o' the stuff for 'em all to eat while they was cooped up on the
+island waitin' for spring.
+
+"But the storm done 'em dirt. The wind came on to blow harder'n ever,
+an' pretty soon the sea she just picked up the ship an' hauled her off
+and--crickety-crack!--she went slam-bang to pieces on the Old Harry
+Shoals. Didn't have no more chance than a paper bag at a picnic. No
+sir, there weren't one man saved out o' the whole crowd.
+
+"So there was them six people stuck up on top o' the rock."
+
+"Did they have to stay there all winter?"
+
+"Now you wait a minute. I'm a-tellin' you. Some time 'long in April
+there was a hunter come that way duck-shootin'.
+
+"He shot a duck an' it dropped in the big waves runnin' and jumpin' on
+the beach.
+
+"He got out o' the boat to get it--an' it weren't there!
+
+"'Mercy on us!' says he. 'I shot that duck just as sure as I'm soaked
+clean through. It musta fell right here. What's become o' it? Where's
+it gone to?'
+
+"He looked round and looked round like Robinson Crusoe huntin' fer
+somebody. He looked up an' he looked down, an' it wa'n't no use.
+Wa'n't no duck there.
+
+"'It musta been magic,' he says. 'Magic. Somethin' queer about this
+place!'
+
+"Then he sees little pieces o' wood churnin' around in the foam.
+
+"'What's happened here?' he says to himself. 'Musta been a ship went
+to pieces here some time.' 'Cause he found some o' the splinters had
+letters on 'em showin' they used to be parts o' boxes, an' pretty soon
+he finds a life-preserver that says on it '_The Queen_, St. John's.'
+
+"'Guess I'll climb up to the top o' the rock an' take a look,' says
+he. So up he climbs, the birds flappin' round him an' screamin' 'cause
+they're afraid maybe he's goin' to hurt their eggs.
+
+"Up an' up he clumb, an' he gets up to the top. The grass is long an'
+green an' the soft yellow buttercups is pretty--but what he sees
+lyin' there in the buttercups ain't pretty at all.
+
+"Six dead bodies lyin' there stretched out, with the piece o' the old
+torn sail over 'em. The bodies is fallin' to pieces, but in the
+fingers o' one is some flesh torn out o' the next one to it.
+
+"Then he finds a little book with writin' in it where one of 'em had
+been writin' down as long as he could what happened.
+
+"Well sir, what the writin' said was this. He couldn't hardly make it
+out it was so faint. It said by an' by they drew lots to see who was
+to be killed for the rest to eat."
+
+Here the man with the dog drew a long sigh and said: "That's a fine
+kind of a country to be comin' to, ain't it, where things like that
+can happen? I'm glad I ain't in Doc Grenfell's rubber boots. He's
+goin' to stay. I thank my lucky stars I don't have to. I'll sure be
+glad to get back to Yarmouth once more. I used to think it was a hole
+in the ground, but it's heaven compared to what we're comin' to."
+
+"Wait a minute, wait a minute!" said the other, "I ain't finished
+tellin' you. Lemme get through. I was sayin', they drew lots,
+an'--the lot fell to the lady."
+
+"They was goin' to eat the lady!" exclaimed his comrade, in horror.
+
+"Yes, sir, that's what they would 'a' done. But her brother he said
+he'd take her place."
+
+"An' then what happened?"
+
+"They don't know no more after that. The writin' stops there."
+
+"Say," said the dog-fancier, disgusted, "that's no place to have the
+story stop. Get a fellow all strung up and then dump him off that way
+without knowin' how it ended."
+
+The man with the hose began to bind up a leak with a bit of tarpaulin.
+"I ain't made it up outa my head," he said. "I'm just tellin' you what
+happened. An' it seems to me the story did have an end, all right,
+'cause there they were all lyin' stretched out cold the way the hunter
+found 'em."
+
+The listener shivered. "Say, can't you tell us a more cheerful yarn?"
+
+The story-teller shook his head. "Mos' Newfoundland an' Labrador
+stories is like that, Bill," he said. "Grey, like the fog an' the
+face o' the sea.--Guess I'll go an' put on some more clothes. This
+wind sure does bite clear into the middle o' your bones."
+
+"Yes," said the other, "an' the sea's gettin' colder every minute.
+Say, Jim, I hope the watch'll keep his eyes peeled to-night. I'd sure
+hate to run into any o' those there bergs. Don't like the looks o'
+that one we seen just now. One o' those'd be enough to send us all to
+Davy Jones's locker in a jiffy."
+
+For five days more they ran on, all the time through dense fog.
+Then--the grey mist lifted, and the lovely green of the land appeared.
+At least, it looked beautiful after so many days at sea.
+
+But what was that? Over the evergreens a tall plume of black smoke
+rose.
+
+"The place is burnin' up!" said Bill to Jim.
+
+"I counted thirteen places where she's on fire. What is that anyway?"
+
+"That's St. John's," answered Bill, a little proud of his knowledge.
+"Capital o' Newfoundland."
+
+"Where're we gonna land, with this fire goin' on this way?"
+
+"Dunno," said Bill. "We'll run in farther, 'n' then we can see."
+
+Grenfell was at the prow, looking at the burning city. Some of the
+ships had burned down to the water, right at the wharves. Chimneys
+were standing up out of the ruins like broken, blackened fingers
+pointing at the sky.
+
+People came running down through the smoke and the flames.
+
+"Got anything to eat?" they cried.
+
+"Not much!" shouted back Grenfell. "But what we've got you're welcome
+to!"
+
+"Is there a doctor on board?" was the next hail.
+
+"I'm a doctor," called Grenfell.
+
+"Glory be!" came the answer. "There'll be plenty for you to do ashore,
+Doctor!"
+
+So instead of rest and comfort after the long sea-voyage Grenfell and
+those with him had to peel off their coats and plunge right in and
+help with both hands right and left.
+
+It was with heavy hearts a few days later that they said good-by and
+started north for Labrador where there were people who needed them
+even more than the burned-out folk of St. John's.
+
+They ran across the Straits of Belle Isle, through which the River St.
+Lawrence flows to the Atlantic, and the sun flashed on a hundred
+icebergs at once, in a glorious procession.
+
+The seabirds were fighting and crying over the fish.
+
+The whales were leaping clean out of the sea, as if they were playing
+a game and having lots of fun.
+
+Grenfell laughed aloud as he watched them. "I say, boys," he said to
+the sailors, "don't you wish you could jump out of the water like
+that?"
+
+"I wish we had all the oil there is in all them whales!" said Bill,
+who had a very practical mind.
+
+Into the very middle of the fishing-fleet they sailed.
+
+Flags of welcome were run up to the mastheads of the schooners. There
+were about 30,000 Newfoundlanders in the whole fleet, on more than 100
+schooners--and Grenfell's boat was a little bit of a thing compared
+with most of them.
+
+But they all knew that the small boat had sailed clear across the sea
+to help them, and they all wanted to show how glad and grateful they
+were that a real doctor had come to their help.
+
+Pretty soon the little boats coming from the schooners were flocking
+round them like ants about a sugar-bowl.
+
+One man came after all the rest had gone.
+
+His boat was little better than a bunch of boards with a dab of tar
+here and there.
+
+For a long time the rower sat still, looking up at Dr. Grenfell, who
+leaned over the rail gazing down at him.
+
+By and by the fisherman broke the silence.
+
+"Be you a real doctor, sir?"
+
+"That's what I call myself," answered Grenfell.
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Grenfell."
+
+"Well, Dr. Greenpeel, us hasn't got no money, but----"
+
+He stopped.
+
+"I don't care about the money," Grenfell answered. "What's the
+trouble?"
+
+"There's a man ashore wonderful sick, Doctor, if so be you'd come 'n'
+see him."
+
+"Sure I'll come!"
+
+Dr. Grenfell was over the rail and in the fisherman's poor tub in a
+jiffy.
+
+He was taken to a mean sod hut.
+
+The only furniture was a stove that looked like a big tin can burst
+open.
+
+The floor was of stones from the beach: the walls were mud. Six
+children were sitting in a corner, about as dirty as the mud walls,
+and just as quiet.
+
+A woman in rags was giving spoonfuls of water to a man who lay on the
+one bed coughing till it seemed the poor fellow must cough himself to
+pieces.
+
+"Well, well," said the Doctor. "We must fix him up." He didn't tell
+the woman that her husband had both consumption and pneumonia.
+
+He left medicine and food and told the poor wife what to do. Then he
+had to go on to others who needed him.
+
+It was two months before he could come back to this lonely spot--and
+then he found outside the hut a grave, covered with snow.
+
+On that first voyage Dr. Grenfell had to see nine hundred people who
+needed his help!
+
+One was an Eskimo, who had fired off a cannon to celebrate when the
+Moravian mission boat came in.
+
+No wonder he felt like celebrating--for the boat only came once a
+year!
+
+The gun blew up--and took off both of the poor fellow's arms.
+
+He lay on his back for two weeks, the stumps covered with wet filthy
+rags. When Grenfell finally got there, it was too late to save him.
+
+They do queer things on that coast when they have no doctor handy to
+tell them what to do.
+
+For instance, a baby had pneumonia, and the mother dosed it with
+reindeer-moss and salt water, because that was all she had to give it!
+
+A woman was done up in brown paper so the bugs wouldn't bite her.
+
+One man set up in business as a doctor and gave his patients a bull's
+heart dried and powdered for medicine.
+
+Another man said he knew how to get rid of boils. "I cut my nails on a
+Monday," was his cure.
+
+They would take pulley-blocks and boil them in water and then drink
+the water.
+
+To tell how the wind blew they would hang the head of a fox or wolf or
+a seal from the rafters and watch the way it swung. A wolf or fox
+would face the wind, they said, but a seal's head would turn away from
+it.
+
+For rheumatism you must wear a haddock's fin-bone.
+
+Green worsted tied round your wrist was a sure cure for hemorrhage.
+
+If you had trouble with your eyes, you ought to get somebody to blow
+sugar into them.
+
+Little sacks full of prayers tied round your neck were a great help in
+any sort of sickness.
+
+A father tied a split herring round his boy's throat for diphtheria.
+
+This shows what Dr. Grenfell was up against when he came to Labrador
+with his "scientific notions" about what ought to be done for sick
+people.
+
+One day, just as the Doctor had cast anchor between two little islands
+far out at sea, a little rowboat came to him from a small Welsh
+brigantine.
+
+"Doctor!" a man called out. "Would ye please be so good an' come
+ashore an' see a poor girl? She's dyin'!"
+
+The Doctor didn't need to be urged. He went ashore in the rowboat. In
+a rough bunk in a dark corner of a fishing-hut lay a very pretty girl,
+about eighteen years old.
+
+All summer long, poor thing--the only woman among many men--she had
+been cooking, mending, helping to clean and dry and salt the fish.
+
+Nobody asked if she was tired. Nobody asked if she wanted a vacation.
+She had done her faithful best--and now, worn out, she was cast aside
+like an old shoe.
+
+One look told the Doctor that she was dying.
+
+The captain of the brigantine, who was tender-hearted, and really
+cared for her, had decided that this was a case of typhoid. He told
+the fishermen to keep away--for the germs might get into the fish they
+were preparing to send off to market.
+
+So he had been the nurse. But all he could do was feed her. For two
+weeks--during part of which time she was unconscious--she had not been
+washed, and her bed had not been changed.
+
+Outside it was a dark night, and the fog hung low and menacing over
+the water. The big trap-boat with six men, and the skipper's sons
+among them, had been missing since morning.
+
+The skipper had stayed home to take care of the poor little servant
+girl. While he sat beside her wretched bunk, his mind was divided
+between her plight and his anxiety for the six men out there in the
+angry, ugly sea.
+
+"I wonder where the b'ys are now," he muttered.
+
+Then he would go to the door and peer out under his hand into the
+night. Nothing there but the dark and the mystery.
+
+"'Twas time they were back,--long, long ago!" he would say. "'Tis a
+wonderful bad night for the fog. I doubt they'll find their way in. I
+should 'a' gone out wi' them. But no, she needed me! Poor girl! The
+Lord, He gives, an' the Lord He takes away: blessed be the name o' the
+Lord!"
+
+Wiping his eyes on his rough sleeve, the captain came back and helped
+the Doctor put clean linen on the bed and wash the poor girl's grimy
+face.
+
+She was unconscious now: her life was ebbing fast.
+
+The captain went to the door again and again. Outside there was no
+sound but the low moaning of the night wind in the blackness. The
+fishermen, afraid of what the mysterious disease might do for them,
+were keeping their distance.
+
+Suddenly as the captain glanced on the pale face of the girl, he
+gasped.
+
+"She's dead, Doctor, she's dead!" The Doctor felt her heart. It was
+true. The spirit of the brave little maid had gone at last beyond the
+beck and call of men.
+
+It was midnight, and over the dim and smoking lamp the captain and the
+Doctor decided that the best thing to do was to make a bonfire of the
+girl's few poor effects.
+
+So they took her meagre clothes and miserable bedding out on the
+cliffs, piled them, soaked them in oil, and set them afire.
+
+The flames leapt high and made a beacon to be seen afar.
+
+Out there on the black face of the deep six hopeless, helpless men in
+a trap-boat, groping their way blindly, saw the flames and took heart
+again.
+
+"See!" they cried to one another. "Look there! Up yonder on the
+cliffs! They're givin' us a light to steer by!"
+
+They drove their oars into the yeasty waves again with strength
+renewed. Little did they know what it was that had made the light for
+them.
+
+When at last they dragged their boat ashore and hobbled to the hut,
+they saw the body of the girl, the lamp, and the captain and the
+Doctor making the body ready for the burial. They entered the hut, and
+were told what had happened.
+
+"B'ys," said the foremost, "she's dead. Mary's dead. The last thing
+she did was to give us a light to show us the way home. Poor girl,
+poor little girl!"
+
+Once when a small steamer Grenfell was using had broken down, he found
+shelter in a one room hut ashore.
+
+The inmates had few clothes, almost no food, and neither tools nor
+proper furniture. There was nothing between them and the Aurora
+Borealis but ruin and famine. There were eight children. Five slept in
+one bed: three slept with the parents in the other bed: Grenfell in
+his sleeping-bag lay on the floor, his nose at the crack of the door
+to get fresh air.
+
+They all suffered from the cold, for there was not a blanket in the
+house.
+
+"Where's the blanket I sent you last year?" asked the Doctor.
+
+The mother raised her skinny arm and pointed about the room to patched
+trousers and coats.
+
+Then she said, with a good deal of feeling, "If youse had five lads
+all trying to get under one covering to onct, Doctor, you'd soon know
+what would happen to that blanket."
+
+First thing in the morning, Grenfell boiled some cocoa, and took the
+two elder boys out for a seal-hunt.
+
+To a boy on the Labrador, a seal-hunt is the biggest kind of a lark.
+If it is winter, the seals may be caught near their blow-holes in the
+ice, and hit over the head with a stick called a gaff. In summer, they
+must be shot from a boat.
+
+One of the boys, when he thought the Doctor was not looking, emptied
+the steaming fragrant cocoa from his mug and filled it with water
+instead.
+
+"I 'lows I'se not accustomed to no sweetness," was his excuse.
+
+The boys proved the jolliest of comrades and the best of huntsmen. In
+the nipping wind they rowed the boat where the Doctor told them, so
+that he could shoot. He had on a lined leather coat: but they had only
+torn cotton shirts and thin jackets to face the raw dampness of the
+early morning.
+
+But they laughed and joked and carried on, and didn't care whether any
+seals were found or not. The hunt was unsuccessful. When Grenfell
+left, however, he promised the boys they should have a dozen fox traps
+for the winter.
+
+Their eyes shone, and they grasped his hands. It was to them a
+princely, a magnificent gift.
+
+"Doctor, Doctor!" was all they could say. "What can we do for ye?"
+
+"Go out and catch foxes," said the Doctor. "We'll see what we can get
+for them when you catch them."
+
+Next summer the Doctor, true to his word as always, came back and
+found the little house as bare and bleak as before. But the boys met
+him with the same old broad grins on their faces, cheerful as the
+sunrise.
+
+"See, Doctor!" They flourished the precious pelt of a silver fox. "We
+kep' it for youse, though us hadn't ne'er a bit in the house. We
+knowed you'd do better'n we with he."
+
+So Dr. Grenfell said he would try. He went to an island where Captain
+Will Bartlett made his home. This Bartlett was the father of "Bob"
+Bartlett who captained Peary's ship, the _Roosevelt_, on the
+successful trip to the North Pole in 1909. Father Bartlett was famous
+round about for sealing and fishing, and he had not only a thriving
+summer trade of his own but a big heart for unfortunate neighbors.
+
+"Do your best for me, Captain Will," said Grenfell, handing over the
+skin.
+
+"That I will, Doctor!" answered Bartlett heartily. "Drop in on your
+way back."
+
+The Doctor did so--and he found Captain Will had put aside a full
+boat-load of provisions of all sorts for the starving family.
+
+Happy in the thought of the good it would do, Grenfell started back
+for the promontory at Big River where he had every reason to expect
+the family would be watching for him anxiously.
+
+As he neared the land--he saw no one moving. The boat was beached, and
+the Doctor went up to the house.
+
+The door was locked: there was no one within hail, though he shouted
+again and again.
+
+Grenfell knew this absence must mean that the whole family had gone to
+the distant islands for the fishing.
+
+So he broke in the door, piled the things he had brought inside, and
+wrote a letter.
+
+"This is the price of your pelt. Put all the fur you catch next winter
+in a barrel and sit on the top of the barrel till the spring, when we
+are coming back again. Be sure not to let anybody get it from you at a
+low price."
+
+During the winter, accordingly, the family put by the furs that they
+got from the animals which the boys caught in their traps. In the
+summer, Grenfell took the pelts to the nearest cash buyer, and with
+the money supplies were bought in St. John's. The poor fisherman found
+that he had more food than he needed, so he sold the surplus, at a
+fair profit, to his neighbor.
+
+Year after year this was kept up, and when the father died he left
+Grenfell $200 in cash to be divided among the children.
+
+Thus the Doctor had the satisfaction of bringing this family up from a
+blanketless poverty, on the flat brink of starvation, to something
+like wealth in a land where a man with fire-wood, lettuce, dogs,
+codfish in the sea and a few dollars in hand thinks he is well off and
+piously thanks Heaven for his good fortune.
+
+As for the sealers--the men who stand a chance to make anything are
+those who buy what they call a ticket to the ice--that is to say, a
+share in a sealing venture--and go out from St. John's in the steamers
+or sailing vessels at the beginning of March. The ship has sheathed
+wooden sides a foot and a half thick, and is bound with iron at the
+bow, to aid in battering the ice-pack. For the auxiliary engine 500
+tons of coal are carried: and a crew of 300 men will use 500 gallons
+of water in a day--but the easy way to get more is to boil the ice, so
+nobody worries about that. Tragedies of the sealing fleet are without
+number. The worst have happened when blizzards caught the men out on
+the ice-floes far from their ship. One captain saved all his men by
+having them pile up their gaffs and lie down on them for cat-naps.
+Then he would make them get up and dance like mad for five minutes,
+while he crooned "chin-music" to them. Thus he saved them from
+freezing to death. In that storm the _Greenland_ of Harbor Grace lost
+52 of her 100 men. Grenfell tells of sixteen fishermen on Trinity Bay
+who, without fire or food or sufficient clothing, after thirty-six
+hours of suffering dragged their boats ten miles across the ice to the
+land.
+
+_The Southern Cross_ in 1914 was coming from the banks with 174 men
+and a full load. She was lost with all hands, and her fate remains a
+mystery. A life-belt picked up on the Irish coast was all that was
+ever recovered from the doomed ship. In the same year the men of the
+_Newfoundland_ were caught out on the ice and unable to get back to
+the ship. Of the company seventy-seven lost their lives and forty-two
+were crippled.
+
+Two boys and two men were tending seal nets when a "divey" or
+snowstorm blew them helplessly to sea. They crashed on an island, but
+ere they could land they were blown off again. During the night and
+the morning that followed, both men and one of the boys died. The
+other boy dressed himself in the clothes of the three who died, and
+kept their bodies in the boat.
+
+They had caught an old harp seal, and he ate its flesh and drank its
+blood. On the third day he gaffed another seal as it floated past on a
+cake of ice. Then he had another drink of warm blood. Two days later
+he killed another seal.
+
+By that time he began "seeing things." He thought he saw a ship in the
+distance. He clambered out of his boat and hobbled five miles over the
+ice, only to find that it was not a sail that he had seen, but a
+hummock of ice. The only thing to do was to make his way back over the
+weary miles to the boat he left.
+
+On the seventh day, with despair gnawing at his heart, one of the
+sealing fleet, the _Flora_, came in sight.
+
+It was dark, and this was his one chance of rescue. He shouted with
+all his might. But the boat immediately backed as if to leave him.
+
+He screamed again, and the merciful wind caught up his voice and
+carried it to the vessel.
+
+He shouted once more: "For God's sake, don't leave me with my dead
+father here!"
+
+Then the ship hove to, and when the brave boy was lifted aboard the
+watch explained to him:
+
+"Ye see, lad, the first time we heard ye call we thought it was
+sperrits."
+
+They picked up the boat as well as the boy, and finally put them
+aboard another vessel that was going toward the lad's fatherless home.
+
+Grenfell went out with the sealing fleet and took his full share of
+all the hardships of the mariners who from boyhood look on sealing as
+life's great adventure. While they are still tiny tads, the boys of
+St. John's and the outposts practise leaping across rain-barrels and
+mud-puddles. They are looking forward to the time when a running jump
+from one cake of ice to another may be the means of saving their
+lives. To "copy" is to play the game of follow-my-leader: and so the
+boys use the phrase "a good big copy from pan to pan" when they mean
+it is a long leap between.
+
+There is uncontrollable excitement aboard a sealer when the prize is
+in sight at last. Perhaps the ship has been buffeting the ice for
+many weary days, bucking the floes and backing away again with the
+lookout in the crow's nest scanning the horizon in vain with powerful
+spy-glasses.
+
+But at last the joyful cry is heard: "Whitecoats!" or "Dere'm de
+whitey jackets!" In less time than it takes to tell the men swarm over
+the bulwarks with their gaffs and knives and are deployed among the
+seals.
+
+The "whitecoats" are the helpless young ones, mild and innocent as
+puppies, with great tears in their eyes and as pettable as woolly
+lambs if the sealers did not have to steel their hearts and think of
+their own young ones at home. Can you blame the man with the knife,
+any more than you blame the butcher who serves your household with
+lamb chops, if he goes to the red-handed slaughter with might and
+main? Those "whitey jackets" may spell to his family the difference
+between starvation and sufficiency if not plenty. He cannot afford to
+let sentiment interfere with his grim business.
+
+The young seals are gaffed without trouble: the old ones are shot. The
+adult males are called "dogs"--and a "dog" hood seal, brought to bay
+and standing up on his flippers like a bear, is an ugly customer. It
+needs two men to tackle him, and if they are not careful he will bite
+off an arm or a leg in a jiffy. Yet the "dog" takes to the water, if
+he can get there, without paying the slightest heed to what becomes of
+the mother seal or the young one. He is generally a poor defender of
+his own family.
+
+For the hood seal family consists of but the three. Father--the "dog"
+hood--blows a big skin bag over his head when he is attacked, and the
+blows of the gaff rain upon it harmlessly. So terrific is his bite,
+when he gets a chance at his assailant, that the Newfoundlanders say
+the carcass itself can bite after the head has been cut off. A mature
+"dog" seal weighs from 600 to 900 pounds.
+
+Bucking the ice to get at the main herd is a big part of the battle.
+Sometimes the skipper shouts: "Bombs out!" Then the blasting powder is
+produced, and the cry comes: "Hot poker for the blasts!" The fuse is
+then touched off with the red-hot implement. The bomb is thrust into
+an ice-crevice, whereupon all hands "beat it" as fast as ever they
+can--and a little bit faster.
+
+Then comes a deafening explosion that rocks the ship: and the ice
+rains on the deck in chunks, like bursting shells in an artillery
+bombardment.
+
+With all the watchfulness, and the desperate risks the skipper takes
+as he drives the vessel into the pack ice, there is an excellent
+chance of missing the main herd entirely. An "Aerial Observation
+Company," started by a plucky Australian flyer at Botswood, was
+successful in showing the sealers of 1922 where to go, by dropping
+letters on or near the ships--but they could not make their way
+through the ice to the place indicated. During 1923 the fog was so
+dense that the sealing-season was almost a failure.
+
+On his first voyage to the sealing grounds Grenfell saw the seals like
+black dots by the thousands, all over the floes as far as the horizon.
+The ships butted and rammed their way into the thick of the herd, the
+men overjoyed at the prospect of plenty. As soon as the engines
+stopped they were over the side, booted and sweatered, in a jiffy.
+
+There was plenty of work for Dr. Grenfell. Many a man twisted his leg
+or his ankle as he slipped between the blocks of ice. Presently there
+were thirty or forty at a time surrounding him begging him to put some
+liniment in their eyes to cure the snow-blindness due to the fierce
+glare of the sun upon the ice-fields.
+
+The Eskimos, not having glasses, use spectacles of wooden discs with
+narrow slits, and do not suffer so much--but very few of the sealers
+from "the Old Rock," as Newfoundland is called, think to provide
+themselves with smoked glasses.
+
+One day Grenfell was kept busy for a long time rubbing arms and legs
+and anointing smarting eyes. The men were nearly all scattered about
+on the ice, near and far, when he got through--so he thought he would
+drop over the side and watch them at their work. By this time it was
+late afternoon.
+
+Till now, a strong wind had been blowing, and this had kept the ice
+packed together. The wind died down and the bits of ice began to "run
+abroad" as the sailors say. Grenfell and a dozen men with whom he
+found himself were far from the ship, and darkness was fast coming
+on.
+
+Of course they had no boat, and the only way they could get back to
+the ship was to float on one piece of ice to another. They had no oars
+with which to propel themselves--all they could do was to beat the
+water with the seal-gaffs.
+
+This was so slow a process that by and by they gave it up, and decided
+to wait for the ship to come and find them. The ship by this time was
+out of sight.
+
+It grew colder and colder after the red sun went down. They had a
+little sugar and oatmeal. This they mixed with snow and devoured. Then
+they took their "seal bats" and cut them up with their big knives.
+They dipped the pieces in the fat of the dead seals, and with these
+they made bonfires to let the ship know where they were.
+
+In the light of the occasional blaze of their beacon fires they played
+games to keep from freezing. "Leap-frog" and "one old cat" were the
+favorites. Men not accustomed to the toughening Northern life might
+have been whimpering with the piercing cold and the fear of the sea's
+anger by this time. Not so with these men.
+
+The night wore on--and suddenly out of the darkness they heard the
+welcome sound of the little steamer crunching her way through the
+ice-pack.
+
+The wrath of the skipper leaning over the bow was almost more terrible
+to face than any ice-storm would have been.
+
+Did he respect the Doctor of the Deep Sea Mission? He did not. His
+tongue-lashing included them all.
+
+"It was the worst blowing-up I ever received since my father spanked
+me," says Grenfell with a laugh, remembering that anxious night.
+
+Later, the skipper came to him. "Doctor," he said, "the truth is I was
+that torn in my mind while ye were gone, and that relieved of worry
+when I came on ye in the ice-pack, that I do not know the words I may
+have used. If I was wicked or profane--the good God forgive me. It was
+my upside-down way of saying my gratitude to God for His salvation."
+
+The Doctor's day's work was not yet ended. He clambered down into the
+hold, a man ahead of him carrying a candle and matches. In his hand
+was a bottle of cocaine solution, for some of the men were suffering
+such agonies with the snow-blindness that they were all but out of
+their minds. They would moan and toss in frenzy, hardly knowing when
+the Doctor came to them.
+
+"It hurts something wonderful!" they would cry, brave men as they
+were. "Can't ye give me something to stop it? 'Twere better dead than
+this!"
+
+It was hard to get down into the hold at all, for the ladders were
+gone, and as the vessel rocked the seals and the coal were sloshing
+about below-decks where the men lay sprawled among them.
+
+"Is anybody here?" the Doctor would call, as he poked into a dark
+angle.
+
+No answer.
+
+He would try again. "Any one in here?" There might be a fitful wail
+from a far corner. Then the Doctor would have to clamber over and
+round the casks and throw aside potato sacks and boxes. Sometimes his
+patients, in a sodden stupor, hidden away at the bottom of
+everything, could not be found at all.
+
+In these filthy, reeking holds, enduring all discomforts for the sake
+of perhaps a hundred dollars payable weeks hence, the men somehow
+recovered from their ailments and throve and grew fat on pork and seal
+meat, fried with onions. Whenever the rats were especially noisy, the
+wise ones said it meant a gale: but sometimes the rats and the wise
+men were wrong. It was no place for a man with a weak stomach, that
+gallant little sealing-steamer!
+
+On Sunday the men religiously refused to go out on the ice, though the
+seals tantalizingly frolicked all about them. The seals seemed to know
+how the pious Newfoundlander observes the Lord's Day. The animals
+stared at the ship and the ship stared back at them. Then in great
+glee the seals took to their perpetual water-sports, in which they are
+as adept as the penguins of the Antarctic.
+
+"I have marveled greatly," Grenfell says, "how it is possible for any
+hot-blooded creature to enjoy so immensely this terribly cold water as
+do these old seals. They paddle about, throw themselves on their
+backs, float and puff out their breasts, flapping their flippers like
+paws over their chests."
+
+While they lay off Fogo Island, watching the seals, the great pans of
+ice, rising and falling with the heaving of the sea, beat on the stout
+sides of the _Neptune_ as on a drum-head. Sometimes to avoid an awful
+drubbing the _Neptune_ would steam a little ahead, very much as a
+swimmer dives into a breaker to cleave it before it combs over and
+carries him off his feet. Grenfell himself, loving a bout with "the
+bright eyes of danger," left the ship and went out on the ice and
+tried to climb one of the bergs, stranded in the midst of the
+ice-pack. It was like a living thing striving to fight its way
+out--something like a polar bear surrounded by "husky" dogs worrying
+him and trying to pull him down.
+
+As a sky-scraper gives to the wind, the berg was rocked to and
+fro--eight feet or so with every wave that struck it. It fell on the
+pans like a great trip-hammer, backed away and came on again, the ice
+groaning as though it were a living creature in mortal agony. As
+pieces fell off into the sea the waves leapt up, the way wolves might
+leap about a running caribou. In such a battle of the ice with the
+ice, a man knows what a pigmy he is, measured against the mightiest
+natural forces.
+
+The _Neptune_ escaped a ramming--but her neighbor, the _Wolf_, was not
+so lucky. The _Wolf_ had rounded Fogo Island in an offshore wind that
+treacherously offered her a clear channel close to the land. As soon
+as she got round, the north wind, as though a demon impelled it,
+brought the ice crashing back and pinned her fast. An immense floe of
+ice, massing in upon the doomed ship, piled higher and higher above
+the bulwarks.
+
+"Get the boats onto the pans!" Captain Kean shouted to his men. It is
+just what they have had to do on many an Arctic expedition when the
+ice has nipped them.
+
+They took their food and clothes--but Captain Kean, the last to leave
+the ship, of course--saved nothing of his own except his life. And it
+was the closest possible call for him. Just after he jumped, the ice
+opened like the Red Sea parting for the hosts of Pharaoh. Down went
+the _Wolf_ like a stone, and as she tossed and heaved and gurgled in
+her death-throes the ends of her spars caught on the edges of the ice
+and were broken off as if they were match-wood. The sea seems to dance
+above such a wreck with a personal, malicious vengeance.
+
+It was the old, sad story for the captain and his men. They would have
+to walk ashore, three hundred of them, over the miles of cruel ice. At
+home, their wives and children would be waiting and hoping for a grand
+success and a good time. Instead, after a forced and weary march of
+days,--going perhaps three hundred miles,--with much rowing and
+camping, father or brother would stagger in, his little pack of poor
+belongings on his sore shoulders, and throw it down, and say with a
+great sob: "'Tis all I've brought ye!"
