lost, and I was
partly snowblind.

I waved my flag as high as I could raise it, broadside on. At last,
beside the glint of the white oar, I made out the black streak of the
hull. I knew that, if the pan held on for another hour, I should be
all right.

With that strange perversity of the human intellect, the first thing I
thought of was what trophies I could carry with my luggage from the
pan, and I pictured the dog-bone flagstaff adorning my study. (The
dogs actually ate it afterwards.) I thought of preserving my ragged
puttees with our collection of curiosities. I lost no time now at the
burning-glass. My whole mind was devoted to making sure I should be
seen, and I moved about as much as I dared on the raft, waving my
sorry token aloft.

At last there could be no doubt about it: the boat was getting nearer
and nearer. I could see that my rescuers were frantically waving,
and, when they came within shouting distance, I heard some one cry
out, "Don't get excited. Keep on the pan where you are." They were
infinitely more excited than I. Already to me it seemed just as
natural now to be saved as, half an hour before, it had seemed
inevitable I should be lost, and had my rescuers only known, as I did,
the sensation of a bath in that ice when you could not dry yourself
afterwards, they need not have expected me to follow the example of
the apostle Peter and throw myself into the water.

As the man in the bow leaped from the boat on to my ice raft and
grasped both my hands in his, not a word was uttered. I could see in
his face the strong emotions he was trying hard to force back, though
in spite of himself tears trickled down his cheeks. It was the same
with each of the others of my rescuers, nor was there any reason to be
ashamed of them. These were not the emblems of weak sentimentality,
but the evidences of the realization of the deepest and noblest
emotion of which the human heart is capable, the vision that God has
use for us his creatures, the sense of that supreme joy of the
Christ,--the joy of unselfish service. After the hand-shake and
swallowing a cup of warm tea that had been thoughtfully packed in a
bottle, we hoisted in my remaining dogs and started for home. To drive
the boat home there were not only five Newfoundland fishermen at the
oars, but five men with Newfoundland muscles in their backs, and five
as brave hearts as ever beat in the bodies of human beings.

So, slowly but steadily, we forged thro