Once he had killed three of the dogs, Wilfred used lengths of the walrus-hide traces to fashion the skins together into a blanket. The warmth he would receive had come at a high price.
By now it was completely dark, and Wilfred decided to try to see if he could get some sleep. He called his largest dog, Doc, to him and told the animal to lie down beside him. Wilfred then snuggled up to Doc for warmth, his dog-skin blanket pulled tightly around him.
Wilfred awoke several hours later, his fingers stinging from the cold. He thought he saw the sun rising, but when he looked closer, he realized that it was a bright, full moon peeking through the clouds above.
Once again Wilfred took up his position beside Doc for warmth. By now the dog was growling, thinking Wilfred was one of the other dogs wriggling beside him and waking him. Wilfred tried to lie as still as possible. As he tried to drift off to sleep once again, the words of a hymn that he had sung as a boy back in Parkgate began to play over and over in his mind.
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!
Wilfred did not know how long he had slept this time, but he awoke with the same stinging cold fingers. This time, though, an idea was pulsing in his head. He needed a pole and flag. That way maybe, just maybe, someone onshore might spot him and rescue him. His spirits were buoyed when he realized the wind had died down and the ice pan was no longer floating out to sea. But he was still more than five miles out from the closest point of land on Hare Bay.
As he thought about a flagpole, Wilfred realized that his dogs’ sacrifice would have to serve him yet again. It was not easy, but working in the dark, he at last managed to lash the dogs’ leg bones together with lengths of walrus hide to form a pole.
By now the sun had risen. Wilfred pulled off his flannel shirt and attached it to the pole. He clambered to his feet and began to wave the pole above his head. It wasn’t very tall, but at least it hoisted the flannel-shirt flag five feet farther into the air.
Wilfred waved as hard as he could. His arms throbbed, but he forced himself to carry on. He told himself that this was his last chance. If he stopped waving the flag right now, someone might come along onshore in five minutes and not see it and know that he was trapped out on an ice pan in the bay. He was cold, and he was hungry. He knew he could not survive more than twenty-four hours on the ice; he had to keep waving.
Eventually Wilfred could not will himself to wave any longer, and he had to sit and take a break. After twenty minutes he rose to his feet again. By now his feet and hands were so cold he could not feel them. They were simply lumps of flesh at the ends of his legs and arms that he willed to move in order to survive.
Again Wilfred waved the flagpole for as long as he could until once again he was forced to take a break.
The third time he stood waving the flagpole, he noticed something in the distance—the light from the bright morning sun was glinting off something. It was something that seemed to be moving up and down. Wilfred tried to focus on it, but the glare of the sun off the ice had partially blinded him. He kept waving at whatever it was in the distance. Slowly, ever so slowly, the moving object assumed the shape of oars and then the lines of a rowboat. It was a boat! Wilfred could scarcely believe it. Four men were rowing the boat, and a fifth was guiding them along the fissures in the ice.
“Doctor! You’re alive! Stay where you are. We will come to you,” one of the men called from the rowboat.
Half an hour later they were helping Wilfred into the boat. Tears streamed down the men’s faces when they saw that he was safe. They wrapped him in a warm blanket and then poured him a cup of hot tea from a flask they had brought with them. Finally the six remaining dogs climbed into the boat, and the men began to row back to shore, following the fissures in the ice.
Once they were ashore, Wilfred was given warm clothes to change into and the best bowl of stew he had ever eaten. During the boat ride back to shore, nobody had said much, but now, with warm clothes on his body and warm food in his stomach, Wilfred began to talk, telling those who had gathered to wish him well about his ordeal and how he had managed to survive.
The men who had rescued Wilfred told him how lucky he was to be alive. Several men from the village had made a trip down the lonely coast to collect some seals they had killed earlier and had left hanging until they froze. One of the men had said he saw a man adrift on an ice pan far out on the bay. At first no one believed him, but when someone searched the bay with a spyglass, he spotted Wilfred adrift. But the wind then was too strong to launch a rescue attempt. The men had to wait until morning, all the while hoping that Wilfred would survive the night and not be blown out to sea.
The following day the men tied Wilfred onto a komatik and took him back to St. Anthony. Wilfred was eager to get back there and assure everyone that he was safe. Unfortunately, as his hands and feet thawed out, the pain was unbearable. His fingers and toes had suffered minor frostbite, and he could not walk or use his hands for much.
Wilfred was welcomed enthusiastically at St. Anthony. Many in the community were convinced he had died on the ice. When they saw him alive, they rushed to him and, with tears in their eyes, welcomed him home.
The boy from Brent Island, whom Wilfred had been on his way to help, arrived safely in St. Anthony two days later, the breakup of the ice allowing him passage across the bay by boat. His blood poisoning was treated at the hospital, and several days later he returned home to Brent Island, well on his way to making a full recovery.
Glad to be safely home, Wilfred was eager to be up and about again, but his frostbitten fingers and toes forced him to slow down while he recuperated. While he lay in bed recovering, Wilfred dictated an account of his ordeal on the ice to Jessie Luther, and this account was published as a book titled Adrift on an Ice-Pan.