+
+It is a pitiful thing indeed for a man to have traveled hundreds of
+miles to board a ship, in the hope of a few dollars for the risk of
+his life, and then to have the sea swallow up his chance, and turn him
+loose to the ice and snow, a ruined man. When a captain loses his
+ship, whatever the reason, it is almost impossible for him to obtain a
+command again.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+HAULED BY THE HUSKIES
+
+
+There was great excitement at the little village of St. Anthony, on
+the far northern tip of Newfoundland.
+
+Tom Bradley was coming back from a seal-hunt, and his big dogs Jim and
+Jack were helping him drag a flipper seal big enough to give a slice
+of the fat to every man, woman and child in the place.
+
+Tom had a large family, and for nine days they had tasted nothing but
+a little roasted seal meat.
+
+Finally Tom took his gun down from the nails over the door. It was a
+single-barrel muzzle-loader, meant for a boy, but he was a good shot,
+and had often wandered out alone over the frozen sea and come back
+with a nice fat bird or even a seal to show for it.
+
+"Where be you goin', Tom?" asked his anxious wife.
+
+"Out yonder." He jerked his thumb toward the wide white space of the
+ice-locked ocean.
+
+She ran to get his warm cap and mittens. "When'll you be back?"
+
+"I dunno. Not till I get a seal. Us has got to have somethin' to eat,
+an' have it soon."
+
+She found an old flour-bag, and tied up in it a few crusts of bread.
+
+"You'd ought to keep this here," said Tom.
+
+"No, Tom. You can't hunt without nothin' to eat. We'll manage somehow.
+We'll borrow."
+
+"Ain't nobody to borrow from," answered Tom. "Ain't nobody round here
+got nothin'. We uns is all starvin'. Hope Sandy Maule's letter gits to
+that there Dr. Grenfell."
+
+"Who's Dr. Grenfell?"
+
+"He's a doctor comin' out here from England. He's goin' to help us."
+
+"Will he have anythin' to eat?"
+
+"Yes--he'll have suthin'. But he's got lots o' friends in England an'
+America--an' he can get 'em to send things."
+
+"What'd Sandy Maule write?"
+
+Tom was poking a bit of greasy cloth through the gun with a ramrod.
+Everything depended on the way that gun worked. He mustn't miss a
+shot--there was no fun in that long, hard hunt on the ice that lay
+ahead of him.
+
+"Sandy Maule wrote, 'Please, Doctor, come and start a station here for
+us if you can. My family and I are starvin'. All the folks around us
+are starvin' too. The fish hain't struck in and bit like they should.
+We're cuttin' pieces outa the sides o' our rubber boots an' tyin' 'em
+on for shoes.' Things like that, Sandy writ to the Doctor."
+
+Mrs. Bradley drew the sleeve of her thin, worn calico dress across her
+eyes. She was a brave woman, but her strength was nearly gone. She did
+not want her husband to see her cry.
+
+"It's all of it true," she said. "If I could only get a little fresh
+milk to give the baby! Might as well ask for the moon."
+
+She did not speak bitterly. She would stay by her man and live for her
+children to the end.
+
+"Well," said Tom, trying to sound matter-of-fact, "we'll go out with
+the ole gun an' see what we get." Not one of the little boys was old
+enough to go, but the dogs Jim and Jack leaped up, wagging their tails
+and fawning upon their master.
+
+Tom had only part of a dog-team: when he or his neighbors made a long
+trip they borrowed from one another. What one had, they all had.
+
+As Tom stood looking at the dogs, he couldn't help thinking: "One of
+those dogs would keep the family alive for a while. But I sure would
+hate to kill one of the poor brutes. They've been the best friends we
+ever had." His wife knew what he was thinking, though the dogs did
+not.
+
+Then he spoke. "Gimme a kiss, wifey." He smiled at her brightly.
+"Cheer up. This little ole gun and me'll bring ye enough to eat for a
+long time."
+
+She kissed him, and off he trudged, the dogs leaping beside him and
+trying to lick his mittened hands.
+
+Away out yonder on the ice was a little black speck. He strained his
+eyes to see.
+
+"There's one!" he muttered. "Now, how to get up near enough. If the
+dogs comes with me they'll sure scare it away--it'll go poppin' into
+its old blow-hole afore I kin git it."
+
+Jim and Jack were sitting on the bushy plumage of their tails, their
+bright eyes fixed on their master, waiting for orders. They would
+have loved it had he told them to chase that black speck far out at
+sea. They would have gone on till they dropped, at his lightest word.
+
+"No, boys, you wait here," he said. "You're goin' to help me haul it
+back--when I get it. But gettin' it is somethin' I gotta do all by my
+lonely. Now, you stay right here an' wait for me. Don't you dast to
+come no nearer!" He shook his finger at them solemnly.
+
+They seemed to understand. They curled up and lay down in the thin
+powdery snow-blanket.
+
+"Now then," muttered Tom, "I gotta creep an' creep an' crawl an' crawl
+till I get near, an' then I gotta lie down an' scrape along on my
+tummy same as if I was a seal myself. That's what I gotta do."
+
+Suiting the action to the word, he started on, watching all the time
+that little dark spot on which all depended.
+
+He could imagine the children waiting at home and asking their mother
+every little while: "When's Papa comin' back? Is he goin' to bring us
+somepin' to eat?"
+
+"I wonder if that there Grenfell man is ever goin' to git this far
+north?" Tom asked himself as he crept toward the seal. "If us could
+only git a chance to sell our fish for better'n two cents a pound,
+after us gets 'em salted an' dried! Them traders, they bleeds the life
+outa us. They say Grenfell when he comes is a-goin' to fight them
+traders an' put 'em outa business!"
+
+The swift wind was throwing stinging bits of ice, sharp as needles, in
+his face. He drew his cap about his ears more closely and plodded on.
+The further he walked the further away the seal seemed to be. He was
+half crouching as he walked: he wished he might cover himself with a
+skin and crawl on all fours. But if he started to crawl now--he felt
+as though it would be a year before he could get near enough to shoot.
+
+"Please, God"--he spoke to God as naturally as to his family--"bless
+this ole gun an' make her shoot straight and he'p me knock that seal
+over, the first shot. For it don't look like there's goin' to be
+more'n one shot, an' if I don't kill her there's my whole family's
+goin' to starve and mebbe a whole lot o' other people that's a-lookin'
+for what they think I'm a-goin' to bring back."
+
+Now it was time to flatten himself down on the ice and scrape along,
+like another seal. It was hard work--try it yourself, if you don't
+think so!--and it took lots of patience.
+
+Now he could see the seal raise its head and look about. He mustn't
+give it a chance to ask questions of the wind, because the wind might
+say: "Look out, Mr. or Mrs. Seal! There's a man creeping and creeping
+toward you with a gun, and in a minute that man is going to shoot, and
+you'll be sorry you hung around here and didn't dive through the ice
+the very first second your nose told you you'd better!"
+
+He raised his gun, and prayed again--this time a very short prayer: "O
+Lord, bless this gun!" And he fired.
+
+The black spot had not vanished. It was motionless. "Did I hit him?"
+Tom asked himself. "Better try another shot an' make sure."
+
+He was a long time sighting--and he imagined the spot moved a little
+as he did so.
+
+Then he fired again.
+
+There it was still. Now he dared to believe he had hit the seal.
+Dragging the gun he crawled nearer and nearer. Still the seal did not
+move.
+
+Now he could see the whole animal clearly.
+
+The sight was joyful.
+
+"Glory be!" he shouted. Then he jumped up and capered about madly on
+the ice. It was a nice, fat, luscious, flipper seal and dead as a
+door-nail. Enough for a banquet for all of the tiny village of St.
+Anthony. And if Dr. Grenfell should be there when he and the dogs got
+back with it, the Doctor should have the largest, tenderest, juiciest
+steak of all.
+
+The wind was setting toward the dogs. He could barely see them there,
+far, far behind him--making a black spot where they slept, exactly as
+though they were another seal.
+
+So he put two fingers to his lips and blew a long, shrill blast.
+
+It was the signal for which they had been waiting. On they came like
+two wild young race-horses, each eager to be first to greet their
+master.
+
+They must have known well enough that he had killed the seal. They had
+hunted with him so often that if they had been human the man and the
+dogs could hardly have spoken to each other and understood better.
+
+"Good old Jim! Good old Jack!" The dogs bounced round him like india
+rubber, mad with delight.
+
+"Look what we gotta take back! Ain't that somethin' to make the old
+lady's eyes pop outa her head? First big seal's been caught off here
+for months! Enough to save the whole village from starvation. An' you
+dogs is to have some of it too, all o' you. Here's to begin with!"
+
+He drew his clasp-knife and snicker-snacked two good-sized bits from
+the tail of the fallen monarch. He threw the meat to the dogs, who had
+it down in a gulp and a swallow and then stood with their ears up,
+like the Jack-in-the-pulpit, to know if there would be more.
+
+"No, boys, that's enough to start back on!" He produced straps and
+ropes from the bread-bag and rigged up a harness so that the dogs
+might haul the seal, giving himself the end of a rope, to pull more
+than his share of the heavy carcass.
+
+"Wisht we could git a coupla polar bears too!" he laughed. "But I
+don't know how we could pull to the shore any more'n what we got
+here. Well, when we've got this et we'll be comin' back fer more,
+won't we, boys?"
+
+And the dogs, tugging and wagging as they plodded shoreward, seemed to
+agree.
+
+In spite of the weight of the seal, the trip back did not seem nearly
+so long. For you know how it is--when your heart is light any burden
+you carry doesn't count for nearly so much.
+
+Tom Bradley in spite of pulling so hard was singing to himself like a
+kettle on a stove. And the dogs, too, would have spared breath to bark
+joyously, if huskies ever barked. But no well-bred husky makes remarks
+of that sort.
+
+Tom stopped to rest, and sat on an ice-hummock, the dogs with their
+heads against his knee, their tongues lolling out.
+
+"'Member that time we chased the ole bear?" he laughed. "That was the
+time I couldn't do nothing with you! You was young dogs then, an' you
+got so excited you wouldn't listen to nothin'!
+
+"You just went a-racin' an' a-tearin' on from the time you seen 'im.
+O' course, as a driver don't have no reins, an' we only got a whip,
+we can't pull you up if you really wanta go. We can just holler
+'left' an' 'right' an' 'stop' an' 'go ahead.' But my oh my! We sure
+did stack up against trouble that day.
+
+"You an' the rest o' the team, you waded right into that bear before
+I'd got you cut loose from the traces. The air was full o' bear-meat
+an' dog-fur flyin'. Guess the bear didn't know no difference between
+you an' wolves. There's many a man has made the same mistake.
+
+"There was old Mr. Bear standin' up on his hind legs battin' away like
+he was wound up, handin' out punishment like it was a boxin' match,
+and you fellows hollerin' bloody murder.
+
+"You done more'n wolves would 'a' done. Wolves wouldn't 'a' tackled a
+bear that way--unless it was a great big crowd o' wolves an' one lone,
+lorn, small bear.
+
+"He was a buster, he was, an' there was only six o' you. But you stood
+right up-ta him all right! You remember, don't you?"
+
+Jim and Jack flopped their tails on the ice as if to say yes. Their
+mouths were wide open--it looked as if they were laughing in delight
+to be reminded of the battle.
+
+"Say, you dogs certainly are the willin', hard-workin' fellers when
+you're fed up right. I believe you'd rather haul a sled than eat. You
+rascals! 'Member the time you et my gloves just as I was goin' to
+start? I had to larrup outa you that trick you had when you was young
+o' gobblin' your own harness when you wasn't watched. I sure do hate
+to hit you. One o' these whips 'll bite a hole in a door twenty feet
+off: I've seen ole Pop Rinker drive a nail in a board with one.
+
+"When we get back, if that ther Dr. Grenfell has come we'll get some
+other dogs an' take him out for a ride. He'll have to have a team o'
+dogs. Can't get along in this country without you dogs--not till they
+have reindeer. Heaven knows, the Doctor'll have miles and miles o'
+country to cover, to get round to all the people hereabouts that needs
+him. Ain't it a great an' mighty blessin' this country's now a-goin'
+to have a doctor all our own, all our very own?"
+
+When they got back to the hamlet with their seal, there was a
+jollification.
+
+Tom Bradley could have been Mayor, or King, or anything he wanted.
+
+There was plenty of one thing in that place--and that was fire-wood,
+from the spruces and firs alongshore.
+
+So they built a monstrous pyramid, big enough to cook twenty seals,
+and round the community bonfire they collected, dogs and all, for a
+feast. The children shouted in glee and clapped their hands. The
+mothers were happier for themselves than for their babies. And their
+joy was the greater because word had come that Dr. Grenfell was
+finding his way in the little steamer, the _Julia Sheridan_, through a
+channel behind the islands and was likely to be in their midst at any
+hour of any day.
+
+Next day, the Doctor came. Such hand-shaking and back-slapping and
+outcries of honest pleasure as greeted him! And from the very first
+minute there were anxious appeals for his aid.
+
+"Doctor, would ye please come to see my old woman?"
+
+"What's the matter with her?"
+
+"Oh, Doctor, she does be took wonderful bad. Sometimes the wind rises
+an' it goes all up an' down an' it settles in her teeth an' the pains
+shoots her in the stummick an' we has to take hold of her arms an'
+pull 'em out and she howls like a dog an' we dunno what's the matter.
+Would you please come an' see? She's askin' us to kill her she's in
+such punishment, but us didn't think us'd ought to do it without
+askin' you. Would you please come 'n' see?"
+
+In that first winter Grenfell was "at home" three Sundays only, and he
+had to cover fifteen hundred miles behind the dogs. Sometimes they
+were heart-breaking, bone-racking miles. Sometimes they were as smooth
+and easy as a skating-rink. But not very often.
+
+One day he had a run of seventy miles to make across the frozen
+country.
+
+The path was not broken out--it wasn't even cut and blazed.
+
+Just once had the leading dog made the journey.
+
+But because he had made it once--they left it all to him to choose the
+way to go.
+
+Straight on the good dog went, never stopping to turn round and look
+in the face of the driver, the way dogs will.
+
+The way--such as it was--took them over wide lakes, and through thick
+woods deep-hung with snow.
+
+"Halt!" called Grenfell. The driver gave the command to the dogs. They
+stopped and rested while the men explored.
+
+Sure enough, the leading dog was right. A climb to the top of a high
+tree showed the "leads" and proved to the men that they were traveling
+in the right direction: and the compass said so too.
+
+Again and again they stopped--and every time it proved that the dog
+was right.
+
+On journey after journey of this kind, round about St. Anthony on that
+far northern peninsula of Newfoundland, Grenfell and the dogs he drove
+got to know and love one another better.
+
+Grenfell has done seventy-five miles in a day easily: but how far one
+goes depends on the state of the ice and snow and the roughness of the
+trail: sometimes five miles a day is as much as the dogs, pulling
+their very hearts out, are able to cover. Six miles an hour is an
+average rate of speed when it is "good going." Once the Doctor made
+twenty-one miles in a little more than two hours, over level ice.
+
+The building of the sled, or komatik, is a most important matter. The
+Doctor prefers one eleven feet long, of black spruce, with runners an
+inch thick, covered with spring steel. With such a sled, and a good
+team of dogs attached with proper traces, travel on firm and level
+snow is an exhilarating experience. But a thousand and one things may
+go wrong, the dogs when not running are forever picking bloody
+quarrels, and continual vigilance is the price of a swift, smooth
+passage.
+
+A member of Grenfell's staff had crossed a neck of land between two
+bays, and was "twenty miles from anywhere," when his dogs struck the
+fresh trail of deer.
+
+At such times the dogs are likely to take leave of all their senses
+save the instinct of the chase. These plucky beasts were no exception
+to the rule.
+
+As they were short of food, the two teams were hitched to one sled,
+and the other sled, laden, was left in charge of a boy, while the men
+gave chase to the caribou. Like Casabianca on the burning deck, the
+boy had been told not to stir from that chilly, lonesome spot.
+
+But just as the men got under way, a terrible snowstorm sprang up from
+nowhere, and so enveloped and bewildered the hunters that for two days
+they wandered, till they lost all hope.
+
+Then, by great good luck, starving and worn out, they came to a little
+house many long and weary miles from where the boy was left with the
+komatiks.
+
+They sent a relief team back to find him. There he was, standing by
+the sleds like a good, true soldier, just where they told him to
+remain. He was bound to be faithful unto death, even though he should
+freeze stiff for his obedience to orders.
+
+Another time, the team was halted in a wood at nightfall, and Grenfell
+and his comrades started to walk on snowshoes to the village six miles
+distant.
+
+They lost their way, and found themselves by nightfall at the foot of
+steep cliffs which they could not get round, though the village was
+hardly more than a mile away and its lights twinkled them a warm
+yellow welcome like friendly eyes.
+
+The only thing to do was to fight their way up and over the rocks. As
+they came to the top, they found two tired men who knew the way, but
+were so weary they had made up their minds to flop down in the snow
+for the night.
+
+But Grenfell started a fire, and served out some bits of sweet cake he
+carried: so that presently they took heart to go on. If they had not
+done so, they might all have frozen to death in the snow, for the
+night was bitterly cold and they were perspiring from their hard work,
+so that their clothes were turning as stiff as suits of armor with the
+ice. As it was, the whole party reached the village safely, and came
+back next day to find the dogs and the sleds and bring them in.
+
+A lumber mill was started on a bay sixty miles below St. Anthony, and
+a boiler weighing three tons was landed and set in place with the
+whole neighborhood helping. After Christmas Grenfell decided to make
+the run thither with the dogs from St. Anthony.
+
+There was no trail. Most of the way the journey was through virgin
+forest. There were windfalls and stumps and bushes with pointed rocks
+amid the snow--offering no end of pitfalls where a man might break
+his ankle and lie groaning and helpless as a wounded caribou till he
+died.
+
+Nobody they could find had ever made the trip. But they had to know
+without delay how the boiler worked and how the mill was going. So off
+they started, gay as a circus parade, telling themselves they would do
+the distance in two days.
+
+Not so. At the end of two days they were still wrangling with mean
+little scrub bushes, fallen rotten logs and the pointed rocks
+treacherously sheeted with ice and snow.
+
+If they struggled to the top of a snow-laden spruce for an outlook,
+all they saw was more of the same old thing--a scowling landscape of
+white-clad woods and lonesome ponds. The compass always seemed to lead
+them straight into the thick of the worst places.
+
+They took the wrong turning to get round a big hill, and found a river
+which they thought would lead them to the head of the bay where the
+mill stood.
+
+But the river was a raging torrent, which leapt among the rocks, made
+rapids and falls, and left gaping holes in the ice into which the
+dogs fell, snarling their traces and their tempers and many times
+risking a broken leg.
+
+Still the brave little beasts of burden strained and tugged forward,
+encouraged by the shouts of the men.
+
+They couldn't get away from the river, for the banks were too steep.
+By and by they reached a ravine where the water boiled and churned and
+raced along in its great rocky trough too rapidly to be frozen, even
+by the intense cold that prevailed. It seemed as if they must be
+halted here--but that is not the way with men of Newfoundland and the
+Labrador.
+
+The only thing to do was to chop a passage through the ice along the
+bank--like making a tow-path for a canal.
+
+After they had fought their way through the narrows, they yearned for
+sleep. So they built a fire, and felled tree-trunks twenty feet long
+into it, till they had a "gorgeous blaze." Then they dug holes in the
+snow, deep as bear's dens, broke loose from their stiff, icy clothes,
+got into their sleeping bags, and slept the sleep of the just till
+the golden sun warmed them with its morning blessing.
+
+The rest of the way gave them no trouble. They got a royal welcome
+from the hands at the mill. It was such a great event, in fact, that a
+holiday was declared, and all hands went "rabbiting." At the end of
+the day they built another mighty fire of logs, gathered round it with
+steaming cocoa and pork buns, and decided all over again that life was
+worth living and that moving a lumber-mill on an Arctic fore-shore is
+sheer fun, if you only think so.
+
+Not long after an experimental fox farm was begun. The farm part of it
+is not so hard as the foxes. All you need for the farm is a few poles
+and some wire netting.
+
+They picked up a dozen couples of foxes--red, white, cross, and one
+silver pair. A Harvard professor describes moving day when foxes were
+being brought on the little steamer to St. Anthony. "Dr. Grenfell at
+one time had fifteen little foxes aboard.... Some of these little
+animals had been brought aboard in blubber casks, and their coats were
+very sticky. After a few days they were very tame and played with the
+dogs; they were all over the deck, fell down the companionway, were
+always having their tails and feet stepped on, and yelping for pain,
+when not yelling for food. The long-suffering seaman who took care of
+them said, 'I been cleaned out dat fox box. It do be shockin'. I been
+in a courageous turmoil my time, but dis be de head smell ever I
+witnessed.'"
+
+    [Illustration: CASTLES AND CATHEDRALS OF ICE AFLOAT]
+
+Probably the fox farm suffered from too much publicity. A mother
+silver fox is one of the scariest of creatures, and is known to "kill
+her children to save their lives" when a thunderstorm comes on, or
+visitors are alarming. Most fox farms are therefore in the depths of
+the woods: and the path to them is kept a dark secret by the owners.
+But the farmers at St. Anthony's were green to the business, and they
+let the fishermen come in numbers to see the show, not realizing what
+the consequences would be. The red and the cross foxes seemed pleased
+to entertain guests; not so with the white foxes, and the precious
+silver foxes were the shyest of all. Not a pup lived to grow up. Many
+were born, but their parents killed them all. By and by, after a
+mortal plague broke out among the animals, the farm was converted
+into a garden with a glass frame for seeding vegetables.
+
+But others, with more science at their command, developed a profitable
+industry in Quebec, Labrador and in Prince Edward Island. In the year
+the war began a silver vixen and her brood were sold for ten thousand
+dollars. A wild fox, sold for twenty-five dollars, was resold for a
+thousand. There is money in the business, properly conducted. For
+those who want wild animals to have fair play, there is satisfaction
+in the thought that to get fox fur by way of breeding is infinitely
+more humane than to get it by way of the trap, whose cruel teeth may
+hold the animals through hours and days of suffering till the hunter
+comes.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+SOME REAL SEA-DOGS
+
+
+"Get out o' there, youse!"
+
+A big raw-boned fisherman with an oar in his hand came running up the
+stony beach at Hopedale.
+
+The door of the little Moravian church was open. So were the windows.
+And so were the mouths of a pack of dogs who were yowling their heads
+off and trying to kill each other inside the church.
+
+"That's just the way with them huskies!" panted Long Jim, as he
+stumbled up the slope. "Can't leave 'em be ten minutes without their
+gettin' into mischief. 'Tis a nice place they picked out for a fight
+this time! I'll soon have 'em out o' there! They'll find out the house
+o' God ain't no dog-house."
+
+Swinging his oar right and left he dashed into the church.
+
+Such a scene as met his eyes!
+
+The dogs had been tearing the hymn-books apart as if they were slabs
+of raw seal-meat. For the Eskimos had been handling the books with
+their fingers fresh from cleaning fish and cutting up blubber. So that
+to a dog's nose each book smelt and tasted perfectly delicious. As
+fast as one dog closed his hungry jaws on a book, another dog,
+snarling and yowling, would try to snatch it from him.
+
+Over and over in the aisles and between the pews they rolled, snapping
+and tearing at one another. For the sake of meat they would do murder
+any day--and the fact that it was in a church on Sunday meant nothing
+to Long Jim's idle, hungry pack.
+
+"Go on, now! Git outa here!" Long Jim laid about him vigorously with
+the oar. Sharp yelps resounded as he thwacked their heads and legs.
+One dog took a header into the baptismal font, which was full of stale
+water.
+
+Another tried to climb under the little cabinet organ. But there were
+two dogs there already, and one of them bit him in the chest. He
+backed away, slobbering and raging.
+
+Another dog hid under the communion table, but Long Jim found him and
+kicked him away with his soft furry boots that did no damage to dog
+ribs.
+
+The leaders of the pack, Jock and Sandy, soared out of the window at
+the right. Jock landed on his head in the kitchen garden where the
+precious cabbages were growing behind high wooden palings. Sandy was
+more fortunate, and fell squarely on his feet. Both dogs began to
+gobble the soft green stuff just visible above the ground.
+
+The other dogs came after them, biting and tearing at each other even
+while they were scrambling across the window-sill.
+
+"Long Jim" ran out at the door, and had to tear down a lot of the
+stakes before he could drive the dogs out of the garden. When at last
+they went, most of the young and precious cabbages went with them. The
+garden looked like a mud-pile where children have been in a quarrel.
+
+"Ain't that a shame!" exclaimed Long Jim. "Them poor Moravian brothers
+worked so hard to git that garden goin'! I s'pose I gotta pay for them
+hymn-books an' them cabbages. Where I'm a-gonna git the money t' pay
+f'r it all, I'm blessed if I know! I guess I'll have to see if I can
+git the money from Dr. Grenfell till I get paid for my fish."
+
+Dr. Grenfell was in a cottage near by, visiting a patient. The sick
+man couldn't stir from his bed.
+
+A puff of wind blew the door open, just as the hungry pack of dogs
+came rushing up.
+
+Instantly Jock and Sandy halted, and sniffed a mighty, soul-satisfying
+sniff.
+
+Such a nice, sweet smell of dinner as was blown on the breeze from the
+door!
+
+Their whiskers twitched and their mouths watered.
+
+Then it was just as if Jock and Sandy said to the other dogs: "Well,
+what about it, boys? Shall we have some more fun? Are you hungry?"
+
+For the whole pack as though pulled by a string made a dash for the
+door and swept in on the Doctor and the sick man lying there.
+
+It was like an avalanche. Dr. Grenfell was swept off his legs, as if
+he had been bathing in the surf and a big wave rushed up and knocked
+him down.
+
+The boldest jumped up on the stove, where the stewpot was, that sent
+out such a delicious smell.
+
+He pried off the cover, and then the pot rolled off the stove with a
+terrible clatter, and its steaming contents were dumped out on the
+floor.
+
+You could fairly hear those beasts screaming "That's mine! Get out of
+there! That belongs to me!" Just like greedy, quarrelsome boys that
+forgot their manners long ago, if they ever had any.
+
+They fought with added fury because--the hot stew burned their noses.
+They were in such a hurry they couldn't wait for it to cool. They
+snuffled and scuffled, they bit and snarled and snorted, as they had
+done in the church with the hymn-books and then with the cabbages in
+the vegetable garden.
+
+One of the dogs thrust his head in the pot to get the last "lickings"
+and then he couldn't shake it loose again.
+
+Round and round the room he banged and struggled, till the Doctor took
+pity on him and hauled it off his head.
+
+Meanwhile the house filled with steam as if it were on fire.
+
+The Eskimos came rushing from everywhere, with shouts in their own
+tongue that sounded almost like the cries of the dogs.
+
+They had long harpoon handles, and they pranced about the room,
+thwacking right and left.
+
+The Doctor was entirely forgotten. So was the sick man. The room was
+filled with steam, stew, dogs, harpoons, and blue language.
+
+At last the dogs were shoved out, and the door was slammed after them.
+
+"How are you feeling?" said the Doctor to his patient.
+
+"B-b-better, Doctor. It was a funny show while it lasted. But I guess
+they ain't much left o' that there stew, is there?"
+
+The Doctor laughed. "No--our dinner is wrecked. A total loss!"
+
+The door opened slowly. Long Jim stood there in the doorway, fumbling
+his hat in his hand. "Awful sorry about them dogs, Doctor," he
+muttered. "They just seem to ha' gone clean crazy. They ain't had
+nothin' to eat for so long, you see. They're good dogs when they ain't
+hungry. Would you--would you lend me the money to pay for them
+hymn-books an' cabbages an' the stew till I can pay ye back?"
+
+"Oh, that's all right, Jim!" answered the Doctor. "All told, the
+damage won't amount to much. I'll fix it up. Dogs will be dogs."
+
+"Thank ye, Doctor," said Jim, simply. But he was deeply grateful. He
+went out after his dogs to make them quit rampaging and take their
+places in the team.
+
+"Doctor," said the sick man, "I minds me o' the time one o' them
+missionaries put a young dog in the team ahead o' the old leader. Did
+ye ever hear tell o' that?"
+
+"No. What happened?"
+
+"Well, the big feller bit through the little feller's traces an' then
+must 'a' said 'you get out o' here!' the way one dog knows how to talk
+to another. 'Cause the pup he began to run away, before they'd got the
+sled started at all."
+
+"And then what?" asked Grenfell.
+
+"Why--Mr. Young harnessed up the pup three times an' each time the big
+dog he bites the pup loose an' the pup runs away."
+
+"So what did Mr. Young do then?"
+
+"He give the big dog a whipping."
+
+"Did that do any good?"
+
+"Not the least little bit that ever was. It done a lot o' harm. The
+old dog's heart was bust. After that beatin' he weren't never the same
+again--he seemed to lose all taste for haulin' a sled. He might as
+well have lain down an' died in the traces, for all the use he was to
+the team after that. He wa'n't no good for a leader any more. He
+wa'n't no good for anything."
+
+"Do you use moccasins for your dogs?" asked Grenfell.
+
+"Sure us does. Makes 'em o' sealskin. Us ties 'em round the dog's
+ankles, cuttin' three little holes for the claws."
+
+"I know," said Grenfell. "And the dog sometimes eats his own shoes,
+doesn't he?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Till he gets to know what the shoes is for. I've had my
+dogs eat their own harness, many's the time. Don't seem as if dogs
+could ever git so tired they wouldn't rather fight than sleep. I'd
+just like to know what'd wear out a husky so he wouldn't be ready for
+a scrap. They likes fightin' next to eatin'!"
+
+"I suppose you feed your dogs once a day?" said the Doctor.
+
+"Yes, Doctor. Only--they puts down the two fish I gives 'em in about
+one swallow for both fish. I can't see that they gits much fun out o'
+their supper."
+
+Then the sick man began to laugh feebly. "It 'minds me o' the time I
+was out with the dogs in the deep snow. I was just goin' to build me a
+snow hut for the night. There was a herd o' caribou come by, goin' so
+fast I couldn't git my gun ready in time.
+
+"But the dogs--they tears 'emselves loose from the traces, 'cause I
+hadn't taken 'em out yet, an' off they starts like the wind. They
+leaves behind one little mother dog. She was their leader--they was
+mostly from her litter.
+
+"So off they goes like a shot from a gun, me runnin' an' yellin' after
+'em.
+
+"Pretty soon they finds a deer a hunter had shot an' must ha' left
+behind 'cause he had so much he couldn't carry any more.
+
+"Anyway, they didn't ask no questions. They eats an' eats till you
+could see 'em bulgin' way out like they had swallowed a football.
+
+"Well sir, would you believe it? All those dogs wa'n't such pigs.
+There was one hadn't forgot the poor little ole mother dog at home
+that was all tied up so she couldn't go with 'em. The biggest dog, he
+brought back a whole hunk out o' the leg o' that deer, an' he laid it
+down, within her reach, where she could grab it up an' give a gnaw to
+it when she felt like it."
+
+"That reminds me," said Grenfell. "A settler and his wife, in a lonely
+place, got the 'flu.' They were so weak they couldn't take care of
+each other. The poor woman could hardly crawl to the cupboard and get
+what little food there was, and she couldn't cook it when she got it.
+
+"But she managed to write in pencil on a bit of paper, 'come over
+quickly.' She put it in a piece of sealskin and tied it with a piece
+of deer-thong round a dog's neck.
+
+"He ran with it to the nearest house, which was ten miles away. And
+soon men came and brought them aid, and their lives were saved.--Well,
+John, I'm coming back in a day or two to see how you are. And I'll
+call in on neighbor Martha Dennis, and she'll make you some nice broth
+to take the place of the stew the dogs got."
+
+"Thank you, Doctor! I'll be glad to see you when you comes back. I
+don't know what us would do, if it wasn't for you, Doctor!"
+
+To the stories that the Doctor and his patient told each other might
+be added many more true tales of the intelligence of the "husky" dogs.
