A Boy Who "Stood By" by Sir Wilfred Grenfell, M.D.

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 11, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 15.

A Boy Who "Stood By"

By Sir Wilfred Grenfell, M.D.

(Sir Wilfred Grenfell, M.D., in Sunday School Times)

I KNEW a boy last fall, a boy of about fifteen. He was one of a family of five. His mother was dead; his father had had a bad fishing and hunting season; they were on the verge of starvation. The boy had no possible means of helping his father and little brothers and sisters. He begged the doctor — who is serving as a volunteer, paying his own way like others on the coast — he asked the doctor if he would not allow him to be his dog driver last winter. He was rather young, but his keenness and earnestness made the doctor yield at last, and he took the boy.

They made a good northern trip, had changed their dogs and driven the last two hundred miles with new dogs, and had just taken up their own dogs to go south; they had a big neck to cross, the distance between them and a place of shelter being about fifty miles. They had only just started when the doctor decided to give at least one hour in an attempt to get some fresh meat for both men and dogs, as some deer had just crossed the trail. Telling the boy to stand by the teams, the three men started off, one of the doctor's companions being a guide who had been two or three years up the coast and who said he knew the way.

The three men lost their way, a blizzard came on, and the men wandered in circles and kept coming back near their starting-point. The blizzard kept up all night; they sat down and made a fire, but had neither food nor covering. The next day was the same; they wandered round and round all

day long. Their boots had been partly eaten, they had grilled and chewed their gloves, and at night again sat down, wet and discouraged — no nearer to getting back to the teams. However, they now started due south, hoping to strike an inlet and then by following the northern bank of it to find a little village they knew to be there. They walked all night, and as morning broke they could see away in the distance the smoke from a tiny cottage. They made for that cottage and reached it, utterly played out. The first thing they did was naturally to ask whether any news had come of the boy — as he was only a boy of fifteen and able to do very little. No word had been received.

A party was quickly organized to go back, the doctor telling them where the boy had been left. They fully expected that either the dogs had turned on him or that he would naturally get on the sled and let the dogs go, for they could at least find for themselves the habitation they had last left. They little expected to find the boy, yet as they drew near the place, they saw some black dots on the snow. When they reached the spot, there was the boy “standing by” the two komatiks, walking up and down for the third day. That was all. That is exactly what Christ wants of us.