Sir Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

“ 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 [54] 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. ”

“ Our eternal life has always been with me a matter of faith. It seems to me one of those problems that must always be a mystery to knowledge. But my own faith in this matter had been so untroubled that it [41] seemed now almost natural to be leaving through this portal of death from an ice pan. ”

“ Each time I sat down to rest, my big dog "Doc" came and kissed my face and then walked to the edge of the ice-pan, returning again to where I was huddled up, as if to say, "Why don't you come along? Surely it is time to start." The other dogs also were now moving about very restlessly, occasionally trying to satisfy [38] their hunger by gnawing at the dead bodies of their brothers. ”

“ I had no flag, and I could not spare my shirt, for, wet as it was, it was better than nothing in that freezing wind, and, anyhow, it was already nearly dark.
Unfortunately, the coves in among the cliffs are so placed that only for a very narrow space can the people in any house see the sea. Indeed, [26] most of them cannot see it at all, so that I could not in the least expect any one to see me, even supposing it had been daylight.
Not daring to take any snow from the surface of my pan to break the wind with, I piled up the carcasses of my dogs. ”

“ The piece of ice we were on was so small it was obvious we must soon [12] all be drowned, if we remained upon it as it drifted seaward into more open water. If we were to save our lives, no time was to be lost. When I stood up, I could see about twenty yards away a larger pan floating amidst the sish, like a great flat raft, and if we could get on to it we should postpone at least for a time the death that already seemed almost inevitable. ”

“ But the tops of bushes and large pieces of kelp have often deceived those looking out. Moreover, within our memory no man has been thus adrift on the bay ice. The chances were about one in a thousand that I should be seen at all, and if I were seen, I should probably be mistaken for some piece of refuse.
To keep from freezing, I cut off my long moccasins down to the feet, strung out some line, split the legs, and made a kind of jacket, which protected my back from the wind down as far as the waist. ”

“ Unwinding the sealskin traces from my waist, round which I had wound them to keep the dogs from eating them, I made a slip-knot, passed it over the first dog's head, tied it round my foot close to his neck, threw him [22] on his back, and stabbed him in the heart. Poor beast! I loved him like a friend,—a beautiful dog,—but we could not all hope to live. In fact, I had no hope any of us would, at that time, but it seemed better to die fighting. ”

“ My team was an especially good one. On many a long journey they had stood by me and pulled me out of difficulties by their sagacity and endurance. To a lover of his dogs, as every Christian man must be, each one had become almost as precious as a child to its mother. They were beautiful beasts: "Brin," the cleverest leader on the coast; "Doc," a large, gentle beast, the backbone of the team for power; "Spy," a wiry, powerful black and white dog ”

“ It seems impossible to say how long one sleeps, but I woke with a sudden thought in my mind that I must have a flag; but again I had no pole and no flag. However, I set to work in the dark to disarticulate the legs of my dead dogs, which were now frozen stiff, and which were all that offered a chance of carrying anything like a distress signal. Cold as it was, I determined to sacrifice my shirt for that purpose with the first streak of daylight. ”

“ But we have learned down here to pray for things we want, and, anyhow, just at that moment the miracle occurred. The wind fell off suddenly, and came with a light air from the southward, and then dropped stark calm. The ice was now "all abroad," which I was sorry for, for there was a big safe pan not twenty yards away from me. If I could have got on that, I might have killed my other dogs when the time came, and with their coats I could hope to hold out for two or three days more, and with the food and drink their bodies would offer [32] me need not at least die of hunger or thirst. ”

“ The conditions of the life were onerous, the existing traffic in spirituous liquors and in all other demoralizing influences had to be fought step by step, prejudice and evil habit had to be overcome and to be replaced by better knowledge and better desire, there was room for both fighting and teaching, and the medical mission won its way. "When you set out to commend your gospel to men who don't want it, there's only one way to go about it,—to do something for them that they'll be sure to understand. ”

“ Grenfell looked for another field, for yet another need, and found it on that barren and inhospitable coast the Labrador, whose only harvest field is the sea.
Six hundred miles of almost barren rock with outlying uncharted ledges,—worn smooth by ice, else still more vessels would have found wreckage there; a scant, constant population of hardy fishermen and their families, pious and God-fearing, most of them, but largely at the mercy of the local traders, who took their pay in fish for the bare necessities of living, with a large account [xxiv] always on the trader's side ”

“ Anthony in the year 1908, but with us in northern Newfoundland still winter. Everything was covered with snow and ice. I was walking back after morning service, when a boy came running over from the hospital with the news that a large team of dogs had come from sixty miles to the southward, to get a doctor on a very urgent case. It was that of a young man on whom we had operated about a fortnight before for an acute bone disease in the thigh. The people had allowed the wound to close, the poisoned matter had accumulated, and we thought we should have to [2] remove the leg. ”

“ My long sealskin moccasins, reaching to my thigh, were full of ice and water. These I took off and tied separately on the dogs' backs. My coat, hat, gloves, and overalls I had already lost. At first, nothing would induce the two dogs to move, and though I threw them off the pan two or three times, they struggled back upon it, which perhaps was only natural, [14] because as soon as they fell through they could see nowhere else to make for. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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' [66] 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. ”

“ 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 [63] 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. ”

“ Wilfred Thomason Grenfell, second son of the Rev. Algernon Sydney Grenfell and Jane Georgiana Hutchinson, was born on the twenty-eighth day of February, eighteen hundred and sixty-five, at Mostyn House School, Parkgate, by Chester, England, of an ancestry which laid a firm foundation for his career and in surroundings which fitted him for it. On both sides of his inheritance have been exhibited the courage, patience, persistence, and fighting and teaching qualities which are [xiv] exemplified in his own abilities to command, to administer, and to uplift. ”

“ Into this they put their feet, and then pack the rest with more grass, tying up the top with a binder. The ropes of the harness for our dogs are carefully sewed all over with two layers of flannel in order to make them soft against the dogs' sides. So, as soon as I could sit down, I started with my trusty knife to rip up the flannel. Though my fingers were more or less frozen, I was able also to ravel out the rope, put it into my shoes, and use my wet socks inside my knickerbockers, where, though damp, they served to break the wind. ”

“ I din' 'ope to find the doctor alive an' kept lookin' for a sign of un on th' [65] 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. ”