+
+Sometimes a man at work in the forest, getting in his winter's supply
+of fire-wood, will send the dog home with no message at all.
+
+Then the good wife looks about, to see what the dog's master has
+forgotten. It may be an axe-head, or his pipe, or his lunch of bread
+and potatoes.
+
+Whatever it is, she ties it to the dog and back he trots to his master
+in the woods, a willing express-messenger.
+
+But one of the finest deeds set down to the credit of a "husky" is
+what a plain, every-day "mutt" dog did at Martin's Point, on the west
+coast of Newfoundland near Bonne Bay, in December 1919.
+
+The steamer _Ethie_, Captain English commanding, was making her last
+southward trip of the season. I knew the _Ethie_ well, every inch of
+her, for I had made the up trip and the down trip aboard her only a
+few weeks before. Through no fault of her gallant captain, she had
+been carrying a great many more passengers than she ever was meant to
+carry. On a pinch, she had accommodations for fifty. But on one trip,
+by standing up the fishermen in the washroom as if they were bunches
+of asparagus, she had taken three hundred passengers. From a hundred
+to two hundred was a common number. I had been one of about
+twenty-five lucky enough to find a "berth" in the small dining-saloon.
+The berth was like a parcel-rack in a railway car. The people of the
+coast were signing a long petition to have the miserable old tub laid
+up and a larger, modern vessel substituted.
+
+When Captain English was nearing Martin's Point on the _Ethie's_ last
+voyage, a high sea was running, and she sprang a leak. The water
+rushed into the fireroom. Captain English went below and made an
+appeal to "his boys" not to desert their fires and not to fail him.
+
+"If you will stick till we get round the Point we can beach her," he
+said. The stokers manfully plied their shovels: with the snow
+whirling, and the wind blowing half a gale, the vessel struck, several
+hundred yards from the beach. In a little while the waves, sweeping
+furiously over the deck, would have swept the ninety-two persons
+aboard into the sea.
+
+They tried to fire a line ashore to the willing crowd that stood at
+the edge of the breakers.
+
+But the line fell short, across an ugly reef of jagged rocks half-way
+to the land.
+
+Then volunteers were asked to swim ashore with the rope. But none of
+the sailors knew how to swim. It is a rare accomplishment among
+sailors, especially in those bitter northern waters. So that plan was
+surrendered.
+
+A boat was launched. Before it had fairly hit the tremendous waves, it
+was dashed to pieces against the _Ethie's_ side.
+
+The company on shipboard seemed at the end of their resources. But the
+people ashore had not been idle.
+
+There was a fisherman of Martin's Point named Reuben Decker, who had a
+dog whom he had not taken the trouble to name at all. It was one of
+the young dogs in process of being broken to the sled, and in the
+meantime it was kicked and stoned and starved--not by the owner, but
+by strangers afraid of it, as is the general lot of dogs in this part
+of the world, after they have done their best by man.
+
+The dog happened to be down at the shore, forlornly searching for
+sculpins and caplin. There was still open water between the shore and
+the ship. Reuben Decker pointed to the rocks across which the rope had
+fallen. At his word of command, the dog jumped into the sea, swam to
+the rocks, and seized the rope in his mouth. Then, with the cries from
+the ship and the shore ringing in his ears, he turned and began to
+swim with it to the shore. It was not a heavy line. It was meant to be
+used to haul a thicker rope. But it was wet, of course, and partly
+frozen, and the miracle is how the animal managed to pull it through a
+sea where men did not dare to go.
+
+The watchers ashore, standing waist and shoulder deep in the waves,
+anxious to launch a boat as soon as the heavy swell would let them,
+watched the dog and clapped their hands and yelled to him to come on.
+
+"Look at un!"
+
+"Swimmin' like a swile!"
+
+"Kim alang, b'y, kim alang!"
+
+    [Illustration: LET'S GO!]
+
+"Man dear! My, my, my! Ain't dat wunnerful, now!"
+
+"Dat 'm de b'y!"
+
+"By de powers!--Git y'r gaff, b'y! Help un in!"
+
+"We'll have 'm all sove, soon's us lays han's on dat rope. Lord bless
+dat dog!"
+
+At one moment his little brown head would rise on the crest of a
+streaked, yeasty wave, the rope still in the white teeth--and then as
+the wave curled and broke he would be plunged to the bottom of the
+trough and they would lose sight of him. Would he come up again?
+
+"Yes--dere he be! My, my, my! Look at him a-comin' and a-comin'! I
+never did see a dog the beat o' un! By the livin' Jarge, he's got more
+sense 'n any o' us humans! I tell ye, thet's a miracle, thet's what it
+is. Nothin' short o' a gospel miracle!"
+
+So the comment ran--for those who said anything. But many were too
+surprised and thrilled to speak--and if they cried out it was when
+they all cheered mightily together as the dog, hauled through the surf
+by as many as could get their eager hands on him, scrambled out on
+the beach and dropped the fag-end of the rope as if it were a stick,
+thrown into the water in sport, for him to retrieve.
+
+Now that communication was established, the next thing to do was to
+haul a heavier rope to the beach. On this a breeches-buoy was rigged
+without delay. In that breeches-buoy the ninety-two were hauled
+ashore. One of them was a baby, eighteen months old, who traveled in a
+mail-bag, "pleasantly sleeping and unaware." The last to leave was the
+captain.
+
+The sea hammered the life out of the boat--but the human life was gone
+from it, and nobody cared. As for the dog--you can imagine how Reuben
+Decker's cottage door was kept a-swing till it was nearly torn from
+its hinges, by friends who dropped in to pat him on the back, and look
+with curiosity at the animal which a few hours ago they ignored or
+despised. And Reuben did not tire of telling them all what a dog it
+was. He could safely say there was no better on the coast. Perhaps in
+the world.
+
+The rumbling echoes of the dog's brave deed traveled "over the hills
+and far away," to Curling, where lives from hand to mouth a little
+paper called _The Western Star_. It has a circulation of 675 in fair
+weather and 600 when it storms. The editor is a man named Barrett, who
+is a correspondent of the Associated Press. He put a brief dispatch on
+the wire for all America. Some people in Philadelphia read it, and
+sent the dog a silver collar, almost big enough to go three times
+round his neck. Since the dog had no name, the word "Hero" was
+engraved on the collar.
+
+The day of the presentation was a general holiday. All the way from
+St. John's, people came to see "Hero" rewarded. Father Brennan made a
+speech, the sheriff was in his glory, and Reuben Decker and his dog,
+dragged blinking into the limelight, were equally dumb with modesty,
+surprise and gratitude. The cheer that was raised when the silver
+clasp of the magnificent collar clicked round "Hero's" throat drowned
+out the loud music of the ocean.
+
+Now "Hero," freed forever from bondage to the sled, may lie by the
+fire in his master's house, his head on his paws, his nose twitching,
+as he dreams of his great adventure.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+HUNTING WITH THE ESKIMO
+
+
+When Dr. Grenfell first sailed his mission boat to the Eskimo
+settlements, the Eskimo swarmed aboard his little schooner, the
+_Albert_. They were singing a hymn the Moravian missionaries taught
+them.
+
+"What do you know about that?" said Sailor Bill to Sailor Jim. "Them
+fellers certainly can sing!"
+
+"Yes, an' they got a brass band," answered Jim. "Just hear 'em a-goin'
+it, over there on the shore when the wind sets our way. You'd sure
+think the circus was comin' to town! Hey there, where you goin', young
+feller?"
+
+The "young feller" was an old Eskimo of about seventy, but Jim
+couldn't be expected to know that. For he was all done up like a
+figure from fairy-land--in snow-white jumper, peaked fur cap, and
+sealskin boots.
+
+The Eskimo only grinned from ear to ear. He seemed ready to laugh at
+everything. His little bright eyes missed nothing.
+
+"These husky-maws are so bloomin' curious," said Jim. "Just like them
+husky dogs. Hafta take the lid off 'n' look into everything. The cook
+says he dasn't turn his back to the stove. Don't you let 'em into the
+cabin!"
+
+"There's one of 'em in there now!" cried Bill. Out of a port-hole
+issued the notes of a hymn, which one of the Eskimo was pumping out of
+a melodeon.
+
+"Come up outa there!" yelled Bill, thrusting his head in at the
+doorway.
+
+The Eskimo didn't understand the words, but he knew what the tone
+meant, and meekly turned a smiling face toward the sailor.
+
+Then he jumped up from his seat on the top of a keg and put out his
+hand. Bill took the pudgy, greasy little fingers. The Eskimo brought
+from somewhere in his blouse a piece of ivory carved in the likeness
+of a boat with rowers.
+
+"How much d'ye want for that?" asked Bill.
+
+The Eskimo shook his head.
+
+"Are ye deaf?" cried Bill. "How much d'ye want for the boat?"
+
+"Aw shucks!" exclaimed Jim. "Hollerin' so loud don't do no good. He
+dunno what you're sayin'. He can't talk English. Show him your
+clasp-knife. That'll talk to him better'n you can. He wants to swop
+with ye."
+
+Bill brought out the big knife. The little brown man nodded eagerly.
+Then he handed over the ivory boat. It was worth a great deal more
+than the knife. But not to the Eskimo. That knife would be a precious
+thing to help him carve meat and cut things out of sealskin and
+perhaps stab a polar bear.
+
+"So everybody's happy?" laughed a clear and pleasant voice at Bill's
+shoulder. "You traded about even, did you?"
+
+"Guess so, Doctor. He's got what he wants, and I'm goin' to send the
+boat to the kiddies in the old country."
+
+That night as the men sat around the cabin lamp with their pipes and a
+big pail of steaming cocoa, Dr. Grenfell told them something about the
+strange people they had come among.
+
+He had spent all day ashore among them, in various repairs to their
+bodies, and he had promised to come back to them in the morning.
+
+"They're a nice, jolly, friendly lot," he said. "So different from
+the old days, before the Moravian missionaries came.
+
+"You know, they always called themselves 'Innuits.' That means 'the
+people.' They said God went on making human beings till He made the
+Eskimo. When He saw them, He was perfectly satisfied, and didn't make
+any more.
+
+"But the early Norsemen came along, about a thousand years after the
+time of Christ, and called them 'skrellings.' That means 'weaklings.'
+It was the Indians who called them Eskimo. The word means 'eaters of
+raw meat.'"
+
+"They've sure got some funny ideas about Hell 'n' the Devil, Doctor!"
+put in an old, wise sailor who was sitting deep in the shadows.
+
+"Yes they have!" agreed the Doctor. "Their God, Tongarsuk, is a good
+spirit. He rules a lot of lesser spirits, called tongaks, and they run
+and tell the priests, who are called angekoks, what to do. The
+angekoks are the medicine-men and the weather-prophets. The Devil
+isn't he, but she. And she is so dreadful that she hasn't any name,
+because you're not supposed to talk about her at all.
+
+"The angekoks are awfully busy fellows. They have to keep making
+journeys to the centre of the earth, the Eskimos believe. Because
+that's where Tongarsuk the good spirit is, and they have to go and ask
+him what to do when the little spirits get lazy and won't tell them.
+
+"Anybody who thinks the angekok has an easy time of it on his voyage
+is mistaken. The journey has to be in winter. It must be at midnight.
+The angekok's body is standing alone in the hut--his head tied between
+his legs, his arms bound behind his back. In the meantime his soul has
+left the body, and is on the way to heaven or hell.
+
+"That's what an ordinary, every-day angekok has to do. But if you want
+to become an angekok poglit, which is a fat priest (meaning a chief
+priest), it hurts a lot more, and takes much more time and trouble.
+Then you have to let a white bear take your wandering soul and drag it
+down to the sea by one toe. They don't tell you how a soul comes to
+have a toe to drag it by.
+
+"When the soul reaches the seaboard, it must be swallowed by a
+sea-lion--and of course the soul may have to sit there in the cold for
+quite a while waiting for a sea-lion to come along. After the
+sea-lion has swallowed it, the same white bear must reappear and
+swallow it too. Then the white bear must give up the spirit, and let
+it return to the dark house where the body is waiting for it. All this
+time the neighbors keep up an infernal racket with a drum and any
+other musical instruments they may happen to have.
+
+"The Eskimo know very well that once there was a flood--but they
+cannot say exactly when. The trouble was that the world upset into the
+sea, and all were drowned except one man who climbed out on a cake of
+ice. They are sure of what they say, because although the oldest man
+alive only heard about it from the oldest man when he was a baby, they
+still find shells in the crannies of the rocks far beyond the maddest
+reach of the sea: and somebody once found the remains of a whale at
+the very top of a high mountain.
+
+"You do not go up to heaven when you die: you go down,--way, way down,
+to the bottom of the sea, where the best of everything is. There it's
+summer all the time. To the Eskimo there is no hell in being hot--hell
+is terrible cold. Down there where it is summer all the time you
+don't have to chase reindeer if you want them to pull you about--they
+come running up to you, obliging as taxicabs, and ask you please to
+harness them and tell them where you would like to go. And your dinner
+is ready for you all the time: the seals are swimming about in a
+kettle of boiling water. The women don't have to spend their time
+chewing on the sealskins to make them pliable for shoes and garments.
+The skins come off, all by themselves, already chewed--as nice and
+soft as can be, fit to make a bed for an Eskimo baby.
+
+"His boat and his weapons go with the warrior to his grave, so that
+his spirit may have the use of them in the next world.
+
+"Once, one of the sailors from Newfoundland took something from a
+grave and hid it in his bunk.
+
+"That night the dead Eskimo came looking for his property.
+
+"It was pitch dark--but one of the crew saw and felt the ghost
+prowling about in the cabin!
+
+"He yelled, and they lit the lamp.
+
+"The ghost went out at the hatchway instantly.
+
+"They put out the light, and the ghost came back. Then shouts were
+heard, 'There he is! He's a Eskimo! He's huntin' in Tom's bunk!'
+
+"After that, they kept the lamp lit all night long: and the next day,
+Tom went back and with trembling fingers restored what he had stolen
+to the grave.
+
+"There are wide chinks in the rocky roof of every properly made Eskimo
+grave. This is not so that prowling sailor-men may reach in: it is so
+the spirits will have no trouble going in and out.
+
+"You may still find lying in a grave a modern high-powered rifle ready
+for business, and good steel knives ready to carve those cooked seals
+down there in Heaven. I've even found pipes all ready filled with
+tobacco, to save the spirits the trouble of using their fingers to
+cram the bowl.
+
+"Nowadays sealskins are exchanged for European goods, especially guns,
+and the Labrador Eskimo have lost much of the art of using their
+kayaks, the canoes into which they used to bind themselves securely,
+so that when they turned over in the water it did no harm. They would
+'bob up serenely' and go right on, and in contests one man would pass
+his boat right over that of a rival without risk of accident.
+
+"The Eskimo and the Indians were bitter enemies. The story of the last
+fight is, that the Eskimo had their fishing-huts on an island off the
+mouth of a river.
+
+"Down-stream by night crept the Indians in their war-canoes. These
+they dragged ashore and hid in the rocks. Next morning the Eskimo came
+upon their enemies and at once attacked them.
+
+"The Eskimo are little people as compared with the Indians. The
+Indians, their squaws fighting like bears beside them, drove the
+Eskimo back and back toward the sea.
+
+"Stubbornly the 'huskies' contested every inch of the ground. Now and
+again they would crawl into holes among the rocks--but the Indians
+would find them there and cut them down without mercy, like animals
+trapped in their burrows.
+
+"The Eskimo had their choice between the Indians and the sea. They
+would carry their children and even their wives down to the boats on
+their backs, and sometimes the frail skin-boats would turn over, and
+all the people in them would be drowned. If they succeeded in putting
+out to sea, they had no place to go: the Indians waiting ashore would
+get them whenever and wherever they landed.
+
+"At last--there were only the Indians in their war-paint, dancing and
+howling on the beach--not an Eskimo was left to tell the tale."
+
+A few days later, Dr. Grenfell came to Hopedale.
+
+There, he found, the Eskimo believed that Queen Victoria, away off
+there on the other side of the ocean, was sitting on a rock waiting
+for the _Harmony_ (the Moravian mission ship from Labrador) to come in
+sight.
+
+They loaded him down with all sorts of messages they wanted him to
+give her.
+
+Especially, they wanted him to say to her that they were very, very
+grateful to her for sending him over the seas to help them.
+
+When they learned that England was at war in Egypt, and a brave
+general was holding the upper Nile against a crowd of savages,
+although they hadn't the slightest notion as to where Egypt was or who
+the Egyptians were, they got out everything they had in the way of
+firearms and began to drill up and down on the rocky beach.
+
+One old fellow had a policeman's coat split up the back and much too
+big for him, and he dragged the tail of it along the ground like a
+bedraggled water-fowl. He also had a single epaulet that had come in a
+box of cast-off clothing.
+
+On the strength of that uniform they made him captain of the company.
+
+Then they all marched up to the missionaries and said:
+
+"We want to go to war and help the English!"
+
+"It won't be any use," said the missionaries. "Egypt is a long, long
+way off--and the war will be over before you could get there!"
+
+"Never mind!" insisted the "huskies." "We want to go!"
+
+They kept on drilling and making warlike noises with their mouths till
+the ice melted and the cod came in. And after that, in the struggle
+with the cold sea and the barren land for a living they forgot all
+about war and the rumors of war.
+
+There were seals and bears and foxes to be hunted, instead of men.
+
+Dr. Grenfell found one man who was lucky enough to catch a black fox
+in a trap of stones.
+
+He was so happy over the catch that tears of joy ran down his face as
+he carried the precious skin to the store. He said God had heard his
+prayers and made his family suddenly rich.
+
+The storekeeper paid him forty-five dollars. That seemed like a
+fortune. The price was not paid in cash, however, but in food.
+
+Staggering under the load he came back to his hut, and when the stuff
+was put on the shelves it looked like such a lot he began to think he
+and his family never would be able to get it eaten before the end of
+the world came.
+
+So he sent out for his friends and neighbors.
+
+Be sure they came. An Eskimo can smell food cooking (or even merely
+rotting) for miles beyond the power of sight to detect it.
+
+The invitation ran: "Come and eat and stay with me." And then the
+Eskimo ran too, the big ones tumbling over the little ones, and the
+dogs outstripping their masters, and all making loud noises according
+to their kind.
+
+Alas! in two days they had literally eaten their generous host out of
+house and home, and along with the dogs of the quarreling packs there
+was the wolf of hunger gnawing at the door.
+
+One of the Newfoundland fishermen left an Eskimo in charge of his
+supplies for the winter. Of these provisions he had set aside plenty
+for the Eskimo--for he knew how much a "husky" can eat. The Eskimo
+seems to have a "bread-basket" quite as extensible as any dog he
+drives.
+
+Then all the other Eskimo came swarming: and he fed them all, so that
+in two days the whole crowd were starving together.
+
+Grenfell found that the white man, green to the business of
+dog-driving or whale-hunting, had to win the respect of the Eskimo.
+
+The Eskimo knows that most of his paleface brethren from the south are
+wholly unable to paddle their own canoes.
+
+The white man, as a rule, cannot slay the seal, nor catch the cod, nor
+catch anything else except a cold.
+
+He cannot stand up to a polar bear with a knife in fair fight.
+
+He cannot sit out on a rock in a rain-storm all day without an
+umbrella and seem to enjoy it.
+
+He cannot stand hunger, thirst and frost, and he chokes when the fumes
+and the black smoke of oil lamps get into his throat.
+
+Then he is so funny about food! He doesn't care for stinking fish: he
+doesn't like his meat crawling with maggots after it has been buried
+in the ground; he doesn't know how much better molasses tastes when
+mice have fallen into it and expired.
+
+The white man washes. How silly! He takes a brush made of little white
+bristles and rubs his teeth with it. Well, if the white man's mouth,
+which is full of water, isn't clean, then what part of him can be
+clean? And why does he turn up his nose at the Eskimo for being dirty?
+
+As for smells, what is a bad smell? The Eskimo doesn't seem to know.
+In Kipling's wonderful address on "Travel," before the Royal
+Geographical Society, he had much to say about smells, and how they
+suggest places. Eskimo taken to the World's Fair in Chicago were
+homesick for the smell of decaying blubber, rancid whale-meat,
+steaming bodies in the igloo, the rich perfume of the dogs, and all
+the other aromatic comforts of home. As smells are their special
+delight, so dirt is their peculiar glory. A bath in warm water would
+make them as unhappy as it makes a cat.
+
+Fond of eating as they are, they like a change of food, and if
+bear-meat is all they find to eat in a certain spot, they hitch up and
+hike on to a better meal at a distance. They always want to be on the
+go. They rarely stay in one place more than a year or two.
+
+Even the rifle does not seem, in the long run, to be helping them
+much. When the sealer used a harpoon, he hardly ever missed the seal,
+for he always struck at close range. But with the rifle, shooting from
+afar, the sea often swallows up his prey ere he can reach it. The
+walrus has gone to the farthest North and the seal is becoming gun-shy
+very fast.
+
+As a hunter, the Eskimo is not wanting in nerve. A mighty hunter north
+of Nain was out gunning for big birds--ptarmigan, guillemot and
+divers,--when he came on a robust and fierce polar bear, a monstrous
+specimen.
+
+The Eskimo had a shotgun, not a rifle. It takes a ball cartridge of
+large calibre to do for Mr. Bruin ordinarily--and he can "make his
+getaway" with a good deal of lead in him. But the "husky" calmly
+walked up close to the bear, and discharged his shotgun pointblank in
+the face of the astonished animal. If the hunter had been at a
+distance, the bear would have minded the dose about as much as a pinch
+of pepper. As it was, the animal was blinded, and turned in fury on
+the hunter.
+
+The Eskimo tore off his sealskin tunic and threw it over the bear's
+head, the way a bull-fighter confuses a charging bull with a mantilla.
+The bear stopped to tear the garment in pieces before proceeding to
+kill and devour the owner.
+
+But the delay was fatal to Mr. Bear. In jig-time the hunter had
+reloaded the gun. He put the second charge into the bear's head
+through the eye,--and the monster expired at his feet.
+
+The boys have bows and arrows; they begin by practising on small birds
+and later become proficient with a gun, so that by the time they are
+twelve years old they are veteran hunters.
+
+The greatest joy in the life of the Eskimo is to spend a day in a
+seal-hunt.
+
+Hours before dawn, the hunter climbs a rock and looks out to sea,
+anxious to learn if it will be a good day for his watery business.
+
+Then he gets his breakfast. In the old days, it was a drink of water.
+Nowadays, if the Eskimo has learned to like the white man's hot drink,
+it may be a cup of coffee.
+
+At any rate, he drinks his breakfast: he doesn't eat it. He says food
+in his stomach makes him unhappy in the kayak.
+
+The only food he takes with him is a plug of tobacco. He carries the
+kayak to the water, puts his weapons where he can get his hands on
+them instantly, climbs into the hole amidship and fastens his jacket
+round the circular rim.
+
+He may have to go a dozen miles out to sea. Now and then, to vary the
+paddling, he throws a bird-dart. Like the Eskimo harpoon, this dart
+and the stick that throws it are most ingenious contrivances, and
+beautifully wrought.
+
+The hunter grabs the beak of a wounded bird in his teeth, and with a
+wrench breaks the creature's neck. He then ties his prey to the rear
+of the kayak and grins at the other hunters.
+
+At the hunting-ground, seals' heads are to be seen everywhere, like
+raisins in a pudding. This is not sealing on the ice, as along the
+coast of Newfoundland: it is hunting them in open water--a very
+different thing.
+
+Papik (let us call him) spots the seal he wants and creeps up on it,
+paddling warily.
+
+The seal, a wise creature where such hunting is concerned, sees him
+and dives.
+
+Papik rests on his paddle, and gets his harpoon ready for the
+reappearance of the seal.
+
+It is a waiting game. Whenever the seal bobs up, the kayak is a little
+nearer, for while the seal is under water a few strokes of the paddle
+have cut down the distance.
+
+A seal can stay under water a long, long time.
+
+But an Eskimo, for his part, can sit all day as still as a tombstone
+in a cemetery.
+
+Woe be to the furry creature, if it waits a fraction of a second too
+long before it dives!
+
+In the clear sunlight the shaft flashes whistling from the throwing
+stick, the barb strikes, and the seal goes down in a welter of
+blood-stained foam. At the end of the harpoon line is a bladder--and
+as the bladder dances away over the surface, sometimes bobbing out of
+sight, Papik is after it like a hound chasing a rabbit.
+
+The bladder is to the barbed harpoon what the fisherman's float is to
+the baited hook.
+
+When the seal comes up, furious to attack and punish the hunter, it
+first tears the bladder in pieces--then it makes at the kayak.
+
+But Papik is calmly ready. He has a lance with which he takes careful
+aim.
+
+The seal comes on, bent double to hurl itself forward with all its
+might. It seems strange that a creature usually so gentle can show
+such ferocity.
+
+The lance is flung. It goes through the seal's mouth and comes out at
+the back of the neck. The seal shakes its head violently, but it is
+doomed.
+
+Papik's second lance strikes through a flipper into the lungs.
+
+The seal is still alive as he comes close. Papik stabs it with his
+long knife, and it ceases to struggle at last. The seal is a creature
+that clings to life a long, long time. He ties the seal to the stern
+of the kayak, rearranges his apparatus, coils his rope, puts his
+lances in their place, and is ready for another. If he is in luck, he
+may paddle homeward with four seals, and even more, in his wake.
+
+If a storm comes before he gets to the shore, his watermanship is
+severely tested. He fights not only to bring his boat and himself
+through the tumult of the waters: he means to save every one of those
+carcasses wallowing along behind.
+
+In the midst of his hard fighting with the waves, which turn him over
+and roll him about, as he stubbornly rights himself after each
+capsizing and hurls himself through the next curving green hillside of
+water, he comes upon a helpless comrade.
+
+Ordinarily, the second man, Patuak, could bob up again and go on, like
+stalwart Papik.
+
+But Patuak's jacket worked loose at the rim of the body-hole of the
+kayak. The water rushed in. Now he is water-logged. He will lose his
+boat, his seals, his life, unless Papik can save him.
+
+Is Papik tempted to think only of himself and leave Patuak to his
+fate? If he is, it does not appear in what he does. He runs his kayak
+alongside that of his friend: he puts his paddle across both boats,
+and if he cannot bring in both kayaks, with such help as Patuak is
+able to give, he may even carry Patuak lying across the prow of his
+own boat.
+
+It is easier to drown a seal than to drown an Eskimo.
+
+The women stand on the rocks, shielding their eyes with their hands as
+they gaze eagerly seaward--just as the women of Nantucket stood on the
+roofs of the houses in olden times watching and waiting for the
+whaling-fleet.
+
+At the first sign of the approaching hunters a cry goes up: "They are
+coming!"
+
+Then they begin to count.
+
+They thank their own idea of Heaven when they find that--seals or no
+seals--their men are coming back in safety.
+
+If a man is towing seals, they shout his name with joy--and after it
+put the word "kaligpok," which means "towing."
+
+The women haul in the boats, rub noses with their husbands to show
+their affection, and proceed to prepare the feast of raw blubber.
+
+After that feast the men tell the story of the day's work--without
+boasting, but with touches of humor that send the listeners off into
+ringing peals of laughter.
+
+The story-telling is a part of the seal-hunt. The phrases are
+straight-flung as a seal-lance.
+
+"When the time came for using the harpoon, I looked to it, I took it,
+I seized it, I gripped it, I had it fast in my hand, I balanced
+it"--and so on. The audience, mouths agape, misses no word. It is the
+nearest thing the Eskimos have to motion pictures--and what a motion
+picture the whole of the seal-hunt is! No wonder the hunter lolls back
+like a lord, and lets himself be waited on, a conquering hero.
+
+The old men feel their youth renewed as they sit and listen to these
+wonder-tales. In their turn, they are moved to tell how they met the
+walrus in fair fight and overcame him. Perhaps the dreaded tusk went
+right through the side of the boat and wounded the hunter. But there
+are no friends like Eskimo friends for a man in such a plight. They
+killed the walrus--they dined off the meat--and the tusks are kept to
+this day to show for it. A skin canoe against a walrus--that is a
+battle indeed. The younger men know what it means: and the old man is
+comforted by the remembrance of what he used to be.
+
+They are patient people, the Eskimo, and they need all the patience
+they have. An Inspector sent a boat-load of Eskimo to a fiord to get
+some grass for his goats.
+
+They were gone a long time, and he wondered what had become of them.
+
+When at last they returned, he asked them why they remained away so
+long. They told him that when they got to the place where he told them
+to go, they found the grass was too short. So they had to sit down and
+wait until it grew. Their time was of no value. And they had their
+orders to obey!
+
+The world owes it to these brave people not to take from them their
+birthright to their few possessions in the far places where they
+dwell.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+LITTLE PRINCE POMIUK
+
+
+There was an Eskimo boy named Pomiuk who lived in the far north of
+Labrador, at Nachoak Bay. Pomiuk had the regular sea-and-land training
+of the Eskimo boy. In summer his family lived in a skin tent, in
+winter they occupied an ice igloo. It is a fine art making one of
+those rounded domes--the curving blocks must be shaped and fitted
+exactly, so as to come out even at the top.
+
+Blubber in a stone dish supplied light and heat. If the air got too
+thick, father could thrust the handle of his dog-whip through the
+roof. Nobody bothered about bathing on Saturday night, and nobody
+minded the smell of rotten whale-meat for the dogs. In an atmosphere
+that would stifle a white man, Pomiuk and his brothers and sisters
+throve and laughed and had the time of their lives. Pomiuk had his own
+whip of braided walrus hide, and even when he was little the dogs
+respected him and ran forward when he shouted "oo-isht!" turned to
+the right at "ouk!" and stopped and sat down panting when he shouted
+"ah!"
+
+When Pomiuk was ten years old a ship came on a strange errand.
+Pomiuk's family and their friends were fishing for cod. But when the
+strange ship dropped anchor, they flocked to it shouting in their own
+tongue "Stranger! stranger!" When they learned why it came they were
+amazed.
+
+An Eskimo interpreter who came with the white men from the south
+explained that what they wanted was to take the Eskimo to that far-off
+land called America, where at a place called Chicago most wonderful
+things were gathered together in huge igloos for all the world to see.
+They wanted the Eskimo to come themselves and to bring with them their
+boats and dogs, their sleds, their tools, their clothing, and the
+things with which they hunted whales and seals and polar bears. In
+fact the white men could not pretend to show the world anything very
+remarkable, unless such clever people as the Eskimo brought their
+things with them.
+
+The men from the south urged and flattered and argued till a number
+of the Eskimo let themselves be persuaded. The Eskimo had no idea of
+the trouble and disaster they were letting themselves in for, or they
+never would have started. The beautiful fairy-tales told by the white
+men inflamed their imaginations. They had always been very well
+pleased with their own white, cold world of whales and seals and
+kayaks--those canoes in which they are as much at home as the fish in
+the sea. But here was a chance to travel, and see marvels, and come
+home and rouse the envy of those who had not dared. It was too good a
+chance to miss. They would return rich men, and have nothing to do but
+brag about their adventures for the rest of their lives.
+
+Pomiuk's father didn't care to go. But he was broad-minded. It was a
+big sacrifice for him to part with his wife and son, for it is the
+teeth of the women that must chew the sealskins to make them pliable
+for shoes and clothes: it is the fingers of women that do all the
+sewing. But Pomiuk's mother could show the helpless white women how to
+make skin boots, and Pomiuk could teach the paleface men and children
+to use the dog whip as he used it every day. If the Eskimo brought
+back money enough to buy many things at the nearest trading-post, the
+time spent on the long southward trek would not be wasted. The Eskimo,
+unlike the northern Indian, is a good business man, counting his
+puppies after they are born and his fox-skins before he spends them.
+
+So the Eskimo sailed away from their own coast, with a gnawing
+homesickness at heart, though their lips were silent about it: and
+when they got to Chicago the life was strange with hideous sight and
+sound, and altogether unbearable: and they longed to get away from it
+to the sea and the ice and behold again their northern lights, which
+to the Eskimo are the spirits of the dead at play.
