THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 417 



fairly close to the land. Off Phayre Point itself the shelf of ice 

 adhering to the land was less than half a mile wide. We saw two 

 caribou near the point but they took fright from the howling of 

 the dogs and we should have had to devote at least half a day 

 to following them. The land, too, was rocky and fetching meat 

 from inland would have been hard on the sledge shoeing. 



The next day when traveling east along the south side of the 

 peninsula of which Phayre Point forms the extremity we noticed 

 almost simultaneously a man a mile or two ahead of us and two 

 men a mile or two behind following our trail. The man ahead did 

 not appear to have seen us but the others were evidently trying to 

 catch up, so we stopped and waited for them. They turned out 

 to be two Eskimos whom I had not previously seen but who had 

 spent the summer in Banks Island and had visited Captain Bernard 

 at Cape Kellett. They were able to give us some information 

 from Kellett dating a little later than our departure but it amounted 

 merely to saying that everything was going well. 



They told, however, a story that worried me. I have mentioned 

 before in telling how our party traveled homeward across Banks 

 Island in the summer that we met the Eskimo Kullak and his 

 wife Neriyok, and that Kullak presented me with a pair of slip- 

 pers to see to it that his wife should have easy delivery and that 

 her expected child should be a boy. I was now anxious to hear 

 about them but did not want to inquire for fear my doing so might 

 give the impression that I was over-interested. Presently, how- 

 ever, our visitors mentioned of their own accord that Kullak and his 

 wife were not far behind and that the child had not yet been born. 

 It became instantly clear that no child was involved but some 

 form of abdominal tumor which had given the woman an appear- 

 ance mistaken by the Eskimos. It seemed to me that such an 

 abscess would certainly lead to death and I feared that I should 

 eventually appear to the Eskimos as a murderer whenever the 

 death should occur. For the time being I was anxious to keep 

 out of their way for I felt sure that if I met them there would be 

 additional importunities that I should do something I was power- 

 less to do. 



After stopping an hour or two on the road to chat, we all 

 proceeded to the village which the visitors said was only a mile 

 or two ^ahead in a deep bight. When we came in sight of it a crowd 

 of about a hundred men, women and children came out to meet 

 us, practically the entire population. Among them I recognized 

 several acquaintances from my short visit to these people the 



