Adrift on an Ice-Pan | Page 3

Deep Sea Fishermen, who suggested his joining
the staff of the mission and establishing a medical mission to the
fishermen of the North Sea. The conditions of the life were onerous, the
existing traffic in spirituous liquors and in all other demoralizing
influences had to be fought step by step, prejudice and evil habit had to
be overcome and to be replaced by better knowledge and better desire,
there was room for both fighting and teaching, and the medical mission
won its way. "When you set out to commend your gospel to men who
don't want it, there's only one way to go about it,--to do something for
them that they'll be sure to understand. The message of love that was
'made flesh and dwelt amongst men' must be reincarnate in our lives if
it is to be received to-day." Thus came about the outfitting of the Albert
hospital-ship to carry the message and the help, by cruising among the
fleets on the fishing-grounds, and the organization of the Deep Sea
Mission; when this work was done, "when the fight had gone out of it,"
Dr. Grenfell looked for another field, for yet another need, and found it
on that barren and inhospitable coast the Labrador, whose only harvest
field is the sea.
Six hundred miles of almost barren rock with outlying uncharted
ledges,--worn smooth by ice, else still more vessels would have found
wreckage there; a scant, constant population of hardy fishermen and
their families, pious and God-fearing, most of them, but largely at the
mercy of the local traders, who took their pay in fish for the bare
necessities of living, with a large account always on the trader's side;
with such medical aid and ministration as came only occasionally, by

the infrequent mail boat, and not at all in the long winter months when
the coast was firm beset with ice,--to such a place came Dr. Grenfell in
1892 to cast in his lot with its inhabitants, to live there so long as he
should, to die there were it God's will.
As it stands to-day the Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, which Dr.
Grenfell represents, administers, and animates on the Labrador coast,
not only brings hope, new courage, and spiritual comfort to an isolated
people in a desolate land, but cares for the sick and injured, in its four
hospitals and dispensary, provides house visitation by means of
dog-sledge journeys covering hundreds of miles in a year, teaches
wholesome and righteous living, conducts coöperative stores, provides
for orphans and for families bereft of the bread-winners by accidents of
the sea, encourages thrift, and administers justice, and adds to the
wage-earning capacity and therefore food-obtaining power by operating
a sawmill, a schooner-building yard, and other productive industries.
To accomplish this, to make of the scattered settlements a united and
independent people, to safeguard their future by such measures as the
establishment of a Seamen's Institute at St. John's, Newfoundland, and
the insurance of communication with the outside world, and to raise, by
personal solicitation, the money needed for these enterprises, requires
an unusual personality. Faith, courage, insight, foresight, the power to
win, and the ability to command,--all of these and more of like qualities
are embodied and portrayed in Dr. Grenfell.
CLARENCE JOHN BLAKE.

ADRIFT ON AN ICE-PAN
It was Easter Sunday at St. Anthony in the year 1908, but with us in
northern Newfoundland still winter. Everything was covered with snow
and ice. I was walking back after morning service, when a boy came
running over from the hospital with the news that a large team of dogs
had come from sixty miles to the southward, to get a doctor on a very
urgent case. It was that of a young man on whom we had operated

about a fortnight before for an acute bone disease in the thigh. The
people had allowed the wound to close, the poisoned matter had
accumulated, and we thought we should have to remove the leg. There
was obviously, therefore, no time to be lost. So, having packed up the
necessary instruments, dressings, and drugs, and having fitted out the
dog-sleigh with my best dogs, I started at once, the messengers
following me with their team.
My team was an especially good one. On many a long journey they had
stood by me and pulled me out of difficulties by their sagacity and
endurance. To a lover of his dogs, as every Christian man must be, each
one had become almost as precious as a child to its mother. They were
beautiful beasts: "Brin," the cleverest leader on the coast; "Doc," a
large, gentle beast, the backbone of the team for power; "Spy," a wiry,
powerful black and white dog; "Moody," a lop-eared black-and-tan, in
his third season, a plodder that