+
+But there they were cooped up behind a stockade, like creatures at the
+zoo, to amuse the crowd, and be giggled at and poked toward as if they
+were some newly imported breed of monkey. An Eskimo likes as little as
+any other human to have fun made of him.
+
+Worst of all, they lived in the white man's houses, and found the four
+walls instead of the "wide and starry sky" intolerable. A snow house
+has its own kind of stuffiness--the smell of whale-blubber and
+seal-oil to Eskimo nostrils is a sweet perfume. To be cooped up in a
+bedroom, and expected to sleep on a mattress with pillows, is pure
+torture.
+
+While they were on the exhibition stand, in the torrid heat, they had
+to wear those heavy clothes of furs and skins which the ladies said
+looked so picturesque. They knew how the polar bear felt in his cage
+away from his ice-blocks. The food the white man ate with relish was
+such queer stuff. They longed for that delicious tidbit, the flipper
+of a seal. How good the entrails of a gull, or a fox's stomach would
+have tasted! But the white men seemed to think that coffee, and
+watermelon and corn on the cob, and ham and eggs, and the pies their
+Eskimo mothers never used to make were good enough for them. Except
+for the warm blood of the seal, the Eskimo ordinarily has no use for a
+hot drink.
+
+Several of the older Eskimo wilted away like flowers, and died. They
+were buried and forgotten; and when the dogs died they were buried
+and forgotten too: there was about the same lack of ceremony in the
+one case as in the other.
+
+But little Pomiuk through thick and thin was the joyous life of the
+party. They worked him hard, because he amused the visitors. The
+visitors would throw nickels and dimes into the enclosure, and as the
+coins flickered in the air Pomiuk would lash out at them with his
+thirty-five foot whip. If he nicked the coin it was his. Then he would
+laugh--a very musical laugh, that could be heard a long way off. He
+was a jolly, friendly little soul, and he wore a smile that hardly
+came off even when he slept.
+
+But there came a time when even happy little Pomiuk could not smile.
+
+One day as he leapt high in the air, agile as a Russian dancer, to
+bring down one of those spinning coins with his whip, he fell on the
+boards, his hip striking a nail that stuck out.
+
+His mother ran to pick him up. His face was twisted with agony.
+
+He tried to stand, for her sake, but the effort was too much for him,
+and he sank back in her arms, weak as a baby. What was she to do? The
+men who ran the exhibit had not kept their promises. Pomiuk was the
+chief bread-winner for them all. The coins he had nicked with his whip
+were most of what they had to spend.
+
+With this money they sent out and got a so-called "surgeon" who did
+not know his business, but took the money just the same. He patched up
+poor "Prince" Pomiuk so that the boy was worse off than before.
+
+The Fair closed: the Eskimo were stranded. If that had happened on a
+sea-beach at home, they would have known what to do: they would have
+laughed--for they are merry people, like our southern negroes--and
+they would have killed sea-birds with stones and made their way
+alongshore. But to be stranded in Chicago is another story. God knows
+how a few survivors of the band found pity in men's hearts, and
+straggled back to their home at Nachoak Bay.
+
+Pomiuk's wound never healed--he could not run about, nor walk, nor
+even stand. His mother had to carry him everywhere. In Newfoundland
+the fishermen and the sealers, desperately poor as they were, took
+them into their bare cabins, and gave them bread and tea taken from
+the mouths of their own hungry children.
+
+Dr. Frederick Cook, creation's champion liar, did a golden deed for
+which the Recording Angel should give him a good mark in the Book of
+Life. He made room for several of the Eskimo on his journey to the
+Labrador coast: and fishing-schooners took the rest of the survivors.
+
+Imagine how happy Pomiuk was, in spite of the pain in his hip, when he
+thought of crawling back into the mouth of his own snow house again,
+and rubbing noses with his father once more!
+
+But when the mother and the child were put ashore at Nachoak Bay--they
+were told that the father's spirit was at play with the rest among the
+northern lights. In this world they would not see him again. He had
+been murdered while his wife and child were in Chicago.
+
+It was at that dark hour that Dr. Grenfell came into his life.
+
+Grenfell found the poor little boy, who had earned so much money, and
+brought so much glory to his tribe, lying naked on the rocks beside
+the hut. The mother had married again, and gone off "over the
+mountains" with the other children, leaving her crippled son to the
+tender mercy of the neighbors. It was indeed a "come-down" in the
+world for a "prince," whose father was a "king" among his fellows. It
+was deemed best to send Pomiuk south on the little hospital steamer
+with the Doctor. The Doctor could fix him up, if anybody could, and
+moreover--this was the clinching argument--he was "no good fishing."
+So the next day found Pomiuk bound south, clasping his only worldly
+possession--a letter from a clergyman of Andover, Massachusetts. There
+was a photograph with it. If you asked Pomiuk what he had there, he
+would turn on that magic smile and show you the picture, and say: "Me
+love even him."
+
+The minister who wrote the letter sent money for the care of the poor
+"Prince." Next summer Grenfell saw him again, and the child laughed as
+he said, "Me Gabriel Pomiuk now." A Moravian missionary had given him
+the name. They had made him as comfortable as possible at the Indian
+Harbor hospital: his own disposition made him happy. He had been moved
+from the hospital to a near-by home, and he hopped about on crutches
+as gayly as though he could run and play like the other children.
+
+But malignant disease in his hip was sapping his strength, just as the
+ants of Africa will eat away a leg of furniture till it is a hollow
+shell, and one day the whole table or chair falls crashing. His
+strength was ebbing fast. Suddenly he became very ill: he was put to
+bed, with high fever, and was often unconscious. In a week he was
+dead. But that little generous, courageous life was the
+foundation-stone of Dr. Grenfell's noble orphanage at St. Anthony, put
+up with the pennies of American children, where I had the pleasure of
+telling dog-stories to smiling Eskimo boys in the summer of 1919.
+Gabriel is the angel of comfort: and this small Gabriel has left
+behind him the comfort of fatherless homes in Labrador for ages yet to
+be.
+
+Dr. Grenfell says that on the night of his passing the heavens were
+aflame with the aurora. It was as though little Prince Pomiuk's father
+had come to welcome him, and they were at play once more in the old
+games they knew.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+CAPTURED BY INDIANS
+
+
+In the lonely interior of Labrador in midsummer an old man sat on the
+rocky ground with a ring of Indians about him.
+
+He was "Labrador" Cabot of Boston. Year after year he had gone to
+Labrador to visit the Indian tribes and study their ways. He could
+talk the Indian language and understand what they said to him.
+
+"What's the matter with your leg?" asked the Chief, a big, strong
+fellow with keen eyes. "Can't you walk? We must get started if we want
+to find the deer."
+
+"I think I must have broken my leg when I slipped and fell on the
+rocks," answered Mr. Cabot.
+
+He made an effort to rise and stand, but sank back helplessly.
+
+A curious, evil grin spread across the red man's face.
+
+"You're sure you can't walk?"
+
+Mr. Cabot shook his head.
+
+"What will you do?"
+
+"One thing is sure," said Mr. Cabot, "I'll have to stay with you if
+I'm to get out of this place alive."
+
+"We can't let you keep us back," answered the Indian. "We might leave
+you here with a fire and something to eat."
+
+"And what would I do after the fire went out, and the food was gone?"
+
+The Indian shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know."
+
+"Can't some of your men make a litter of boughs and carry me?" pleaded
+Mr. Cabot.
+
+"They could if they wanted to," answered the Indian, coldly. "But I
+don't think they want to."
+
+"Haven't we always been friends?" urged Mr. Cabot.
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"Haven't I been here summer after summer, and helped you, and given
+medicine to sick people?"
+
+The Indian picked up handfuls of sand and threw them on the fire.
+"Yes, and you were always writing in a little book. Maybe when you
+went away from here you told lies to the world about us. Who knows?"
+
+Mr. Cabot was puzzled. Was this the friendly, peaceful Chief he knew
+before he had the misfortune to fall and hurt his leg?
+
+In spite of the pain he was suffering, he tried to talk calmly and not
+show that he was afraid of being left behind. "Why have you turned
+against me?"
+
+"What do you mean?" the Indian chief answered.
+
+"A little while ago you seemed like my friend. Now you are willing to
+leave me here where there are no fish, and the deer do not come, and
+the mosquitoes are worse than any wild animals. What is the meaning of
+all this?"
+
+"I will tell you," the Indian answered, very slowly. "You must pay us
+for what a white man did to us."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Listen, and you shall hear.
+
+"Last year, we had fox furs--very many and very fine. We had risked
+our lives: we had starved and frozen to get them. All over Ungava we
+had tracked and trapped in the wilderness.
+
+"Then--see what happened. A trader came among us. He had much money.
+It was not like any money we had seen before, but he said it was a new
+kind of money. And he would give us more of it for our furs than any
+man had given us before.
+
+"He gave us much to drink. We had a feast, and dancing. The trader
+gave handsome presents to our wives. Beads and bright cloth for
+dresses. He gave us tobacco, and whiskey.
+
+"When we did not know what we were doing, he bought our furs. He
+bought them all. He gave us this new, strange money and much of it.
+Then he went away. We fired guns in the air to honor him. We shook
+hands with him. We thought he was our friend. We promised to be
+friends with him as long as sun and moon endured.
+
+"He smiled, and waved, and went away--and we, we had nothing of him
+but the money. It was paper, all of it, very bright and new and
+green, with printed marks on it we could not read.
+
+"Some shook their heads when he had gone, and said, 'No, no, brothers.
+We should not have taken this green paper and given him those furs.'
+
+"But others said, 'Look what he has paid us! We are all rich men. The
+price is better than we ever had before!'
+
+"The old, wise men said, 'How do you know that it is more, when you do
+not know how much it is?'
+
+"So, night and day, there was talking to and fro--along the trail by
+day, around the camp-fire when the sun had set.
+
+"It soon came time for us to send men down to Rigolet, on Hamilton
+Inlet, there to buy at the Hudson's Bay store the things that we would
+need in the winter time.
+
+"We sent twelve of the strong young men in their canoes to get the
+things and bring them home to our tents. We were happy when we thought
+of all the guns and tobacco, all the flour and the fine clothes so
+much money would buy.
+
+"They went: and they were gone many days, while we waited in one
+fixed place for them, and in our minds spent the money many times
+over."
+
+Then the Indian paused. He was squatting on his haunches, and puffing
+at his pipe. Mr. Cabot's leg was giving him much pain, but he was too
+proud to ask the Indian to do anything for him.
+
+The Indian's face grew very stern as he remembered. His tone became as
+hard as the expression of his face. He looked at Mr. Cabot and
+clenched his fist. "When our men came to the storekeeper, they walked
+all about the store. 'I'll take that fine dress,' said one. 'Give me
+that shotgun,' said another. 'I will have this bag of tobacco,' said a
+third. Some took flour, and some chose bright ornaments for their
+wives, and others took candy, and one man got a talking-machine. Some
+chose the best clothes in the store. They also took much food of every
+kind, and ammunition for the guns.
+
+"They made great piles of the things on the floor, to take them to the
+canoes.
+
+"Then they brought out their money to pay for all these things.
+
+"'What is that stuff?' said the storekeeper.
+
+"'That? It is our money. It is what a trader paid us for our furs.'
+
+"'What was his name?'
+
+"'That we do not know. We did not ask. We do not care who buys from
+us; all we care is that he buys. One man's money is as good as
+another's.'
+
+"Then the storekeeper laughed in their faces. And he said: 'You have
+been fooled. You have been fooled as easily as little children. Do you
+know what this "money" is that you have given me?'
+
+"'No,' they said.
+
+"'It is not money at all,' he told them. 'It is nothing but labels
+from beer bottles. You cannot have those things you have piled up on
+the floor. I will take them back and keep them here until you bring me
+real money for them.'
+
+"Then they said to him, 'But it is all we have. We cannot go back to
+our people with nothing.'
+
+"He said: 'I cannot help that. It is no fault of mine.'
+
+"They wanted to fight--but it would do no good to kill the agent or
+drive him away. There would be no one from whom to get things another
+year.
+
+"'You ought to have brought your furs to me. I would have given you
+real money for them,' said the agent.
+
+"They went away very sorrowful. After many days they came back to us
+again. We were very glad when we saw them coming--but we wondered that
+their canoes were not piled high with the things we had told them to
+buy.
+
+"When we heard their story we were very sorrowful. We talked about it
+a great deal. We said, 'What shall we do?'
+
+"Then we made up our minds. This is what we decided. We said: 'The
+next white man that comes among us we shall hold. We shall not let him
+go until he pays to us a sum of money, seven hundred dollars, equal to
+that which we have lost. Since he is a white man he or his friends
+must make up to us that which we have lost at the hands of a white
+man.'
+
+"So now you see--you are the man. And it is you that must pay back to
+us the money."
+
+"But I haven't seven hundred dollars."
+
+"Then you must promise that you will pay it, or get your friends to
+pay it. These many years you have come here among us. We will trust
+you for that. It is much that we should trust you--when it is one of
+your own people who brought such suffering and loss upon us."
+
+"But this is an outrage!" said Mr. Cabot. "I never did anything to you
+but good. You know that."
+
+"Yes, we know that," said the Indian, gravely. "But we shall leave you
+here unless you pay. You cannot find your way out alone--even if you
+could stand and walk upon your broken leg. We shall not carry you from
+here unless you pay the money. Is that not so?"
+
+He turned to the others, who had not said one word all this while:
+they had been merely looking on and listening.
+
+"Yes," they said. "He has spoken for us all. As he has said, we shall
+do. You shall be left here, if you do not pay."
+
+"The Great Spirit has given you into our hands," the Chief declared.
+"When you came to us this summer again, we said among ourselves that
+he had sent you. We did not know that he would cause you to break your
+leg. We were going to keep you even if this had not happened. Now the
+Great Spirit has caused this hurt to happen to you. We see, by this,
+that we were not mistaken. He sent you to us as surely as he sends the
+fish or the deer when we have need of food. It is for you to choose,
+if you will pay, and go on with us to the coast--or refuse to pay and
+be left here in the wilderness to die."
+
+So Cabot had to sign a promise to pay them the $700 for a great rascal
+whose name neither he nor those Indians will ever know.
+
+They made a stretcher and put him on it, and carried him with them out
+to the coast.
+
+If they had not done so--his white bones would now be bleaching beside
+the cold embers of a camp-fire in the desolate interior of Labrador.
+
+Do you blame those Indians for wanting to "take it out" of the first
+member they met, of a race that bred such a rogue as the man who
+cheated them?
+
+Dr. Grenfell tells us that for about two hundred years the Eskimo of
+the interior and the Indians of the coast were at war with one
+another. There was a battle, long, long ago, in which Indians killed a
+thousand Eskimo.
+
+But nowadays when the Eskimo and Indians come together they have no
+quarrel.
+
+There was such a meeting at Nain in 1910. It was the first time the
+Eskimo had ever seen Indians in that tiny fishing-village, and they
+"ran about in circles" in their excitement.
+
+It was on a Sunday afternoon when the Indians appeared. They had come
+down a stream from the interior, and when they rounded the bend in
+their boats--of a kind that was strange to the Eskimo--the latter set
+up a cackle like that of a barnyard when a hawk appears.
+
+The Indians, with their bundles on their shoulders, filed ashore, made
+their way to a hut the kindly Moravian missionary let them use, and
+sat in muddy, weary silence round the walls.
+
+The Eskimo crowded into the doorway, their tongues hanging out,
+staring at these queer folk as if they had dropped from the moon.
+
+But other Eskimo, kind-hearted and hospitable, were moved to show the
+strangers what shore life was like.
+
+They got busy at the stove, boiled water, and presently handed about
+large cups of tea, with sugar and biscuit.
+
+The Indians devoured the refreshments thankfully, for they were very
+hungry. The Northern Indians lead lives that are often sharpened with
+hunger for long periods together. You can see it in their lank frames
+and their gaunt faces. The southern Indians, nearer the flesh-pots,
+with kindly priests at work among them, look roly-poly, chubby and
+content.
+
+It was a very silent party. The Indians who had been so bold as to
+come this far to the sea were probably homesick for the flat stones,
+the dwarf birches, the far-lying ponds and cold swirling streams, the
+hordes of mosquitoes and the caribou of their lone spaces at Indian
+House Lake. The cluster of houses at Nain looked to them as New York
+would seem to one who had always dwelt in the heart of the Maine
+woods.
+
+By morning, after a sound sleep on the floor, they were eager to begin
+trading.
+
+A southern Indian translated.
+
+They had brought deerskins chiefly. There are few valuable furs in
+their part of Labrador, but they did their best to make a brave
+showing with the few they were able to find.
+
+You can imagine their people at home at Indian House Lake saying
+before the start of the expedition: "Oh, if we only had some beaver or
+marten skins! Wouldn't it be nice, now, if we could get a silver or a
+cross fox? Those people down there at the coast know such a lot, and
+are so rich, and so particular! Nothing but the very best we have will
+do."
+
+They held up a bearskin with great pride. They had a wolverine,--the
+only sort of fur on which snow will not freeze,--several wolf-skins,
+and moccasins, embroidered. The translator would point to what they
+wanted on the shelves. Then they would take the object in their hands
+and weigh it very carefully, thinking of all those portages on the
+homeward trail--probably twenty at least--over which every ounce must
+be carried on a man's shoulders.
+
+They bought lots of tea--one man getting as much as sixteen pounds.
+They wanted gay prints. Other things to which they took a fancy were
+tobacco, cartridges, fish-hooks, matches, needles, and pearl buttons.
+First they handed over the skins, and received money in return: then
+they spent the money. Mouth-organs were much in demand, and they
+looked longingly at an accordeon and tried to play on it and were
+enchanted with the squawks that came out: but they were not rich
+enough to buy it. One boy bought a clay pipe, and spent all his time
+licking it. They were not allowed to smoke in the store, but they spat
+wherever they pleased.
+
+Doctor and Mrs. Grenfell are out on the war-path against this
+disgusting custom, and they have had very hard work to persuade even
+the "liveyeres" that there is danger concealed in germs that cannot be
+seen, when saliva dries and the wind blows it about. In all this
+glorious fresh air it is mournful to think of the many who die of
+consumption, pneumonia and all sorts of lung-trouble, because of
+stifling houses and unclean habits.
+
+The Indians at first were extremely shy. Then they waxed merry, and as
+they bought they laughed and chatted. In the party were three women.
+One of them was young and good-looking, and she was showered with
+presents--kettles, cups and saucers, perfumed soap and cologne! A
+young man bought for her anything she wanted--and every time he made a
+purchase for the fair one the others laughed aloud. And each time he
+bestowed a gift, one of the other women turned to her husband and made
+him buy the same thing for her. Human nature is the same on the
+Labrador as on Coney Island.
+
+It took two days for them to do their buying, and wrap up their
+purchases, and say farewell.
+
+By this time Indians and Eskimo were sworn friends.
+
+The Eskimo crowded to the end of the little pier, and knelt down to
+reach over and grasp the hands of the parting guests. There were
+shouts of "Yomai!" from the Indians, and various cries in answer from
+the Eskimo. Then, crouching on their heels, the Indians trimmed their
+sails to the breeze and were borne swiftly round the point to be seen
+no more.
+
+How different is all this from the days of old, when the Eskimo were
+called "the most savage people in the world!"
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+ALONE ON THE ICE
+
+
+In April, 1908, Dr. Grenfell had the closest call of his life. Of
+course in April the ice and snow are still deep over the bays and
+forelands of Labrador and northern Newfoundland. There is not the
+slightest sign that spring with its flowers and mosquitoes is coming.
+All travel save by dog-team is at a standstill, and only a
+life-and-death message--such as Dr. Grenfell is constantly getting--is
+a reason for facing the howling winds and the driving snows of the
+blizzards that the bravest seamen and the mightiest hunters have good
+reason to fear.
+
+On Easter Sunday morning at his St. Anthony home Dr. Grenfell was
+walking back from the little church to his house after the morning
+service, thinking of the sermon, and of his mother in England.
+
+Suddenly a boy came running after him from the hospital near by.
+
+"Oh, Doctor, Doctor!"
+
+The Doctor turned in his deep, floundering steps to see who it was
+that called him.
+
+"Doctor," panted the small messenger, "I came to the hospital to fetch
+ye. There's a man with dogs, from sixty mile away down to the south,
+and he says they must have a doctor come to 'em, right off, or the
+boy'll die."
+
+The Doctor put his kind hand on the little fellow's shoulder. "Who is
+it that is sick?"
+
+"I dunno, Doctor, but he's wonderful sick. He'll die unless ye come."
+
+The Doctor thought a moment--then he remembered. It was a young man on
+whom he had operated two weeks before, for a bone disease that was
+eating away his thigh.
+
+Those who had tried to help him had closed up the wound--the worst
+thing to do. The poison had collected, and probably the leg would have
+to be taken off.
+
+The Doctor knew that every minute counted. He went to his kennels in
+the snow and picked out his sturdiest dog-team. They whined and pawed
+and jumped up and down, eager to be chosen. The real "husky" hates to
+loaf, except when he has come in from a long, hard run late at night
+and has had his meal of fish. He wants to be at work all the time, and
+when the sled is loaded the dogs must be tied up tight or they will
+dart away at breakneck speed and perhaps upset everything. This sleigh
+was heavy-laden with instruments, drugs and dressings. A second team
+was to follow, with the messengers.
+
+Dr. Grenfell loved, as with a personal affection, every one of the
+five beasts that were taking him on this long haul to save a boy's
+life.
+
+First came "Brin," by common consent the surest leader anywhere on the
+coast. The strongest dog of the team--big and affectionate and
+playful--was "Doc." A black and white dog whose muscles were like
+small wire ropes, was "Spy," and "Moody," now in his third year, was a
+black-and-tan named for Dr. Grenfell's friend Will Moody, son of the
+evangelist. "Moody" had the reputation of never looking behind him: he
+was eager to go on to the bitter end.
+
+The youngest dog of the team, named "Watch," had beautiful soft eyes,
+a Gordon setter coat, and long legs capable of carrying him over the
+frozen crust at a tremendous rate of speed. Then there was "Sue," the
+most wolf-like of the lot--black as jet, her pointed ears the standing
+question-marks for further orders. "Jerry" was a perfect lady, quick
+on her feet as a dancer, and so fond of play and so demonstrative that
+she often tipped the Doctor over when he had a boxing-bout with her,
+and sent him sprawling on his back in the snow.
+
+"Jack," a black dog with the looks and the ways of a retriever, had
+"Moody's" good habit of going straight on without turning to see who
+followed, and he was put in the position of trust nearest the sledge.
+He liked to run with his nose close to the ground, and nothing that
+the trail or the snow-crust could tell any wise "husky" dog was a
+secret to the busy nose of this gentle-natured fellow.
+
+Do you wonder that Dr. Grenfell was proud and fond of these
+four-legged helpers, and that he gave them the tender care one bestows
+on children? It would have grieved him to the heart to think of any
+accident happening to any of them. He looked on them just as a Captain
+Scott or a Sir Ernest Shackleton regarded his mates on a Polar
+expedition. They were his friends and helpers. Some of them had stood
+by him in many a hard tussle with the cold and the stinging hail, with
+the rotten ice threatening to let them down into the river or the sea.
+With their bushy tails thrown over them like fur wraps, they had slept
+in the snow-drift round his camp-fires. They seemed to him like human
+beings, his little brothers. As he is fond of saying, "Dogs are much
+nicer than a Ford car. A Ford car can't come and kiss you good-night."
+
+Since it was late April, and the melting ice might mean a soaking any
+moment, Grenfell carried a spare outfit--a change of clothes, an
+oilskin suit, snowshoes, an axe, a rifle, a compass. He knew there was
+no place to stop and get any of these things if he should lose them.
+The most daring skipper of a boat or driver of a sled along the coast,
+the Doctor takes no chances when it comes to his equipment.
+
+Though the messengers had broken the trail on the up journey, they
+preferred to fall in behind the Doctor on the down trip. They knew
+that he would want to travel like the wind. They felt a certain
+security and comfort in letting him take the lead. It relieved them
+of a lot of responsibility for setting the course. There are always
+people traveling in Grenfell's wake who are willing to let him make
+the hard choices and take the daring chances. But a good reason for
+Grenfell's going first this time was that his picked team of young,
+strong, spry dogs were hustlers, whom it would be impossible to hold
+back, and the other dogs were heavier and slower.
+
+Although Grenfell in the twenty miles before nightfall twice called a
+halt, the slower team behind him was unable to catch up. He reached a
+small hamlet and had given his eager dogs their supper of two fish
+apiece, and was gathering the people together for prayers when the
+second team overtook him.
+
+In the night the weather changed. The wind began to blow from the
+northeast; a fog set in, with rain. The snow became mushy, to make
+hard going, and out in the bay the sea was ugly, with the water
+heaving the ice-pans about. The plan for the coming day was to make a
+run of forty miles, the first ten miles a short cut across a bay, over
+the salt-water ice.
+
+Grenfell did not want to get too far from his convoy, and so he let
+the second team start on ahead, with a lead of two hours.
+
+He told them just where to call a halt and wait for him. There was a
+log hut, or "tilt," at the half-way point. Since there was no one
+living on that part of the very lonely coast-line, this hut was a
+refuge fitted out with anything that a shipwrecked mariner or a
+benighted traveler by land might need--dry clothes, food, and
+medicines.
+
+"You go to the hut and wait there till I come," were the Doctor's
+final orders.
+
+The rain began to fall, and when Grenfell got under way it was such
+treacherous going that he couldn't cut straight across the bay as he
+wished, but had to keep closer to the land. The sea had risen in its
+wrath and thrown the pans of ice about, so that there were wide spaces
+between, and half a mile out from the shore it was clear water.
+
+But far out from the shore there was an island, and by a daring series
+of jumps across the cracks,--the dogs as buoyant as their master,
+hauling the sled as though it were a load of feathers,--Grenfell
+reached the island, and made the dogs rest--a hard thing to do--while
+he looked about him to see where the next lap of the journey would
+take him and them.
+
+It was four miles, he knew, to a rocky headland over yonder, if he
+ventured out on that uncertain field of ice. That would save several
+miles over the more prudent course alongshore.
+
+As far as he could see, the ice looked as though it would hold up the
+sled. It was rough--but a hardened voyager with a dog-team is
+accustomed to a hummocky road. It looked as if the sea had torn it up,
+as men tear up the paving blocks in a city street, and then thrown the
+bits together to make a hard, cohesive mass that men and dogs could
+surely trust. The strong wind seemed to have packed it in and the
+intense cold of the night, he supposed, had frozen it solid.
+
+The wind died down, and Grenfell found that he was deep in what is
+known as "sish"--soft ice as mushy as the name sounds. He compares it
+to oatmeal, and it must have been many feet deep. There was a thin
+coating of new ice on top of it, through which the whip-handle easily
+pierced.
+
+The "sish" ice is composed of the small fragments chipped off the
+floes after the pounding and grinding between the millstones of the
+great winds and the heavy seas. The changing breeze now blew from
+offshore, and instead of packing the ice together it was driving it
+apart. The packed "slob" was "running abroad," as the fisher-folk say.
+The ice-pans were so small that there was hardly one as large as a
+table-top.
+
+By this time the team had come to a halt on one of these tiny pans,
+and with the other pans floating about as the entire sheet was
+breaking up the peril was evident. It was not possible to go back--the
+way was cut off by the widening spaces between the pans. Only about a
+quarter of a mile was left between their pan and the shore.
+
+Grenfell threw off his oilskins, knelt by the side of the komatik, and
+ordered the dogs to make for the shore.
+
+It takes a great deal to "rattle" a husky. But the dogs, after about
+twenty yards of half-wading, half-swimming, were thoroughly
+frightened. They stopped, and the sled sank into the ice. With the
+sled in the freezing water, it was necessary for the dogs to pull
+hard, and now they too began to sink.
+
+Not long before, the father of the boy to whom the Doctor was going
+was drowned by being tangled in the dog's traces in just such a place
+as this. To avoid that danger, Grenfell got out his knife, and cut the
+traces in the water.
+
+But he still kept hold of the leader's trace, which he wound about his
+wrist.
+
+In the water there was not a piece of ice to be seen in which dogs or
+driver could put their trust. The dogs were as eager as their master
+to find something to cling to. Care-free and jolly as they had been
+hitherto, they knew as well as he that death by drowning stared their
+little caravan in the face.
+
+About twenty-five yards away there was a big lump of snow, such as
+children put up when they mean to make a snow-man. The leading dog,
+"Brin," as he wallowed about managed to reach it, at the end of his
+long trace of about sixty feet. "Brin" had black marks on his face,
+which made it look as though he were laughing all the time, like one
+who finds this world a grand, good joke. When he clambered out on the
+hummock he shook his coat and turned round and gazed calmly at his
+master.
+
+"He seemed to be grinning at me," says the Doctor.
+
+But it was no laughing matter for the other dogs, floundering about.
+
+Grenfell hauled himself along toward "Brin" by means of the trace
+still attached to his wrist. But suddenly "Brin" stepped out of his
+harness, and then the Doctor found himself sprawling and struggling in
+the water, with no means of getting to the place where "Brin" had
+found temporary safety.
+
+Grenfell thought this time it was all over. He had looked Death in the
+eyes before, but Death had decided to go by. This time, it did not
+seem possible to escape. He did not feel any great alarm--in fact, he
+became drowsy, and thought how easy it would be just to fall asleep
+and forget everything, as the icy water chilled and numbed his senses.
+He was like the weary traveler who drops into the snow-bank, on whom
+the torpor steals by slow degrees.
+
+Suddenly Grenfell caught sight of a big dog that had gone through the
+ice and was pulling the trace after him, in a desperate effort to
+reach the hummock on which "Brin" was sitting. Grenfell grabbed the
+trace, and hauled himself along after the animal. He calls this "using
+the dog as a bow anchor."
+
+But the other dogs were following this poor beast's example, and they
+crowded and jostled the Doctor so that it was hard for him to hold on.
+One of them, in fact, got on his shoulder, very much as a drowning man
+in his desperation will throw his arms round the neck of someone who
+tries to rescue him, and drag him under. This pushed Grenfell still
+deeper into the ice, and it was a question whether his energy would
+hold out in that frigid water.
+
+As they say on the football field, he now had only three yards to
+gain, and by a mighty effort he drew himself past his living anchor
+and climbed up on the piece of slob ice. He rested a moment to draw
+breath, and then began to haul his beloved dogs one after another up
+to a place beside him. They swam and panted through the lane in the
+ice that he had broken, and seemed to understand perfectly that their
+master was trying to save them, even though they had lost their heads
+and had almost drowned him.
+
+It would not do for them all to remain on that small, treacherous lump
+of ice. It might break in two at any moment with the combined weight
+of dogs and driver. It was slowly drifting with the tidal current out
+to the open sea, where all hope would be lost. Grenfell knew that if
+he were to save his team and himself--they were always first in his
+thoughts--he must act instantly.
+
+He stood up to survey the scene. About twenty yards away there was a
+good-sized pan floating about in the "sish" like a raft, such as that
+on which Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer floated down the Mississippi. To
+reach that raft would at any rate be to postpone death for a little
+while. But it was taking too much of a risk, to try to get from the
+little cake to the big one without a life line. How was he to make
+such a line, and then how was he to get it across the wide space
+between?
+
+Fortunately when the Doctor cut the dogs away from the sled he had not
+lost his knife: he had tied it to the back of one of the dogs. There
+it was still. It was the work of a joyful moment to untie it, and he
+fell to work cutting from the dogs' harness the sealskin traces that
+remained and stringing those together to make two long lines. His
+overalls, coat, hat and gloves were gone, but he still had his
+sealskin hip-boots. He took these off, shook them free from ice and
+water, and tied them on the backs of "Brin" and another dog. Then he
+fastened the lines to the two animals, tying the near ends round his
+wrists.
