se the
word lightly. Grenfell tells of a new church that was blown into the
sea with its pulpit, pews and communion-table. In a storm like that,
the mainsail, jib and mast of this luckless smack went over the side.
The boat was driven helplessly before the wind, for three days and
nights. Then the wind changed, and they could put up a small foresail,
which in two more awful days brought them to the land. But they were
running ashore with such violence that they would have been lost
beyond a doubt, if six brave "liveyeres" had not put out to rescue
them. Their boat was smashed to flinders.

Then they found that all this time they had been going due north, for
a hundred and fifty miles. They had to stay till the next summer.
Their friends, when they got back to Newfoundland, had given them up
for dead.

A fisherman said to Grenfell, in explaining why he couldn't swim: "You
see, we has enough o' the water without goin' to bother wi' it when we
are ashore." This man had barely escaped drowning on no less than four
occasions. Once he saved himself by clinging to a rope with his teeth,
after his hands were too numb to serve him, till they hauled him
aboard.

The shore of one of the Labrador bays had a total adult population of
just one man. As the ice was breaking up in the spring, he had sent
his two young sons out on the ice-pans in pursuit of seals.

But the treacherous flooring gave way, and the father from the shore
saw his boys struggling in the water.

He tied a long fishing-line round his body, and gave the other end to
his daughter. While she held it he crawled out over the pans. Then he
jumped into the bitter water, like a deep-sea diver going down to
examine a wreck, and stayed between and below the pans till he had
recovered both bodies--but the last spark of life was extinct.

Almost under the windows of Dr. Grenfell's hospital at Battle Harbor
two men started with sled and dogs to get fire-wood. They were
rounding a headland, when the sled went into the water, taking not
merely the dogs but the drivers with it. One man got under the ice,
and was seen no more. The other clung to the edge of the ice, too weak
to crawl out.

His sister saw what happened, and came running over the ice. Men
further away who were bringing a boat shouted to her: "For God's sake,
don't go near the hole." She did not heed their warning. Instead, she
threw herself flat, so as to distribute her weight, and dragged
herself along t