I waved the flag as high as I could raise it in a direction to be broadside towards those places where I thought people might have gone out around the ice after ducks, which is their main occupation a little later in the year. I hoped that they might then see my flag and come straight on for me. At last, beside the glitter of a white oar, I made out the black speck of a hull. I knew then if the pan held out for another hour that I should be all right. With that strange perversity of the human intellect, the first thing I thought of when I realized that a rescue boat was under way was what trophies I could carry with my luggage from the pan! I pictured the dog-bone flagstaff adorning my study--the dogs intervened, however, and ate it later on--and I thought of preserving my ragged puttees in my museum. I could see that my rescuers were frantically waving, and when they came within shouting distance I heard someone shout, “Don’t get excited; keep on the pan, where you are.” As a matter of fact, they were infinitely more excited than I. Already it seemed just as natural to me now to be saved as half an hour before it seemed inevitable that I should be lost. Had my rescuers only known, as I did, the sensations of a bath in the ice when you cannot dry yourself afterwards, they need not have expected me to throw myself into the water. At last the boat came up, crashing into my pan with such violence that I was glad enough to catch hold of the bow, being more or less acquainted by now with the frail constitution of my floe, and being well aware it was not adapted for collisions. Moreover, I felt for the pan, for it had been a good and faithful friend to me. A hearty handshake all round and a warm cup of tea--thoughtfully packed in a kettle--inside, and we hoisted in my remaining dogs and instantly started back, for even then a change of wind might have penned the boat with ice, which would have cost us dearly. Indeed, the men thought we could not return, and we started for an island, in which direction the way was all open. [Illustration: “I COULD SEE THAT MY RESCUERS WERE FRANTICALLY WAVING.”] There were not only five Newfoundland fishermen at the oars, but five men with Newfoundland muscles in their backs and arms and five as brave hearts as ever beat in the bodies of human beings. So we presently changed our course and forced our way through to the shore.