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
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