Classic Audiobook Collection - Adrift on an Ice-Pan by Sir Wilfred Grenfell ~ Full Audiobook [biography]

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

Adrift on an Ice-Pan by Sir Wilfred Grenfell audiobook. Genre: biography In Adrift on an Ice-Pan, Sir Wilfred Grenfell, the famed doctor and medical missionary of northern Newfoundland and Labrador, recounts a single harrowing journey that became one of the defining stories of his life. On Easter Sunday in 1908, a desperate call pulls him from St. Anthony into the white expanse: a young patient needs urgent help, and Grenfell sets out fast with a komatik and a team of trusted dogs. Trying to save time by cutting across a bay, he is suddenly betrayed by spring ice that fractures and moves underfoot, leaving man and animals soaked, stranded, and drifting seaward on a floating pan as wind and current open the water around them. With supplies lost, visibility failing, and cold closing in, Grenfell must improvise shelter, warmth, and a plan from whatever remains, making split-second decisions that test endurance, ingenuity, and conscience. Told with vivid detail and plainspoken intensity, this short memoir blends survival narrative with Grenfell's deep faith and his lifelong commitment to isolated coastal communities, revealing what it costs to keep going when help feels impossibly far away. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:11:36) Chapter 02 (00:52:11) Chapter 03 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adrift on an Icepan by Sir Wilfred Grenfell Chapter 1 Biographical Sketch Most noble vice-chancellor and you eminent proctors A citizen of Britain is before you, once a student in this university, now better known to the people of the new world than to our own. This is the man who 15 years ago went to the coast of Labrador to succor with medical aid the solitary fishermen of the Northern Sea. in executing which service he despised the perils of the ocean, which are their most terrible,

in order to bring comfort and light to the wretched and sorrowing. Thus, up to the measure of human ability he seems to follow, if it is right to say it of anyone, in the footsteps of Christ himself, as a truly Christian man. Rightly then we praise him by whose praise not he alone, but our university also is honored. I present to you Wilfred Thomason Grenfell, that he may be admitted to the degree of doctor in medicine, honoris causa. Thus may be rendered the Latin address when in May 197, for the first time in its history, the University of Oxford conferred the honorary degree in medicine. With these fitting words was presented a man whose simple faith has been the

motive power of his works, to whom pain and weariness of flesh have called no stay, since there was discouragement never, to whom personal danger has counted as nothing since fear is incomprehensible. as the lord wills whether for wreck or service i am about his business on november ninth of the preceding year the king of england gave one of his birthday honours to the same man making him a companion of st michael and st george c m gregn wilfridt thompson grenfell second son of the reverend algin and sydney grenfell and jane georgiana hutchinson was born on the twenty eighth day of february eighteen hundred and sixty five at moston house school paris 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, patient, persistence, and fighting and teaching qualities which are exemplified in his own abilities to command, to administer, and to uplift. On his father's side were the Grenvilles,

who made good account of themselves in such cause as they approved, among them Basil Grenville, commander of the Royalist Cornish Army, killed at Lansdown in 1643 in defense of King Charles. Four wheels to Charles Wayne. Grenville, Trevanion, Slanning, Godolphin, slain. There was also Sir Richard Grenville, immortalized by Tennyson in The Revenge, and John Pasco Grenville, the right-hand man of Admiral Cochran, who boarded the Spanish Admiral's ship the Esmeralda on the port side, while Cochran came up on the starboard, went together they made short. work of the capture. Nor has the strain died out, as is demonstrated in the present generation by

many of Dr. Grenfell's cousins, among them General Francis Wallace Grenfell, Lord Kilvey, and by Dr. Grenfell himself on the Labrador in the fight against disease and disaster and distress along a stormy and uncharted coast. On his mother's side, four of her brothers were generals or colonels in the trying times of service in India. The eldest fought with distinction throughout the Indian mutiny and in the defense of Lucknow, and another commanded the crack cavalry regiment, the guides at Peshawar, and fell fighting in one of the turbulent north of India wars.

Of teachers, there was Dr. Grenfell's paternal grandfather, the Reverend Alginon Grenfell, the second of three brothers, housemaster at rugby under Arnold, and a fine classical scholar, whose elder and younger brothers each felt the ancestral call of the sea and became admirals,

with brave records of daring, and success. Dr. Grenfell's father, after a brilliant career at rugby school and at Balliol College, Oxford, became assistant master at Repton, and later, when he married, headmaster of Moston House School, a position which he resigned in 1882 to become chaplain of the London Hospital. He was a man of much learning with a keen interest in science, a remarkable eloquence, and a fervent, evangelistic faith. Mostyn House School still stands, enlarged and modernized, in the charge of Dr. Grenfell's elder brother, and in it his mother is still the real head and controlling genius.

