Chapter 3

Chapter 33,102 wordsPublic domain

These I now laid out to dry, while I searched about on my snow-pan to see if I could get a piece of transparent ice to make a burning-glass. For I was pretty sure that with all the unravelled tow I had stuffed into my leggings, and with the fat of my dogs, I could make smoke enough to be seen if only I could get a light. I had found a piece which I thought would do, and had gone back to wave my flag, which I did every two minutes, when I suddenly thought I saw again the glitter of an oar. It did not seem possible, however, for it must be remembered it was not water which lay between me and the land, but slob ice, which a mile or two inside me was very heavy. Even if people had seen me, I did not think they could get through, though I knew that the whole shore would then be trying. Moreover, there was no smoke rising on the land to give me hope that I had been seen. There had been no gun-flashes in the night, and I felt sure that, had any one seen me, there would have been a bonfire on every hill to encourage me to keep going.

So I gave it up, and went on with my work. But the next time I went back to my flag, the glitter seemed very distinct, and though it kept disappearing as it rose and fell on the surface, I kept my eyes strained upon it, for my dark spectacles had been lost, and I was partly snowblind.

I waved my flag as high as I could raise it, broadside on. At last, beside the glint of the white oar, I made out the black streak of the hull. I knew that, if the pan held on for another hour, I should be all right.

With that strange perversity of the human intellect, the first thing I thought of was what trophies I could carry with my luggage from the pan, and I pictured the dog-bone flagstaff adorning my study. (The dogs actually ate it afterwards.) I thought of preserving my ragged puttees with our collection of curiosities. I lost no time now at the burning-glass. My whole mind was devoted to making sure I should be seen, and I moved about as much as I dared on the raft, waving my sorry token aloft.

At last there could be no doubt about it: the boat was getting nearer and nearer. I could see that my rescuers were frantically waving, and, when they came within shouting distance, I heard some one cry out, "Don't get excited. Keep on the pan where you are." They were infinitely more excited than I. Already to me it seemed just as natural now to be saved as, half an hour before, it had seemed inevitable I should be lost, and had my rescuers only known, as I did, the sensation of a bath in that ice when you could not dry yourself afterwards, they need not have expected me to follow the example of the apostle Peter and throw myself into the water.

As the man in the bow leaped from the boat on to my ice raft and grasped both my hands in his, not a word was uttered. I could see in his face the strong emotions he was trying hard to force back, though in spite of himself tears trickled down his cheeks. It was the same with each of the others of my rescuers, nor was there any reason to be ashamed of them. These were not the emblems of weak sentimentality, but the evidences of the realization of the deepest and noblest emotion of which the human heart is capable, the vision that God has use for us his creatures, the sense of that supreme joy of the Christ,--the joy of unselfish service. After the hand-shake and swallowing a cup of warm tea that had been thoughtfully packed in a bottle, we hoisted in my remaining dogs and started for home. To drive the boat home there were not only five Newfoundland fishermen at the oars, but five men with Newfoundland muscles in their backs, and five as brave hearts as ever beat in the bodies of human beings.

So, slowly but steadily, we forged through to the shore, now jumping out on to larger pans and forcing them apart with the oars, now hauling the boat out and dragging her over, when the jam of ice packed tightly in by the rising wind was impossible to get through otherwise.

My first question, when at last we found our tongues, was, "How ever did you happen to be out in the boat in this ice?" To my astonishment they told me that the previous night four men had been away on a long headland cutting out some dead harp seals that they had killed in the fall and left to freeze up in a rough wooden store they had built there, and that as they were leaving for home, my pan of ice had drifted out clear of Hare Island, and one of them, with his keen fisherman's eyes, had seen something unusual. They at once returned to their village, saying there was something alive drifting out to sea on the floe ice. But their report had been discredited, for the people thought that it could be only the top of some tree.

All the time I had been driving along I knew that there was one man on that coast who had a good spy-glass. He tells me he instantly got up in the midst of his supper, on hearing the news, and hurried over the cliffs to the lookout, carrying his trusty spy-glass with him. Immediately, dark as it was, he saw that without any doubt there was a man out on the ice. Indeed, he saw me wave my hands every now and again towards the shore. By a very easy process of reasoning on so uninhabited a shore, he at once knew who it was, though some of the men argued that it must be some one else. Little had I thought, as night was closing in, that away on that snowy hilltop lay a man with a telescope patiently searching those miles of ice for _me_. Hastily they rushed back to the village and at once went down to try to launch a boat, but that proved to be impossible. Miles of ice lay between them and me, the heavy sea was hurling great blocks on the landwash, and night was already falling, the wind blowing hard on shore.

