I at once
started north for St. Anthony, though I must confess that I did not
greatly enjoy the trip, as I had to be hauled like a log, my feet
being so frozen that I could not walk. For a few days subsequently I
had painful reminders of the adventure in my frozen hands and feet,
which forced me to keep to my bed--an unwelcome and unusual interlude
in my way of life.

In our hallway stands a bronze tablet:

"To the Memory of
Three Noble Dogs
Moody
Watch
Spy
Whose lives were given
For mine on the ice
April 21st, 1908."

The boy whose life I was intent on saving was brought to the hospital
a day or so later in a boat, the ice having cleared off the coast
temporarily; and he was soon on the highroad to recovery.

We all love life, and I was glad to have a new lease of it before me.
As I went to sleep that night there still rang through my ears the
same verse of the old hymn which had been my companion on the ice-pan:

"Oh, help me from my heart to say,
Thy will be done."

CHAPTER XIX

THEY THAT DO BUSINESS IN GREAT WATERS

Contrary to her ungenerous reputation, even if vessels are lost on the
Labrador, her almost unequalled series of harbours--so that from the
Straits of Belle Isle to those of Hudson Bay there is not ten miles of
coast anywhere without one--enables the crew to escape nearly every
time.

In 1883, in the North Sea in October, a hurricane destroyed
twenty-five of our stout vessels on the Dogger Bank, cost us two
hundred and seventy good lives, and left a hundred widows to mourn on
the land. In 1889 a storm hit the north coast of Newfoundland, but too
late in the season to injure much of the fishing fleet, which had for
the most part gone South. But it caused immense damage to property and
the loss of a few lives. As one of the testimonials to its fury, I saw
the flooring and seats of the church in the mud of the harbour at St.
Anthony at low tide even though that church had been founded entirely
on a rock. We now concede that it is good economy on our coast to have
wire stays to ringbolts leaded into rocky foundations, to anchor small
buildings. Our storms are mostly cyclones with wide vortices, and
coming largely from the southwest or northwest, are offshore, and
therefore less felt.

We were once running along at full speed in a very thick fog, framing
a course to just clear some nasty shoals on our port bow. There was
nothing outside us a