Parkgate, at one time a seaport of renown, when Liverpool was still unimportant, and later a seaside health resort to which came the fashion and beauty of England had fallen through the silting of the estuary and the broadening of the sands of Dee, to the level of a hamlet in the time of Dr. Grenfell's boyhood. The broad stretch of seawward trending sand with its interlacing rivulets of fresh and brackish water made a tempting, though treacherous playground, alluring alike in the varied forms of life at Harvard and in the adventure which whetted exploration. Thither came Charles Kingsley, Canon of Chester, who married a Grenfell, and who coupled his verse with scientific study and made geological excursions to the river's mouth with the then

master of Mostynhouse School. In these excursions the youthful Wilford was a participant, and therein he learned some of his first lessons in that accuracy of observation essential to his later life work. Here in this trained but untrammeled boyhood, with an inherited incentive to labor and an educated thirst for knowledge, away from the thrall of crowded communities, close to the wild places of nature, with the sea always beckoning and a rocking boat as familiar as the land, it is small wonder that there grew the fact. of the purpose of a man, dimly at first, conceived in a home in which all, both of tradition and of teaching, bred faith, reverence, and the sense of thanksgiving and usefulness. From the school days at Parkgate came the step to Marlborough College, where three years were

marked by earnest study, both in books and in play, for the one gained a scholarship and the other an enduring interest in rugby football. Matriculating later at the University of London, Grenfell entered the London Hospital, and there laid a, not only the foundation of his medical education, but that of his friendship with Sir Frederick Treves, renowned surgeon and daring sailor and master mariner as well. With plenty of work to the fore as a hospital intern, the ruling spirit still asserted itself, and the young doctor became an inspiration among the waifs of the teeming city. He was one of the founders of the great Ladd's brigades, which have done much good and fostered more in the example that they have set

for allied activities. Nor were the needs of his own bodily machine neglect. football, rowing, and the tennis court kept him in condition, and his athletics served to strengthen his appeals to the London boys whom he enrolled in the brigades. He founded the Interhospital Rowing Club at Putney and rode in the first inter-hospital race. He played on the varsity football team and won the throwing the hammer at the sports.

A couple of terms at Queen's College, Oxford, followed the London experience, but here the conditions were too easy and luxurious for one who, by both inheritance and training, had within him the incentive to the strenuous life. Need called, misery appealed, the message of life, of hope, and of salvation awaited, and the young doctor turned from Oxford to the medical mission work in which his record stands among the foremost

for its effectiveness and for the spirituality of its purpose. Seeking some way in which he could satisfy his medical aspirations, as well as his desire for adventure and for definite Christian work, he appealed to Sir Frederick Treves, a member of the Council of the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, who suggested his joining the staff of the mission and establishing a medical mission to the fishermen of the North Sea. The conditions of the life were onerous,

the existing traffic and spiritual 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. The message of love that was made flesh and dwelt amongst men must be reincarnate in our lives if it is to be received today. Thus came about the outfitting of the Albert Hospital ship to carry the message and the help by cruising among the fleets on the fishing grounds and the organization of the deep sea mission. When this work was done, when the fight had gone out of it,

Dr. 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. 600 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 and fish for the bare necessities of living, with a large account always on the trader's side. With such medical aid and ministrations came only occasionally by the infrequent mail-boat, and not at all in the long winter months when the coast was firm beset with ice.

To such a place came Dr. Grenfell in 1892 to cast in his lot with its inhabitants, to live there so long as he should, to die there. where it God's will. As it stands today, the mission to deep-sea fishermen, which Dr. Grenfell represents, administers, and animates on the Labrador coast, not only brings hope, new courage, and spiritual comfort to an isolated people in a desolate land, but cares for the sick and injured in its four hospitals and dispensary, provides house visitation by means of dog-sled journeys covering hundreds of miles in a year, teaches wholesome and righteous living, conducts cooperative stores, provides for orphans and for families bereft of the breadwinners by accidents of the sea,

encourages thrift, and administers justice, and adds to the wage-earning capacity and therefore food-obtaining power by operating a sawmill, a schooner-building yard, and other productive industries. To accomplish this, to make of the scattered settlements a united and independent people, to safeguard their future by such measures as the establishment of a Siemens Institute at St. John's Newfoundland, and the insurance of communication with the outside world, and to raise by personal solicitation the money needed for these enterprises, requires an unusual personality. Faith, courage, insight, foresight, the power to win and the ability to command.

