nd we had seen no ice of late, so I went below for
some lunch, telling the mate to report land as soon as he saw any, and
instructing the man at the wheel, if he heard a shout, to port his
helm hard. The soup was still on the table when a loud shouting made
us leap on the deck to see the ship going full tilt into an enormous
iceberg, which seemed right at the end of the bowsprit. This
unexpected monster was on our starboard bow, and the order to avoid
the shoal was putting us headfirst into it. Our only chance was full
speed and a starboard helm, and we actually grazed along the side of
the berg. It seemed almost ludicrous later to pick up a large island
and run into a harbour with grassy, sloping sides, out of which the
fog was shut like a wall, and then to go ashore and bargain over
buying a couple of cows, which were being sold, as the settler was
moving to the mainland.

Among the records of events of importance to us I find in 1908 that of
the second real hurricane which I have ever seen. It began on
Saturday, July 28, the height of our summer, with flat calm and
sunshine alternating with small, fierce squalls. Though we had a
falling barometer, this deceived us, and we anchored that evening in a
shallow and unsafe open roadstead about twenty miles from Indian
Harbour Hospital. Fortunately our suspicions induced us to keep an
anchor watch, and his warning made us get steam at midnight, and we
brought up at daylight in the excellent narrow harbour in which the
hospital stands. The holding ground there is deep mud in four fathoms
of water, the best possible for us. Our only trouble was that the
heavy tidal current would swing a ship uneasily broadside against an
average wind force.

It was blowing so strongly by this time that the hospital yawl Daryl
had already been driven ashore from her anchors, but still we were
able to keep ours in the water, and getting a line to her, to heave
her astern of our vessel with our powerful winch. The fury of the
breeze grew worse as the day went on. All the fishing boats in the
harbour filled and sank with the driving water. With the increase of
violence of the weather we got up steam and steamed to our anchors to
ease if possible the strain on our two chains and shore lines--a web
which we had been able to weave before it was too late. By Sunday the
gale had blown itself entirely away, and Monday morning broke flat
calm, with lovely sunshine, and only an enormous sullen ground s