It was evidently indeed a serious case.  Cape Norman lies thirty miles to the northward of St. Anthony, and the trail is a rough one.  The night was moonless and pitchy black, but Grenfell set out at once to look for dogs.  He borrowed four from one man, hired one from another, and arranged with a man, named Walter, to furnish four additional ones and to drive the team.  Walter was to report at the hospital at 4:30 in the morning prepared to start, though it would still be long before daybreak.

Having made these arrangements Grenfell went back to the hospital and with the head nurse called upon every patient in the wards, providing so far as possible for any contingency that might arise during his absence.  It was midnight when he had finished.  Snow had set in, and the wind was rising with the promise of bad weather ahead.

At 4:30 he was dressed and ready for the journey.  He looked out into the darkness.  The air was thick with swirling clouds of snow driven before a gale.  He made out a dim figure battling its way to the door, and as the figure approached he discovered it was Walter, but without the dogs.

“Where are the dogs, Walter?” he asked.

“I didn’t bring un, sir,” Walter stepped inside and shook the accumulation of snow from his garments. “’Tis a wonderful nasty mornin’, and I’m thinkin’ ’tis too bad to try un before daylight.  I’ve been watchin’ the weather all night, sir.  ‘Tis growin’ worse.  We has only a scratch team and the dog’ll not work together right ’till they gets used to each other.  I’m thinkin’ we’ll have to wait ’till it comes light.”

“You’ve the team to drive and you know best,” conceded the Doctor.  “Under the circumstances I suppose we’ll save time by waiting.”

“That we will, sir.  We’d be wastin’ the dogs’ strength and ours and losin’ time goin’ now.  We couldn’t get on at all, sir.”

“Very well; at daylight.”

Walter returned home and Doctor Grenfell to his room to make the most of the two hours’ rest.

It was scarce daylight and Walter had not yet appeared when another telegram was clicked in over the wires: 

“Come along soon.  Wife worse.”

The storm had increased in fury since Walter’s early visit.  It was now blowing a living gale, and the snow was so thick one could scarce breathe in it.  The trail lay directly in the teeth of the storm.  No dogs on earth could face and stem it and certainly not the picked up, or “scratch” team as Walter called it, for strange dogs never work well together, and will never do their best by any means for a strange driver, and Walter had never driven any of these except his own four.

With visions of the suffering woman whose life might depend upon his presence, the Doctor chafed the forenoon through.  Then at midday came another telegram: 

“Come immediately if you can.  Wife still holding out.”

He had but just read this telegram when, to his astonishment, two snow-enveloped, bedraggled men limped up to the door.