All of these and more of like qualities are embodied and portrayed in Dr. Grenfell. End of Chapter 1, Biographical Sketch. Recording by Sean Michael Hogan. Chapter 2 of A Drift on an Ice Pan. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Sean Michael Hogan. A Drift on an Icepan by Sir Wilfred Grimful. Chapter 2.

It was Easter Sunday at St. Anthony in the year 198, 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 60 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 remove the leg. There was obviously therefore no time to be lost.

So having packed up the necessary instruments, dressings, and drugs, and having fitted out the dog sleigh with my best dogs, I started at once, the messengers following me with their team. My team was an especially good one. On many a long journey they'd 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. Moody, a lop-eared black and tan in his third season, a plodder that never looked behind him. Watch, the youngster of the team, long-legged and speedy, with great liquid eyes on a Gordon-Setter coat.

Sue, a large dark Eskimo, the image of a great black wolf with her sharp pointed and perpendicular ears, for she harked back. to her wild ancestry. Jerry, a large roan-colored slut, the quickest of all my dogs on her feet, and so affectionate that her overtures of joy had often sent me sprawling on my back. Jack, a jet-black, gentle-natured dog, more like a retriever that always ran next the sledge and never looked back, but everlastingly pulled straight ahead, running always with his nose to the ground. It was late in April, when there is always the risk of getting wet through the ice, so that I was carefully prepared with a spare outfit, which included a change of garments, snow shoes, rifle, compass, axe, and oilskin overclothes. The messengers were anxious that their team should travel

back with mine, for they were slow at best and needed a lead. My dogs, however, being a powerful team, could not be held back, and though I managed to wait twice for their sleigh, I had reached a village about twenty miles on the journey before nightfall, and had fed the dogs, and was gathering a few people for prayers when they caught me up. During the night the wind shifted to the northeast, which brought in fog and rain, softened the snow, and made traveling very bad, besides heaving a heavy sea into the bay.

Our drive next morning would be somewhat over 40 miles, the first ten miles on an arm of the sea, on saltwater ice. In order not to be separated too long from my friends, I sent them ahead two hours before me, appointing a rendezvous in a log tilt that we have built, in the woods as a halfway house. There is no one living on all that long coastline, and to provide against accidents which have happened more than once. We built this hut to keep dry

clothing, food, and drugs in. The first rain of the year was falling when I started, and I was obliged to keep on what we call the ballycatters, or ice barricades, much farther up the bay than I had expected. The sea of the night before had smashed the ponderous covering of ice right to the land wash. There were great gaping chasms between the enormous blocks, which we call pans, and half a mile out it was all clear water. An island three miles out had preserved a bridge of ice, however, and by crossing a few cracks I managed to reach it. From the island it was four miles across to a rocky promontory, a course that would be several miles shorter than going round the shore. Here, as far as the eye could reach, the ice seemed good, though it was very rough. Obviously,

it had been smashed up by the sea and then packed in again by the strong wind from the northeast, and I thought it had frozen together solid. All went well till I was about a quarter of a mile from the landing point. Then the wind suddenly fell, and I noticed that I was traveling over loose sish, which was like porridge and probably many feet deep. By stabbing down I could drive my whip handle through the thin coating of young ice that was floating on it. The sish ice consists of the tiny fragments where the large panes, Pans have been pounding together on the heaving sea, like the stones of Frey's grinding mill.

So quickly now did the wind come offshore. And so quickly did the packed slob, relieved to the wind pressure, run abroad, that already I could not see one pan larger than ten feet square. Moreover, the ice was loosening so rapidly that I saw that retreat was absolutely impossible. Neither was there any way to get off the little pan I was surveying from. There was not a moment to lose. I tore off my oil skins, threw myself on my hands and knees by the side of the cometic to give a larger base to hold, and shouted to my team to go ahead for the shore. Before we had gone twenty yards, the dogs got frightened, hesitated for a moment, and the cometic instantly sank into the slob. It was necessary then for the dogs to pull much harder so that they now began to sink in also. Earlier in the season, the father of the very boy I was going to operate on, had been drowned in this same.

