7A THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE KARLUK 
in the box-house, broke their chains on the twenty- 
third, and some of them got into a fight; our best 
dog, Jack, was so badly bitten that he could not 
walk. I took him on board and down into the car¬ 
penter’s shop where Mr. Hadley sewed up his 
wounds with surgical needle and silk cord. Poor 
Jack was in bad shape and at first refused all food. 
He received constant attention from Mr. Hadley 
out could not bear a harness until the latter part of 
February. The fight in which he was hurt warned 
us that we must not keep too many dogs together, 
so I had the Eskimo build several snow ken¬ 
nels in a large snowbank near the ship. They 
sprinkled ashes on the floor of the kennels and 
chained up the nine most quarrelsome dogs, each 
in his separate kennel. 
With the approach of Christmas all hands began 
to make plans for the proper celebration of that 
good old holiday. The spirits of the whole party 
were excellent; now that they were in the neigh¬ 
borhood of the place where Santa Claus came from 
they seemed determined to observe the day in a 
manner worthy of the jolly old saint. 
At six o’clock on Christmas morning the second 
engineer and McKinlay started in decorating the 
cabin with the flags of the International Code and 
a fine lot of colored ribbon which Mr. Hadley had 
brought with him from Point Barrow for the trad- 
