Grenfell: Knight-Errant of the North

by Fullerton L. Waldo

Though the messengers had broken the trail on the up journey, they preferred to fall in behind the Doctor on the down trip. They knew that he would want to travel like the wind. They felt a certain security and comfort in letting him take the lead. It relieved them of a lot of responsibility for setting the course. There are always people traveling in Grenfell's wake who are willing to let him make the hard choices and take the daring chances. But a good reason for Grenfell's going first this time was that his picked team of young, strong, spry dogs were hustlers, whom it would be impossible to hold back, and the other dogs were heavier and slower.

Although Grenfell in the twenty miles before nightfall twice called a halt, the slower team behind him was unable to catch up. He reached a small hamlet and had given his eager dogs their supper of two fish apiece, and was gathering the people together for prayers when the second team overtook him.

In the night the weather changed. The wind began to blow from the northeast; a fog set in, with rain. The snow became mushy, to make hard going, and out in the bay the sea was ugly, with the water heaving the ice-pans about. The plan for the coming day was to make a run of forty miles, the first ten miles a short cut across a bay, over the salt-water ice.

Grenfell did not want to get too far from his convoy, and so he let the second team start on ahead, with a lead of two hours.

He told them just where to call a halt and wait for him. There was a log hut, or "tilt," at the half-way point. Since there was no one living on that part of the very lonely coast-line, this hut was a refuge fitted out with anything that a shipwrecked mariner or a benighted traveler by land might need—dry clothes, food, and medicines.

"You go to the hut and wait there till I come," were the Doctor's final orders.

The rain began to fall, and when Grenfell got under way it was such treacherous going that he couldn't cut straight across the bay as he wished, but had to keep closer to the land. The sea had risen in its wrath and thrown the pans of ice about, so that there were wide spaces between, and half a mile out from the shore it was clear water.

But far out from the shore there was an island, and by a daring series of jumps across the cracks,—the dogs as buoyant as their master, hauling the sled as though it were a load of feathers,—Grenfell reached the island, and made the dogs rest—a hard thing to do—while he looked about him to see where the next lap of the journey would take him and them.

It was four miles, he knew, to a rocky headland over yonder, if he ventured out on that uncertain field of ice. That would save several miles over the more prudent course alongshore.

As far as he could see, the ice looked as though it would hold up the sled. It was rough—but a hardened voyager with a dog-team is accustomed to a hummocky road. It looked as if the sea had torn it up, as men tear up the paving blocks in a city street, and then thrown the bits together to make a hard, cohesive mass that men and dogs could surely trust. The strong wind seemed to have packed it in and the intense cold of the night, he supposed, had frozen it solid.