way, his dogs tangling their traces around him in the slob. This flashed into my mind, and I managed to loosen my sheath knife, scramble forward, find the traces in the water, and cut them, holding on to the leader's trace wound round my wrist. Being in the water, I could see no piece of ice that would bear anything up. But there was, as it happened, a piece of snow, frozen together like a large snowball, about 25 yards away, near where my leading dog, Bryn, was wallowing in the slob. Upon this he very shortly climbed, his long trace of ten fathoms almost reaching there before he went into the water. This dog has weird black markings on his face, giving him the appearance of wearing a perpetual grin. After climbing out on the snow as if it were the most natural position in the world,

he deliberately shook the ice and water from his long coat, and then turned round to look for me. As he sat perched up there out of the water, he seemed to be grinning with satisfaction. The other dogs were hopelessly bogged. Indeed, we were like flies in treacle. Gradually I hauled myself along the line that was still tied to my wrist, till without any warning, the dog turned round and slipped out of his harness, and then once more turned his grinning face to where I was struggling. It was impossible to make any progress through the sish ice by swimming,

so I lay there and thought all would soon be over, only wondering if anyone would ever know how it happened. There was no particular horror attached to it, and in fact I began to feel drowsy, as if I could easily go to sleep, when suddenly I saw the trace of another big dog that had himself gone through before he reached the pan, and though he was close to it, was quite unable to force his way out. Along this I hauled myself, using him as a bow anchor, but much bothered by the other dogs as I passed them,

one of which got on my shoulder, pushing me farther down into the ice. There was only a yard or so more when I had passed my living anchor, and soon I lay with my dogs around me on the little piece of slob ice. I had to help them onto it, working them through the lane that I had made. The piece of ice we were on was so small, it was obvious we must soon 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 onto it we should postpone at least for a time the death that already seemed almost inevitable. It was impossible to reach it without a lifeline, as I had already learned to my cost, and the next problem was how to get one there. Marvelous to relate, when I had first fallen through, after I had cut the dogs adrift without any hope of saving myself, I had not let my knife sink, but had fastened it by two half-hitches to the back of one of the dogs. To my great joy there it was still,

and shortly I was at work, cutting all the sealskin traces still hanging from the dog's harnesses and splicing them together into one long line. These I divided and fastened to the backs of my two leaders, tying the near ends round my two wrists. I then pointed out to Brin the pan I wanted to reach, and tried my best to make them go ahead, giving them the full length of my lines from two coils. My long seal-skin moccasins, reaching to my thigh, were full of ice and water. These I took off, and tied separately on the dog's 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, because as soon as

they fell through, they could see nowhere else to make for. To me, however, this seemed to spell the end. Fortunately, I had with me a small black spaniel, almost a featherweight with large furry paws called Jack, who acts as my mascot, and incidentally as my retriever. This at once flashed into my mind, and I felt I had still one more chance for life. So I spoke to him and showed him the direction, and then threw a piece of ice toward the desired goal. Without a moment's hesitation he made a dash for it, and to my great joy got there safely, the tough scale of sea ice carrying his weight bravely. At once I shouted to him to, lie down, and this too he immediately did, looking like a little black fuzzball on the white setting.

My leaders could now see him seated there on the new piece of flow, and when once more I threw them off they understood what I wanted, and fought their way to where they saw the spaniel, carrying within the line that gave me the one chance for my life. The other dogs followed them, and after painful struggling, all got out again except one. Taking all the run that I could get on my little pan, I made a dive, slithering with the impetus along the surface, till once more I sank through.

After a long fight, however, I was able to haul myself by the long traces onto this new pan, having taken care beforehand to tie the harnesses to which I was holding under the dog's bellies, so that they could not slip them off. But alas, the pan I was now on was not large enough to bear us,

and was already beginning to sink, so this process had to be repeated immediately. I now realized that, though we had been working toward the shore, we had been losing ground all the time, for the offshore wind had already driven us a hundred yards farther out, but the widening gap kept full of the pounded ice, through which no man could possibly go.

I had decided I would rather stake my chances on a long swim, even, than perish by inches on the flow, as there was no likelihood whatever of being seen and rescued. But keenly, though I watched, not a streak even of clear water appeared, the interminable sish rising from below and filling every gap as it appeared. We were now resting on a piece of ice about ten by twelve feet, which, as I found when I came to examine it, was not ice at all, but simply snow-covered slob frozen into a mass, and I feared it would very soon break up in the general turmoil at the heavy sea, which was increasing as the ice drove offshore before the wind. At first we drifted in the direction of a rocky point on which a heavy surf was breaking. Here I thought once again to swim ashore, but suddenly we struck a rock. A large piece broke off the already.

