MAKING A SLEDGE 



apart, and on these they laid the planks to be shaped 

 and smoothed. I offered them the use of the 

 carpenter's bench in the hospital, but they declined 

 the offer with scorn. They were better used to 

 their open-air work-bench, and seemed to use the 

 tools quite well with their hands cased in thick 

 sealskin gloves ; at all events, the sledge-making 

 went on apace, and each time I went out I found 

 them a little further on with it. All the men who 

 had any time to spare were clustered round to 

 watch, and, no doubt, to keep up a constant fire of 

 comments ; but the chatter was always good- 

 humoured, and the men seemed to get on the faster 

 for it. As my sledge grew under their hands, 1 

 found that they were making it sixteen feet long, 

 and two and a half feet broad. It had twenty-six 

 cross-pieces, and never a nail did they use. " Kappe," 

 they said, " nails no good : plenty soon break : seal- 

 hide ananak." They set the runners on the blocks, 

 and bored holes for the binding : then stood them up 

 a couple of feet apart and bound the cross-pieces to 

 them, first the front and back ones, then the middle 

 one, and then the others to fill up the spaces. There 

 was a gentle upward curve from back to front to 

 make the sledge rise better to the snowdrifts, they 

 said ; and the runners were not set quite upright, but 

 splayed slightly outwards to keep the sledge from 

 slipping sideways ; and every bit of the work was 

 done with a neatness and exactness that the most 

 skilled of carpenters might envy. Jerry and Julius 

 may have thought that their sledge was the best 

 ever made, but there are fully a score of men in 

 Okak who can build a sledge without a fault, as 



perfect as a sledge can be. 



116 



