es he and his father would have
together. He was deeply attached to his father who had always been
kind and good to him, and who loved him better, even, than his mother
loved him.
Pomiuk's heart beat high, when at last, one day, the vessel drew into
the narrow channel that leads between high cliffs into Nachvak Bay. He
looked up at the rocky walls towering two thousand feet above him on
either side. They were as firm and unchanging as always. He loved
them, and his eyes filled with happy tears. Just beyond, at the other
end of the channel, lay the broad bay and the white buildings of the
Hudson's Bay Company's trading post, where his father used to bring
him sometimes with the dogs in winter or in the boat in summer. What
fine times he and his father had on those excursions! And somewhere,
back there, camped in his tupek, was his father. What a surprise his
coming would be to his father!
Pomiuk was carried ashore at the Post. Eskimos camped near-by crowded
down to greet him and his mother and the other wanderers who had
returned with them. It would be a short journey now in the boat to his
father's fishing place and his own dear home in their snug tupek. What
a lot of things he had to tell his father! And at home, with his
father's help he would soon be well and strong again.
Then he heard some one say his father was dead. Dazed with grief he
was taken to one of the Eskimo tupeks where he was to make his home.
All that day and for days afterward, days of deep, unspoken sorrow,
the thought that he would never again hear his father's dear voice was
in his mind and forcing itself upon him. The world had grown suddenly
dark for the crippled boy. All of his fine plans were vanished.
One day late that fall Dr. Grenfell found Pomiuk lying helpless and
naked upon the rocks near the tupek of the Eskimo who had taken him
in. The little lad was carried aboard the hospital ship. He was washed
and his diseased hip dressed, he was given clean warm clothing to
wear, and altogether he was made more comfortable than he had been in
many months. Then, with Pomiuk as a patient on board, the ship steamed
away.
Thus Pomiuk bade goodbye to his home, to the towering cliffs and
rugged sturdy mountains that he loved so well, and to his people. The
dear days when he was so jolly and happy in health were only a memory,
though he was to know much happiness again. Perhaps, lying helpless
upon the deck of the hospital ship, he shed a tear
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