Adrift on an Ice-Pan | Page 9

other dogs when the time came, and with their coats I could
hope to hold out for two or three days more, and with the food and
drink their bodies would offer me need not at least die of hunger or
thirst. To tell the truth, they were so big and strong I was half afraid to
tackle them with only a sheath-knife on my small and unstable raft.
But it was now freezing hard. I knew the calm water between us would
form into cakes, and I had to recognize that the chance of getting near
enough to escape on to it was gone. If, on the other hand, the whole bay
froze solid again I had yet another possible chance. For my pan would
hold together longer and I should be opposite another village, called
Goose Cove, at daylight, and might possibly be seen from there. I knew
that the komatiks there would be starting at daybreak over the hills for
a parade of Orangemen about twenty miles away. Possibly, therefore, I
might be seen as they climbed the hills. So I lay down, and went to
sleep again.
It seems impossible to say how long one sleeps, but I woke with a
sudden thought in my mind that I must have a flag; but again I had no
pole and no flag. However, I set to work in the dark to disarticulate the
legs of my dead dogs, which were now frozen stiff, and which were all
that offered a chance of carrying anything like a distress signal. Cold as
it was, I determined to sacrifice my shirt for that purpose with the first
streak of daylight.
It took a long time in the dark to get the legs off, and when I had
patiently marled them together with old harness rope and the remains
of the skin traces, it was the heaviest and crookedest flag-pole it has
ever been my lot to see. I had had no food from six o'clock the morning
before, when I had eaten porridge and bread and butter. I had, however,
a rubber band which I had been wearing instead of one of my garters,
and I chewed that for twenty-four hours. It saved me from thirst and
hunger, oddly enough. It was not possible to get a drink from my pan,
for it was far too salty. But anyhow that thought did not distress me
much, for as from time to time I heard the cracking and grinding of the
newly formed slob, it seemed that my devoted boat must inevitably

soon go to pieces.
At last the sun rose, and the time came for the sacrifice of my shirt. So I
stripped, and, much to my surprise, found it not half so cold as I had
anticipated. I now re-formed my dog-skins with the raw side out, so
that they made a kind of coat quite rivalling Joseph's. But, with the
rising of the sun, the frost came out of the joints of my dogs' legs, and
the friction caused by waving it made my flag-pole almost tie itself in
knots. Still, I could raise it three or four feet above my head, which was
very important.
Now, however, I found that instead of being as far out at sea as I had
reckoned, I had drifted back in a northwesterly direction, and was off
some cliffs known as Ireland Head. Near these there was a little village
looking seaward, whence I should certainly have been seen. But, as I
had myself, earlier in the winter, been night-bound at this place, I had
learnt there was not a single soul living there at all this winter. The
people had all, as usual, migrated to the winter houses up the bay,
where they get together for schooling and social purposes.
I soon found it was impossible to keep waving so heavy a flag all the
time, and yet I dared not sit down, for that might be the exact moment
some one would be in a position to see me from the hills. The only
thing in my mind was how long I could stand up and how long go on
waving that pole at the cliffs. Once or twice I thought I saw men
against their snowy faces, which, I judged, were about five and a half
miles from me, but they were only trees. Once, also, I thought I saw a
boat approaching. A glittering object kept appearing and disappearing
on the water, but it was only a small piece of ice sparkling in the sun as
it rose on the surface. I think that the rocking of my cradle up and down
on the waves had helped me to sleep, for I felt as well as ever I