han I, and had they only known
as I did the sensations of a bath in the icy water, without the chance
of drying one's self afterwards, they would not have expected me to
wish to follow the example of the Apostle Peter.

As the first man leaped on my pan and grasped my hand, not a word was
spoken, but I could see the emotions which he was trying to force
back. A swallow of the hot tea which had been thoughtfully sent out in
a bottle, the dogs hoisted on board, and we started for home, now
forging along in open water, now pushing the pans apart with the oars,
and now jumping out on the ice and hauling the boat over the pans.

It seems that the night before four men had been out on the headland
cutting up some seals which they had killed in the fall. As they were
leaving for home, my ice-raft must have drifted clear of Hare Island,
and one of them, with his keen fisherman's eyes, had detected
something unusual on the ice. They at once returned to their village,
saying that something living was adrift on the floe. The one man on
that section of coast who owned a good spy-glass jumped up from his
supper on hearing the news and hurried over to the lookout on the
cliffs. Dusk though it was, he saw that a man was out on the ice, and
noticed him every now and again waving his hands at the shore. He
immediately surmised who it must be; so little as I thought it, when
night was closing in the men at the village were trying to launch a
boat. Miles of ice lay between them and me, and the angry sea was
hurling great blocks against the land. While I had considered myself a
laughing-stock, bowing with my flag at those unresponsive cliffs, many
eyes were watching me.

By daybreak a fine volunteer crew had been organized, and the boat,
with such a force behind it, would, I believe, have gone through
anything. After seeing the heavy breakers through which we were
guided, as at last we ran in at the harbour mouth, I knew well what
the wives of that crew had been thinking when they saw their loved
ones depart on such an errand.

Every soul in the village was waiting to shake hands as I landed; and
even with the grip that one after another gave me, I did not find out
that my hands were badly frostburnt--a fact which I have realized
since, however. I must have looked a weird object as I stepped ashore,
tied up in rags, stuffed out with oakum, and wrapped in the bloody
dogskins.

The news had gone over to the hospital that I was lost, so