A BREAKDOWN ON THE MOUNTAIN 



impossible to walk in the ordinary way because of 

 the wind whistling down stream and found the 

 drivers holding a palaver over a smashed runner. 

 They displayed no consternation at our plight, and 

 had very little to say ; at times like that the Eskimo 

 is a man of action, and it seemed quite natural that 

 with a short grunt of explanation little Johannes 

 pulled an axe from among the load firmly lashed to 

 the upturned sledge and trotted off on an errand 

 of his own. 



Meanwhile, Julius was looking for his gun, which 

 he had tucked along the floor of my travelling box, 

 and I was amazed to see him load it and start firing 

 at the broken runner. He was using great bullets 

 that he had most likely intended for reindeer, and 

 the effect of each shot was to bore a good-sized hole 

 in the wood. He placed eight of them at intervals 

 along the runner, some near the top and some near 

 the bottom, and then coolly polished out his gun 

 with a wad of tow and made it fast on the sledge 

 again. 



By this time Johannes was in sight on the river 

 bank, carrying a long, thin tree over his shoulder ; 

 and Julius set to work to find a spare length of 

 seal-hide trace somewhere among his travelling 

 equipment. If only the crash had not jarred my 

 camera open, and fogged every one of the plates, I 

 should have had a series of unique pictures of the 

 sledge-mending; as it was, I was sufficiently fasci- 

 nated to forget the February cold while I stood and 

 watched those two Eskimos at work. They chopped 

 the tree to the proper length, and flattened it a little 

 on one side ; then they threaded the line through 



the shot holes and bound the tree to the broken 



185 



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