The ice pan still held together, and with a new day came fresh hope of the possibility of rescue. The coast was still well in sight, and there was a chance that a change of wind might drive the pan toward it on an incoming tide. At this season, too, the men of the coast were out scanning the sea for "signs" of seals, and some of them might see him.
This thought suggested that if he could erect a signal on a pole, it would attract attention more readily. He had no pole, and he thought at first no means of raising the signal, which was, indeed, necessary, for at that distance from shore only a moving signal would be likely to attract the attention of even the keenly observant fishermen.
Then his eyes fell upon the carcasses of the three dogs with their stiff legs sticking up. He drew his sheath knife and went at them immediately. In a little while he had severed the legs from the bodies and stripped the flesh from the bones. Now with pieces of dog harness he lashed the legs together, and presently had a serviceable pole, but one which must have been far from straight.
Elated with the result of his experiment, he hastily stripped the shirt from his back, fastened it to one end of his staff, and raising it over his head began moving it back and forth.
It was an ingenious idea to make a flagstaff from the bones of dogs' legs. Hardly one man in a thousand would have thought of it. It was an exemplification of Grenfell's resourcefulness, and in the end it saved his life.
As he had hoped, men were out upon the rocky bluffs scanning the sea for seals. The keen eyes of one of them discovered, far away, something dark and unusual. The men of this land never take anything for granted. It is a part of the training of the woodsman and seaman to identify any unusual movement or object, or to trace any unusual sound, before he is satisfied to let it pass unheeded. Centering his attention upon the distant object the man distinguished a movement back and forth. Nothing but a man could make such a movement he knew, and he also knew that any man out there was in grave danger. He called some other fishermen, manned a boat and Dr. Grenfell and his surviving dogs were rescued.