+
+"Hist!" he shouted--the signal to go on: but the dogs refused to
+budge. They were setting their own wits against their master's. Such
+dogs believe they know their business. They saw no proper place to go
+to. Why should they dash into the icy water for the sake of reaching
+another pan not much bigger than their own? If it were land--that
+would be another story. So they must have reasoned, in their doggish
+fashion. They had been devoted and obedient--but there were limits
+even to their faith.
+
+Grenfell three times threw the dogs off the Pan. Each time they
+struggled back upon it: and their master could not blame them.
+
+"This is really the end!" Grenfell told himself. "We never shall get
+out of this!"
+
+Just as a boy sometimes comes up to the scratch where a man has
+failed, a small dog may play the hero when a big one quits. That was
+the case here. The smallest dog of the lot, "Jack," came to the
+rescue. He was so small that he was not taken very seriously for his
+hauling power--but when it came to hunting, he was there with all four
+paws, and he was used as retriever when Dr. Grenfell went out with a
+gun. Here was a chance for him to show the stuff that was in his
+black, rough hide.
+
+"Jack!" said the Doctor. "Hist! Hist!" And he pointed to the other
+pan, and threw a piece of ice in that direction.
+
+"Jack" understood and instantly obeyed. In little more time than it
+takes to tell of it, his furry paws had taken his small body through
+and over the rotten mush. Since he was the lightest of the lot, he
+scarcely sank below the surface as he went. "His frame was little but
+his soul was large."
+
+When he got there he turned about, wagging his tail as a flag-signal,
+his tongue lolling out, his whole attitude seeming to say, "Well,
+aren't you pleased with me?"
+
+"Lie down!" shouted Grenfell, and the dog at once obeyed--"a little
+black fuzz ball on the white setting."
+
+That was an object lesson to "Brin" and the other dog. The next time
+he threw them off they made directly for the other pan. It was a hard
+fight to get there, but they must have said to themselves: "What dog
+has done, dog can do. If that little fellow can turn the trick, so can
+we." So they plashed and floundered through, their heads barely above
+the waves, and the salt spray in their eyes, till they had carried the
+lines across. The traces had been knotted securely under their
+bellies, so they could not come off when the Doctor pulled with the
+weight of his body against the lines.
+
+He took as much of a run as he could get in the few feet from side to
+side of the pan, and dived headlong into the "slob." It was a long,
+hard pull, but the lines held, and the dogs too, so that presently he
+found himself scrambling up beside them on the other pan where they
+were waiting with little "Jack."
+
+To his crushing disappointment, Dr. Grenfell found that the place
+where he now clung was if anything worse than the spot he had left. By
+this time all the other dogs but one poor fellow had made the
+distance, and were beside him, their eyes asking the piteous questions
+their tongues could not utter.
+
+"What does this mean, master? What are you going to do with us now?
+Which is the way home? Why don't we start? How soon are we going to
+have our suppers?"
+
+The pan was sinking: it could not hold them all. They must get off it
+at the earliest possible moment. This pan was nearer the shore than
+the one they had left, but all the time an offshore wind was shoving
+the entire ice-pack steadily out toward the open sea, so that, like
+the frog in the well, for every foot they gained they were losing two
+or three. All this time, Grenfell was longing for a chance to swim
+ashore--and the dogs would have followed him in that. Grenfell doesn't
+in the least mind a bath in icy waters. I remember one nipping day on
+the _Strathcona_ I came out on deck to find that he had just been
+taking his bath in the open by emptying the bucket over himself in
+the biting wind. "You could have had one too," he said, "but I've just
+lost the bucket overboard." I wonder that he didn't dive for it, as he
+dived for the cricket-ball on that earlier occasion.
+
+It was impossible to swim ashore from the pan--because there was that
+slushy "sish" filling all the gaps. The tiny table-top on which they
+were now crowded together measured about ten by twelve feet. It was
+not even solid ice--it was more like a great snowball loosely packed
+by the cold wind--and at any moment under the extra strain of the
+weight of men and dogs it might break up and let them all down into a
+watery grave. As the wind became more brisk and the sea grew rougher,
+the pan rocked about and bent and swayed, and the risk of its parting
+in the middle increased.
+
+The pan headed toward a rocky point, where heavy surf was breaking:
+and a hope sprang up in Grenfell's heart that he might get near enough
+to swim ashore after all. But then the worst possible thing happened,
+short of an utter break-up. The pan hit a rock, and a large piece of
+it broke off. Then the rest of it swung round and the wind took hold
+of it, like a fiend alive, and started to push it steadily out to sea
+again.
+
+The sea has been compared to a cat, which in calm weather purrs at
+your feet and in a storm will reveal its true nature and crack your
+bones and eat you. Now it was cruelly teasing Grenfell and his
+four-footed comrades as a cat tortures a mouse before it kills. The
+last hope seemed to have gone--unless someone by a miracle should pass
+along the shore and spy that tiny object on the horizon, and summon
+others to help him launch a boat to the rescue.
+
+But no one lives on the shore of that huge bay. The other sled by now
+was so far ahead that it would be a long time before those with it
+could come back to make a search, even after they felt sufficiently
+alarmed to do so.
+
+Cold and keen and marrow-searching, the brutal west wind--the worst of
+all in the spring of the year--moaned and whistled over the ice to the
+benumbed Doctor, and an additional exasperation was the fact that the
+komatik, from which he had been compelled to cut the dogs loose, had
+bobbed up to the surface again, and could now be seen not fifty yards
+away, but just as un-get-atable as if it were a mile off. There it
+stood to tantalize him, in the slush, and he knew that it had aboard
+everything he now wanted so acutely. There were dry clothes, wood and
+matches to make a signal fire, food and even a thermos bottle with hot
+tea!
+
+The slender hope of being seen from the shore diminished as Grenfell
+thought of how inconspicuous he was, nearly naked, his dogs about him.
+Crusoe alone on his isle of solid ground was a king of space by
+comparison. Should he escape it would be the first time that a man
+adrift on the offshore ice had come ashore to tell the tale. Nearly
+anybody gazing seaward--even if anybody saw--would say: "Oh, that's
+just a piece of kelp or a bush!" The wiseacres refuse to be fooled by
+such sights. They are like the Arabs of the desert, who refuse to get
+excited over a mirage.
+
+That he might not freeze to death before he drowned, Grenfell cut off
+those long top boots down to their moccasin feet, split the legs, and
+managed to tie them together into a makeshift for a jacket which at
+least protected his back from the fiercest biting of the wind.
+
+Presently as Grenfell watched the widening interval between himself
+and the island he had left so comfortably a few hours before, he saw
+the komatik with its load up-end and vanish through the ice, as though
+it grew tired of waiting for him to make a try for it. The
+disappearance was one more sign of the general break-up of the ice on
+all sides of him, as his frail ice-pan neared the wide-open mouth of
+the bay. The white plain over which he had trudged from the island
+with the dogs had almost disappeared. The island was evidently
+surrounded on all sides by water and "sish," so that even if he could
+get back to it he would be cut off from the shore.
+
+There were eight dogs on the pan. Slowly, slowly he was making up his
+mind to the hardest of all decisions. It was a choice between his own
+life and the lives of some of the animals he loved so well.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+A FIGHT WITH THE SEA
+
+
+No boat could come out from the shore through the sort of sea that was
+now running. The great pans of ice, rising and falling on the waves,
+were crashing and charging into the cliffs alongshore "like medieval
+battering-rams," and the white spray dashed high against the rocks
+with a sullen roar as of artillery. It would be necessary to skin some
+of the dogs and use their pelts for blankets, in order to escape
+freezing in the terrible cold of the oncoming night. Imagine how hard
+it was for their master to choose which should be slain!
+
+He had the sealskin traces wound about his waist, to keep the hungry
+animals from devouring them. He now undid them, and made a hangman's
+noose. This he slipped over the head of one of the dogs. Then he threw
+the animal on his back, put his foot on his neck, and stabbed him to
+the heart. The struggling creature bit his master--a deep gash--in
+the leg, but Grenfell kept the knife in the dog till the poor beast
+lay still, that the blood might not spurt out and freeze on the skin.
+Two more animals were put to death in the same fashion, and one of
+them bit him again in the death throes. So violent was the battle that
+the Doctor fully expected the pan to break up as they fought, and let
+them all into the sea.
+
+With the strange indifference that "huskies" generally show to the
+fate of their fellows, the other dogs were licking their coats and
+trying to dry themselves. The Doctor had done his best to stifle the
+cries of the slain animals, for these would have roused them to a
+frenzy and led them to fall upon the under dog, and upon one another
+as well, and a general fight at such close quarters would have been
+disastrous.
+
+He found himself envying the dead dogs, and wondering whether, when
+they came to the open sea, it would not be better to use his knife on
+himself than to die, inch by agonizing inch, in the freezing water.
+
+When the dogs were skinned, and the harness had been used to lash the
+skins together, it was nearly dark, and they were fully ten miles out
+at sea.
+
+To the north he spied a solitary light, twinkling from the village he
+had left in the morning. He thought of the fishermen sitting down to
+their tea: and he knew they would not think of him as in danger, for
+he had told them he would not be back for three days. And all the
+"liveyeres" think of Grenfell as a man who knows the coast so well,
+and the ways of getting about, that he is far more likely to give help
+than to ask it of them.
+
+He had unraveled a small piece of rope, and soaked this in fat from
+the entrails of a dog, thinking he might make a torch of it. But his
+match-box, which he wore on a chain, had leaked. Fishermen will tell
+you how hard it is to find a match-box that will not let in water: I
+prize one I have carried a great many years, which seems to be
+waterproof. I wish Grenfell had had it then. The matches were a pulp.
+Nevertheless Grenfell kept them, thinking that they might be dried and
+usable by morning. Every now and then, by a sort of mechanical
+instinct, the Doctor would rise to his full height and wave his hands
+toward the land, in the forlorn hope of being seen through a powerful
+glass.
+
+There was nothing but his hands to wave. He dared not let his shirt
+fly as a flag: it would not do to take it off too long at any time,
+because of the piercing cold.
+
+Nor would it be safe to pile up snow from the pan to break the force
+of the wind, for the pan might give way if it were thinned out
+anywhere. So he placed the dog-skins in a pile, sat on them, and
+changed his clothes, wringing them out, and flapping them in the wind,
+then putting them by turns against his body. The exercise at least
+postponed the coming of the last hour of all.
+
+The moccasins let the water through so easily that it was impossible
+for him to dry his feet. Then he remembered a trick of the Lapps, who
+had been brought over to care for the reindeer which Grenfell was
+striving to introduce at St. Anthony in place of the dogs. The Lapps
+have a way of tying grass in pads about their feet. On the harness of
+the dogs there was flannel, to make it soft where it rubbed against
+the flanks. The Doctor cut off the flannel, raveled out the rest of
+the rope, stuffed his shoes with the fragments of rope, and wound the
+flannel about his legs like puttees. If the situation were not so
+serious, he might have laughed at the outfit in which he faced the
+night wind, for the Oxford University running trunks and the Richmond
+Football Club red, yellow and black stockings were garments he had
+worn twenty years before and had recently found in a box of old
+clothes.
+
+What was left over of the rope was stuffed inside the flannel shirt
+and the trunks, which with the stockings and sweater vest made up the
+Doctor's complete costume. Then he made "Doc," his biggest dog, lie
+down, so that he might curl up beside him and use him as a kind of
+fireless stove. He wrapped the three skins round his body,
+and--strange to say--fell asleep. One hand kept warm against "Doc's"
+hide, but the other froze,--since the Doctor had lost his gloves. Even
+so, Edward Whymper camping out on the volcano Cotopaxi in Ecuador
+found his tent too hot on the side next the volcano and too cold on
+the other side.
+
+Grenfell awoke, his teeth chattering and his body shivering. He
+thought for an instant he was looking at the sunrise, but it was the
+moon, and he guessed it must be about half an hour after midnight.
+"Doc" didn't at all relish having his slumber disturbed. He was warm
+and comfortable, and he growled his remonstrance, deep down in his
+throat, till he discovered that it was his master and not another dog
+against his cushioned ribs.
+
+For a great mercy, the wind died down, and stopped pushing the ice-pan
+out into the dreaded North Atlantic. Just out yonder, not sixty feet
+away, was a cake of ice much bigger than his own. It would have made a
+fine raft for them all: and if only they could have reached it,
+Grenfell was sure he could have held out for two or three days. He
+could have killed off the dogs one by one, eaten the flesh, and drunk
+the warm blood. The Eskimo would think such a meal luxury. On his
+little pan, the effort to kill each dog would mean the risk of
+drowning every time.
+
+At daybreak, Grenfell remembered, men would be starting from Goose
+Cove with their sleds to go twenty miles to a parade of Orangemen.
+With this thought in his mind he fell asleep again. Then he woke with
+a sharp realization of the fact that he must have some kind of flag
+with which to signal them. He made up his mind that as soon as it was
+daylight he would use his shirt for a flag--but the pole was lacking.
+So in the dark he wrenched the bodies of the dead dogs apart--an
+extremely difficult task with the tough, frozen muscles and fibres.
+But he made what he says was "the heaviest and crookedest flagpole it
+has ever been my lot to see," lashing the bones together with his bits
+of rope and the remains of the seal traces.
+
+By this time he was almost starving, since he had not yet been able to
+bring himself to the point of devouring his comrades. His last meal
+had been porridge and bread and butter, nearly twenty-four hours
+before. Round one leg was a rubber band which had replaced a broken
+garter. He chewed on this constantly, and somehow it seemed to help
+him from being overcome with hunger and thirst.
+
+No more welcome sight--except that of men to the rescue--could there
+have been than the face of the rising sun. When he took off his shirt
+to run it up as a flag, he found that it was not so cold as it had
+been. His skeleton flagpole as he tried to wave it bent and
+buckled--but he found that by means of it he could raise his
+shirt-flag three or four feet over his head, and the least additional
+height meant much to his slim chance of being spied from the shore.
+
+The wind, too, had been carrying him back toward the shore, at a
+rugged point called Ireland Head. Unhappily for the man at sea, the
+little fishing-village there was deserted in winter: the people had
+shifted, bag and baggage, to another settlement where they could get
+teaching for their children and see more of other people.
+
+Now it settled down to a severe endurance test. If Grenfell had been
+fresh with comfortable sleep, and well-fed, it might not have been so
+serious a business to keep that gruesome "flag" of his waving aloft to
+attract the keen eye of someone ashore. But as it was, he must keep
+the terribly heavy banner of dog-pelts swinging to and fro with his
+strength at a low ebb, and hope barely alive in his heart. Again, his
+imagination began to play cruel tricks with him. He thought he saw men
+moving: but they were trees blown by the wind. Then to his joy it
+seemed that a boat was approaching: he thought he saw it rising and
+falling on the waves, as the oars drove it onward. He wanted the boat
+to come so much that the wish was father to the thought. Instead--it
+was only the glitter of the sun on a block of ice bobbing up and down.
+
+Whenever the Doctor sat down to rest, faithful old "Doc" would lick
+his face, and then roam about the ice-pan, coming back again and again
+to where the Doctor sat, his eyes and his ears asking: "Well, why
+aren't we starting? What is the matter? Isn't it time to be under
+way?" On a sunny day on the trail amid ice and snow the "husky" seeks
+some good reason for not being in the traces, tugging and hauling with
+his mates. The other dogs, following his example, were roaming about,
+and sometimes they would bite at the bodies of the slain dogs,
+wondering, no doubt, how soon their master would hand out to them the
+square meal of fish or seal-meat to which they were accustomed.
+
+For his own midday meal, Grenfell had begun to plan another
+killing--that of one of the bigger dogs, whose blood he would drink.
+Nansen had to do the same thing, according to the story told in his
+book "Farthest North," which Grenfell had been reading only a few days
+before. It might be a hard battle to conquer one of the big dogs, as
+he himself grew weaker. But fear had not once entered the Doctor's
+mind. His uppermost sensation now was a desire to sleep--and if death
+came after that, it would only be the answer to a question he had many
+times asked himself.
+
+He looked at the precious matches, to see if they were dry. The heads
+were a paste, except the blue tips of three or four wax matches. If
+the latter could be dried, they might be used. Once I gave Dr.
+Grenfell a bottle of the same kind of matches, and he said: "I'd
+rather have those than a five-dollar bill." If no air is stirring they
+will burn with a tall, strong flame for a minute or more, clean down
+to the bottom.
+
+He laid the matches out to dry, and looked about for a piece of
+transparent ice which would do for a burning glass. With the tow he
+had stuffed into his leggings, and the fat from the slain dogs, he
+thought he could produce a plume of smoke to be seen from the land,
+if he could get a light. He found a piece of ice which he thought
+would serve his purpose, and was just about to wave his "flag" again
+when he saw something that made his heart stand still for an instant.
+
+Was it--could it be--the glitter of an oar-blade rising and falling?
+
+But no--it could not be. It was not clear water, but the "slob ice,"
+probably too heavy for a rowboat to pierce, which lay between the pan
+and the beach. There had been no smoke-signal from the land, no gun
+discharged, no fire kindled: one of these things would be sure to
+happen, had anybody caught sight of him or of the unwieldy banner that
+he had raised aloft so many times.
+
+By this time Grenfell was partly snow-blind, for he had lost his dark
+glasses. As he raised his "flag" again, however, it seemed to him that
+the glitter was more distinct. It seemed to be coming nearer. With his
+hopes now mounting, he lifted the skins as high as he could, and waved
+with all his might. Now he could see not only a white oar-blade, but a
+black hull. If the pan would hold together an hour more, his rescue
+was assured.
+
+Queer tricks the mind of a man will play at such a time. Our boys in
+the war thought so much of saving helmets, pistols and belt-buckles
+from the battlefields that it has been said the war was fought for
+souvenirs. Even in the hospital where they lay suffering with the most
+dreadful wounds, they were more anxious for those precious relics than
+they were for their own recovery.
+
+And so, coming back out of the jaws of icy death, Grenfell was
+thinking: "I wonder what trophies I can save, to take home and put up
+in my study." He had a picture in his mind's eye of the dog-bone
+flagstaff, hanging over the big fireplace in the living-room at St.
+Anthony. (Later, the dogs "beat him to it," and devoured the bones
+with relish, as a child would eat candy.) Then he thought how
+picturesque those queer puttees would look, hanging on the wall with
+snowshoes and lynx-skins. The "burning-glass" was forgotten where it
+lay. As a reception-committee of one, rehearsing the speech of
+welcome, Grenfell roamed to and fro, with the restlessness of a caged
+leopard in the Zoo at feeding-time. They couldn't very well miss him
+now--but he could remember harrowing tales he had read when he was a
+boy, of a man on a desert island who scanned the horizon many days for
+a sail. Then a ship came along, missed the frantic watcher, and sailed
+away, leaving him to utter despair. He did not intend that this should
+happen to him now. To his delight, he could see that the rescuers by
+this time were waving back, in answer to his signals. Presently he
+could hear them shouting: "Don't get excited! Keep on the pan where
+you are!"
+
+They were far more excited than he was: for it now seemed as natural
+to Grenfell to be saved as, a little while before, it had seemed to
+perish where so many good men had been swallowed up before him as they
+went to their business in great waters. Nearer and nearer they came,
+plying the oars valiantly, till the snub nose of the boat was thrust
+into the soft edge of the pan, as a dog's muzzle is thrust into a
+man's hand.
+
+The man in the bow jumped from the boat and took both of the Doctor's
+hands. Neither said a word. At such moments men do not care much to
+speak. You remember how Stanley hunted Africa for Livingstone, and in
+the thrilling moment when at last the two men came together Stanley
+simply walked up to the missionary, put out his hand, and said: "Dr.
+Livingstone, I presume?"
+
+But the tears rolled down the cheeks of the honest fisherman, despite
+his silence.
+
+The boatmen had brought a bottle of warm tea, and one can imagine how
+much good it did Grenfell after going without food and drink so long a
+time. The dogs were put in the boat, and strong arms drove the vessel
+shoreward. Five big, stalwart Newfoundlanders were at the oars,--all
+of them devoted to the Doctor, and rejoicing that they had come in
+time to save him. How often, in a dark hour, he had proved himself
+their friend! He had turned out in the dead of night to help them and
+their families: they knew he was on his way to aid one of their number
+now. There was nothing they would not do for him: it would be a small
+return for all he had done to earn their gratitude already.
+
+It wasn't all plain rowing, by any means. Now and then the boat would
+get jammed in the ice-pack so that they all must clamber out and lift
+the stout vessel over the pans. Sometimes men had to stand in the bows
+and force the pans apart, using their oars after the fashion of
+crowbars. For a long time as they fought onward very little was said.
+They were saving their breath for their work. But as they rested on
+their oars and mopped their brows with their tattered sleeves,
+Grenfell asked: "How under the sun did you happen to be out in the ice
+in this boat?"
+
+They said that on the night before four men had gone out on a headland
+to get some harp seals which they had left to freeze there during the
+winter. As they were starting home, one of them thought he saw an
+ice-pan with something on it, drifting out to sea. When they got back
+to the village, and told their neighbors, the latter said it must be
+just the top of a tree. There was one man in the village who had a
+good spy-glass.
+
+He left his supper instantly, and ran out to the edge of the cliffs.
+Yes, he said, there was a man out yonder on the ice. He could see him
+wave his arms--and he declared it must be the Doctor, who had started
+out that morning.
+
+Even though night was falling, and the wind was coming on, they wanted
+to launch a boat, but it would have been no use: and they decided to
+wait until morning. The sea was taking up the blocks of ice and
+hurling them on the beach, just as it used to throw the little
+fishing-smacks over the sea-wall at Grenfell's boyhood home.
+
+Messengers went up and down the coast: look-outs were stationed: many
+were watching, and some were weeping, all the while that Grenfell
+thought nobody saw him and that he was waving in vain.
+
+Before daybreak, these five volunteers had manned the boat. They took
+an awful risk in such seething waters. Just a little while before, a
+fisherman's wife said good-by to her husband and three sons when they
+started to row out toward a ship that was signaling with flags for a
+pilot. All four were drowned in spite of their cool and skilful
+seamanship.
+
+The people had come from far and near to see the landing. They rushed
+into the surf to be the first to shake the Doctor's hands. They seized
+them and shook them so heartily that he did not find out till later
+that they had been badly frost-bitten. It was not a pretty object the
+villagers greeted. Says the Doctor: "I must have been a weird sight as
+I stepped ashore, tied up in rags, stuffed out with oakum, wrapped in
+the bloody skins of dogs, with no hat, coat, or gloves besides, and
+only a pair of short knickers. It must have seemed to some as if it
+were the old man of the sea coming ashore."
+
+    [Illustration: WHO SAID "HALT"?]
+
+Copious draughts of hot tea, and almost equally liquid Irish stew went
+to the right spot. Grenfell as a veteran was wise enough not to eat
+too much all at once. That is the danger, after one has been without
+food so long.
+
+They dressed Grenfell in the warm clothes fishermen wear, and hauled
+him back to the St. Anthony hospital. That ride was no fun at all. The
+jolting racked his weary bones and his feet were so frozen that he
+could not walk. There, two days later, they brought to him the boy on
+whom he was to have operated at his own home. The operation was a
+complete success.
+
+The other dogs lived long and pulled the Doctor many leagues on
+errands of mercy: but he mourned the loss of the three who perished
+that he might survive. I have seen on the glass-enclosed veranda of
+the Doctor's home at St. Anthony the brass tablet with its
+inscription:
+
+                     _TO THE MEMORY OF
+                       Three Noble Dogs
+                            MOODY
+                            WATCH
+                             SPY
+                    Whose Lives Were Given
+                     For Mine on the Ice
+                       April 21st, 1908
+                       Wilfred Grenfell
+                       St. Anthony_
+
+The men who came to the rescue wanted no reward. To have the Doctor
+back in their midst again was all they desired. But the Doctor
+insisted on giving them tokens of his gratitude. As George Andrews
+said:
+
+"'E sent us watches, an' spy-glasses, an' pictures o' himself made
+large an' in a frame. George Read an' me 'ad th' watches an' th'
+others 'ad th' spy-glasses. 'Eere's th' watch. It 'as 'In memory o'
+April 21st' on it, but us don't need th' things to make we remember
+it, though we're wonderful glad t' 'ave 'em from th' Doctor."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE KIDNAPPERS
+
+
+One day, as Grenfell was about to leave northern Labrador in his
+little steamer the _Strathcona_, a man came aboard with trouble in his
+eyes. It was the good-hearted Hudson's Bay agent.
+
+"Doctor," he pleaded, "old Tommy Mitchell's been comin' in every
+Saturday for two months, tryin' to get somethin' for his family. I've
+been givin' him twenty pounds of flour a week for himself and wife and
+six children. That's every shred they've got to live on. He hasn't a
+salmon or a codfish to give me, and he was in debt when I came here.
+What'll we do?"
+
+The _Strathcona_ had steam up and was whistling to the Doctor to come
+aboard. On the Labrador coast you must leave promptly or the sea may
+punish you for the delay.
+
+"See if you can't stop at the island off Napaktok Point, Doctor.
+They're livin' out there with nothin' but their own hats to cover
+'em--if they've got any."
+
+"I will," the Doctor promised, and was off.
+
+When they came near the island, the dory was lowered, and Grenfell and
+his mate rowed toward the rocks.
+
+"Can you see anything that looks like a house, Bill? You have better
+eyes than mine."
+
+"No, Doctor. I been a-lookin'. I sees--nothing."
+
+"I didn't expect you to do as well as that," said the Doctor. "But
+keep on looking. And call out when you see anything."
+
+They rowed almost round the island, against a stiff head wind.
+
+Each time they passed cove or headland they thought, "Well now, surely
+it must be just around the next point."
+
+"There's a smoke, sir!" cried the sharp-eyed Bill.
+
+Sure enough--there was a tiny wisp of smoke, trickling up the face of
+the rocks.
+
+But no hut was to be seen.
+
+They landed, and pulled the boat out on the beach.
+
+Then they went toward the smoke. The fire was built among flat stones
+out in the open.
+
+A hollow-cheeked woman sat with a poor, scrawny scrap of a baby on her
+arm. In her other hand she held what looked like an old paint can, and
+she was stirring some thin sort of gruel in it, in spite of the weight
+of the baby on her arm. It was not heavy, poor little creature!
+
+"Good-morning. Where's your tent?" Grenfell asked, cheerily.
+
+"There she is."
+
+The woman pointed with the gruel stick to a mass of canvas and
+matting, plastered in patches with mud against the face of the cliff.
+
+"Why do you cook in the open?"
+
+"'Cos us hasn't got no stove."
+
+"Where's Tom?"
+
+"He's away. He's gone off wid Johnnie, tryin' to shoot a gull. Here,
+Bill, run an' fetch yer dad, an' tell him Dr. Grenfell wants 'un."
+
+A half-naked little boy about nine years old darted off into the scrub
+bushes.
+
+"What's the matter with baby?" Dr. Grenfell inquired kindly, as the
+infant clasped his finger and looked up into his mild face.
+
+"Hungry," was the mother's sufficient answer. "I ain't got nothin' to
+give him." Her lip trembled, and she turned her head away.
+
+The baby kept up a constant whimpering, like a lamb very badly scared.
+
+"It's half-starved," said the Doctor. "What do you give it?"
+
+"Flour, and berries," was the response. "I chews the loaf first--or
+else it ain't no good for him."
+
+Then a little girl, of perhaps five, and a boy of--maybe--seven, shyly
+came from behind the tent, where they had fled wild-eyed and hid when
+the strangers came. They had nothing on: but they were brown as
+chestnuts and fat as butter.
+
+It was snowing, and the snow had driven them toward the poor, mean
+fire where mother sat with the baby.
+
+"Glad to see the other children are fat," said the Doctor.
+
+"They bees eatin' berries all the time," was the mother's answer. Then
+suddenly the full force of their plight swept all other thoughts out
+of her mind.
+
+"What's t' good of t' government?" she cried. "Here is we all
+starvin'. And it's ne'er a crust they gives yer. There bees a sight o'
+pork an' butter in t' company's store. But it's ne'er a sight of 'im
+us ever gets. What are them doin'? T' agent he says he can't give Tom
+no more'n dry flour, an' us can't live on dat."
+
+Then a bent and weary figure shuffled on the scene. It was Tom, the
+poor husband and father. He had an old and rusty, single-barreled
+muzzle-loading gun, and he was carrying a dead sea-gull by the tip of
+one of its wings. Two small boys trudged along after him, their faces
+old before their time. They stood looking at the Doctor in wonderment.
+
+"Well, Tom, you've had luck!" was Grenfell's greeting. He explains
+that he meant Tom was very lucky not to have the gun open at the wrong
+end and discharge its contents into his face!
+
+"It's only a kitty," the hunter answered, sadly. "An' I been sittin'
+out yonder on the p'int all day." A kitty is a little gull.
+
+"Your gun isn't heavy enough to kill the big gulls, I suppose."
+
+"No, Doctor. I hain't much powder--and ne'er a bit o' shot. I has to
+load her up most times with a handful o' they round stones. T' hammer
+don't always set her off, neither. Her springs bees too old, I
+reckon." He fumbled with the trigger in a way that led Grenfell to ask
+him to let him hold the gun instead. Tom passed it over, and Grenfell
+held it till their talk was over.
+
+Tom, who was part Eskimo, was a very poor business man. He had been a
+slave of the "truck system" by which a man brings his furs or his fish
+to a trader, exchanges them for supplies, and is always in debt to the
+storekeeper who takes pains to see that it shall be so.
+
+"Tom," the Doctor told him, "I want to help you. Winter is coming on,
+and here you are with a handful of flour and a sea-gull, and no proper
+shelter from the cold. You have too many children to keep. I think
+you'd better pass over to me for a while your two little boys, 'Billy'
+and 'Jimmy,' and the little girl. I'll feed them and clothe them and
+have them taught till they are big enough to come back and help you.
+All the time they are with me I'll do all I can to help you along. If
+you have them here--they'll certainly starve. The snow is beginning to
+cover up the berries already. And that's about all you've got to feed
+them."
+
+Poor Tom couldn't think.
+
+He merely stood there, looking first at the sea, then at the sky, then
+at the Doctor, his mouth wide open.
+
+His wife broke the silence. "D'ye hear, man? T' Doctor wants to take
+t' children. I says 'tis the gover'ment should feed 'em here. I
+wouldn't let no children o' mine go, I wouldn't." Saying which, she
+held her sickly infant tighter.
+
+The talk to and fro went on for a long time. It didn't get much of
+anywhere. On the part of the fond parents it consisted largely of what
+the government ought to do. Grenfell patiently explained that the
+government was a long way off, and couldn't answer before Christmas if
+it answered at all.
+
+All this time Father Tom stood there, dumb as a stalled ox, trying to
+see daylight by which to make up his mind. Evidently his wife was the
+real man of the family.
+
+"Why doesn't youse say something?" she broke out at last. "Bees you
+a-goin' to let t' Doctor have youse childer?"
+
+Tom looked more distracted than ever, and it didn't help much when he
+took off his hat and let cold air blow on his heated brain as he
+rummaged with his finger in the dense thatch on his head.
+
+Then Tom said: "I suppose he knows."
+
+"Yes," Dr. Grenfell said. "I think you'd better let me have Billy and
+Jimmy for a while."
+
+There was more talk, and finally the wife gave way. "Well, youse can
+take Billy, I suppose, if you wants un."
+
+All this time the mate had said nothing. Big and burly as he was,
+there were tears in his eyes; he had a kind heart, for there were many
+little ones to feed and clothe in his own household. He thought it was
+time to settle the dispute.
+
+For he heard the _Strathcona's_ whistle blowing impatiently, warning
+the men ashore that the sea was rising and the rocks in the uncertain
+weather meant danger. The little steamer, while the palaver went on,
+had been following alongshore as they went round the island. The snow
+was getting thicker, and the wind was tipping the waves with
+whitecaps. They must be off without further parley.
+
+So the mate, not wasting words, suddenly grabbed Billy under one long,
+strong arm.
+
+Billy kicked and howled and struggled. Billy had no idea of that
+delightful home for the children at St. Anthony. He would have cried
+to go there, if he had known what playmates he would have, what
+diverting games to play.
