he hospital after morning service, when a boy came
running over with the news that a large team of dogs had come from
sixty miles to the southward to get a doctor to come at once on an
urgent case. A fortnight before we had operated on a young man for
acute bone disease of the thigh, but when he was sent home the people
had allowed the wound to close, and poisoned matter had accumulated.
As it seemed probable that we should have to remove the leg, there was
no time to be lost, and I therefore started immediately, the
messengers following me with their team.

My dogs were especially good ones and had pulled me out of many a
previous scrape by their sagacity and endurance. Moody, Watch, Spy,
Doc, Brin, Jerry, Sue, and Jack were as beautiful beasts as ever
hauled a komatik over our Northern barrens. The messengers had been
anxious that their team should travel back with mine, for their
animals were slow at best, and moreover were now tired from their long
journey. My dogs, however, were so powerful that it was impossible to
hold them back, and though I twice managed to wait for the following
sledge, I had reached a village twenty miles to the south and had
already fed my team when the others caught up.

That night the wind came in from sea, bringing with it both fog and
rain, softening the snow and making the travelling very difficult.
Besides this a heavy sea began heaving into the bay on the shores
of which lay the little hamlet where I spent my first night. Our
journey the next day would be over forty miles, the first ten lying on
an arm of the sea.

[Illustration: A SPRING SCENE AT ST. ANTHONY]

[Illustration: DOG RACE AT ST. ANTHONY]

In order not to be separated too long from my friends I sent them
ahead of me by two hours, appointing as a rendezvous the log tilt on
the other side of the bay. As I started the first rain of the year
began to fall, and I was obliged to keep on what we call the
"ballicaters," or ice barricades, for a much longer distance up the
bay than I had anticipated. The sea, rolling in during the previous
night, had smashed the ponderous layer of surface ice right up to the
landwash. Between the huge ice-pans were gaping chasms, while half a
mile out all was clear water.

Three miles from the shore is a small island situated in the middle of
the bay. This had preserved an ice bridge, so that by crossing a few
cracks I managed to get to it safely. From that point it was only four
mile