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 the memory of three noble dogs, Moody, Watch, and Spy, whose lives were given for mine on the ice. In my home in England my brother has placed a duplicate tablet, and has added these words, "Not one of them is forgotten before your Father which is in heaven." And this I most fully believe to be true. The boy whose life I was intent on saving was brought to the hospital a day or two later in a boat, the ice having cleared off the coast not to return for that season. He was operated on successfully, and is even now on the high road to recovery. We all love life. I was glad to be back once more with possibly a new lease of it before me. I had learned on the pan many things, but chiefly that the one cause for regret, when we look back on a life which we think is closed forever, will be the fact that we have wasted its opportunities. As I went to sleep that first night there still rang in my ears the same verse of the old hymn which had been my companion on the ice, "Thy will, not mine, O Lord."
MEMORIAL TABLET AT ST. ANTHONY'S HOSPITAL, NEWFOUNDLAND[ToList]