+
+Billy was captured "for good and all." But Dr. Grenfell knew that it
+wouldn't do for Billy to be toted off alone.
+
+He was bound he'd get another child,--for he knew he was right, not
+merely because of the good he could do the children, but because of
+the hopeless situation of the whole family if they all remained on
+this miserable shelf of rock in the open Atlantic.
+
+"Now, Mrs. Mitchell," he coaxed, "you're going to let Jimmy come too,
+to keep Billy company."
+
+She shook her head in defiance. Her mind was made up. Billy could
+go--but he was the only one. That was flat and final.
+
+Then Tom broke his silence once more: "I says he knows what's for t'
+best."
+
+The _Strathcona's_ whistle was petulantly crying: "Come on! We really
+must be starting! If you don't come aboard right away, we may be
+wrecked. Really, you must think of your crew. It isn't fair to let us
+run this risk, with the barometer falling, and the wind like this."
+
+Dr. Grenfell made every tempting promise he could think of.
+
+"If you'll let me have Jimmy, I'll give your husband a fine gun."
+
+"No," said Mrs. Mitchell. "Ye can't have un."
+
+"I'll send him plenty of powder and shot."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I'll give him a letter to the agent so he can get work."
+
+She made an impatient gesture of rejection with her free hand.
+
+The Doctor played a trump card. "You shall have nice dresses for
+yourself and clothes for all the children."
+
+Mrs. Mitchell yielded. "Well then, ye can have Jimmy. But that's all.
+That's the very last one."
+
+"Now, Mrs. Mitchell, be reasonable. Let me have the baby girl, too."
+
+"No."
+
+"Look at your tent. We'll put the little girl in a fine house with a
+roof on it, and a door that opens and shuts."
+
+"No."
+
+"We'll give her pretty clothes, and teach her from the picture books.
+She'll come back so you won't know her."
+
+"But I want to know her."
+
+"We'll feed her well, and fill her up till she's as fat as a seal."
+
+"No. That's all. Jimmy and Billy can go. She shall stay here with me."
+
+This time the father kept his face tight closed. There was no help at
+all from him. He looked the other way, stiff as a seal-gaff.
+
+The mate was already on his way to the beach, with the two naked
+little boys wriggling under his arms. They were red and blue all over
+with the stains of the berries--a beautiful sight.
+
+"All right, Mrs. Mitchell. We must go on board now. Come with us, and
+we'll give you the things."
+
+Then there was joy for that poor, hungry family.
+
+They were all clad in stout clothing that would keep out the wind. A
+gun was lent to the father, and his shattered fowling-piece was fixed
+up by the clever engineer, till it was "most as good as new." The
+eldest boy, John, would be big enough to use it.
+
+The powder and shot were dug out of the lockers: tins of condensed
+milk were found for the poor little shrimp of a baby. The second
+axe--a gorgeous prize--went into the growing pile of gifts: soap,
+needles and thread, shoes and stockings, potatoes, some flour, a
+package of tea, sugar, and other precious things went into two oilskin
+bags, and then over the rail into the Mitchells' leaky, tossing boat.
+
+Meanwhile an astonishing change was taking place in the two boys. They
+were getting a bath on the deck, in the wind and snow, with a bucket
+and a scrubbing-brush, and after they were dressed they had their hair
+cut. Their mother stared and stared as the boat rowed away. She could
+hardly believe they were hers.
+
+"Good-by, Doctor. Thank you."
+
+"Good-by, Mrs. Mitchell. We'll take good care of them."
+
+Father said nothing. He was rowing the boat. But no doubt he was
+thinking very grateful thoughts.
+
+The boys wept a little, silently as they looked their last on their
+patched and tattered home. The family they left behind them would make
+a journey of a hundred miles in that rotten boat to a winter hut on
+the mainland.
+
+But they looked at each other, washed and dressed, with all that wild
+hair pruned away--and then they began to laugh at each other as the
+biggest joke in their short lives.
+
+After they reached St. Anthony and were installed in the Orphanage,
+they were two of the happiest and most popular lads in the place.
+
+They purred like pleased kittens and lost no chance to show how much
+they liked the people who were doing so much for them. They studied
+hard, and put the same driving spirit into play. It could be seen that
+the little "heathen" of the island were in a fair way to become in
+time the leaders of men who are needed in all walks of life. Dr.
+Grenfell felt well rewarded for all the trouble he had taken for Jimmy
+and Billy and all their family.
+
+The "liveyeres," as those who "live here" are called, may lead rough,
+hard lives. But for that very reason they welcome books, and music,
+and all such things.
+
+One day as the _Strathcona_ was scudding southward, her sails swelling
+with a stiff breeze, and the Doctor in a great hurry to reach a
+distant coast-line and get to work on some patients who had been
+waiting a long time for him, a little boat came and planted herself
+directly in the _Strathcona's_ path.
+
+The _Strathcona_ was a small craft herself, but she seemed a monster
+compared with this impudent sailboat. The smaller boat had a
+funny-looking flag, hoisted as a signal to stop. It was almost as if a
+harbor tug should attempt to hold up the _Leviathan_.
+
+Dr. Grenfell thought it must be some very serious surgical case.
+
+He gave the order at once: "Down sail and heave her to."
+
+Then an old, white-haired man, the only passenger in the small boat,
+climbed stiffly over the rail, fairly creaking in his joints.
+
+"Good-day," said Grenfell. "What can we do for you? We're in a hurry."
+
+The old man took off his cap, and held it in his hand as he looked
+down at the deck. Then he mustered up courage to make his request.
+
+"Please, Doctor," he said slowly, "I wanted to ask you if you had any
+books you could lend me. We haven't anything to read here."
+
+Dr. Grenfell confesses with shame that his first impulse was to return
+a sharp, vexed answer, and to ask, "What do you mean by holding up my
+mission boat for such a reason?" But then he realized his mistake. In
+a way, it would be as good a deed to put a prop under the old man's
+spirit with a good book as to take off his leg with a knife.
+
+"Haven't you got any books?"
+
+"Yes, Doctor. I've got two, but I've read 'em through, over and over
+again, long ago."
+
+"What were they?"
+
+"One is the Works of Josephus, sir, and the other is Plutarch's
+Lives."
+
+The old fellow was overjoyed when the Doctor put aboard his bobbing
+skiff a box of fifty books--a mixture of everything from Henty's
+stories to sermons.
+
+Dr. Grenfell never could tell what a day--or a night--would bring
+forth. If variety is the spice of life, his life in the north has been
+one long diet of paprika.
+
+Once late in the fall he was creeping along the Straits of Belle Isle
+in a motor-boat--the only one in those waters at that time.
+
+It broke down, as the best of motor-boats sometimes will, and the
+tidal current, with that brutal habit which tidal currents have, began
+to pull the boat on the rocks as with an unseen hand.
+
+They tied all the lines they had together, attached the anchor, and
+put it overboard.
+
+The water was so deep they could not reach the bottom.
+
+Darkness was shutting down--and it was an awful place to pass the
+night.
+
+Then a schooner's lights flashed out. "Hurrah!" cried Grenfell's men.
+"We're all right now!"
+
+They lashed the hurricane light on their boat-hook and waved it to and
+fro like mad. They MUST make those fellows on the schooner take notice
+and stop for them. The sea would probably get them if they failed.
+
+The water was so rough, the night so dark, that even their precious
+motor-boat was nothing, if only they could clamber aboard that
+schooner. At almost any time, those Straits offer stretches of the
+most perilous sailing-water in the world. Sailors who have rounded
+Cape Horn would say yes to that.
+
+But just then--to their horror, the schooner which had been close to
+them put about and hurried off like a startled caribou. Soon the
+powerless motor-boat was left far, far behind, wallowing in the trough
+of waves much too big for her size.
+
+They shouted with all their might, but the whistling wind threw away
+their outcry instead of carrying it across the tossing waves, which
+threatened to swamp the boat at any instant.
+
+They shot off their guns.
+
+They yelled again.
+
+They lit flares such as are used in the navy for signal lights.
+
+But it was all in vain.
+
+They almost began to believe they had dreamed of rescue--that a
+phantom ship had come to them in a nightmare.
+
+They waved their hurricane light again and again, as high as they
+could hold it.
+
+The engineer, a willing amateur, all this while had been toiling away
+till his hands bled, at his motor, drenched with the spray. He had
+torn the machinery limb from limb, and patiently refitted the parts.
+Suddenly one cylinder gave a weak kick, and then came a spasmodic
+succession of sputters, with long waits between. But with the aid of
+the oars the boat was now able to make slow and tedious progress in
+the schooner's wake.
+
+At last--at last--along toward midnight they crept into the harbor
+where the schooner had also taken refuge.
+
+Tired as they were, they wouldn't turn in at a fisherman's cottage
+without boarding the ship to rebuke the sailors for their unhandsome
+behavior.
+
+How could they leave men in a tiny boat in distress, perhaps to be
+swamped and to drown in those cruel waters out yonder in the blind
+dark?
+
+The skipper made solemn reply. "Them cliffs is haunted," he announced.
+"More'n one light's been seen there than ever any man lit. When us saw
+youse light flashing round right in on the cliffs, us knowed it was no
+place for Christian men that time o' night. Us guessed it was just
+fairies or devils tryin' to toll us in."
+
+Many of the little boats on the Labrador are not fit to spend a night
+at sea, and often it is an anxious business to get into a safe harbor
+before sundown. Dr. Grenfell has a reputation as a daredevil skipper,
+because so often, on an errand of mercy, he has steamed right out in
+the teeth of the storm when hardened, ancient mariners shook their
+heads and hugged the land. But the Doctor does not take chances for
+the sake of the risk itself--his daring always has behind it the good
+reason that he wants to go somewhere in a great hurry in time of
+need.
+
+A hundred miles north of Indian Tickle, where there was no light,
+Grenfell was caught one night when he was coming south with the
+fishing fleet.
+
+All of a sudden the fog fell on the whole group of ships like a thick
+wet blanket, before they could make the harbor. There were many reefs
+between their position and the open sea: the only thing to do was to
+anchor then and there. When a rift came in the fog, Dr. Grenfell saw
+the riding-lights of eleven vessels round about him. A northeaster
+grew in violence as night came swiftly on, and a heavy sea arose. The
+ships tugged at their anchors. The great waves swept the decks from
+end to end.
+
+In the hold of the _Strathcona_ were patients lying in the cots, on
+their way to Battle Harbor Hospital. As the Doctor would say, there
+was less than an inch of iron between them and eternity.
+
+They were dressed, and the boats were prepared to take them ashore.
+
+One after another in the mad waters the neighbor lights went out. All
+night the _Strathcona_ fought the sea. When day came, only one of the
+other boats was left--a ship much bigger than the _Strathcona_, named
+the _Yosemite_.
+
+The _Yosemite_ was drifting down upon the smaller vessel, and it
+seemed as if in a moment more there must be a collision.
+
+But just then the _Yosemite_ struck a reef. She turned over on her
+side. In that position the sea drove the vessel ashore, through the
+breakers, with the crew clinging to the bridge.
+
+The fact that the _Strathcona_ kept steam up and was "steaming to her
+anchors" all night long had saved her, the only survivor of the entire
+fleet. Every vessel that went ashore was smashed to kindling.
+
+As they were about to weigh anchor, the main steam pipe began to leak.
+It was necessary to "blow down" the boilers.
+
+For the whole of that short day the engineers tinkered at the damage,
+knowing that the lives of all on board might depend on their success
+ere nightfall.
+
+Suddenly, to the inexpressible relief of everyone, the engineer
+shouted:
+
+"Right for'ard!"
+
+Then came the sweet music of the engine-room bell, and presently they
+were under way again, so nightfall found them safe at last in the
+harbor, with those eleven wrecks pounding on the rocks outside.
+
+Sometimes the fishermen expected miracles of healing. One day a big
+"husk" of a fisherman clambered aboard, saying that his teeth hurt
+him.
+
+"Sit down on that wood-pile," said the Doctor.
+
+The man obeyed. The Doctor pried his mouth open, and saw the tooth
+that was making the trouble. Then he fetched the forceps.
+
+Up started the patient in wide-eyed alarm.
+
+"Bees you a-goin' to haul it, Doctor?"
+
+"Of course I'm going to pull it out. What did you want me to do?"
+
+"I wouldn't have you touch it! Not for all the fish in the sea!"
+
+"Well then, why did you come to me? You're just wasting my time."
+
+"I wanted you to charm her, Doctor."
+
+"But my dear fellow, I'm not an Eskimo medicine-man. I don't know how,
+and I don't believe in it anyway."
+
+Mr. Fisherman looked very much put out. "I knows why youse won't charm
+un. It's because I'm a Roman Catholic."
+
+"Nonsense. That wouldn't make the slightest difference. But if you
+really think it would do any good,--come on, I'll try. Only--you'll
+have to pay twenty-five cents, just as though I had 'hauled' it."
+
+"That I will, Doctor, and glad to do it. Go ahead!"
+
+He perched on the rail like a great sea-bird. The Doctor to carry out
+the farce put his finger in the gaping mouth and touched the tooth.
+While he kept his finger in place he uttered the solemn words:
+
+"Abracadabra Tiddlywinkum Umslopoga."
+
+That last word must have come from a hazy memory of the name of the
+wonderful big black man in H. Rider Haggard's "Alan Quatermain," who
+after a long, hard run beside a horse that carries his master, defends
+a stairway against their enemies and splits a magic stone with an axe
+and so brings the foe to grief.
+
+At any rate, the combination worked. Grenfell pulled out his finger
+quickly so that his patient wouldn't bite him.
+
+The fisherman got up in silence. Then he slowly made the circuit of
+the deck. In the course of the brief journey, he thrust his hand deep
+into his jeans and pulled out a quarter.
+
+"Thank you, Doctor. Many thanks." He solemnly handed the coin to his
+benefactor. "All the pain has gone."
+
+Dr. Grenfell stood holding the coin in his hand, wondering how he came
+to make such a fool of himself, while the fisherman's broad back bent
+to the oars of the little boat that took him ashore.
+
+A month later, in the same harbor, the same man swung his leg over the
+rail with a hearty greeting.
+
+"Had any more trouble?" asked the Doctor.
+
+"No--sir! Not an ache out of her since!" came the jovial answer.
+
+The Doctor had much trouble with patients who wanted to drink at one
+draught all the medicine he gave them. They thought that if a
+teaspoonful of the remedy was good for you, the whole bottle must be
+ever so much better.
+
+A haddock's fin-bone was a "liveyere's" charm against rheumatism--but
+you must get hold of the haddock and cut off the fin before he touches
+the boat. So you don't often get a fin that is good for anything.
+
+If you want to avoid a hemorrhage, the best plan is to tie a bit of
+green worsted round your wrist.
+
+Both Protestants and Catholics write prayers on pieces of paper and
+wear them in little bags about their necks to drive off evil things.
+
+The constant battle against wind and wave develops heroes and
+heroines, and the tales told of golden deeds such as might earn a
+Carnegie medal or pension are beyond number.
+
+One man started south for the winter in his fishing-boat, with his
+fishing partner, his wife, four children and a servant girl. A gale of
+wind came up. On the Labrador a gale is a gale: they do not use the
+word lightly. Grenfell tells of a new church that was blown into the
+sea with its pulpit, pews and communion-table. In a storm like that,
+the mainsail, jib and mast of this luckless smack went over the side.
+The boat was driven helplessly before the wind, for three days and
+nights. Then the wind changed, and they could put up a small foresail,
+which in two more awful days brought them to the land. But they were
+running ashore with such violence that they would have been lost
+beyond a doubt, if six brave "liveyeres" had not put out to rescue
+them. Their boat was smashed to flinders.
+
+Then they found that all this time they had been going due north, for
+a hundred and fifty miles. They had to stay till the next summer.
+Their friends, when they got back to Newfoundland, had given them up
+for dead.
+
+A fisherman said to Grenfell, in explaining why he couldn't swim: "You
+see, we has enough o' the water without goin' to bother wi' it when we
+are ashore." This man had barely escaped drowning on no less than four
+occasions. Once he saved himself by clinging to a rope with his teeth,
+after his hands were too numb to serve him, till they hauled him
+aboard.
+
+The shore of one of the Labrador bays had a total adult population of
+just one man. As the ice was breaking up in the spring, he had sent
+his two young sons out on the ice-pans in pursuit of seals.
+
+But the treacherous flooring gave way, and the father from the shore
+saw his boys struggling in the water.
+
+He tied a long fishing-line round his body, and gave the other end to
+his daughter. While she held it he crawled out over the pans. Then he
+jumped into the bitter water, like a deep-sea diver going down to
+examine a wreck, and stayed between and below the pans till he had
+recovered both bodies--but the last spark of life was extinct.
+
+Almost under the windows of Dr. Grenfell's hospital at Battle Harbor
+two men started with sled and dogs to get fire-wood. They were
+rounding a headland, when the sled went into the water, taking not
+merely the dogs but the drivers with it. One man got under the ice,
+and was seen no more. The other clung to the edge of the ice, too weak
+to crawl out.
+
+His sister saw what happened, and came running over the ice. Men
+further away who were bringing a boat shouted to her: "For God's sake,
+don't go near the hole." She did not heed their warning. Instead, she
+threw herself flat, so as to distribute her weight, and dragged
+herself along till she was close enough to reach her brother's hand.
+
+She could not quite pull him out. He was so benumbed that he could not
+help in the rescue. She lifted his body part way over the edge of the
+ice-sheet and held on.
+
+Nearer and nearer the boat came with the rescuers shouting
+encouragement. "We're a-comin', girl.' Don't let go!" Her strength was
+almost gone. But she was bound to be faithful unto death--if the sea
+claimed her brother it must take her too.
+
+She did not cry out. She wasted no energy in words upon the frosty
+air. The boat seemed ages in coming, though the rowers plied the oars
+with might and main.
+
+One of her legs had broken through the ice. At any instant she might
+find herself struggling in the sea, and her agony of effort would have
+been in vain.
+
+At what seemed the last second of the last moment for the pair, the
+brawny arms of the fishermen hauled them over the gunwale.
+
+She told the story simply, and as though it were all in the day's
+work.
+
+"What made you go on?" Grenfell asked her.
+
+"I couldn't see him drown, could I?" was all her reply.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+WHEN THE BIG FISH "STRIKE IN"
+
+
+"Doctor, how do you catch the codfish? Do you use a hook and line, the
+same as father and I do when we go fishing in Long Island Sound?"
+
+The speaker was a New York boy who hadn't been north of Boston, until
+one summer his father let him go to St. John's for the sea-trip. There
+by great good luck he ran into the Doctor, who had come from St.
+Anthony in his little steamer the _Strathcona_.
+
+"You can catch codfish with a hook and line," explained the Doctor,
+"but it would take too long for the fishermen who have to get their
+living from the sea.
+
+"Most of the time they use a great big net, called a 'cod-trap.'
+
+"It's like a room of network without a roof. It has a door, and the
+cod are steered in at the door by another net which reaches from the
+cod-trap to the rocks."
+
+"I should think the whole business would float away out to sea the
+minute it got the least bit rough," said Harry.
+
+"It might," the Doctor admitted. "But you see they have heavy anchors,
+or they tie big stones to the net at the bottom to hold it down."
+
+"I'd love to see those cod coming in!" exclaimed Harry. "They must
+push and shove like anything. But what do they want to go in for? I
+s'pose o' course they must use some kind of bait."
+
+"They use the squid, or octopus," said the Doctor.
+
+"Are those the funny things that wave their arms around and throw out
+ink when they get mad?" asked Harry.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Are they very big?"
+
+"They come in all sizes. There's even such a thing as a giant squid.
+For a long time people laughed at the idea that there was any such
+monster. They thought he was a myth, like the sea-serpent.
+
+"But one day two fishermen were plying their trade when two great
+arms rose out of the sea and clasped their boat and tried to drag it
+under.
+
+"Luckily, they had a big knife, and they hacked away at the arms till
+they cut them off.
+
+"The cuttlefish--that's another name for it--made the sea about them
+as black as tar. But it did not try again.
+
+"They took the arms ashore, and sold them to a man named Dr. Harvey.
+Everybody had been making fun of Dr. Harvey because he said there was
+such a thing as the giant squid.
+
+"The Doctor hated strong drink, and so the clerks at the store of Job
+Brothers here in St. John's were very much surprised when Dr. Harvey
+rushed in and shouted: 'I want a barrel of rum!'
+
+"Then he told them what he wanted it for--he wanted to send the giant
+squid to the Royal Society in London. The parts of the arms cut off
+were nineteen feet long.
+
+"Later on, somebody who heard about it brought him an octopus that was
+lying dead on the water, whose reach was forty feet from tip to tip."
+
+"How do they catch the octopus for bait?" asked Harry.
+
+"It's exciting work. You see, besides having arms like a windmill,
+with curious sucking saucers on them, the octopus has a beak like a
+parrot, with awful teeth, and it can bite like anything.
+
+"You'll see a cluster of rowboats anchored close together, and the
+fishermen are jigging up and down a little bright red leaden weight,
+bristling with spikes.
+
+"Suddenly there's a stir. The squids have come rushing in, and they
+bite at those jiggers like a terrier after a rat.
+
+"When the squids get those spiked weights in their mouths and are
+being hauled aboard--look out!
+
+"All of a sudden--just the way people squirt things in the
+movies--they shoot out jets of ink at the fishermen.
+
+"It stings like anything if it gets into your eyes and it ruins your
+clothes."
+
+"How much do the squid cost when you buy them for bait?" asked Harry,
+who had a practical mind.
+
+"Fifteen or twenty cents a hundred for the little ones."
+
+"That isn't much for all that work," said Harry.
+
+Dr. Grenfell smiled. "You'll find that the fishermen do lots of hard
+work for very little pay, Harry," he answered.
+
+"What other kind of bait do they use for the cod?"
+
+"Caplin--a small fish like a sardine--and herring. Sand eels and
+white-fish sometimes. Bits of sea-gulls, and even rubber fish with
+hooks. Mussels don't hold well on the hooks."
+
+Harry looked thoughtful. "I suppose it makes a lot o' difference,
+having just the right kind o' bait."
+
+"All the difference in the world," the Doctor agreed. "If a man can't
+please the fish, he might as well burn his nets and boats and leave
+the sea.--But I was telling you about the cod-traps.
+
+"While the fish are following their leader, like so many sheep, in at
+the door of the trap, along comes the man they call the trap-master.
+He has a tube with plain glass in the bottom, and he puts it down
+over the side of the boat and looks through it to see if the trap is
+full.
+
+"When he thinks it's full enough, the door is pulled up so the fish
+can't get out, and the floor of the trap is hauled to the surface.
+
+"As it is lifted, a big dipper is put in, and the fish are ladled into
+the boat.
+
+"When the boat is full, the rest of the fish are put into big net
+bags. These are tied to buoys, so the fishermen may come back later
+and get them."
+
+"I suppose the fishermen like to pick out the best places," said
+Harry.
+
+"Yes--there's a mad race on the day the season opens. You've got to
+get your cod-trap anchored in four days, with the net that leads from
+the shore put in place: and it's a big job to do it in that time.
+
+"Then there's what they call the cod-seine. That's worked by seven
+men. The seine-master, fish-glass in hand, stands in the bow: and the
+minute he sights the school of fish he gives orders for the nets to be
+dropped.
+
+"The men row in a circle and return to a buoy, paying out the net as
+they go.
+
+"The bottom rope is weighted, and they gather it round a central
+anchor into a bag as they row. It's not so easy as it sounds, but
+'practice makes perfect.' When they've got the fish bagged in this way
+they may scoop them up whenever they like.
+
+"Other kinds of nets, as well as lines, are used.
+
+"While those who use the lines generally take great pains to put on
+them the bait they think Mr. and Mrs. Cod will like, some fishermen
+make the others very angry by 'jigging' with unbaited hooks.
+
+"This means that two hooks, joined back to back with a bit of lead
+that sinks them, are dropped where the fish are most thickly crowded.
+
+"Then the line is jerked up and down. Half a dozen fish may be hurt
+for one that is hooked."
+
+"What becomes of the one that gets hurt?" asked Harry.
+
+"Oh, the rest of the cod rush at the poor fellow and eat him up!"
+
+"They're not good sports!" was the boy's comment. "Neither are the
+fishermen that hurt the fish without catching them. That's like
+hunters that shoot more animals than they can use for food. But I
+suppose fishing just for fun is a very different thing from fishing to
+make a living."
+
+Dr. Grenfell's blue eyes were very serious. "It is," he said. "You
+have to go out with the fishermen to understand the difference."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+BIRDS OF MANY A FEATHER
+
+
+Harry had seen and heard many kinds of birds alongshore, of all sizes
+and colors, some flying in curious ways and some making very queer
+sounds, so he asked the Doctor to tell him about them.
+
+"The Labrador coast is one of the finest bird-nurseries anywhere,"
+said the Doctor. "You can find about two hundred different kinds--if
+your eyes are sharp enough and your patience--and your shoes--hold
+out!
+
+"Of course they don't all live there the year round. Some of them are
+just summer boarders.
+
+"Maybe in a very lonely spot you'll hear a bird all by himself, with a
+very sweet song--the hermit thrush.
+
+"Perhaps there will be a chorus of pipits, fox and white-throated
+sparrows, robins, warblers and buntings.
+
+"You might even come upon a Nashville warbler or a Maryland
+yellow-throat!
+
+"If eggs are collected in Labrador, the contents aren't wasted.
+
+"You bore a hole in the side of the egg, put in a blowpipe with a
+rubber bulb, and force the contents into a frying-pan. You can make
+fine omelet from the eggs of eiders, gulls, puffins and cormorants. Or
+you can mix flour with the eggs, add salt and butter, and make a nice
+pancake browned on both sides.
+
+"It tastes rather fishy, of course, but it's very filling, and when
+you come in after a long, hard run behind the dogs, or soaked to the
+skin from a boat-ride, it certainly is fine to fill up on cormorant
+omelet while you pleasantly roast yourself before the leaping flames
+of a driftwood bonfire.
+
+"A Labrador baby thinks that a gull's egg is as good as a stick of
+candy.
+
+"Puffins are lots of fun. You've read about the penguins in the
+Antarctic, where they have almost no other animals--how the penguins
+dive and swim and carry stones about, looking like solemn old
+gentlemen at a club in their dress suits. Well, the puffins are to
+Labrador what penguins are to the South Pole country.
+
+"Their burrows are two or three feet long, and the mother sits on a
+single dirty white egg in a straw nest. The birds have red,
+parrot-like bills, and they have pale grey faces with markings that
+make them look as if they were wearing spectacles.
+
+"Their bodies are chunky, and they shuffle about very clumsily. They
+don't like it a bit when people come where they have their nests.
+
+"But the razor-billed auk doesn't make any nest--it just lays its egg
+on the bare rock in the biting cold. There are very few auks left
+to-day, but there were lots of them when Audubon the naturalist
+visited Labrador ninety years ago. Audubon tells how a band of
+'eggers' started out just like pirates.
+
+"All they cared about was to plunder every nest.
+
+"They went sneaking along from cove to cove, turning in sometimes at
+the little caves or finding shelter in an angle of the rocks when the
+sea ran too high.
+
+"While they were waiting they would fight and swear and drink. It's a
+wonder that the eggers didn't get drowned oftener, for their boats
+would be mended with strips of sealskin and the sails were patched
+like an old suit, and it looked as if a puff of wind would blow them
+over.
+
+"These eggers got out of their sailing ship into a rowboat they towed,
+so as to go to an island of sea-pigeons, or guillemots--because they
+couldn't get near enough in the larger vessel.
+
+"As they came to the rocks, the birds rose up in a screaming white
+cloud. The air was full of them, just as you've seen the gulls
+creaking and crying about the hull of an ocean steamer, hoping to pick
+up food thrown overboard.
+
+"But the mother birds stuck faithfully to the nests. It was the
+fathers and brothers that rose up in the air and made the noisy fuss.
+
+"All of a sudden--bang! the eggers discharged their guns in a volley
+right into the middle of the wheeling, screaming cloud of feathers
+overhead.
+
+"Some fell into the water, and the rest in terror flew about not
+knowing where to go or what to do.
+
+"The eggers picked up the birds that lay in rumpled, bloody heaps on
+the water. They made toothsome pies, and what they couldn't eat they
+left behind. They didn't care how many birds they killed, because
+there were plenty left.
+
+"They weren't shooting just for food--they were shooting mostly for
+fun. As they trampled about the island they crushed with their heavy
+boots more eggs than they picked up.
+
+"No one would have blamed hungry men for killing enough birds and
+taking enough eggs to supply their families. But the eggers saw red,
+and just went on shooting and trampling without excuse.
+
+"Years of that kind of thing turned many an island into a graveyard.
+
+"Well, when they had gathered some eggs and smashed the rest, they
+picked up the dead birds they wanted and carried them back to the
+boat.
+
+"They jerked off the feathers and broiled the sea-pigeons. Then they
+brought out big, black bottles of rum to take away the oily, fishy
+flavor, and filled themselves with strong drink and bird-flesh.
+
+    [Illustration: OFF DUTY]
+
+"They fell asleep, snoring drunk, and dawn found them piled about the
+deck helplessly.
+
+"But when they got back to the island from which they started on their
+journey, they found that rivals had landed there, and were killing
+birds which they looked on as their own.
+
+"There was a fight at once.
+
+"The men who were coming back home fired a volley and then took their
+guns as if they were clubs and rushed toward their enemies.
+
+"Then, man to man, they fought like wild beasts. One man was carried
+to the boat with his skull fractured: another limped off with a bullet
+in his leg: a third was feeling his jaw to learn how many of his teeth
+had been driven through a hole in his cheek.
+
+"So they fought till they tired of it, and then they pulled out the
+rum-bottles, and drank themselves into forgetfulness of their fierce
+battle.
+
+"With the next morning came a hundred honest fishermen who wanted
+nothing more from the islands than the birds and the eggs they
+actually needed for their hungry wives and little ones at home.
+
+"They had been eating salt meat for months: scurvy had broken out, and
+they wanted a change of diet.
+
+"But the pirate eggers were bound they shouldn't have it. The
+fishermen brought no guns: they weren't looking for trouble: they were
+taken by surprise when the eggers rushed down on them like tigers
+roused from their lairs.
+
+"One of the eggers, who had not slept off the effects of the carousal
+of the night before, shot one of the fishermen. Then the fishermen,
+who outnumbered the eggers about ten to one, gave the latter the
+beating of their lives. Fortunately, the fisherman who had been shot
+was not killed.
+
+"That was the sort of thing that happened again and again in the bad
+old days.
+
+"No wonder Audubon, as a great lover of birds, was very angry at these
+men who were making it impossible for birds to make their homes and
+lay their eggs and raise their families on the Labrador. They could
+have had all they wanted to eat without exterminating the birds, and
+never giving a thought to anybody who might come after them.
+
+"The fishermen still, in many places, out of sight and reach of any
+law, take all the eggs and kill all the birds they can.
+
+"But it's not so bad as it was in Audubon's time, when men from
+Halifax took about 40,000 eggs which they sold for twenty-five cents a
+dozen. Near Cape Whittle he found two men gathering murre's eggs. They
+were proud of the fact that they had collected 800 dozen and they
+didn't intend to stop till they had taken 2,000 dozen. The broken eggs
+made such a dreadful smell that it almost made him sick.
+
+"The ivory gull, known as the 'ice partridge,' is sometimes caught by
+pouring seal's blood on the ice. The birds swoop down to get it, and
+are shot. Some actually kill themselves by striking the ice too hard
+when they land, for they are so eager to get the blood.
+
+"Labrador is a good place to study the diving birds, which are of two
+kinds.
+
+"There are those that use their feet alone under the water--and then
+there are those that use only their wings.
+
+"The feet-users clap their wings close to their sides when they dive.
+
+"The wing-users spread out their pinions before they strike the water.
+The puffin uses its wings under the water, and so do the other members
+of the auk family.
+
+"In the duck family, there are both wing-swimmers and foot-swimmers.
