to the rescue--could there
have been than the face of the rising sun. When he took off his shirt
to run it up as a flag, he found that it was not so cold as it had
been. His skeleton flagpole as he tried to wave it bent and
buckled--but he found that by means of it he could raise his
shirt-flag three or four feet over his head, and the least additional
height meant much to his slim chance of being spied from the shore.

The wind, too, had been carrying him back toward the shore, at a
rugged point called Ireland Head. Unhappily for the man at sea, the
little fishing-village there was deserted in winter: the people had
shifted, bag and baggage, to another settlement where they could get
teaching for their children and see more of other people.

Now it settled down to a severe endurance test. If Grenfell had been
fresh with comfortable sleep, and well-fed, it might not have been so
serious a business to keep that gruesome "flag" of his waving aloft to
attract the keen eye of someone ashore. But as it was, he must keep
the terribly heavy banner of dog-pelts swinging to and fro with his
strength at a low ebb, and hope barely alive in his heart. Again, his
imagination began to play cruel tricks with him. He thought he saw men
moving: but they were trees blown by the wind. Then to his joy it
seemed that a boat was approaching: he thought he saw it rising and
falling on the waves, as the oars drove it onward. He wanted the boat
to come so much that the wish was father to the thought. Instead--it
was only the glitter of the sun on a block of ice bobbing up and down.

Whenever the Doctor sat down to rest, faithful old "Doc" would lick
his face, and then roam about the ice-pan, coming back again and again
to where the Doctor sat, his eyes and his ears asking: "Well, why
aren't we starting? What is the matter? Isn't it time to be under
way?" On a sunny day on the trail amid ice and snow the "husky" seeks
some good reason for not being in the traces, tugging and hauling with
his mates. The other dogs, following his example, were roaming about,
and sometimes they would bite at the bodies of the slain dogs,
wondering, no doubt, how soon their master would hand out to them the
square meal of fish or seal-meat to which they were accustomed.

For his own midday meal, Grenfell had begun to plan another
killing--that of one of the bigger dogs, whose blood he would drink.
Nansen had to do the same thing, according to the story told in hi