the wharf. We can take it out now and put
it on your boat."

The emergency run of the _Strathcona_ had used five tons and a
quarter. At twenty-four dollars a ton, this would be worth one hundred
and twenty-six dollars.

We went down to the wharf, and tried to put the coal, which was soft
coal, like dust, on a skiff, to take it two hundred yards in a
half-gale to the _Strathcona_.

But the mighty wind blew the coal out of the boat as fast as it was
shoveled aboard.

Then Captain Cote said, "We'll send it, when calm weather comes, to
Sister Bailey at Forteau." She was a wonderful trained nurse,--a
friend of Edith Cavell,--who lived in the near-by village, and had a
cow that fought off the dogs and gave milk to the sick babies.

So Captain Cote's life was saved and the great boats from Montreal and
Quebec with their hundreds of passengers could enter and traverse the
Straits in any weather, because the keeper of the light was at his
post once more.

XVI

THROUGH THE BLIZZARD

Another trip was to the north, in January, over the thirty miles from
St. Anthony to Cape Norman, to save a woman's life. It all looks so
easy when you get out the map and measure it across white space.

But when that white space is snow instead of paper, and there are
thirty miles of it to flog through, instead of three inches under your
hand--that, as Kipling would say, is another story.

Over the telegraph line from Cape Norman to St. Anthony came a piteous
message from a young fisherman. It said his wife was dying. Grenfell
telegraphed back, the message running something like this: "My
assistant has gone off with the dogs to answer another call. Cannot
leave my patients at the hospital and cannot get any dogs till he
comes back."

Then another message came from the distracted husband: "Doctor, my
wife is dying. For God's sake find another team somewhere and come."

The night, as the island saying is, was as dark as the inside of a
cow. Grenfell stumbled out into the blackness to hunt for dogs. The
trail to Cape Norman is very rough, and the January snow was deep. The
wind blowing over it threw the snow, biting and blinding, in the face
of anyone who attempted the trail.

But Grenfell did not hesitate. From house to house he went, to rouse
the occupants like another Paul Revere, and beg for dogs that he might
use on the desperate journey.

One man let him take four. Another, for pay, gave him a fifth animal.
A boy named