the oars,--all
of them devoted to the Doctor, and rejoicing that they had come in
time to save him. How often, in a dark hour, he had proved himself
their friend! He had turned out in the dead of night to help them and
their families: they knew he was on his way to aid one of their number
now. There was nothing they would not do for him: it would be a small
return for all he had done to earn their gratitude already.

It wasn't all plain rowing, by any means. Now and then the boat would
get jammed in the ice-pack so that they all must clamber out and lift
the stout vessel over the pans. Sometimes men had to stand in the bows
and force the pans apart, using their oars after the fashion of
crowbars. For a long time as they fought onward very little was said.
They were saving their breath for their work. But as they rested on
their oars and mopped their brows with their tattered sleeves,
Grenfell asked: "How under the sun did you happen to be out in the ice
in this boat?"

They said that on the night before four men had gone out on a headland
to get some harp seals which they had left to freeze there during the
winter. As they were starting home, one of them thought he saw an
ice-pan with something on it, drifting out to sea. When they got back
to the village, and told their neighbors, the latter said it must be
just the top of a tree. There was one man in the village who had a
good spy-glass.

He left his supper instantly, and ran out to the edge of the cliffs.
Yes, he said, there was a man out yonder on the ice. He could see him
wave his arms--and he declared it must be the Doctor, who had started
out that morning.

Even though night was falling, and the wind was coming on, they wanted
to launch a boat, but it would have been no use: and they decided to
wait until morning. The sea was taking up the blocks of ice and
hurling them on the beach, just as it used to throw the little
fishing-smacks over the sea-wall at Grenfell's boyhood home.

Messengers went up and down the coast: look-outs were stationed: many
were watching, and some were weeping, all the while that Grenfell
thought nobody saw him and that he was waving in vain.

Before daybreak, these five volunteers had manned the boat. They took
an awful risk in such seething waters. Just a little while before, a
fisherman's wife said good-by to her husband and three sons when they
started to row out toward a ship that was signaling with flags for a
pilot. All fou