The whole village was aroused, and messengers were despatched at once along the coast, and lookouts told off to all the favorable points, so that while I considered myself a laughing-stock, bowing with my flag to those unresponsive cliffs, there were really many eyes watching me. One man told me that with his glass he distinctly saw me waving the shirt flag. There was little slumber that night in the villages, and even the men told me there were few dry eyes, as they thought of the impossibility of saving me from perishing. We are not given to weeping overmuch on this shore, but there are tears that do a man honor.

Before daybreak this fine volunteer crew had been gotten together. The boat, with such a force behind it of will power, would, I believe, have gone through anything. And, after seeing the heavy breakers through which we were guided, loaded with their heavy ice battering-rams, when at last we ran through the harbor-mouth with the boat on our return, I knew well what wives and children had been thinking of when they saw their loved ones put out. Only two years ago I remember a fisherman's wife watching her husband and three sons take out a boat to bring in a stranger that was showing flags for a pilot. But the boat and its occupants have not yet come back.

Every soul in the village was on the beach as we neared the shore. Every soul was waiting to shake hands when I landed. Even with the grip that one after another gave me, some no longer trying to keep back the tears, I did not find out my hands were frost-burnt,--a fact I have not been slow to appreciate since, however. 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.

But no time was wasted before a pot of tea was exactly where I wanted it to be, and some hot stew was locating itself where I had intended an hour before the blood of one of my remaining dogs should have gone.

Rigged out in the warm garments that fishermen wear, I started with a large team as hard as I could race for the hospital, for I had learnt that the news had gone over that I was lost. It was soon painfully impressed upon me that I could not much enjoy the ride, for I had to be hauled like a log up the hills, my feet being frost-burnt so that I could not walk. Had I guessed this before going into the house, I might have avoided much trouble.

It is time to bring this egotistic narrative to an end. "Jack" lies curled up by my feet while I write this short account. "Brin" is once again leading and lording it over his fellows. "Doc" and the other survivors are not forgotten, now that we have again returned to the less romantic episodes of a mission hospital life. There stands in our hallway a bronze tablet to the memory of three noble dogs, Moody, Watch, and Spy, whose lives were given for mine on the ice. In my home in England my brother has placed a duplicate tablet, and has added these words, "Not one of them is forgotten before your Father which is in heaven." And this I most fully believe to be true. The boy whose life I was intent on saving was brought to the hospital a day or two later in a boat, the ice having cleared off the coast not to return for that season. He was operated on successfully, and is even now on the high road to recovery. We all love life. I was glad to be back once more with possibly a new lease of it before me. I had learned on the pan many things, but chiefly that the one cause for regret, when we look back on a life which we think is closed forever, will be the fact that we have wasted its opportunities. As I went to sleep that first night there still rang in my ears the same verse of the old hymn which had been my companion on the ice, "Thy will, not mine, O Lord."

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APPENDIX

One of Dr. Grenfell's volunteer helpers, Miss Luther of Providence, R.I., contributes the following account of the rescue as recited in the Newfoundland vernacular by one of the rescuing party.

"One day, about a week after Dr. Grenfell's return," says Miss Luther, "two men came in from Griquet, fifteen miles away. They had walked all that distance, though the trail was heavy with soft snow and they often sank to their waists and waded through brooks and ponds. 'We just felt we must see the doctor and tell him what 't would 'a' meant to us, if he'd been lost.' Perhaps nothing but the doctor's own tale could be more graphic than what was told by George Andrews, one of the crew who rescued him."

THE RESCUERS' STORY

"It was wonderfu' bad weather that Monday mornin'. Th' doctor was to Lock's Cove. None o' we thought o' 'is startin' out. I don't think th' doctor hisself thought o' goin' at first an' then 'e sent th' two men on ahead for to meet us at th' tilt an' said like 's 'e was goin' after all.

"'Twas even' when us knew 'e was on th' ice. George Davis seen un first. 'E went to th' cliff to look for seal. It was after sunset an' half dark, but 'e thought 'e saw somethin' on th' ice an' 'e ran for George Read an' 'e got 'is spy-glass an' made out a man an' dogs on a pan an' knowed it war th' doctor.

"It was too dark fur we t' go t' un, but us never slept at all, all night. I couldn' sleep. Us watched th' wind an' knew if it didn' blow too hard us could get un,--though 'e was then three mile off a'ready. So us waited for th' daylight. No one said who was goin' out in th' boat. Un 'ud say, 'Is you goin'?' An' another, 'Is you?' I didn' say, but I knowed what I'd do.