+The ducks of the sorts known as old squaws, scoters and eiders fly
+under water. But the redheads and canvas-back ducks use only their
+feet under water. Mergansers dive with their wings against their
+sides, like a folded umbrella. The cormorants are famous swimmers, and
+use their feet alone. You know how the Chinese use cormorants as
+fish-catchers, putting rings about their necks to keep them from
+swallowing their prey.
+
+"Among the birds classed as game-birds, the willow grouse are so easy
+to kill that a true sportsman doesn't take much pleasure in going
+after them.
+
+"They are often caught with nooses on the end of a stick, while they
+roost in the trees, and a group in this position may be killed all at
+once, if shot from the bottom, so that the falling bird doesn't
+disturb the others.
+
+"Cartwright, an early explorer, tells how he came upon a covey of six
+grouse and knocked off all their heads with his rifle.
+
+"In winter, the willow grouse bury themselves in the snow, and the
+'cock of the roost' is sentinel, keeping his head above the snow to
+watch for an enemy.
+
+"The Canada goose, breeding about the lakes and ponds, is a
+grass-eater, and so tastes better than the fishy, oily gulls and
+divers. You can tame the goose and use it as a decoy. When a number
+are shot at a time, those that can't be used right away are hung
+outside the house. There they freeze, and are kept fresh all winter
+long.
+
+"There couldn't be a better retriever for a duck-hunt than the Eskimo
+dog. I've watched them dash into the waves after a bird, only to be
+thrown back, bruised and winded, high up on the ledges of the rock.
+
+"Then the return wave would drag them off, and pound them against the
+rocks. But the dogs would hang on for dear life, till their nails
+were torn away and their paws were bleeding.
+
+"Even that wouldn't make them quit. They would return to the charge,
+and waiting for their chance they would jump right over the breaking
+crest and get clear of the surf.
+
+"When they've once got hold of a duck, nothing will make them let go.
+I've often been tempted to jump in and give the brave fellows a hand,
+when it seemed as if they couldn't keep up the struggle any longer.
+
+"They'd sink out of sight in a bigger wave than usual--and then, sure
+enough, you'd see the duck again, and the dog's head after it, still
+true to duty even in the jaws of death. For sometimes, in spite of all
+his pluck and cleverness, the dog is drowned."
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+BEASTS BIG AND LITTLE
+
+
+Both on sea and land, Labrador animals have to be as tough as Labrador
+people to stand the hard life they must lead.
+
+Dr. Grenfell tells of a seal family he saw killed on an ice-pan about
+half the size of a tennis-court.
+
+They were surprised by four sealers, with wooden bats. Before they
+gave up their lives they put up a tremendous struggle. The father seal
+actually caught a club in his mouth and swung it from side to side
+with such violence that the sealers had to get off the pan.
+
+But at last he was dealt such a blow on the head that it was supposed
+he was killed.
+
+Instead of stripping off the pelt as the fallen monster lay on the
+pan, the sealers hoisted him aboard the steamer "unscalped." As he was
+being lifted over the rail--two thousand pounds of him--the strap
+broke, and back into the sea the huge carcass splashed.
+
+The cold water revived him.
+
+He swam back to the pan, which was marked by the blood stains of his
+slaughtered family--the mate with her young which he had fought so
+desperately to protect.
+
+The pan stood about six feet out of the water. Yet the great animal
+managed to fling himself upon it.
+
+The men, who had bread and tea to win for their families, could not
+afford to let him go.
+
+They went back after him, and this time they did not trust to their
+wooden bats. They used a few of their precious cartridges and shot
+him. And then they "scalped" him on the spot, and hauled the skin over
+the rail.
+
+It is painful to think of such a fate for the brave old warrior.
+
+Just as the cod-traps are put out from the shore, frame nets are set
+for the seals along the beach where they are fairly sure to pass at
+certain times of the year. There is a capstan from which the doorway
+of the seal-trap may be closed with a few turns. The Doctor tells of
+one "liveyere" family that took nine hundred seals in this way: and
+three to four hundred is nothing unusual. One trapper named Jones was
+so successful at this business of trapping seals with the net that he
+became "purse-proud." From his land where there are no roads, he sent
+to Quebec for a carriage and horses, and then he had a road built on
+which he might parade them up and down to show his neighbors how rich
+he was. Then, for his dances o' winter nights, no local fiddler would
+serve, scraping and patting his foot on the floor. He hired a real
+musician from Canada, who remained all winter playing jigs and reels
+to a continuous round of feasts and merry-making. But, as the familiar
+saying goes, it is often only one generation from shirt-sleeves to
+shirt-sleeves. In his case, the grandchildren finally found themselves
+with less than the shirt-sleeves. They appealed to Dr. Grenfell, and
+he found some old clothes on the boat to save them from freezing.
+
+The whale is really a land animal, which finally found the sea more
+amusing, and so took to "a roving, nautical life."
+
+Since the legs were no longer useful, in the course of time they
+became wee things, and were enclosed in the thick, tough skin.
+
+The "arms" were left outside, but they are nothing to boast of. They
+are not useful for swimming, but they help to balance the huge bulk,
+and mother whale seizes her baby with them when she takes alarm.
+
+The eyes are tiny, for when a whale eats he is not particular.
+
+It takes so many millions of little bits of creatures to give a whale
+a square meal, that if he misses a hundred thousand or so out of the
+side of his huge jaws, at the top of his narrow gullet, he need not
+worry. The whale never starves until he is stranded. Out of water he
+may continue to breathe for an hour or two--but he cannot eat.
+
+"On a fine morning on the Labrador Coast," Dr. Grenfell tells us, "I
+have counted a dozen whales in a single school. Now and again a huge
+tail would emerge from the water and lash the surface with its full
+breadth, making a sound like the firing of a cannon, while the silence
+was otherwise broken only by the noise of their blowing, as they
+rolled lazily along on the surface."
+
+The thresher whale is only about twenty feet long, but he is a fierce
+fellow--the pirate of the whale family, terrorizing the rest, and
+ready to tackle anything in sight.
+
+He has a fin which shows where he is as he cruises along close to the
+surface. He readily eats other whales. Three threshers went after a
+big cow sperm whale and her enormous infant, in shallow water. First
+they killed the "calf." Then they chased the mother away, and came
+back and ate the young one.
+
+In 1892 a huge sperm whale rammed the rocks near Battle Harbor, where
+Dr. Grenfell now has one of his hospitals.
+
+The whale evidently wondered why the rocks didn't give way--for nearly
+everything else he encountered had collapsed when he butted into it.
+He lunged once too often, and was left high, if not dry, on the beach.
+
+They towed him into the harbor, a prize eighty feet in length, and
+proceeded to pump the oil out of him. From the head one hundred and
+forty gallons were taken. This oil in the whale's head, which may be a
+third as big as his body, helps to float the great jawbones.
+
+Of course the "blowing" of the whale is one of its most remarkable
+performances. A whale can stay below an hour, because he puts air into
+his blood by spouting about sixty times, the operation taking him
+about ten minutes.
+
+Grenfell helped take to pieces a "sulphur-bottom" whale ninety-five
+feet long, supposed to weigh nearly 300,000 pounds. A boat could row
+into the mouth. The jawbone was nearly eighteen feet long. "It took
+four of us a whole afternoon, with axes and swords mounted on pike
+handles, to cut out one bone and carry it to our steamer." And in
+order to get back far enough to start cutting at the end, where the
+joint came, they "had to walk almost in the footsteps of Jonah."
+
+The whale is the one animal that lives to a great age--and it is said
+whales have lived to be a thousand years old. A wolf is aged at
+twenty, a caribou or fox at fifteen. A personal acquaintance of the
+Doctor was a black-backed gull which had been in captivity for
+thirty-two years.
+
+The timber-wolf, which elsewhere is so fierce an animal, is
+comparatively mild-mannered in Labrador, and Grenfell has found no
+record of these wolves attacking men, though in packs they have often
+followed the settlers to the doors of their houses.
+
+There is nothing good to be said of the Labrador timber-wolf. Like the
+eggers of Audubon's time, he seems to kill very often not for hunger's
+sake but for the sheer love of killing animals that cannot fight back.
+Often the bodies of deer are found with only the tongues and the
+windpipe torn out by the mean and cowardly slayer.
+
+Sometimes the wolf bites the deer in the small of the back: or several
+wolves will stalk a caribou, some circling about to distract the
+attention of their prey while others creep up on it from behind.
+
+The caribou are amiable and affectionate, and it is easy to tame them
+if they are taken in hand when they are young. They make very
+satisfactory pets.
+
+Grenfell had one which went with him on his mission boat, like a dog
+or a cat.
+
+If not taken ashore, it would stand crying at the rail.
+
+It would follow him about while on land, and swim after its master
+when Grenfell was in a rowboat.
+
+In the field it would come running to be petted, and if left behind
+within the palings would stand up on its hind legs and try desperately
+to butt its way out and follow the Doctor.
+
+Sometimes the caribou has been successfully used to haul a sled.
+
+The Labrador black bear is almost as harmless as the caribou.
+
+Grenfell bought a cub, and in the winter-time gave him a barrel, to
+see if he would know what to do, having no mother to guide him.
+
+The bear knew by instinct how to make himself a warm and cosy nest for
+his long winter sleep.
+
+He found grass and moss, put them in the barrel, and trampled them
+down to make a padded lining such as a human being could hardly have
+bettered.
+
+We all know the story of General Israel Putnam,--how he crawled into
+the wolf-den at Pomfret and shot a wolf "by the light of its own
+eyes." A trapper in Labrador, instead of crawling into a den where an
+animal lay, entered an empty lair, under a cliff. It seemed to have
+been made on purpose for campers.
+
+He lit his small lantern, ate his supper, and then curled up as tidily
+as any four-footed tenant and fell asleep.
+
+Like the bears in the fairy tale, who came back to find Goldilocks in
+the chair and then in the bed of one of them, the real owners of the
+cave appeared in the night.
+
+The hunter was awakened suddenly by a noise like rolling thunder in
+the narrow entrance. He turned up his lamp, and the flare showed him a
+bear, so huge that it blocked the passage-way.
+
+Nimbly the hunter reached for his gun, and before the animal could do
+anything more than growl and threaten, a shot had tumbled him flat.
+
+Shoving aside the body, the trapper went out into the cold starlight,
+for he knew that the mate of the slain beast might appear at any
+moment.
+
+Sure enough, presently over the brow of the hill there shambled in
+black silhouette two more bears.
+
+He took careful aim and fired and brought them both down.
+
+The next time he makes a tour of his traps he probably will not choose
+a bear's den for his night's lodging. A bear that is harmless in the
+open may be excused for getting violent if he finds a man asleep in
+the very bed he fixed for himself.
+
+Grenfell's experience with bears for pets--he has tried to tame nearly
+everything animate from gulls to whales--was not so happy as with the
+caribou. He found that if "pigs is pigs," bears "remain bears, and are
+not to be trusted." He had two bear playmates for a long time, but
+when they hit out with their paws they dealt some "very nasty
+scratches," and what was fun for them was more serious for the tender
+pelt of a human being.
+
+The wolverine lives by his wits.
+
+He will turn over a trap and set it off before it can nip him.
+
+He is the pest of the man who has fur traps, for he will go from trap
+to trap and grab whatever he finds therein.
+
+He can climb trees and get meat which the owner thought was secure.
+
+Sometimes when he is caught he will get away with the trap and chain
+still attached to his leg. He will even carry the trap in his mouth,
+to relieve the strain. Like Kipling's Fuzzy Wuzzy in the Sudan, he has
+a great way of shamming dead. He may jump up and bite the hunter, or
+he may make a sudden dash for freedom. Can you blame him?
+
+One of the most satisfactory creatures of all is the beaver. I
+remember a pair in a pond on the west coast of Newfoundland, at
+Curling, where a beaver colony had a fine big house they had built in
+a lake with a dam of their making at one end. I didn't go into the
+house, which was mainly under water, but the male beaver evidently
+feared I would, and just as he dived he smartly slapped the water with
+his tail to give the danger signal to the lady who was placidly nosing
+about and grubbing for the roots of water-plants at the other side of
+the pond.
+
+"Walking one day through thick wood," says Grenfell, "we came across a
+regular 'pathway,' the trees having been felled to make traveling
+easy. A glance at the stumps showed that it was a road cut by beavers,
+to enable them to drag their boughs of birch along more easily.
+
+"The pathway led to a large house on the edge of a lake, and,
+fortunately for us, the beaver was at home. There were other houses on
+an island in the lake, and below them all a large, strong dam, some
+thirty yards long, and below this two more complete dams across the
+river that flowed out. The dams were made of large tree-trunks, with
+quantities of lesser boughs, and were many feet thick, and very
+difficult to break down. The houses were built half on land, half in
+the water. The sitting-room is up-stairs on the bank, and so is the
+'crew's' bedroom, and the front door is made at least three feet below
+the surface to prevent being 'frozen out' in winter, or, worse still,
+'frozen in.'
+
+"The whole house was neatly rounded off, and so plastered with mud as
+to be warm and weather-proof. This is done by means of their
+trowel-like tails, which are also of great use in swimming. The house
+was so strong that even with an axe we could not get in without very
+considerable delay.
+
+"In the deep pond they had dammed up, we found a quantity of birch
+poles pegged out. The bark of these forms their winter food, and is
+called 'browse.' The beaver cuts off enough for dinner, and takes it
+into his house. Sitting up, he takes the stem in his fore paws, and
+rolls it round and round against his chisel-shaped incisor teeth,
+swallowing the long ribands of bark thus stripped off.... When
+surprised they retreat to holes in the bank, of which the entrances
+are hidden under water. These are called 'hovels.'
+
+"Beavers always work up wind when felling trees, and cut them on the
+water side, so that they fall into the pond if possible, and the wind
+helps to blow them home. This beaver we caught proved to be a
+hermit--at least he was living alone. He may have been a widower of
+unusual constancy. They do not destroy fish, their food in summer
+being preferably the stems of the water-lilies. Otters occasionally
+kill and eat beavers. When they call, the beaver has to try and be
+'not at home.'"
+
+While the beaver evidently has strong feelings on the subject of the
+otter, who seems to be a burglar and a murderer, he apparently does
+not mind the lowly muskrat as a summer boarder, even though the
+latter does not pay for his lodging.
+
+Of course the lord of the animate creation on land in the north--as
+the sperm whale is monarch of the sea--is the polar bear. Grenfell
+gives a most interesting account of this white king of beasts whom we
+properly pity on warm days as he lolls and pants by the soup-like
+water of his tank in one of our southern Zoos. The Doctor once saw a
+polar bear swimming three miles out at sea, headed, by a marvelous
+instinct, straight for the north. There was no convenient ice-pan
+floating near on which he might clamber for a snooze. This bear had
+been shot, and he floated high in the water, so that evidently his fat
+was a great help to him, enabling him to stay at sea as long as he
+pleased.
+
+The polar bears wander from their native shores: they seem to enjoy
+travel, and when they sail south on pans of ice they are looking for
+that toothsome morsel, the seal.
+
+If they cannot get seals, these bears devour the eggs of sea-birds on
+the islands.
+
+When they swim after ducks, they hide under water, all but the nose:
+and since that nose is black, and therefore a telltale, they have
+been seen to bury it in the snow when creeping toward a seal-herd.
+
+The polar bear stands a poor chance against a pack of lively and
+determined dogs.
+
+They have reason to fear his huge paws and tearing claws until he
+tires, but he cannot face all ways at once, and if there are enough
+dogs the struggle soon becomes hopeless.
+
+They are not fast enough to get away from the fleet smaller animals.
+
+In the water, where they swim slowly and dive expertly, the fishermen
+may easily "do for them" with a blow from an axe or an oar. Though the
+polar bear has a fishy taste, the Eskimos relish the meat, and the
+prospect of a successful bear-hunt delights the savage breast.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE KEEPER OF THE LIGHT
+
+
+Once I asked Dr. Grenfell if he was tired. His blue eyes lit up as if
+I had thrown salt into a fire. He threw his head back and said:
+"Tired? I was never tired in my life!"
+
+But I thought he was weary that September evening in 1919 when he sat
+with his legs unkinked to the cheerful blaze, in the big living-room
+of his comfortable house at St. Anthony.
+
+The wind can go whooping around that house all it likes and it never
+will get in unless it is invited. That house was nailed and shingled,
+doored and windowed, to stand up against the stiffest blast that ever
+came howling across the rocks and bergs from the Humboldt Glacier or
+even the North Pole.
+
+Part of the time a blind piano-tuner was at work groping for lost
+chords among the strings of Mrs. Grenfell's piano. The piano didn't
+seem to need tuning so much. But the man needed the work. You can
+imagine there is not much for a blind piano-tuner to do in
+Newfoundland. Most of the music is the canned variety of the Victrola.
+Or, if there is a dance, someone may squat obligingly in a corner and
+hum very loudly what is called by its true name--"chin-music."
+
+Mrs. Grenfell, happy to have her husband back from the gales and fogs
+for a little while, was sitting in the puffy armchair with her
+knitting-needles, and the boys, Pascoe and Wilfred, were up-stairs
+with their teacher, making out jig-saw puzzles in arithmetic or
+knocking the tar out of the French Grammar, with various loud sounds.
+
+What the telephone is to busy men in America, giving them no peace
+even in the bathtub, the telegraph is to the Doctor in Newfoundland.
+If it isn't a man on the doorstep with a bleeding cut or a hacking
+cough, then it is a boy with a message which comes from a point twenty
+to sixty miles off. Most of the time your doctor or mine has a few
+blocks to go: and we think it hard, and he thinks so too, if a patient
+clamors for him in the middle of the night. But the middle of the
+night is the heart of Grenfell's office hours. Once after conducting
+a late evening service in the church at Battle Harbor he had to doctor
+forty patients in the room off the chancel before he could get away.
+
+So it was no surprise to him, in the midst of a tale of the old days
+at Oxford on the football-field, to have a rat-tat like Poe's raven at
+the door, and a respectful "young visitor" doffing his sou'wester.
+
+"Please, sir, a telegram."
+
+Grenfell tore it open.
+
+It read: "Doctor would you please come. My throat is full up and I
+can't eat or sleep."
+
+It was signed "J.N. Cote."
+
+"That," said Grenfell, "is the lighthouse-keeper at Greenley Island,
+just west of the line that divides Canadian Labrador from Newfoundland
+Labrador. He has a big job on his hands. He has two fog-horns, each
+with a twelve horse-power Fairbanks gasoline engine, so that if one's
+put out of business he can use the other. He's had fog all summer--and
+a sub-tonsillar abscess, too. The big Canadian Pacific ships go by his
+place. It's a bad spot. The light-keeper at Forteau tried to bring out
+his wife and five children--and lost all but one child on the rocks.
+Another keeper at Belle Isle tried to bring out a family of about the
+same size--and they all were lost. A doctor stopped in on Captain Cote
+on the down trip from Battle Harbor, on his way back to Baltimore.
+Evidently whatever he did wasn't enough. Looks as if I must go and
+finish the job."
+
+As if to settle the question, even while he spoke there came another
+messenger--like the first, a volunteer--bringing another telegram.
+
+This time, as in those messages sent from Cape Norman about the woman,
+the tone was sharper, more imperative and anxious.
+
+"Please come as fast as you can to operate me in the throat and save
+my life."
+
+The shade of concern in the Doctor's grave face deepened.
+
+"Cote doesn't cry out for nothing," he said. "He's a real man. We must
+go. Would you rather stay here and rest a few days, or will you go with
+me?" Who would care to toast his toes and dally with a book, while
+Grenfell was abroad on such a mission? I had a quick vision of the
+gallant run the _Strathcona_ would be called on to make--squirming
+through the rocks and bucking the headwinds and the heavy seas, to save
+that lighthouse-keeper and keep the big, proud ships from Montreal and
+Quebec from running blind in the dark. Not far from that spot a British
+man-of-war ran aground in 1922 and was a total loss, though happily her
+men were saved. I have been in the wireless cabin on the topmost crags
+of Belle Isle when the Straits all round about, fog-bound, were
+clamorous with the ships, anchor-down, calling to one another and
+whimpering like little lost children trying to clasp hands and afraid
+in the dark together.
+
+It would be a run of a hundred miles from St. Anthony to Captain
+Cote's strangling throat--and what miles they were! Not until the
+middle of June had the mail-boat--that poor, doomed _Ethie_ of the
+dog's rescue--been able to pierce the ice. Where those ice-pans met at
+Cape Bauld the grinding, rending and heaving of their battle was worse
+to hear and see than all the polar bears or the tusked walruses that
+ever rose up and fought together.
+
+Dr. Grenfell could be perfectly sure that he would have to run a
+gauntlet all the way--picking and choosing between crags on the one
+hand and bergs on the other: just such a risky, "chancy" course as he
+most relishes. While he crumpled the telegram in his hand I could see
+his eyes light up again with that flash they showed when I asked him
+if he was ever tired.
+
+His pockets at that moment were full of pleading, piteous letters from
+White Bay, meant to pull him to the other side of the island. One of
+them, from a desperate woman, after saying her husband had caught but
+eleven dollars' worth of fish all season, wound up with an appeal for
+oddments of clothes to put on the children, for "We are all as naked
+as birds."
+
+It was hard to say no to the heart-throbs of those begging letters in
+his pocket. But Captain Cote's life was not one life. It was the lives
+of thousands--men, women and children--going down to the sea in ships,
+faring through the St. Lawrence, and the Gulf, and then those terrible
+Straits of Belle Isle, to the Old Country.
+
+So we started. But was Mrs. Grenfell going to stay home with the
+piano, and French verbs, and her fancy-work, while the _Strathcona_
+nosed the seething waters? Not on your life! Wilfred and Pascoe had a
+perfectly good governess, and while it was hard on them to remain
+behind with their books, their turn with Father was coming.
+
+The big black dog, named Fritz, had no French verbs to study, and no
+measly sums in arithmetic to do, so--at one running jump--he was added
+to the passenger-list. His berth was chiefly out on the end of the
+bowsprit--he was more ambitious than a figurehead. There he could
+sniff the breeze, and see the shore, even when there wasn't any, and
+bark defiance at all the dogs and the sea-pusses.
+
+The _Strathcona_ used both steam and sail. She was ketch-rigged, with
+six sails--mainsail, foresail, two jibs, two topsails. One of those
+topsails was a fancy, oblong thing which Dr. Grenfell's crew
+mistrusted as though it were witchcraft. He had brought it from the
+North Sea; they had never seen the likes of it before, and their minds
+are likely to be sternly set against anything new. But the Doctor, who
+is restless on shipboard, climbed to the crow's nest now and then to
+adjust the strange contraption, and make sure that it was using the
+wind in such a way as to develop the last ounce of pulling power. This
+was no pleasure cruise. It was a run for life.
+
+The sea was a vast blue smile as we swaggered out of St. Anthony
+Harbor. What a fickle creature is that northern ocean! This was the
+first clear day in ever so long--and now the sun and the water were in
+conspiracy to pretend it had always been this gay, fair weather.
+
+The only blemish on the seascape was a troop of bergs, six in number,
+out yonder to starboard. But they were dim and distant as we bore in
+toward the headland at Quirpon Tickle. Quirpon is called "Carpoon" by
+the fishermen because that isn't the way to pronounce it. And Tickle
+has nothing to do with making you laugh. Quite the contrary. It means
+a very serious business of creeping and twisting snakewise through a
+channel that winds among the rocks. You are perfectly sure you are
+about to ram the face of a wall--and then, lo and behold! there is a
+way out at the last minute, and it leads you to another wall and
+another rift that suddenly and impossibly opens to let you through.
+You have to think of the pirates who used to run and hide in places
+like that, and give the slip to honest sailor men from France and
+England who were trying to run them down. If they didn't meet the
+pirates they met and fought each other, which was vastly diverting to
+the pirates and perhaps just as satisfying to themselves.
+
+There were fishermen's dories bouncing about like happy children in
+the shallower waters near the shore. I happened to be at the wheel,
+and my one idea was not to hit those sharp and cruel rocks, not to
+strike a fisherman, and to give the widest berth I could to the
+distant menace of those icebergs.
+
+Grenfell, red-booted and brown-sweatered, put his head in at the
+wheel-house door, and the wind ruffled his silver hair as he cried:
+"Run her so close to those rocks that you all but skin her!"
+
+You see, his mind was only on Captain Cote, with the choke in his
+throat, strangling and struggling, but going on with his duty as the
+keeper of the light with the beams outflashing to the long, far bellow
+of his mighty horn.
+
+In our race against time, we were burning coal, that precious
+commodity, then twenty-four dollars a ton,--and much more costly
+to-day. Spruce and fir and juniper were piled on deck--some of the
+wood across the barrels of whale-meat, in a vain attempt to shut off
+the rotten smell of the food so loved by the dogs. But, hasten as we
+might, the night closed down like a lid on a box as we sounded our
+gingerly way through the perilous twistings of the Tickle. The wind
+was rising, and as we looked back we saw the waves, running white and
+high at a mad dance in cold moonlight. If we went on, and came out
+into the Straits, the wind would hold us there without an inch of
+gain, though we had the full power of the engines going and all sails
+set. The _Strathcona_, a tiny steamer of less than fifty tons, was no
+match for the sea aroused in opposition. It is a miracle that this
+small boat, the _Strathcona_, lived so long, with so many attempts of
+ice and rock to punch the life out of her wherever she went.
+
+Dr. Grenfell, as his habit is on shipboard, rose at two, at three and
+at four to study his charts and lay out his course, and at twenty
+minutes to five his strong hands were at the wheel, on which are the
+words "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."
+
+The dog Fritz had been sleeping all night on a thick blue woolen
+blanket in the bunk below mine. He had no business there, and he knew
+it, but as regularly as I turned him out into the nipping air and the
+frosty starlight he would return indignantly. "What's the matter with
+you?" his wrinkled face seemed to say. "You're just a visitor on this
+boat, and I belong here. What right have you to keep me out of a nice
+warm bed? You don't need this whole cabin, you selfish man." Finally
+my patience gave out and I let him have his way.
+
+Under the red edges of the dawn, a fresh breeze blowing, we came
+within hail of that ugly rock named the Onion. "In that bay over
+there," laughed Grenfell, "we were blown across the ice--sled and dogs
+and all--when we were trying to round up the reindeer herd. We had the
+time of our lives!
+
+"You see, we had brought a bunch of reindeer all the way from Lapland,
+and Lapp herders came with them, to keep off the dogs and prevent the
+natives from shooting them as if they were caribou. On one occasion we
+had a real 'Night before Christmas' celebration, and St. Nick
+delighted the children at the Orphanage where he came with his gifts
+on a big sled behind a real team of reindeer.
+
+"But the reindeer spread all over the peninsula, and the Lapps
+couldn't keep track of their charges. The hunters and the dogs were
+hard on the trail of the herd. You couldn't blame hungry men and
+famished animals.
+
+"I meant in time to persuade the people to give up their dogs and use
+reindeer instead. The reindeer could draw sleds, and would give milk,
+and meat too, if necessary, and their furs would be valuable. There
+wouldn't be any risk of their hurting children, or strangers, or sick
+people, and they wouldn't make night hideous with their howling.
+
+"But at last, in order to save the remnant, it was necessary to move
+them, and I decided to load them on a fishing-vessel and take them
+across the Straits to the St. Augustine River country, where they
+could increase in peace, and the dogs would not bother them, and the
+Canadian Government could protect them from any Indian hunters who
+might come along.
+
+"It was a fine plan, on paper. But it was like the old recipe for
+making a rabbit pie--'first catch your hare.' The reindeer having had
+the run of the open spaces so long saw no reason why they should be
+caught and put on a boat and carried off.
+
+"So they gave us a run for it, I can tell you! All over the place we
+rushed, shouting and trying to lasso or corner the terrified animals.
+I never laughed so hard in my life. The wind was blowing great guns,
+and you simply couldn't stand up against it. We caught a great many of
+the reindeer. But a lot of them romped off into the woods and took to
+the hills and we never saw them again. Since they were moved to Canada
+they have done well--and some day, when the people are ready to have
+them, I want to move them back and see if we can't replace the
+dog-teams with them."
+
+Meanwhile the little ship had turned her head away from the unsavory
+Onion, and was running on, over a long diagonal, to cross the straits
+in the bared teeth of the green and yeasty waves. That she was
+top-heavy was plainly to be seen, with her barrels of whale-meat and
+her high-piled fire-wood on deck, and almost no ballast or cargo
+below.
+
+As we stood out into the middle of the channel, I thought of the great
+boats that must feel their way through the dense fog in evil weather.
+They would have to be honking like wild geese, even though the straits
+at their narrowest between Flower's Cove and Greenley Island are ten
+miles wide. Fog is a terrible deceiver. I remember coming up the East
+Coast on the mail-steamer _Invermore_ in 1913. In a day after leaving
+Twillingate we were nearly wrecked three times. First, when we thought
+we were ten miles offshore, we found a tiny skiff, with two persons
+aboard, in our path--we nearly ran it down. Father and small son,
+fourteen, were fishing for cod, and had their meagre catch in a tin
+pail. Captain Kane had stopped our boat--we were going at quarter
+speed--and he had the man come up on the bridge to show us where the
+land lay. "Out yonder!" The ancient mariner pointed to the northwest.
+A rowboat was manned: in a few minutes its crew came back and
+reported that the rocks were not more than two hundred yards away. So
+we backed off, and steamed hard in the opposite direction. But only an
+hour or so later,--pulled steadily on and on toward the shore, by the
+strong, insetting tide,--we saw the grey edge of the fog lifting like
+a table-cloth, and there were those cruel rocks again, dragons in a
+lair, waiting to receive us, crush our bones and drink our blood.
+Again we backed away--and before long the fierce jangle of the bell in
+the engine room and the captain's sharp accent of command from the
+bridge once more halted us suddenly. There, directly before our prow,
+was a great white wall of ice, which had taken almost the color of the
+mist. It was an iceberg that barred our path, and if we had been
+speeding like the _Titanic_ instead of creeping like a snail, it would
+doubtless have been the end of the _Invermore_. Only one more tragedy
+of a missing ship.
+
+At four in the afternoon, when the great rock bastion of Belle Isle
+loomed across our bows, we gave up for the night: and next morning,
+between seven and eight, no fewer than eight enormous icebergs
+crossed our bows in a glittering processional.
+
+But to-day, mid-stream, there was no fog, and despite the roughness of
+the water the cool air and clear sunlight were cause for rejoicing.
+"Isn't it fun to live?" exclaimed the Doctor, as he swung the wheel;
+and the _Strathcona_, feeling her master's hand, trembled and obeyed.
+
+Fritz, out yonder on the prow, was staring toward the bleak Labrador
+coast. Was he thinking of dogs to fight, and fish to eat, and a snooze
+on the beach, after the run was over and the anchor was down? No--he
+was looking at something near at hand--and his ears were even quicker
+than ours to catch over the voice of waves or wind the cry of men in a
+power-boat off the starboard bow.
+
+There were three of them. Two of them held up the third man, whose
+bare head flopped over on his chest. The collar of his overcoat was
+turned up to shelter that agonizing throat. Yes, it was Captain Cote,
+the man we came so far to seek.
+
+"Doctor!" they called. "He couldn't wait! We've brought him out to
+ye!"
+
+A moment more and hands as tender as they were willing were lifting
+him over the rail. A wee baby would have had no gentler handling.
+
+Captain Cote's face was the greenish white of a boiled potato. It was
+seamed with deep lines of pain and sleepless nights. He was carried to
+the brass rungs of the ladder and lowered.
+
+"Easy! easy!" those who let him down were saying to each other. They
+seemed to fear he would break if they dropped him.
+
+By the light of a battered tin lamp Grenfell ran a needle into his
+throat with the novocaine that would destroy the pain of the
+operation.
+
+Then he took his thin scissors a foot long and thrust them into the
+abscess under the tonsils.
+
+Five minutes later, Captain Cote had found the use of his tongue
+again, and, waving both hands round his ears as he talked, he was
+thanking God and Dr. Grenfell, and giving us the full history of the
+dreadful months he spent before help came.
