A CAMPING ACCIDENT 



which was boiling at the beginning of the meal and 

 scummed with ice before the end, was sufficient 

 to jog Kristian's memory of the last long sledge 

 trip that he had made. He was a boy at the time, 

 and was doing the boy's work of filling the crevices 

 in the snow house wall after the builder, while his 

 father, old Abia of Okak, kept the dogs in order by 

 flicking the whip to and fro. Kristian struck his 

 knife in the snow house wall, and just at that 

 moment Abia lashed out at a quarrelsome dog. The 

 lash, as it came twirling back for the stroke, wrapped 

 itself round the knife and hurled it straight at Abia. 

 He thought that the whip had struck him, and took 

 no more notice until a queer faintness and the sight 

 of blood trickling over his boot made him put 

 his hand to his back and find the knife. The man 

 in the snow house heard his cries, and came running 

 to see what was wrong. Kristian had forgotten the 

 name of that man, but he must have been a cool 

 customer, for he set about a piece of marvellous 

 emergency surgery. He cut a thread of hide from 

 the harness of one of the dogs, and, using a spike of 

 bone for a needle, he sewed up the wound and 

 stopped the bleeding. Abia got over both the 

 injury and the rough surgery, for I knew him as 

 an old man of seventy- seven, a great age for an 

 Eskimo. 



I had only been a few days in Nain when a 

 solitary Eskimo arrived from Okak with a note from 

 my wife, whom I had left in charge of the hospital. 

 " A boy has been brought in with a compound 

 fracture. If you can come at once you may save 

 his leg." The messenger was almost worn out : 

 he had hurried on night and day, as Eskimos do 



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