"As soon as 'twas light us went to th' cliff wi' th' spy-glass to see if us could see un, but thar warn't nothin' in sight. Us know by the wind whar t' look fur un, an' us launched th' boat. George Read an' 'is two sons, an' George Davis, what seen un first, an' me, was th' crew. George Read was skipper-man an' th' rest was just youngsters. The sun was warm,--you mind 'twas a fine mornin',--an' us started in our shirt an' braces fur us knowed thar'd be hard work to do. I knowed thar was a chance o' not comin' back at all, but it didn' make no difference. I knowed I'd as good a chance as any, _an' 'twa' for th' doctor, an' 'is life's worth many_, an' somehow I couldn' let a man go out like dat wi'out tryin' fur un, an' I think us all felt th' same.

"Us 'ad a good strong boat an' four oars, an' took a hot kettle o' tea an' food for a week, for us thought u'd 'ave t' go far an' p'rhaps lose th' boat an' 'ave t' walk ashore un th' ice. I din' 'ope to find the doctor alive an' kept lookin' for a sign of un on th' pans. 'Twa' no' easy gettin' to th' pans wi' a big sea runnin'! Th' big pans 'ud sometimes heave together an' near crush th' boat, an' sometimes us 'ad t' git out an' haul her over th' ice t' th' water again. Then us come t' th' slob ice where th' pan 'ad ground together, an' 'twas all thick, an' that was worse'n any. Us saw th' doctor about twenty minutes afore us got t' un. 'E was wavin' 'is flag an' I seen 'im. 'E was on a pan no bigger'n this flor, an' I dunno what ever kep' un fro' goin' abroad, for 'twasn't ice, 'twas packed snow. Th' pan was away from even th' slob, floatin' by hisself, an' th' open water all roun', an' 'twas just across fro' Goose Cove, an' outside o' that there'd been no hope. I think th' way th' pan held together was on account o' th' dogs' bodies meltin' it an' 't froze hard durin' th' night. 'E was level with th' water an' th' sea washin' over us all th' time.

"When us got near un, it didn' seem like 'twas th' doctor. 'E looked so old an' 'is face such a queer color. 'E was very solemn-like when us took un an' th' dogs on th' boat. No un felt like sayin' much, an' 'e 'ardly said nothin' till us gave un some tea an' loaf an' then 'e talked. I s'pose e was sort o' faint-like. Th' first thing 'e said was, how wonderfu' sorry 'e was o' gettin' into such a mess an' givin' we th' trouble o' comin' out for un. Us tol' un not to think o' that; us was glad to do it for un, an' 'e'd done it for any one o' we, many times over if 'e 'ad th' chance;--an' so 'e would. An' then 'e fretted about th' b'y 'e was goin' to see, it bein' too late to reach un, an' us tol' un 'is life was worth so much more 'n th' b'y, fur 'e could save others an' th' b'y couldn'. But 'e still fretted.

"'E 'ad ripped th' dog-harnesses an' stuffed th' oakum in th' legs o' 'is pants to keep un warm. 'E showed it to we. An' 'e cut off th' tops o' 'is boots to keep th' draught from 'is back. 'E must 'a' worked 'ard all night. 'E said 'e droled off once or twice, but th' night seemed wonderfu' long.

"Us took un off th' pan at about half-past seven, an' 'ad a 'ard fight gettin' in, th' sea still runnin' 'igh. 'E said 'e was proud to see us comin' for un, and so 'e might, for it grew wonderfu' cold in th' day and th' sea so 'igh the pan couldn' 'a' lived outside. 'E wouldn' stop when us got ashore, but must go right on, an' when 'e 'ad dry clothes an' was a bit warm, us sent un to St. Anthony with a team.

"Th' next night, an' for nights after, I couldn' sleep. I'd keep seein' that man standin' on th' ice, an' I'd be sorter half-awake like, sayin', 'But not th' doctor. Sure _not_ th' _doctor_.'"

There was silence for a few moments, and George Andrews looked out across the blue harbor to the sea.

"'E sent us watches an' spy-glasses," said he, "an' pictures o' hisself that one o' you took o' un, made large an' in a frame. George Read an' me 'ad th' watches an' th' others 'ad th' spy-glasses. 'Ere's th' watch. It 'as 'In memory o' April 21st' on it, but us don't need th' things to make we remember it, tho' we 're wonderful glad t' 'ave 'em from th' doctor."

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The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS

U.S.A.

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End of Project Gutenberg's Adrift on an Ice-Pan, by Wilfred T. Grenfell