te as Santa Claus from head to foot, staggered into the
room, with the wind whooping at their backs as if in a wild anger
that they escaped its clutches.

Grenfell, accustomed as he was to the brave men of a hard country,
fairly gasped when he saw them.

"Where did you come from?"

"We comes to fetch you, sir, for the sick woman at Cape Norman."

"Do you think dogs can get me there now?" the Doctor asked, anxiously.

"No, sir. We was blown here most o' the way, wi' the wind at our
backs. The wind drove us. The dogs can't make head against it, not
till the wind shifts clean round the other way, sir."

Ten miles of their journey had been in the fairly sheltered lee of the
land. Twenty miles had been before the pitiless sweep of the wind over
the unprotected sea-ice. If the snow had not drifted so heavily, they
would have been borne along at a pace so rapid that their sled would
have been wrecked.

"When was it you left Cape Norman?" was the Doctor's next question.

"Eight o'clock last night, sir."

So they had been coming on all through the night, without rest or
food. Yet the first thing they had done when the sled stopped at last
before Grenfell's door was to get something for their dogs to eat.
Already, the animals lay snug and tranquil in a drift, as if it were a
feather-bed--sleeping the sleep of good dogs who have done their work
and earned their daily fish-heads and know of nothing more to want in
this life or the next.

The Doctor patted the broad shoulders of the gaunt, shy spokesman. "Go
into the hospital and get a good, big, hot dinner," he said. "Then go
to bed. We'll wake you when it's time to start."

But after dark--and the darkness came on very early--the two troubled
men were at Grenfell's door again. "Us couldn't sleep, sir, for
thinkin' of the woman. Us have got another telegram sayin' please to
hurry. The storm is not so bad as it was, sir. If you think fitten to
start, we're ready."

"Call Walter," said the Doctor.

"Us has called he, sir. He's gettin' the dogs. He'll be here in a
minute."

Grenfell and his comrades knew that the lull in the storm did not mean
the end of it. It was gathering strength, and might at any moment
break loose again with redoubled fury. But he--and they--couldn't
stand waiting any longer. They must go. It was as if out of the black
distances they heard the thin, far, pleading voice of the sufferer
calling to them, to come and save her.

Their first task w