etween crags on the one
hand and bergs on the other: just such a risky, "chancy" course as he
most relishes. While he crumpled the telegram in his hand I could see
his eyes light up again with that flash they showed when I asked him
if he was ever tired.

His pockets at that moment were full of pleading, piteous letters from
White Bay, meant to pull him to the other side of the island. One of
them, from a desperate woman, after saying her husband had caught but
eleven dollars' worth of fish all season, wound up with an appeal for
oddments of clothes to put on the children, for "We are all as naked
as birds."

It was hard to say no to the heart-throbs of those begging letters in
his pocket. But Captain Cote's life was not one life. It was the lives
of thousands--men, women and children--going down to the sea in ships,
faring through the St. Lawrence, and the Gulf, and then those terrible
Straits of Belle Isle, to the Old Country.

So we started. But was Mrs. Grenfell going to stay home with the
piano, and French verbs, and her fancy-work, while the _Strathcona_
nosed the seething waters? Not on your life! Wilfred and Pascoe had a
perfectly good governess, and while it was hard on them to remain
behind with their books, their turn with Father was coming.

The big black dog, named Fritz, had no French verbs to study, and no
measly sums in arithmetic to do, so--at one running jump--he was added
to the passenger-list. His berth was chiefly out on the end of the
bowsprit--he was more ambitious than a figurehead. There he could
sniff the breeze, and see the shore, even when there wasn't any, and
bark defiance at all the dogs and the sea-pusses.

The _Strathcona_ used both steam and sail. She was ketch-rigged, with
six sails--mainsail, foresail, two jibs, two topsails. One of those
topsails was a fancy, oblong thing which Dr. Grenfell's crew
mistrusted as though it were witchcraft. He had brought it from the
North Sea; they had never seen the likes of it before, and their minds
are likely to be sternly set against anything new. But the Doctor, who
is restless on shipboard, climbed to the crow's nest now and then to
adjust the strange contraption, and make sure that it was using the
wind in such a way as to develop the last ounce of pulling power. This
was no pleasure cruise. It was a run for life.

The sea was a vast blue smile as we swaggered out of St. Anthony
Harbor. What a fickle creature is that northern ocean! This