small pan, and what was left swung round in the backwash, and started right out to sea. There was nothing for it now but to hope for a rescue. Alas, there was little possibility of being seen. As I have already mentioned, no one lives round this big bay. My only hope was at the other comitic, knowing I was alone, and had failed to keep my trist, would perhaps come back to look for me. This, however, as it proved, they did not do. The westerly wind was rising all the time. Our coldest wind this time of the year, coming as it does over the Gulf ice. It was tantalizing as I stood with next nothing on, the wind going through me in every stitch soaked in ice water, to see my well-stocked comatix some fifty yards away. It was still above water, with food, hot tea in a thermos

bottle, dry clothing, matches, wood, and everything on it from making a fire to attract attention. It is easy to see a dark object on the ice in the daytime, for the gorgeous whiteness shows off the least thing, 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. I have this jacket still, and my friends assure me it would make a good

Sunday garment. I had not drifted more than half a mile before I saw my poor Comethe disappeared through the ice, which was every minute loosening up into the small pans that it consisted of, and it seemed like a friend gone, and one more tie with home and safety lost. To the northward, about a mile distant, lay the mainland along which I had passed so merrily in the morning, only it seemed a few moments before. by midday i had passed the island to which i had crossed on the ice-bridge i could see that the bridge was gone now if i could reach the island i should only be marooned and destined to die of starvation but there was little chance of that for i was rapidly driving into the ever-widening bay it was scarce safe to move on my small ice raft for fear of breaking it yet i saw i must have the skins of some of my dogs of which i had ate on the pan if i was to live the night out there was now some three to five miles between me and the north side of the bay there immense pans of arctic ice surging to and fro on the heavy ground seas were thundering into the cliffs like medieval battering-rams

it was evident that even if seen i could hope for no help from that quarter before night no boat could live through the surf unwinding the seal-skin 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 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. In spite of my care, the struggling dog bit me rather badly in the leg.

I suppose my numb hands prevented my holding his arm. throat as I could normally do. Moreover, I must hold the knife in the wound to the end, as blood on the fur would freeze solid and make the skin useless. In this way I sacrificed two more large dogs, receiving only one more bite, though I fully expected that the pan I was on would break up in the struggle. The other dogs who were licking their coats and trying to get dry apparently took no notice of the fate of their comrades, but I was very careful to prevent the dying dogs crying out, for the noise of fighting would probably have been followed by the rest attacking the down dog, and that was too close to me to be pleasant.

A short shrift seemed to me better than a long one, and I envied the dead dogs whose troubles were over so quickly. Indeed, I came to balance in my mind whether, if once I passed into the open sea, it would not be better by far to use my faithful knife on myself than to die by inches. There seemed no hardship in the thought. I seemed fully to sympathize with the Japanese view of Harakiri. Working, however, saved me from philosophizing. By the time I had skinned these dogs,

and with my knife and some of the harness had strung the skins together, I was ten miles on my way, and it was getting dark. Away to the northward I could see a single light in the little village where I had slept the night before, where I had received the kindly hospitality of the simple fisherman in whose comfortable homes I have spent many a night. I could not help but think of them sitting down to tea with no idea that there was anyone watching them, for I had told them not to expect me back for three days.

Meanwhile, I had frayed out a small piece of rope into oakum, and mixed it with fat from the intestines of my dogs. Alas, my matchbox, which was always chained to me, had leaked, and my matches were in pulp. Had I been able to make a light, it would have looked so unearthly out there on the sea that I felt sure they would see me. but that chance was now cut off. However, I kept the matches, hoping that I might dry them if I lived through the night. While working at the dogs, about every five minutes I would stand up and wave my hands toward the land. 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, most of them cannot see it at all, so that I could not in the least expect anyone 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. With my skin rug I could now sit down without getting soaked. During these hours I had continually taken off all my clothes, wrung them out, swung them one by one in the wind, and put on first one and then the other inside, hoping that what heat there was in my body would thus serve to dry them.

In this I had been fairly successful. My feet gave me most trouble, for they immediately got wet again because my thin moccasins were easily soaked through on the snow. I suddenly thought of the way in which the laps who tend our reindeer manage for dry socks. They carry grass with them, which they ravell up and pad into their shoes. 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 dog's 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 ravell 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. Then, tying the narrow strips of flannel together, I bound to my shoes. up the top of the moccasins, lap fashion, and carried the bandage on up over my knee, making a ragged, though most excellent patis. As to the garments I wore, I had opened recently a box of football clothes I had not seen for twenty years.

