had unraveled a small piece of rope, and soaked this in fat from
the entrails of a dog, thinking he might make a torch of it. But his
match-box, which he wore on a chain, had leaked. Fishermen will tell
you how hard it is to find a match-box that will not let in water: I
prize one I have carried a great many years, which seems to be
waterproof. I wish Grenfell had had it then. The matches were a pulp.
Nevertheless Grenfell kept them, thinking that they might be dried and
usable by morning. Every now and then, by a sort of mechanical
instinct, the Doctor would rise to his full height and wave his hands
toward the land, in the forlorn hope of being seen through a powerful
glass.

There was nothing but his hands to wave. He dared not let his shirt
fly as a flag: it would not do to take it off too long at any time,
because of the piercing cold.

Nor would it be safe to pile up snow from the pan to break the force
of the wind, for the pan might give way if it were thinned out
anywhere. So he placed the dog-skins in a pile, sat on them, and
changed his clothes, wringing them out, and flapping them in the wind,
then putting them by turns against his body. The exercise at least
postponed the coming of the last hour of all.

The moccasins let the water through so easily that it was impossible
for him to dry his feet. Then he remembered a trick of the Lapps, who
had been brought over to care for the reindeer which Grenfell was
striving to introduce at St. Anthony in place of the dogs. The Lapps
have a way of tying grass in pads about their feet. On the harness of
the dogs there was flannel, to make it soft where it rubbed against
the flanks. The Doctor cut off the flannel, raveled out the rest of
the rope, stuffed his shoes with the fragments of rope, and wound the
flannel about his legs like puttees. If the situation were not so
serious, he might have laughed at the outfit in which he faced the
night wind, for the Oxford University running trunks and the Richmond
Football Club red, yellow and black stockings were garments he had
worn twenty years before and had recently found in a box of old
clothes.

What was left over of the rope was stuffed inside the flannel shirt
and the trunks, which with the stockings and sweater vest made up the
Doctor's complete costume. Then he made "Doc," his biggest dog, lie
down, so that he might curl up beside him and use him as a kind of
fireless stove. He wrapped the three skins round his b