They had caught an old harp seal, and he ate its flesh and drank its blood. On the third day he gaffed another seal as it floated past on a cake of ice. Then he had another drink of warm blood. Two days later he killed another seal.
By that time he began "seeing things." He thought he saw a ship in the distance. He clambered out of his boat and hobbled five miles over the ice, only to find that it was not a sail that he had seen, but a hummock of ice. The only thing to do was to make his way back over the weary miles to the boat he left.
On the seventh day, with despair gnawing at his heart, one of the sealing fleet, the Flora, came in sight.
It was dark, and this was his one chance of rescue. He shouted with all his might. But the boat immediately backed as if to leave him.
He screamed again, and the merciful wind caught up his voice and carried it to the vessel.
He shouted once more: "For God's sake, don't leave me with my dead father here!"
Then the ship hove to, and when the brave boy was lifted aboard the watch explained to him:
"Ye see, lad, the first time we heard ye call we thought it was sperrits."
They picked up the boat as well as the boy, and finally put them aboard another vessel that was going toward the lad's fatherless home.
Grenfell went out with the sealing fleet and took his full share of all the hardships of the mariners who from boyhood look on sealing as life's great adventure. While they are still tiny tads, the boys of St. John's and the outposts practise leaping across rain-barrels and mud-puddles. They are looking forward to the time when a running jump from one cake of ice to another may be the means of saving their lives. To "copy" is to play the game of follow-my-leader: and so the boys use the phrase "a good big copy from pan to pan" when they mean it is a long leap between.