I had found my old Oxford University football running shorts and a pair of Richmond Football Club red, yellow, and black stockings, exactly as I wore them twenty years ago. These with a flannel shirt and sweater vest were now all I had left. coat, hat, gloves, oil skins, everything else, were gone. And I stood there in that odd costume, exactly as I stood 20 years ago on a football field, reminding me of the little girl of a friend who, when told she was dying,

asked to be dressed in her Sunday frock to go to heaven in. My costume, being very light, dried all the quicker until afternoon. Then nothing would dry anymore, everything freezing stiff. It had been an ideal costume to struggle through the slob ice. I really believe the convention, garments missionaries are supposed to effect would have been fatal. My occupation till what seemed like midnight was unraveling rope, and with this I patted out my knickers inside,

and my shirt as well, though it was a clumsy job, for I could not see what I was doing. Now, getting my largest dog, dock, as big as a wolf and weighing 92 pounds, I made him lie down so that I could cuddle around him. I then wrapped the three skins around me, arranging them so that I could lie on one edge, while the other came just over my shoulders and head. My own breath, collecting inside the newly flayed skins,

must have had a soporific effect, for I was soon fast asleep. One hand I had kept warm against the curled up dog, but the other, being gloveless, had frozen, and I suddenly awoke, shivering enough, I thought, to break my fragile pan. What I took at first to be the sun was just rising, but I soon found it was the moon,

and then I knew it was about half-past twelve. The dog was having an excellent, on time. He hadn't been cuddled so warm all winter, and he resented my moving with low growls till he found it wasn't another dog. The wind was steadily driving me now toward the open sea, and I could expect, short of a miracle, nothing but death out there. Somehow one scarcely felt justified in praying for a miracle, 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 me need not at least die of hunger or thirst. To tell the truth, they were so big and strong I was half afraid to tackle them with only a sheath knife on my small and unstable raft. But it was now freezing hard. I knew the calm water between us would form into cakes, and I had to recognize that the chance of getting near enough to escape onto it was gone. If, on the other hand, the whole bay froze solid again, I had yet another possible chance,

for my pan would hold together longer, and I should be opposite another village called Goose Cove at daylight, and might possibly be seen from there. I knew that the con of the con. Homotics there would be starting at daybreak over the hills for a parade of Orangeman about twenty miles away. Possibly, therefore, I might be seen as they climbed the hills. So I lay down and went to sleep again. 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 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. It took a long time in the dark to get the legs off, and when I had patiently marled them together with old harness rope and the remains of the skin traces, it was the heaviest and crookedest flagpole it has ever been my lot to see. I had had no food from six o'clock the morning before when I had eaten porridge and bread and butter. I had, however, a rubber band, which I'd been wearing instead of one of my garters, and I chewed that for twenty-four hours. It saved me from thirst and hunger, oddly enough. It was not possible to get a drink from my pan, for it was far too salty, but anyhow that thought did not distress me much. For as from time to time I heard the cracking and grinding of the newly formed slob, it seemed that my devoted boat must inevitably soon go to pieces. At last the sun rose, and the time came for the sacrifices. of my shirt, so I stripped, and much to my surprise, found it not half so cold as I had anticipated.

I now reformed my dogskins with the raw side out, so that they made a kind of coat quite rivaling Joseph's. But with the rising of the sun, the frost came out of the joints of my dog's legs, and the friction caused by waving it made my flagpole almost tie itself in knots. Still, I could raise it three or four feet above my head, which was very important. Now, however, I found that instead of being as far out at sea as I had reckoned, I had drifted back in a northwesterly direction, and was off some cliffs known as Ireland head. Near these there was a little village looking seaward, whence I should certainly have been seen. But as I had myself, earlier in the winter, been night-bound at this place, I had learnt there was not a single soul living there at all this winter.

The people had all, as usual, migrated to the winter-houses up the bay, where they get together for schooling and social purposes. I soon found it was impossible to keep waving so heavy a flag all the time, and yet I dared not sit down, for that might be the exact moment someone would be in a position to see me from the hills. The only thing in my mind was how long I could stand up, and how long go on waving that pole at the cliffs. Once or twice I thought I saw men against their snowy faces, which I judged were about five and a half miles from me, but they were only trees. Once also I thought I saw a boat approaching. A glittering object kept appearing and disappearing on the water, but it was only a small piece of ice sparkling in the sun as it rose on the surface.

