THE BROOK 13 



the ice I could hear the sound of chopping. Chop- 

 ping and chattering, for the sight of a boy with a 

 hatchet would bring the women scattering from their 

 doorways, like a flock of hens at feeding-time. The 

 boy chopped and the women chattered, and I used 

 to see them from my window filling their sacks and 

 kettles with the broken ice ; never in a great hurry, 

 for the Eskimos are a leisurely folk. 



The brook is a tame little thing in the summer- 

 time, when the women trample at their washing ; 

 but in the spring, when the snows begin to melt, and 

 the sunshine warms the poor, frozen earth a little, 

 that same brook is a raging torrent. One year it 

 burst its banks on a Sunday afternoon, as little 

 John, my sledge-driver, could tell you. John was 

 enjoying a Sunday afternoon snooze ; lying on his 

 bed in his shirt sleeves, digesting, I have no doubt, 

 a very good dinner of raw seal-meat. He was 

 awakened, all of a sudden, by a thunderous roar ; 

 the water was cascading down the hillside and beat- 

 ing on the back wall of his hut, flinging stones and 

 lumps of frozen snow, and making the house shake. 

 The little man must have rubbed his eyes as he 

 awoke, for the furniture was all afloat. The house 

 was half full of water, wavelets were lapping the 

 legs of the high bedstead, boxes, stools, pots, 

 and pans, were careering around in a whirlpool, 

 and the rattle and the clatter must have been out- 

 rageous. 



That was the time when the avalanche came. 

 Each year, as the springtime came, we used to call 