+
+Next day we landed on his island--Greenley Island. From the small
+wharf where women were cleaning fish there were two lines of planking
+laid, on cinders, for perhaps a thousand feet through the long green
+grass to the red brick lighthouse tower. On these wooden rails was the
+chassis of a Ford car, and we rode in state. But you had to stick
+closely to the track, or you came to grief on the rough, shelly soil
+alongside.
+
+"It's the first automobile ride I ever had in Labrador!" the Doctor
+gleefully exclaimed.
+
+In the lighthouse was a living-room with a talking-machine, a violin,
+a typewriter and other things to add to the comfort of a home and make
+a family happy.
+
+The patient was brought into the room by his beaming wife and two of
+his children.
+
+"How are you this morning, Captain?" asked Grenfell.
+
+"Feeling fine, Doctor."
+
+"Did you sleep?"
+
+"Slept like a baby. First time in three months."
+
+"And can you eat?"
+
+"I can eat rocks, Doctor."
+
+Then the Captain brought out a pocketbook stuffed with greenbacks.
+Twelve hundred dollars a year, with nothing to spend it for, since he
+gets his living, seems a fortune to a man in that part of the world.
+
+"How much do I owe you?" He pulled out three ten-dollar bills.
+
+"One of those will do," said the Doctor, quietly.
+
+It was right for him to take the money. Self-respect on Captain Cote's
+part demanded that he should pay. Grenfell lets his patients pay in
+wood or fish or whatever they have, a value merely nominal compared
+with what they receive. But he wants them to feel--and they, too, wish
+to feel--that they are not beggars, living on the dole of his charity.
+
+"Now then, Doctor, how about the coal you burned getting here? How
+much does that come to? The Canadian Government'll give it back to
+you. We've got some down on the wharf. We can take it out now and put
+it on your boat."
+
+The emergency run of the _Strathcona_ had used five tons and a
+quarter. At twenty-four dollars a ton, this would be worth one hundred
+and twenty-six dollars.
+
+We went down to the wharf, and tried to put the coal, which was soft
+coal, like dust, on a skiff, to take it two hundred yards in a
+half-gale to the _Strathcona_.
+
+But the mighty wind blew the coal out of the boat as fast as it was
+shoveled aboard.
+
+Then Captain Cote said, "We'll send it, when calm weather comes, to
+Sister Bailey at Forteau." She was a wonderful trained nurse,--a
+friend of Edith Cavell,--who lived in the near-by village, and had a
+cow that fought off the dogs and gave milk to the sick babies.
+
+So Captain Cote's life was saved and the great boats from Montreal and
+Quebec with their hundreds of passengers could enter and traverse the
+Straits in any weather, because the keeper of the light was at his
+post once more.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THROUGH THE BLIZZARD
+
+
+Another trip was to the north, in January, over the thirty miles from
+St. Anthony to Cape Norman, to save a woman's life. It all looks so
+easy when you get out the map and measure it across white space.
+
+But when that white space is snow instead of paper, and there are
+thirty miles of it to flog through, instead of three inches under your
+hand--that, as Kipling would say, is another story.
+
+Over the telegraph line from Cape Norman to St. Anthony came a piteous
+message from a young fisherman. It said his wife was dying. Grenfell
+telegraphed back, the message running something like this: "My
+assistant has gone off with the dogs to answer another call. Cannot
+leave my patients at the hospital and cannot get any dogs till he
+comes back."
+
+Then another message came from the distracted husband: "Doctor, my
+wife is dying. For God's sake find another team somewhere and come."
+
+The night, as the island saying is, was as dark as the inside of a
+cow. Grenfell stumbled out into the blackness to hunt for dogs. The
+trail to Cape Norman is very rough, and the January snow was deep. The
+wind blowing over it threw the snow, biting and blinding, in the face
+of anyone who attempted the trail.
+
+But Grenfell did not hesitate. From house to house he went, to rouse
+the occupants like another Paul Revere, and beg for dogs that he might
+use on the desperate journey.
+
+One man let him take four. Another, for pay, gave him a fifth animal.
+A boy named Walter said he would get four more dogs and would drive
+the ill-assorted team. By that time it was midnight.
+
+"We'll start at 4:30," said the Doctor. At 4:30 it would still be
+pitch-black.
+
+Grenfell went back to the hospital, roused the head nurse, and went to
+every patient to make sure that while he was gone no accident would
+happen that he could possibly prevent.
+
+At 4:30 he was ready to start. Few men are his match for staying up
+all night and looking as fresh as a mountain daisy after the vigil.
+
+He opened the door and a blizzard swept in and tried to rush him off
+his feet. Through the whirling drift staggered Walter, dogless.
+
+"Where are those dogs?" asked the Doctor. He expects men to keep
+agreements made with him. He couldn't get through the length and
+breadth of his big day's work if they didn't.
+
+Walter shook his snow-covered head. "I ain't brought 'em, sir. It's
+too bad a night to be startin' before sun-up. The dogs don't know each
+other: they comes from here, there an' all over. They'll be fightin'
+in the traces an' eatin' each other up in the dark. Us must be able to
+see 'em in order to drive 'em. You know what dogs is like, sir."
+
+"Yes, I do," said Grenfell. "But you're the driver, and I leave it to
+you. We must get off as soon as we can."
+
+Dr. Grenfell went to his room to snatch a catnap before the start.
+Another telegram woke him as he was drowsing off.
+
+"Come along soon. Wife worse."
+
+The storm instead of going down was more violent than ever when the
+grey day came. The sun was not seen at all. On the contrary, the air
+was filled with a mad whirl of pelting, stinging flakes almost as hard
+as Indian arrow-heads. The dogs would be no good in the teeth of such
+a storm--for the team-mates who work with a will are those that are
+best acquainted, and with an unknown driver this team suddenly thrown
+together would have pulled as many different ways as there were fierce
+and headstrong dogs. They would be at each other's throats before they
+were out of sight of the houses.
+
+As he waited, walking restlessly up and down, in his brown sweater and
+thick leggins, Grenfell was plagued with the picture of the woman
+fighting for her life till help should come from the one man who could
+give it.
+
+Still another of those telegrams! This time the message read: "Come
+immediately if you can. Wife still holding out."
+
+Just as he read the words, there were voices, and battering hands at
+the door.
+
+Two men, white as Santa Claus from head to foot, staggered into the
+room, with the wind whooping at their backs as if in a wild anger
+that they escaped its clutches.
+
+Grenfell, accustomed as he was to the brave men of a hard country,
+fairly gasped when he saw them.
+
+"Where did you come from?"
+
+"We comes to fetch you, sir, for the sick woman at Cape Norman."
+
+"Do you think dogs can get me there now?" the Doctor asked, anxiously.
+
+"No, sir. We was blown here most o' the way, wi' the wind at our
+backs. The wind drove us. The dogs can't make head against it, not
+till the wind shifts clean round the other way, sir."
+
+Ten miles of their journey had been in the fairly sheltered lee of the
+land. Twenty miles had been before the pitiless sweep of the wind over
+the unprotected sea-ice. If the snow had not drifted so heavily, they
+would have been borne along at a pace so rapid that their sled would
+have been wrecked.
+
+"When was it you left Cape Norman?" was the Doctor's next question.
+
+"Eight o'clock last night, sir."
+
+So they had been coming on all through the night, without rest or
+food. Yet the first thing they had done when the sled stopped at last
+before Grenfell's door was to get something for their dogs to eat.
+Already, the animals lay snug and tranquil in a drift, as if it were a
+feather-bed--sleeping the sleep of good dogs who have done their work
+and earned their daily fish-heads and know of nothing more to want in
+this life or the next.
+
+The Doctor patted the broad shoulders of the gaunt, shy spokesman. "Go
+into the hospital and get a good, big, hot dinner," he said. "Then go
+to bed. We'll wake you when it's time to start."
+
+But after dark--and the darkness came on very early--the two troubled
+men were at Grenfell's door again. "Us couldn't sleep, sir, for
+thinkin' of the woman. Us have got another telegram sayin' please to
+hurry. The storm is not so bad as it was, sir. If you think fitten to
+start, we're ready."
+
+"Call Walter," said the Doctor.
+
+"Us has called he, sir. He's gettin' the dogs. He'll be here in a
+minute."
+
+Grenfell and his comrades knew that the lull in the storm did not mean
+the end of it. It was gathering strength, and might at any moment
+break loose again with redoubled fury. But he--and they--couldn't
+stand waiting any longer. They must go. It was as if out of the black
+distances they heard the thin, far, pleading voice of the sufferer
+calling to them, to come and save her.
+
+Their first task was to get across the harbor of St. Anthony in the
+dark and the eddying snow. They had their snowshoes, but in spite of
+these they sank to their knees in slush, and the two dog-teams
+floundered and half-swam. The team from Cape Norman went first, to
+encourage the others. A man stumbled ahead of them all, to break out a
+footway. Walter trudged in advance of the rear team, with Grenfell
+driving an assortment of beasts he had never handled before. Only a
+dog-driver knows what that means.
+
+Ascending the flank of the hill across the harbor, they found
+themselves almost overwhelmed by the deep snow, with more piling down
+from above, as they fought their way foot by foot up the hill. They
+had to take hold of the sleds and lift them to help the dogs, and the
+sweat rolled off them in spite of the keen bite of the cold. When they
+topped the rise at last, the wind struck them full force, so that
+their loudest shouts could not be heard in the roaring onrush of the
+wind. The slope was a steep glaze of ice, and down it they coasted,
+running into tree-trunks and rocks that threatened to wrench the sleds
+and injure the dogs and men. It was hardly better when they reached
+the bottom. Here the Bartlett River became their necessary roadway,
+and twice Grenfell and others broke through into the swirling current
+and were almost carried away to be drowned under the ice.
+
+    [Illustration: WHERE FOUR FEET ARE BETTER THAN TWO]
+
+Down-stream they battled their course--no wonder "Battle Harbor" is
+the name of the Labrador inlet not far away. It is a battle to get
+anywhere in winter on this coast. At half-past one in the morning they
+came to where the twenty-mile stretch of sea-ice began.
+
+After that experience of a few years before on the ice-pan, Grenfell
+would not have been to blame if he had called a halt and said, "No,
+not out there! Let us take the longest way round, by the shore, and
+be safe."
+
+But that has never been his way. When duty calls, he takes the air
+line to the scene of action. So it was on this awful night. It had
+taken six hours to do ten miles. The sea was throwing the ice about
+with a mighty booming and crashing like the firing of cannon. The
+blizzard stung their faces and lashed their bodies. Grenfell was ready
+to dare the passage. But the men who came for him would not have it
+so. His life was precious in their sight: and they knew what its
+preservation meant to all that helpless lonesomeness of the winter
+coast.
+
+It lacked six hours to daylight. If they waited, the dogs would not
+freeze, but men might suffer, and perhaps lose their lives.
+
+But the rugged pair from Cape Norman said that in the preceding fall
+someone had put up a "tilt"--a log refuge--in the woods near by. They
+roved about until to their exceeding joy they found it.
+
+There was not merely a shack of spruce-logs. In the shelter there was
+a stove, and beside the stove was a pile of wood. It is the habit of
+the men of the North to think of those who come after them. They who
+have been through a winter understand what it means to depend on
+others and have others depend on them. Those who do not play the game
+that generous, open-handed, far-sighted way have no friends and are
+despised by their neighbors.
+
+The dogs fell asleep in the snow. One of the Cape Norman men "bust
+open" the river with his axe and filled the kettle for tea. But even
+while Grenfell was fussing with the knots of the dunnage bag to get
+out the tea and the sugar, he heard his comrade's pipe fall to the
+floor.
+
+Grenfell looked up. The good soul, standing erect, was fast asleep. It
+had been sixty hours since he had slept, and forty-eight of these had
+been spent on that terrible trail where there was no trail. Flesh and
+blood rebelled at last. Even the records of ambulance-drivers in the
+war have seldom equalled such endurance. The sleeper was roused and
+put on the bench. He tried again to stuff his pipe with his frightful
+rubbish called tobacco. But the pipe clattered to the floor again: he
+was dead to the world: his snoring shook the peace of dreamland, and
+would have broken the glass in the tilt if there had been any glass to
+break.
+
+What might be called dawn came at last, but with it the snow returned
+fast and thick as the flies and mosquitoes of a Labrador spring.
+
+The snow cut off their view of the sea, but they heard it roaring as
+though possessed of all the devils.
+
+Over that roaring there seemed to come to their ears again the still
+small voice of the woman in misery--hopeful, waiting for them,
+trusting the Doctor who had never failed her yet.
+
+They were not the sort who would say sea-ice was impassable, if humans
+and dogs could traverse it.
+
+But examination showed that there was no way over the partly frozen
+sea.
+
+Greatly against their will, they must take the roundabout route
+overland. By two in the afternoon the ice held sufficiently to let
+them cross to Crow Island, and there they tried to boil water and make
+tea. The blizzard defeated them. In the blinding snow, they set their
+course by the compass, and the dogs plunged on. They said nothing to
+the dogs after that, but let them follow their own cold noses. The
+wonderful beasts took them straight to a tiny shore village. A short
+dash from the village, and the long run was over. In a jiffy, Grenfell
+had out the surgical instruments and put the patient under ether.
+To-day the woman is not merely alive but in the best of health, and
+she thinks of Dr. Grenfell as the Greeks used to think of a god.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+WHY THE DOCTOR WAS LATE
+
+
+We have seen by this time that Grenfell does not rush slam-bang into
+danger for the mere sake of "the tumult and the shouting," like a
+soldier of fortune.
+
+Once he said to me: "I'm like these dogs. Every time they hear a fight
+going on at the other end of the village they feel that they have to
+get into it, and off they go, pell-mell. Whenever I hear of a good
+scrap in progress anywhere in the world, my first impulse is to drop
+everything else and get into the struggle. Then I realize that I'm
+serving my fellow-man as truly by staying just where I am, and trying
+to do my duty in my place."
+
+He is fearlessly willing to spend his life in heroic deeds: but he
+always has a definite purpose in view: he is not posing for the
+motion-pictures. So when he harnesses his dogs to go on a journey we
+may be pretty sure that at the other end of the run there is some man,
+woman or child who needs the Doctor, and who takes the medicine of
+hope just from seeing him at the bedside, before he has done anything
+with a knife or a needle.
+
+In the spring of 1919 the Doctor had to go to New York. It wasn't a
+sick person this time: it was a board of directors that wanted to hear
+his report on his work, and was to discuss with him big plans to raise
+$1,500,000 for an endowment fund to carry it on. A Seamen's Institute,
+a string of hospitals, several mission steamers, an industrial school
+and a number of dispensaries take a lot of money to run, even with
+many volunteer helpers.
+
+Most of us, if we find it inconvenient to attend a meeting, telephone
+or write politely to say we have the laryngitis or the shingles or
+some other good excuse, and are very, very sorry that we cannot come.
+
+But Grenfell, having said he would be in New York at the end of May,
+was bound to be there in spite of fog and bog, sea and snow and berg,
+if it was humanly possible. I remember his story of what happened as
+vividly as though it were yesterday, for I also had an appointment
+with him at that time--and he was only a month late in keeping it.
+
+He had written me:
+
+"I am in a terrible state about my boat: she is still in the blockade
+of ice, after two months fighting it. It is harder to beat than the
+Huns, but I am very anxious you should come with me, even if we have
+to canoe down the coast."
+
+The story behind his finally successful attempt to reach New York on
+that occasion is as follows:
+
+He set apart a month to make the journey, which in open summer weather
+would require only a week. He meant to go round the northern tip of
+Newfoundland, from his headquarters on the east coast at St. Anthony.
+
+He planned, therefore, to go by dog-team northward to the Straits of
+Belle Isle, and then alongshore rounding Cape Bauld and Cape Norman,
+and on down the west coast to the railroad at Curling which would take
+him to Port aux Basques. At the latter place, the southwestern corner
+of Newfoundland, an ice-breaking steamer would carry him over Cabot
+Straits to North Sydney, and there he could get a train which would
+make connections for New York.
+
+There is what dogs would consider a fair route alongshore on the
+western coast. And the dogs' opinion is worth considering.
+
+But there sprang up a continuing gale, with a blizzard in its teeth.
+It rocked and hammered and broke the ice with the fury of great guns
+round about the headlands. As the trail for much of the way lay along
+the sea-ice, it would have been as impossible for the dogs to go by it
+as it was to make that short-cut across the bay when Doctor and dogs
+had that terrible experience on the ice-pan.
+
+"Very well then," said Grenfell, "we'll try a motor-boat."
+
+Motor-boating is fun enough in summer on the placid reaches of the
+Delaware or the Hudson, but it is a very different matter on the coast
+of Newfoundland, in a narrow lane between great chunks that have
+broken off a Greenland glacier and lean brown crags with the sea
+crashing white and high upon them. If he went in a motor-boat,
+Grenfell would have to be on the lookout day and night for ice-pans
+and bergs, lest they close in and crush his boat as an elephant's
+tread would squash a peanut.
+
+When the blizzard that had spoiled the ice eased off, Grenfell had his
+boat ready. After two or three days of creeping in the lee of the
+rocks and trying to keep out of the clutch of the breakers, he would
+find himself at a point where he could begin a lonely trek overland, a
+hundred miles to the railroad, with his pack of food and clothing on
+his stalwart shoulders.
+
+Just such a lonely walk as that many a sealer, fisherman or clergyman
+has made. If night overtakes a man, and he is far from a hut, he kicks
+a hole in a drift, lines it with fir boughs, makes his fire and crawls
+in snugly. He finds snow-water will not hurt him if he mixes it with
+tea or sugar. Grenfell, accustomed to hiking with the dog-team, felt
+no dread of a night with a snow-bank for his feather-bed.
+
+The start was made auspiciously. The ice kept well out of the way till
+Grenfell, who had one man with him, cleared the harbor. As they went
+on, however, the east wind spied the bold little craft, and came on
+like an evil thing, to play cat-and-mouse with it.
+
+It brought in the ice, and the ice was constantly pushing the boat
+toward the shore, toward which the current was pulling like a
+remorseless unseen hand.
+
+"Keep her off the rocks, Bill!" warned the Doctor, poling vigorously
+at the stern.
+
+"I'm tryin' to, sir. But the wind is wonderful strong, and I'm
+thinkin'----"
+
+Whatever Bill was thinking, he was rudely interrupted by a rock that
+did not show above the surface. They were in a most perilous position.
+The boat, caught on the tidal reef, tossed to and fro, and the
+propeller, lifted high out of water, whirled like an electric fan.
+Through a hole in the prow the water rushed in. The two men sprang to
+the leak and stuffed it with their hats and coats and anything on
+which they could lay their hands.
+
+Fortunately the hole was not large, and as they had hammer and nails
+and pieces of board for such an emergency they managed to shut out the
+water with rude patchwork. They bailed the boat and shoved it off
+again, and crept onward. But the thermometer dropped fast, and in the
+intense cold the circulating pipes froze and burst. That damage, too,
+was laboriously repaired, and they went ashore and spent the night
+under the glittering starlight with no coverlid but juniper boughs,
+beside a roaring fire. The next day they saw that the ice had so
+closed in to the southward that their little boat could not possibly
+go forward.
+
+They must, therefore, retreat to St. Anthony, and try to get round the
+Cape and into the Straits of Belle Isle.
+
+But they found they were now shut off even from their home port of St.
+Anthony!
+
+Leaving the motor-boat at a tiny fishing-hamlet, they borrowed a small
+rowboat, and went out to "buck the ice."
+
+The ice "made mock of their mad little craft." While they were hunting
+to and fro for crevices through which they might work their way, their
+old enemy the east wind was narrowing the channels till they saw that
+the tiny cockle-shell must soon be caught in the grip of the ice-pack
+and crushed to flinders.
+
+"Jump out, Bill!" commanded the Doctor, setting the example. "We've
+got to lift her onto the pan!"
+
+They seized the prow and hauled with might and main.
+
+But the boat was doomed. They could not pull the stern free in time.
+The ice came on, ramming and jamming--and in an instant the stern was
+cut off, and was crushed to kindling-wood. The ice chewed the
+splinters savagely, as a husky gnaws a bone.
+
+This time there was no question of repairs. They had half a boat, and
+the gaunt cliffs of the shore were far away, with bits of ice dotting
+the black water between.
+
+They had their guns, and they fired at intervals to signal to the
+shore.
+
+"Evidently there ain't nobody at home," Bill remarked grimly. The pan
+was taking them out to the sea, just as it did with Grenfell and the
+dogs on that earlier memorable occasion.
+
+Bill was a venturesome soul. "I'm going to copy," he announced
+briefly.
+
+That meant, as I have explained, that he would jump from one cake of
+ice to the next. Eliza crossing the river-ice in "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
+was nothing to the feat he set himself in that perilous, pitiless
+northern sea. There was no causeway to the land. He would have to do
+as a lumberman does in a log-jam, jumping before the object he has
+stepped on has time to sink with him. There would be no chance to
+think. He would have to keep on the move every instant, and death
+might be the penalty of a misstep.
+
+"Mebbe," said Bill, as coolly as though it were a question of running
+bases at a ball-game, "mebbe I'll git close enough to the land so some
+o' the boys 'll see me. Lend me your boat-hook, will you, Doctor?"
+
+The Doctor, who would rather have taken the water-hazard himself,
+passed over the boat-hook.
+
+Bill jumped from pan to pan, nimble as a goat. Fortune seemed to be
+favoring the brave. His leaps would have broken records at a
+track-meet. Sometimes he put out the boat-hook after the manner of a
+pole-vaulter, and flung himself with its aid across a terrifying
+chasm.
+
+But as Grenfell watched and waited in suspense, all of a sudden, to
+his acute dismay, he saw the pole slip from his comrade's grasp.
+
+Bill staggered on the edge of a pan, and gave a desperate wrench of
+the body to save himself from falling. In vain. In another instant he
+was struggling in the waves. In a moment more the pans might crush
+him, or he might be so benumbed that he could make no further effort
+to help himself.
+
+While the Doctor stood there in mental anguish because he could do
+nothing to help his comrade, he saw Bill with a desperate effort throw
+a burly leg over the edge of the pan and scramble out, seemingly none
+the worse for the ducking.
+
+All Bill could do now was to stand on his pan and let the wind and the
+sea take him where they would.
+
+Grenfell kept on shooting, but there was no response from the shore.
+
+Bill's pan crept nearer and nearer to the Doctor's--but not near
+enough to let Bill get back.
+
+At last the shooting was answered.
+
+They saw the flash of an oar--always the first signal of rescue under
+these conditions--and a boat hove in sight.
+
+The two men on the ice shouted excited encouragement to each other at
+the same instant.
+
+The rescuers were not less joyful than the rescued. Such events as
+this have led some of the fishermen to believe that Grenfell leads a
+charmed life, and that the winds and the seas are aware that he is
+their master.
+
+He had now spent a precious month in trying to break the ice-blockade.
+Since the ice had backed away a short distance from the coast,
+Grenfell now thought he might use the mission steamer herself, the
+brave _Strathcona_, to get round the northern end of the peninsula and
+so follow his original plan of a journey down the west coast. Compared
+with the _Strathcona_, the mail steamer was palatial luxury.
+
+All went well enough till they came to the Straits. There it was the
+old story. The ice was piled mountainously, in a barricade that meant
+a long siege to penetrate. What was still worse, it closed in suddenly
+about the ship, just as it has so often embraced Arctic explorers. The
+_Strathcona_ might not be able to rid herself of the encumbrance for
+many days, perhaps for several weeks.
+
+One way was left--to walk. The distance was ninety miles--and what
+miles they were!
+
+Like the snail, he had to carry all his baggage on his back. It
+included a frying-pan, blankets, food, and a suit of clothes fit to
+wear at the meeting of the board of directors,--a sufficient burden
+for two human shoulder-blades. Mrs. Grenfell remained aboard the
+_Strathcona_. It was to take her down the east coast to the railroad
+at Lewisporte, when the ice released its hold on the ship. In time, if
+all went well, she would join her husband in New York.
+
+It was a hard and lonely journey for Grenfell for the next three days.
+Thirty miles a day was as much as he could do over a beach piled high
+with gnarled, weather-worn rocks and ice carved by the sea into
+strange forms, and flung into rough sugar-bowl heaps. When night came,
+for want of soft snow-banks into which he might dig for a snug bed, he
+scraped himself a place in the wet sand and built a fire and dried his
+clothes to the tune of a raving wind. He knew the mail boat was
+expected at any time at Flower's Cove, and if he missed it he would
+have to wait a fortnight, at least, for its next southward journey.
+In spite of the discomfort of sleeping on the ground, and the fear
+that he might reach the Cove just too late to catch the steamer, his
+rest was sound and sweet, while it lasted. But he let himself have
+very little of it, because of the need of forcing the pace, and we can
+easily imagine that it was a man thoroughly ready for a night in bed
+who rapped at Parson Richard's door at Flower Cove when the three
+days' hike was over.
+
+"Well, well, Doctor!" Parson Richard's face was a warm and beaming
+lamp of welcome. "Come right in! Why didn't you telegraph? You know
+there's nobody I'd rather see than you.--Mary!" he called. "Get the
+Doctor a cup of tea--and let him have a piece of that caribou steak
+we've been keeping. It sure is good to see you, Doctor! Now we'll have
+a fine chance to talk, when you're rested. The mail-boat won't be
+along till to-morrow morning. There are so many things I want to tell
+you about and ask your advice."
+
+Grenfell had tugged off his rubber boots and sat in a cushioned chair
+with his feet luxuriously outstretched to the stove. Now that the hard
+pull afoot from cove to cove was over, it would be comparatively
+luxurious travel the rest of the way. He could probably have the full
+length of the table to sleep on, in the dining-saloon of the _Ethie_
+when the dishes were cleared away. Since it was the beginning of the
+season, and southward-bound travel was slack, he might even get a
+berth to himself.
+
+But a frowsy-polled messenger just at that delicious moment of warmth
+and reverie threw open the front door without the ceremony of
+knocking, and a blast of wind swirled after him.
+
+Parson Richards in his thin, worn coat clasped himself like a cabman
+and shivered. "Shut the door, Tom! What is it?"
+
+The pale and agitated messenger could hardly stammer out the words.
+
+"It's--it's Abe Gould, sir!"
+
+"What has Abe Gould done now?"
+
+"He's shot himself in the leg!"
+
+"Well, well, is it as bad as all that?" asked the good man, his brow
+furrowing with anxiety. "We must come right off and see what we can
+do."
+
+"He's bleeding to death!"
+
+Parson Richards turned to Grenfell. "Now you stay right here, Doctor!"
+
+The Doctor was already hauling on his wet, stiff boots.
+
+"No, no," protested Grenfell, as if somebody had suggested a joy-ride
+and he didn't want to miss it. He turned to the boy. "Take me to him,
+Tom. How far is it?"
+
+"Five miles, sir," said the trembling lad. "Oh, do come, please, sir,
+and hurry up. He's bleeding to death."
+
+"Have you dogs?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Can you get any?"
+
+"No, sir. All the good dogs is away."
+
+"Then we'll walk--or run," Grenfell smiled.
+
+He left the tea with the spoon in it, and did not even stop to thrust
+a bit of bread into his pocket.
+
+"How did it happen?" he said, as they started the jog-trot from the
+door.
+
+"He was cleanin' a gun, sir, and it went off and shot him in the leg."
+
+Not much more was said. Man and boy needed all the breath they had for
+that five-mile marathon over rocks and stumps and snow in the biting
+wind. Grenfell remembered the cross-country runs of the "harriers" at
+Oxford. Then, it was smooth going through fields and meadows and down
+the winding rural lanes. Then, he ran after nights of comfortable
+sleep, and with good fuel for the human machine. Now he had to make
+speed when he was hungry and after three broken nights of lying on
+damp sand. What a difference!
+
+But the old zest of life and youth came flooding back to him--the
+thought of the good he could do was a spur to keep him going at top
+speed. Of old he ran for a ribbon, a medal or a cup. Now he was
+running for a life. So often his errands, afoot or behind the dogs,
+had that guerdon before them--and what prize of victory was more
+valuable than that?
+
+The boy had hard work keeping up with the man--the man who always had
+kept himself in the pink of condition, whose frame never failed to
+serve him when he called on it for a sudden, extra strain.
+
+Grenfell remembered the war service of the young fellow he ran to
+help. Abe Gould was but twenty. As a member of the First Regiment of
+Newfoundland, 5,000 young men picked from the 250,000 islanders, he
+had given four years of his life to the world war, in France and
+Flanders. Then he had come home, and with his honors, and the tales of
+his bravery on all tongues and in all ears, he had gone back quietly
+to scraping the fish and mending the nets as though he never knew
+another life or another country.
+
+As they ran on with hearts pounding, the one big question that kept
+asking itself in the Doctor's mind was, "Am I too late?" He forgot
+everything else--the battle with the ice-pack, the possible fate of
+the _Strathcona_, the weary trudging round the northern promontory.
+Nothing mattered except the brave young soldier, whose blood was
+ebbing away clock-tick by clock-tick, as they hastened to his side.
+That five miles seemed longer than the ninety miles he had covered in
+the three preceding days.
+
+He was no longer stiff and lame--the need of him seemed to have put
+wings on his heels as if he were Mercury.
+
+There was the little grey house at last. The panting boy at his side
+gasped out, "My brother's there!"
+
+Grenfell fairly fell against the door. It was flung open instantly.
+The room was crowded with people who sobbed and sniffled and wrung
+their hands: and none could do anything to help.
+
+"The Doctor!" they cried. It was almost as if Christ Himself had come.
+
+The young soldier lay on a hard table, flat on his back. Imagine his
+conscious agony. What was left of his leg had been laid on a feather
+pillow and to stop the flow of blood his foot was strung up to the
+ceiling. Blood and salt water soaked his garments and dripped to the
+floor, as if he were a slab of seal-meat.
+
+Men and women alike were weeping, and telling each other how fond they
+were of Abe, and what a good, brave lad he was, and how they would
+hate to lose him now. Trouble in this part of the world makes people
+singularly neighborly, and often in their need they are as children.
+They think that any stranger from outside, with better clothes than
+they wear, must know enough to doctor them.
+
+Most of the people had to be sent from the room, for the sake of air
+and space and the poor boy's comfort. Dr. Grenfell had no instruments
+for an operation. He had no medicines. But messengers went hither and
+yon, and picked up things he had left in the neighborhood for use in
+such a crisis. They came back with a knife or two, rusty and in need
+of sharpening, a precious thimbleful of ether, shreds of silk to tie
+the arteries, a small supply of opium.
+
+By the time they came back from their house-to-house search, Dr.
+Grenfell had wound a towel round the patient's thigh, and twisted it
+with a stick in a "tourniquet" that stopped the deadly ebbing of the
+blood.
+
+There wasn't ether enough, but what he had was used. A man stood on
+each side and held the patient to the table. Grenfell had to pick out
+piece after piece of bone from the shattered leg with his fingers. It
+didn't help at all when one of his helpers fainted at the gory sight,
+and fell across the body of the wounded man. The leg had to be cut
+off, eventually, but Abe's life was saved. During the night that
+followed Grenfell's ministration, the Doctor sat by the table-bed,
+feeding the patient a sleeping-draught of opium now and then, to dull
+the awful agony. Not a wink of sleep did the great physician get, the
+long night through. But as he sat there, he was happy to think--that
+he had come in time to save Abe Gould. This more than made up for the
+fact that he was a month late for the meeting with those New York
+gentlemen. And when he finally reached them and told them why he was
+late--they forgave him.
+
+No wonder the fisher-folk of the Labrador swear by "the Doctor" and
+turn a deaf ear and a curling lip of contempt toward any who dares to
+talk against him. They have seen him on the firing-line of his work:
+he is their friend: they know what he did for them and theirs,
+and--men of few words as they are--they would in their turn do
+anything for him.
+
+
+THE END
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page  36: 'Ie means' replaced with 'It means'             |
+    | Page 235: 'the next to be dropped' replaced with          |
+    |           'the nets to be dropped'                        |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Grenfell: Knight-Errant of the North, by
+Fullerton Waldo
+
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