AND KAYAK 203 



laugh ; and it speaks well for the gravity of 

 the Eskimo character that the ludicrous 

 spectacle of the collapsing bench and the 

 struggling dignitaries on the floor did not even 

 cause a titter. 



Morning prayers, or the " Morning Singing " 

 as the Eskimos called it, was the beginning 

 of the day's work ; and I might fill many 

 pages with tales of the odd happenings that 

 sometimes made up the daily round of our 

 hospital. 



There were always some who stayed behind 

 after the singing to talk about some ailment 

 that was troubling them. 



Their usual way of describing pain was to say 

 that they were " broken." When a man said, 

 " My leg is broken : my arm is broken," he 

 only meant that he had a pain in his leg or 

 his arm ; but you may imagine how alarming 

 and terrible it all seemed until we learnt to 

 understand this queer way of saying things. 

 " Little Gustaf has fallen and broken his back," 

 cried an excited little mother, as she came 

 running up the hospital steps but little 

 Gustaf, after all, had only fallen and bruised 

 himself, and was playing about almost as 

 lively as ever by the time his mother reached 

 home again. And when a man came with a 

 bad cold, and told of aches and pains in his 