I think that the rocking of my cradle up and down on the waves had helped me to sleep, for I felt as well as ever I did in my life. And with the hope of a long sunny day I felt sure I was good to last another 24 hours, if my boat would hold out and not rot under the sun's rays. 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 their hunger by gnawing at the dead bodies of their brothers. I determined, at midday, to kill a big Eskimo dog and drink his blood, as I had read only a few days.

before and farthest north of Dr. Nansen's doing, that is, if I survived the battle with him. I could not help feeling even then my ludicrous position, and I thought, if ever I got ashore again, I should have to laugh at myself standing hour after hour waving my shirt at those lofty cliffs, which seemed to assume a kind of sardonic grin so that I could almost imagine they were laughing at me. At times I could not help thinking of the good breakfast that my colleagues were enjoying at the back of those same cliffs, and of the snug fire and the comfortable room which we call our study. I can honestly say that from first to last not a single sensation of fear entered my mind, even when I was struggling in the slob ice.

Somehow it did not seem unnatural. I had been through the ice half a dozen times before. For the most part, I felt very sleepy, and the idea was then very strong in my mind that I should soon reach the solution of the mysteries that I had been preaching about for so many years. Only the previous night, Easter Sunday, at prayers in the cottage, we'd been discussing the fact that the soul was entirely separate from the body, that Christ's idea of the body as a temple in which the soul dwells, is so amply borne out by modern science. We had talked of thoughts from that admirable book, Brain and Personality, by Dr. Thompson of New York, and also of the same subject in the light of a recent operation performed at the Johns Hopkins Hospital

by Dr. Harvey Cushing. The doctor had removed from the man's brain two large cystic tumors without giving the man an anesthetic, and the patient had kept up running conversation with him all the while the doctor's fingers were working in his brain. It had seemed such a striking proof

that ourselves and our bodies are two absolutely different things. 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 seemed now almost unnatural to be leaving through this portal of

death from an icepan. In many ways also I could see how a death of this kind might be of value to the particular work that I am engaged in. Except for my friends, I had nothing I could think of to regret whatever. Certainly I should like to have told them the story, but then one does not carry folios of paper and running shorts which have no pockets, and all my writing gear had gone by the board with the comatic. I could still see a testimonial to myself some distance away in my khaki overalls, which I had left on another pan in the struggle of the night before. They seemed a kind of company, and would possibly be picked up and suggest the true story. Running through my head all the time, quite unbidden, were the words of the old hymn. My God, my father, while I stray,

far from my home on life's dark way. O, teach me from my heart to say, Thy will be done. It is a hymn we hardly ever sing out here, and it was an unconscious memory of my boyhood days. It was a perfect morning. A cobalt sky, an ultramarine sea, a golden sun,

an almost wasteful extravagance of crimson over hills of purest snow, which caught a reflected glow from rock and crag, Between me and the hills lay miles of rough ice and long veins of thin black slob that had formed during the night. For the foreground there was my poor, gruesome pan bobbing up and down on the edge of the open sea, stained with blood, and littered with carcasses and debris. It was smaller than last night, and I noticed also that the new ice from the water melted under the dog's bodies had been formed at the expense of its thickness. Five dogs, myself in

colored football costume and a bloody dog-skin cloak. With a gay flannel shirt on a pole of frozen dog's legs completed the picture. The sun was almost hot by now, and I was conscious of a surplus of heat in my skin coat. I began to look longingly at one of my remaining dogs, for an appetite will rise even on an ice pan, and that made me think of fire. So once again I inspected my matches. Alas, the heads were in paste, all but three or four blue-top wax ones. 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 unraveled 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 anyone seen it. 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 snow-blind. I waved my flag as high as I could raise it, broadside on. At last, beside the glint of the white ore, I made out the black stream. of the hull. I knew that if the pan held 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 paties with our collection of curiosities. I lost no time now at the burning glass. My whole mind was devoted to making sure of 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 someone 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. It 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 onto 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. He 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 handshake and swallowing a cup of warm tea that had been thoughtfully packaged 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 onto 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 the hare island, and one of them, with his keen fisherman's eyes, had seen something unusual. They had once returned to their village, saying there was something alive drifting out to sea on the ice-flow. 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 spyglass. 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 spyglass 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 ashore, he at once knew who it was, though some of the men argued that it must be someone 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 land wash, and night was already falling, the wind blowing hard on shore. The whole village was aroused, and messengers were dispatched at once along the coast, and lookouts told off to all the favorable points, so that while I considered myself a laughingstock, 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 over much on this shore, but there are tears that do a man honour. Before daybreak this fine volunteer crew had been gotten together. The boat, with such a force behind it of willpower, 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 in 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 learned 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. 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 am most fully believed 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, they're still rang in my years the same verse of the old hymn, which had been my companion on the ice. Thy will, not my, O Lord. End of Chapter 2. Recording by Sean Michael Hogan. Chapter 3 of A Drift on an Icepan. This Librevox recording is in the public domain.

