As they looked fearfully out over the rail, their
convoy signalled that she had struck, and the captain of _Haabet_
cried out that all was lost. In the tumult of terror that succeeded,
Egede alone remained calm. Praying for succor where there seemed to
be none, he remembered the One Hundred and Seventh Psalm: "He
brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and brake
their bands in sunder." And the morning dawned clear, the ice was
moving and their prison widening. On July 3, _Haabet_ cleared the
last ice-reef, and the shore lay open before them.
The Eskimos came out in their kayaks, and the boldest climbed aboard
the ship. In one boat sat an old man who refused the invitation. He
paddled about the vessel, mumbling darkly in a strange tongue. He
was an Angekok, one of the native medicine-men of whom presently
Egede was to know much more. As he stood upon the deck and looked at
these strangers for whose salvation he had risked all, his heart
fell. They were not the stalwart Northmen he had looked for, and
their jargon had no homelike sound. But a great wave of pity swept
over him, and the prayer that rose to his lips was for strength to
be their friend and their guide to the light.
Not at once did the way open for the coveted friendship with the
Eskimos.
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