with the seal-gaffs.

This was so slow a process that by and by they gave it up, and decided
to wait for the ship to come and find them. The ship by this time was
out of sight.

It grew colder and colder after the red sun went down. They had a
little sugar and oatmeal. This they mixed with snow and devoured. Then
they took their "seal bats" and cut them up with their big knives.
They dipped the pieces in the fat of the dead seals, and with these
they made bonfires to let the ship know where they were.

In the light of the occasional blaze of their beacon fires they played
games to keep from freezing. "Leap-frog" and "one old cat" were the
favorites. Men not accustomed to the toughening Northern life might
have been whimpering with the piercing cold and the fear of the sea's
anger by this time. Not so with these men.

The night wore on--and suddenly out of the darkness they heard the
welcome sound of the little steamer crunching her way through the
ice-pack.

The wrath of the skipper leaning over the bow was almost more terrible
to face than any ice-storm would have been.

Did he respect the Doctor of the Deep Sea Mission? He did not. His
tongue-lashing included them all.

"It was the worst blowing-up I ever received since my father spanked
me," says Grenfell with a laugh, remembering that anxious night.

Later, the skipper came to him. "Doctor," he said, "the truth is I was
that torn in my mind while ye were gone, and that relieved of worry
when I came on ye in the ice-pack, that I do not know the words I may
have used. If I was wicked or profane--the good God forgive me. It was
my upside-down way of saying my gratitude to God for His salvation."

The Doctor's day's work was not yet ended. He clambered down into the
hold, a man ahead of him carrying a candle and matches. In his hand
was a bottle of cocaine solution, for some of the men were suffering
such agonies with the snow-blindness that they were all but out of
their minds. They would moan and toss in frenzy, hardly knowing when
the Doctor came to them.

"It hurts something wonderful!" they would cry, brave men as they
were. "Can't ye give me something to stop it? 'Twere better dead than
this!"

It was hard to get down into the hold at all, for the ladders were
gone, and as the vessel rocked the seals and the coal were sloshing
about below-decks where the men lay sprawled among them.

"Is anybody here?" the Doctor would call, as he poked into a dark