Once he had fully recuperated, Wilfred set out on his usual summer activities, traveling up and down the Labrador coast in the Strathcona.
The following year Wilfred made a trip home to England. Much to his surprise, Adrift on an Ice-Pan had become a best-seller. Now when he spoke, bigger crowds than ever came to hear him. It seemed to Wilfred that everyone wanted to hear about his ordeal on the ice.
Chapter 14
International Grenfell Association
For the first time in his life, Wilfred was aboard a ship with his mother. Although she was now seventy-nine and a semi-invalid, she had jumped at the chance to sail to the United States to watch Wilfred accept two honorary degrees, one from Harvard University and one from Williams College. The year before, Wilfred had received an honorary doctorate of medicine from Oxford University. It was the first honorary medical degree ever issued by that institution.
For the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, the president of the Cunard Line had kindly given Jane Grenfell the use of a luxurious suite of cabins, and she spent most of the voyage in them. Wilfred, on the other hand, was a ball of energy, inspecting the Mauretania from stem to stern and befriending the captain and crew. On the second day of the voyage, he saw something that truly startled him. It was the sight of a female passenger. She was about twenty years younger than he, and for some reason, Wilfred could not take his eyes off her. He had been introduced to hundreds of beautiful women during his forty-four years, but there was something irresistible about this woman. Staring at her across the dining room, he decided to ask her at once to marry him.
The opportunity came that evening when Wilfred was walking around the deck. The young woman, dressed in black, was sitting on one of the deck chairs doing some embroidery. Wilfred sat down beside her.
“Excuse me, madam,” he said. “I would like to ask you a question.”
He watched as her eyebrows arched.
“Yes, go on,” she replied.
Wilfred took a deep breath and blurted out, “Will you marry me?”
The young woman’s hands flew to her face as she gasped. “But you don’t even know my name!”
Wilfred nodded in agreement. “That is not the issue. The only issue that interests me is what your name is going to be.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” she retorted. “Of course I will not consent to marry you, but I will have breakfast with you at nine o’clock sharp. I am traveling with the Stirling family; we will be in the aft dining room. By the way, my name is Miss Anne Elizabeth MacClanahan.”
With that the woman folded her embroidery, put it into a satin bag, and walked off.
Wilfred sat for some time wondering what had come over him. Never in his entire life had he felt he needed a wife, and now he was smitten with a woman he did not know.
The following morning Wilfred was up bright and early pacing the deck, wondering whether he had made a complete fool of himself the night before. Thankfully, when nine o’clock came, Anne MacClanahan made him feel perfectly at ease as they breakfasted with her traveling companions. As the meal progressed, Wilfred found out more about her. She had grown up in Lake Forest, a wealthy suburb of Chicago. Her father, who had died when she was young, had been a colonel under Robert E. Lee in the Civil War. Her only sibling, a brother named Kinlock, had also died, leaving Anne’s mother to raise her alone.
Anne had done the normal things that were expected of a girl of high social standing, complete with earning a bachelor’s degree from Bryn Mawr. Now she was returning from a three-year tour of Europe.
Despite the rather impulsive beginning, Wilfred and Anne found that they liked each other, and by the time they disembarked in New York, Anne had promised to think about marrying Wilfred. She invited him and his mother to Chicago to meet her mother. Wilfred eagerly changed his plans to do this. But first he went to Williams College and then on to Harvard University and accepted his honorary degrees. As always, he used the opportunity to talk about the work in Labrador. He challenged the students at each university to become WOPS, giving a summer to serve their fellow human beings in the far north.
Finally it was time to head west to visit Anne MacClanahan and her mother. After two days together, Anne agreed to marry Wilfred. The wedding was set for November 18, 1909, two weeks away. Wilfred could not see any sense in waiting, especially since he had already been away from St. Anthony longer than he had intended.
The wedding was a quiet, formal affair at Grace Episcopal Church, followed by a honeymoon at Virginia Hot Springs. Then Wilfred and Anne Grenfell escorted his mother back to New York and put her back on a Cunard liner bound for England.
In January Wilfred wound up his speaking engagements, and the newlyweds headed north for the rest of the winter. Although Wilfred was sure that many people would wonder whether a Chicago socialite could survive the harsh conditions at St. Anthony, he had no such doubts. He was sure that Anne would adjust to whatever situation she found herself in, and he looked forward to introducing her to the life he loved.
Wilfred was having a house built for him while he was away, and he wrote to the carpenters asking them to add a few extra things that Anne had suggested. The result was stunning. Wilfred and Anne soon found themselves living in a lovely, two-story home overlooking the bay at St. Anthony. Within a year the house was filled with the sounds of a baby, Wilfred Jr.
Even though Anne had a son to look after, she took an active role in the mission, overseeing the child welfare department and starting an educational fund. The education of the children weighed on her the most. Using her numerous connections in the United States, Anne was able to arrange for boys and girls who graduated from the mission’s schools to be sent off to colleges in Nova Scotia, Canada, and the United States. It was a huge task to outfit the students, buy their tickets, arrange scholarships, and settle them in at college. More often than not, Anne accompanied the students herself, though at times her assistant went with them.
