Part 7 (1/2)
”That I will, Doctor!” answered Bartlett heartily ”Drop in on your way back”
The Doctor did so--and he found Captain Will had put aside a full boat-load of provisions of all sorts for the starving faood it would do, Grenfell started back for the pro River where he had every reason to expect the fa for hi The boat was beached, and the Doctor went up to the house
The door was locked: there was no one within hail, though he shouted again and again
Grenfell knew this absence one to the distant islands for the fishi+ng
So he broke in the door, piled the things he had brought inside, and wrote a letter
”This is the price of your pelt Put all the fur you catch next winter in a barrel and sit on the top of the barrel till the spring, e are coet it froly, the faot froht in their traps In the summer, Grenfell took the pelts to the nearest cash buyer, and with the ht in St John's The poor fisherman found that he had more food than he needed, so he sold the surplus, at a fair profit, to his neighbor
Year after year this was kept up, and when the father died he left Grenfell 200 in cash to be divided a the children
Thus the Doctor had the satisfaction of bringing this family up from a blanketless poverty, on the flat brink of starvation, to so like wealth in a land where a s, codfish in the sea and a few dollars in hand thinks he is well off and piously thanks Heaven for his good fortune
As for the sealers--theare those who buy what they call a ticket to the ice--that is to say, a share in a sealing venture--and go out froinning of March The shi+p has sheathed wooden sides a foot and a half thick, and is bound with iron at the bow, to aid in battering the ice-pack For the auxiliary engine 500 tons of coal are carried: and a crew of 300 allons of water in a day--but the easy way to get edies of the sealing fleet are without nuht the men out on the ice-floes far fro theaffs and lie down on theet up and dance like mad for five minutes, while he crooned ”chin- to death In that storm the _Greenland_ of Harbor Grace lost 52 of her 100 men Grenfell tells of sixteen fishermen on Trinity Bay ithout fire or food or sufficient clothing, after thirty-six hours of suffering dragged their boats ten miles across the ice to the land
_The Southern Cross_ in 1914 was co from the banks with 174 men and a full load She was lost with all hands, and her fate remains a mystery A life-belt picked up on the Irish coast was all that was ever recovered from the doomed shi+p In the saht out on the ice and unable to get back to the shi+p Of the company seventy-seven lost their lives and forty-tere crippled
Two boys and twoseal nets when a ”divey” or snowstorm blew them helplessly to sea They crashed on an island, but ere they could land they were blown off again During the night and thethat followed, both men and one of the boys died The other boy dressed himself in the clothes of the three who died, and kept their bodies in the boat
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 tiht he saw a shi+p 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 hu 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_, caht
It was dark, and this was his one chance of rescue He shouted with all his ht But the boat iain, and the ht 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 shi+p hove to, and when the brave boy was lifted aboard the watch explained to him:
”Ye see, lad, the first tiht it was sperrits”
They picked up the boat as well as the boy, and finally put the toward the lad's fatherless ho fleet and took his full share of all the hardshi+ps of the reat adventure While they are still tiny tads, the boys of St John's and the outposts practise leaping across rain-barrels andforward to the ti ju their lives To ”copy” is to play the gaood big copy fro leap between
There is uncontrollable exciteht at last Perhaps the shi+p has been buffeting the ice for ain with the lookout in the crow's nest scanning the horizon in vain with powerful spy-glasses