Recording by Sean Michael Hogan. A Dr. On an Ice Pan by Sir Wilfred Grenfell. Chapter 3, Appendix. One of Dr. Grenfell's volunteer helpers, Miss Luther of Providence, Rhode Island, 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 Gricket 15 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 would have 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 wonderful bad weather that Monday morning. The doctor was to Lockscove. None of he thought it was starting out.

I don't think the doctor itself thought of going first, and then he sent the two men on a head for us to meet at the tilt, and said like as he was gone after all. It was even when I knew he was on to ice, George Davis soon and first. He went to the cliff to look for seal. He was after sunset and half dark, but he thought he saw something on the ice and he ran for George Reed,

and got his spyglass and made out a man and dogs on a pan, and knowed it were the doctor. It was too dark for we to go to him, but it's never slipped at all all night. I couldn't sleep. I'd watch the wind and knew if it didn't blow too hard it's getting, though he was in three miles off already. So it's waited for the daylight. No one said it was going out in the boat, and I'd say, is you going? And another, is you? I didn't say, but I know what I'd do.

As soon as twas it was light as went off the cliff with the spyglass, see if us could see in, but there weren't nothing in sight. A snow by the wind wired to look for him, and us launched the boat. George Reed and his two sons, and George Davis, what's seen in first, and me was Rue. George Reed was Skipper Man, and the rest was just youngsters. The sun was warm, you mind twas a fine morning, and us started in our shirt and braces for us knowed there'd be hard work to do. I knowed there was a chance of not coming back at all, but it didn't make no difference.

I know that as good a chance as any, and twiff at a doctor, and his life's worth many, and somehow I couldn't let a man go out like that without trying for him, and I think it's all felt the same. I sat a good strong boat in four oars, and took a hot kettle of tea and food for a week, for us thought it'd have to go far and perhaps lose the boat, and have to walk ashore onto ice. I didn't hope to find a doctor alive,

and kept looking for a sign of it on the pans. It was not easy getting to the pans with a big sea running. The big pans had sometimes eave together and near crushed the boat, and sometimes decided to get out and holler over the ice at the water again. Then I come to the Slab Ice, where the pan had ground together, and t'was all ticked, and that was worse than any. A saw the doctor about twenty minutes of Horace Gotten. He was waving his flag, and I seen him. He was on a pan no bigger than this floor, and I don't know whatever kept him from going abroad, for it wasn't ice, it was packed snow.

The pan was away from even the Slab, floating by himself, and to open water all round, and twas just across from Goose Cove, and outside of that there had been no hope. I think the way the pan held together was on account of the dog's bodies melting into it, and it froze on. hard during the night. He was leveled with the water and the sea washing over us all the time. When it's gotten near and it didn't seem like twas the doctor. He looked so old and his face was such a queer color. He was very solemn like when it was took on the dogs on the boat. No one felt like saying much, and he hardly said nothing till he scavin some tea and loaf and then he talked. I suppose he was sort of faint like. The first thing he said was, how wonderful sorry he was for getting in such a mess and given we the trouble are coming out for him.

Us told him not to think of that, and was glad to do it for him, and he'd done it for any one a wee, many times over if he had the chance, and so he would. And then he fretted about Dubai was going to see, it being too late to reach him, and thus told him his life was worth so much more than Dubai, for he could save others, and Dubai couldn't, but he still fretted. He had ripped the dog harnesses and stuffed the oakum in the legs of his pants to keep him warm. He showed it to he, and he cut off the tops of his boots to keep the draft from his back. He must have worked hard all night

He said he'd rolled off once or twice But the night seemed wonderful long Us took off the pan at about half past seven And had our arid fight getting in Sea still running an eye He said he was proud to see us coming from And so he might for grew wonderful cold in the day And the sea so eye the pan couldn't have lived outside

He wouldn't stop when he got us ashore But must go right on And when he had dry clothes and was a bit warm Ascent to St Anthony with the team Next night And for night after a night I couldn't sleep. I'd keep seeing that man standing on the ice and I'd be sort of half awake like saying, but not the doctor. Sure, not the doctor. There was silence for a few moments,

and George Andrews looked out across the Blue Harbour to the sea. He sent us watches and spy glasses, said he, and pictures of himself that one of you took on, made large and in a frame. George Reed and me had to watches and others had the spy glasses. Here's the watch. It has in memory of April 21st on it, but us don't need the things to make. make we remember it, though we're wonderful glad to have them from the doctor. End of Chapter 3. Recording by Sean Michael Hogan, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. End of Adrift on an Icepan by Sir Wilfred Grenfell.