THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 407 



were so conspicuous and hurt so much that I can only explain the 

 slight injury to the eye itself by supposing that it was partly 

 closed and protected. It was about a week before the inflamma- 

 tion disappeared. 



Accidents of this sort occurred with our rifles about twice 

 per thousand rounds of ammunition. I had two similar experi- 

 ences in later years but in neither case did so much powder come 

 through, and there was no real injury except on this occasion. 

 Storkerson had one or two accidents of the same sort but his eye 

 was not hurt. It seems possible, therefore, that the rifle which 

 I had at the time of the first accident was in some respects slightly 

 different from the others. We had about half a dozen of these 

 rifles and as I made no record of which one I was using at the time, 

 I cannot say whether a second shell ever cracked in the same 

 rifle. 



During the very busy time of the early autumn while we were 

 making things snug for winter, all hands used to work every day 

 including Sundays except the Eskimos. Of these Palaiyak, who 

 had been with me on a previous expedition and with white men a 

 good deal at Herschel Island, and Emiu, who had spent two years 

 in Seattle and a good part of the rest of his life in Nome, Alaska, 

 were the only ones who were willing to work with the white men 

 on Sunday.* The rest, after religious services, spent their time 

 mainly in card playing and in listening to the phonograph. 



By September 25th we had much cold weather and the ice was 

 firm in the straits outside. Accordingly, Storkerson made his sec- 

 ond attempt to reach Peel Point. This time he got within sight 

 of it but could not round it nor proceed beyond, for everything in 

 Melville Sound was open. He climbed to the top of a hill several 

 hundred feet high near Peel Point and made sure that no ice was 

 in sight for at least fifteen miles from land. It appeared to him 

 from the position of the old ice which filled the straits only up to 

 a point eight miles north of where the Polar Bear was wintering, 

 that had we been able to make with the ship those eight miles be- 

 fore the ice crowded down upon us, we should probably have been 

 able to get across to Melville Island. 



The surface of the land near Peel Point was of just such broken 

 rock as in the vicinity of our camp. Trying to cross such land with 

 sledges in the fall is hopeless, for the steel shoeing would be worn 

 away in two or three days — you might as well drag iron over a 



* For Eskimo ideas of Sunday observance see Chapter XXVII, "My Life 

 With the Eskimo," under heading, "On the Conversion of the Heathen." 



