At last the boat came up, crashing into my pan with such violence that I was glad enough to catch hold of the bow, being more or less acquainted by now with the frail constitution of my floe, and being well aware it was not adapted for collisions. Moreover, I felt for the pan, for it had been a good and faithful friend to me.
A hearty handshake all round and a warm cup of tea—thoughtfully packed in a kettle—inside, and we hoisted in my remaining dogs and instantly started back, for even then a change of wind might have penned the boat with ice, which would have cost us dearly. Indeed, the men thought we could not return, and we started for an island, in which direction the way was all open.
“I COULD SEE THAT MY RESCUERS WERE FRANTICALLY WAVING.”
There were not only five Newfoundland fishermen at the oars, but five men with Newfoundland muscles in their backs and arms and five as brave hearts as ever beat in the bodies of human beings. So we presently changed our course and forced our way through to the shore.
To my intense astonishment they told me that the night before four men had been out on a point of land, from which the bay is visible, cutting some dead harp seals out from a store. The ice had been extraordinarily hard, and it had taken them till seven o’clock at night to cut out twenty-four seals. Just at the very moment before they left for home, my pan of ice had drifted out clear of the island called Hare Island, and one of them, with his keen fisherman’s eyes, had seen something unusual. They at once returned to their village, saying there was a man on a pan, but they had been discredited, for the people there thought it could only be the top of some tree.
All the time I had been driving along I knew well that there was one man on the coast who had a good spy-glass, and that he had twelve children, among them some of the hardiest young men on the coast. Many times my thoughts had wandered to him, for his sons are everywhere, hunting seals and everything else. It was his sons, and another man with them, who saw me, and were now with him in the boat. The owner of the spy-glass told me he got up instantly in the middle of tea on hearing the news, and hurried over the cliff to the look-out with his glass. Immediately, dark as it was, he made out that there really was a man out on the ice. Indeed, he saw me wave my hands every now and again towards the shore. By a process of reasoning very easy on so unfrequented a shore, they immediately knew who it was, but tried to argue themselves out of their conviction. They went down at once to try and launch a boat, but found it absolutely impossible. Miles of ice lay between them and me, the heavy sea was hurling great blocks on the land-wash, and night was already falling, with the wind blowing hard on shore. These brave fellows, however, did not sit down idly. The whole village was aroused, messengers dispatched at once along the coast, and look-outs told off to all the favourable points, so that while I considered myself a laughing-stock, waving my flag at those irresponsive cliffs, there were really men’s eyes watching from them all the time.
Every soul in the village was on the beach as we neared the shore, and everybody wanted to shake hands when I landed. Even with the grip that one after another gave me, some no longer trying to keep back the tears, I did not find out that my hands were frost-bitten—a fact I have not been slow to appreciate since. A weird sight I must have looked as I stepped ashore—tied up in rags stuffed out with oakum, wrapped in the blood-stained skins of dogs, with no hat, coat, or gloves, and only a short pair of knickers on! It must have seemed to some of them as if the Old Man of the Sea had landed.
No time was wasted before a pot of tea was exactly where I wanted it to be, and some hot stew was locating itself where I had intended an hour before that the blood of one of my remaining dogs should have gone.
Rigged out in the warm garments that fishermen wear, I started with a large team as hard as I could race for 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; I had to be hauled like a log up the hills, my feet being frost-bitten so that I could not walk. Had I guessed this before I might have avoided much trouble.