Outing for Volume 55 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910 edition. Excerpt: ... and sorrowing." That is a marvelous story in itself, but it has been told. Recently there has been published a little book, "Adrift on an Ice-Pan" (HoughtonMifflin Company), which tells in simple, unpretentious fashion the tale of one night's experience of Dr. Grenfell's, that is better worth reading than many stately volumes. This is the story in brief: On Easter Sunday, 1908, at St. Anthony, Newfoundland, word came from sixty miles to the southward that a boy with a broken leg was in need of the doctor. It was bitter cold and ice was heaped along the shore and snow lay deep on the hills, but Dr. Grenfell set out at once. The first ten miles of his journey was across an arm of the sea, over salt-water ice. This the doctor was to negotiate alone, his companions having been sent ahead to a "halfway house." A quarter of a mile only separated Dr. Grenfell and his dogs from the land when the wind changed and began to blow offshore, breaking up the loose ice. Then his struggle began. After infinite labor, and in spite of dangers that would have killed the spirit of a weaker man, he found refuge on a floe of snow ice that threatened every moment to break under them. Here he drifted the rest of the day and through the long night, the wind driving him farther from shore and possible rescue each hour. Two of the dogs he killed that he might have their skins to protect him from the cold. And always the sea pounded at his treacherous raft and the floating ice threatened on all sides. The night wore away, and when morning came he rigged a signal with the disjointed legs of the dead dogs lashed together for a staff and his shirt for a flag. The day passed in what seemed fruitless waving, but late afternoon brought hope. What...