THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 197 



kimo dogs all of them would have quit pulling or could have been 

 driven only with the whip. But only one of these dogs was a quit- 

 ter; the other five still pulled their best. The quitter was a little 

 fatter than the others, for he had begun to save his strength as soon 

 as he became hungry. No amount of whipping would make him 

 pull an ounce. In circumstances such as these the conventional 

 attitude towards a dog is that he ought to be killed, but we knew 

 that Bones, as we called him, because he was usually so fat that 

 his ribs and even his backbone were difficult to feel, was a good 

 dog when well fed and would be useful again when we killed a 

 seal for food. I admit a little resentment towards him, especially 

 when I saw how well the others pulled who were leaner; still, I 

 could never see why feeling should take the place of judgment, 

 nor why I should kill a dog because he lacked character. Bones 

 did, as a matter of fact, live to serve us many years. But we were 

 careful never to take him again on a trip where emergencies of 

 short rations were likely to arise. 



A depressed evening followed a depressed day and my diary 

 has here about the gloomiest entry of the volume. Under the 

 heading of "Traveling Seasons," I now read: "It is difficult and 

 dangerous to be traveling out on the sea ice in this latitude of the 

 Beaufort Sea after May first. If we should get strong easterly 

 winds now, for instance, our chances of reaching Banks Island 

 would be small, as the few seals here seem to sink and we are 

 nearly out of food. It is a hard thing now to think back on the 

 silly jealousies that made Storkerson's work of preparing for this 

 ice trip stand still for two weeks till I got home — I expected to 

 find everything ready at Martin Point so we could leave for the 

 ice while the midwinter frosts held instead of when spring was 

 upon us as it had to be, after we had done the work of prepara- 

 tion which Storkerson could easily have done earlier if he had had 

 the proper assistance." It is usually so when things go badly. One 

 thinks back to the perversities of human nature which can, if one 

 keeps that point of view, be seen as the source of all one's evil for- 

 , tune. 



