s they
thought of the impossibility of saving me from perishing. We are not
given to weeping overmuch on this shore, but there are tears that do a
man honor.

Before daybreak this fine volunteer crew had been gotten together. The
boat, with such a force behind it of will power, would, I believe,
have gone through anything. And, after seeing the heavy breakers
through which we were guided, loaded with their heavy ice
battering-rams, when at last we ran through the harbor-mouth with the
boat on our return, I knew well what wives and children had been
thinking of when they saw their loved ones put out. Only two years ago
I remember a fisherman's wife watching her husband and three sons take
out a boat to bring in a stranger that was showing flags for a pilot.
But the boat and its occupants have not yet come back.

Every soul in the village was on the beach as we neared the shore.
Every soul was waiting to shake hands when I landed. Even with the
grip that one after another gave me, some no longer trying to keep
back the tears, I did not find out my hands were frost-burnt,--a fact
I have not been slow to appreciate since, however. I must have been a
weird sight as I stepped ashore, tied up in rags, stuffed out with
oakum, wrapped in the bloody skins of dogs, with no hat, coat, or
gloves besides, and only a pair of short knickers. It must have seemed
to some as if it were the old man of the sea coming ashore.

But no time was wasted before a pot of tea was exactly where I wanted
it to be, and some hot stew was locating itself where I had intended
an hour before the blood of one of my remaining dogs should have gone.

Rigged out in the warm garments that fishermen wear, I started with a
large team as hard as I could race for the hospital, for I had learnt
that the news had gone over that I was lost. It was soon painfully
impressed upon me that I could not much enjoy the ride, for I had to
be hauled like a log up the hills, my feet being frost-burnt so that I
could not walk. Had I guessed this before going into the house, I
might have avoided much trouble.

It is time to bring this egotistic narrative to an end. "Jack" lies
curled up by my feet while I write this short account. "Brin" is once
again leading and lording it over his fellows. "Doc" and the other
survivors are not forgotten, now that we have again returned to the
less romantic episodes of a mission hospital life. There stands in our
hallway a bronze tablet to