It was Easter Sunday, but still winter with us, and everything was covered with snow and ice. Immediately after morning service word came from our hospital to say that messengers with a large team of dogs had come from sixty miles to the southward to get a doctor for a very urgent case—that of a young man on whom we had operated about a fortnight before for an acute bone disease in the thigh.
THE AUTHOR, DR. WILFRED T. GRENFELL, C.M.G.
From a Photo. by De Youngs, New York.
There was obviously no time to be lost, so, having packed up the necessary instruments, dressings, and drugs, and fitted out the sleigh with my best dogs, I left at once, the messengers following me with their own team.
Late in April there is always a risk of getting wet through on the ice, so that I was prepared with a spare outfit, which included, besides a change of garments, snow-shoes, rifle, compass, an axe, and oilskin over clothes.
My dogs, being a powerful team, would not be held back, and though I managed to wait twice for the other sleigh I had reached a village about twenty miles on the journey before nightfall, had fed the dogs, and was gathering one or two people for prayers, when they caught me up.
During the night the wind shifted to the north-east. This brought in fog and rain, softened the snow, and made travelling very bad, besides sending a heavy sea into the bay. Our drive next morning would be somewhat over forty miles—the first ten miles across a wide arm of the sea, on salt-water ice.
In order not to be separated too long from my friends, I sent them ahead two hours before me, appointing a rendezvous at a log shanty we had built in the woods for a half-way house. There is no one living along all that lengthy coast-line, and so, in case of accident, we keep dry clothes, food, and drugs at the hut.
The first rain of the year was falling when I left, and I was obliged to keep on what we call the “ballicaters,” or ice barricades, much farther up the bay than I had expected. The sea of the night before had smashed up the ponderous covering of ice right to the land-wash, and great gaping chasms between the enormous blocks, which we call “pans,” made it impossible to get off. As soon as I topped the first hill outside the village I could see that half a mile out it was all clear water.