Adrift on an Ice Pan by Sir Wilfred Grenfell

Author:Sir Wilfred Grenfell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flanker Press
Published: 2016-07-07T04:00:00+00:00

“My God, my Father, while I stray

Far from my home on life’s dark way,

Oh, teach me from my heart to say,

Thy will be done!”

It is a hymn we hardly ever sing out here, and it was an unconscious memory of my boyhood days,

It was a perfect morning—a cobalt sky, an ultramarine sea, a golden sun, an almost wasteful extravagance of crimson over hills of purest snow, which caught a reflected glow from rock and crag. Between me and the hills lay miles of rough ice and long veins of thin black slob that had formed during the night. For the foreground there was my poor, gruesome pan, bobbing up and down on the edge of the open sea, stained with blood, and littered with carcasses and debris. It was smaller than last night, and I noticed also that the new ice from the water melted under the dogs’ bodies had been formed at the expense of its thickness. Five dogs, myself in coloured football costume, and a bloody dogskin cloak, with a grey flannel shirt on a pole of frozen dogs’ legs, completed the picture. The sun was almost hot by now, and I was conscious of a surplus of heat in my skin coat. I began to look longingly at one of my remaining dogs, for an appetite will rise even on an ice pan, and that made me think of fire. So once again I inspected my matches. Alas! the heads were in paste, all but three or four blue-top wax ones.

These I now laid out to dry, while I searched upon my snow pan to see if I could get a piece of transparent ice to make a burning glass. For I was pretty sure that with all the unravelled tow I had stuffed into my leggings, and with the fat of my dogs, I could make smoke enough to be seen if only I could get a light. I had found a piece which I thought would do, and had gone back to wave my flag, which I did every two minutes, when I suddenly thought I saw the glitter of an oar. It did not seem possible, however, for it must be remembered it was not water which lay between me and the land, but slob ice, which a mile or two inside me was very heavy. Even if people had seen me, I did not think they could get through, though I knew that the whole shore would then be trying. Moreover, there was no smoke rising on the land to give me hope that I had been seen. There had been no gun flashes in the night, and I felt sure that, had anyone seen me, there would have been a bonfire on every hill to encourage me to keep going,

So I gave it up, and went on with my work. But the next time I went back to my flag, the glitter seemed very distinct, and though it kept disappearing as it

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