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 never looked behind
him; "Watch," the youngster of the team, long-legged and speedy, with
great liquid eyes and a Gordon-setter coat; "Sue," a large, dark
Eskimo, the image of a great black wolf, with her sharp-pointed and
perpendicular ears, for she "harked back" to her wild ancestry;
"Jerry," a large roan-colored slut, the quickest of all my dogs on her
feet, and so affectionate that her overtures of joy had often sent me
sprawling on my back; "Jack," a jet-black, gentle-natured dog, more
like a retriever, that always ran next the sledge, and never looked
back but everlastingly pulled straight ahead, running always with his
nose to the ground.
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