id down
his life for his country.

One sick call that winter lives in my memory. It was a case where a
nurse was really more needed than a doctor. The way was long, the wind
was cold, and the snow happened to be particularly deep. One of the
nurses, however, volunteered for the journey, and I arranged to carry
her on a second komatik, while my driver broke the path with our
impedimenta. Things did not go altogether well. Since I have enjoyed
the luxury of a driver, or a "carter" as we call them, my cunning in
wriggling a komatik at full speed down steep mountain-sides through
trees has somewhat waned. Comparatively early in the day we looped the
loop--and we were both heavy weights. It was nearly dark when we
reached the last lap--an enormous bay with a direct run of seven miles
over sea ice. We should probably have made it all right, but suddenly
fog drifted in from the Straits of Belle Isle, and steering with a
small compass and no binnacle, while attending to hauling a heavy
nurse over hummocky sea ice in the dark, satisfied all my ambition for
problems. At length the nature of the ice indicated that we were
approaching either land or the sea edge. We stopped the komatiks, and
it fell to my lot to go ahead and explore. Finding nothing I called to
the driver, and his voice returned out of the fog right ahead of me,
and almost in my ear. I had told them not to move or we might miss our
way, and I reminded him of that fact. "Haven't budged an inch" came
the reply from the darkness. I had been describing a large circle. I
can still hear that nurse laughing.

At last we struck the huge blocks of ice, raised on the boulder rocks
by the rise and fall of tide in shallow water, and we knew that we
should make the land. The perversity of nature made us turn the wrong
way for the village toward which we were aiming, and we found
ourselves "tangled up" in the Boiling Brooks, a place where some
underground springs keep holes open through the ice all winter.
Suddenly, while marching ahead with the compass, seeking to avoid
these springs, the ground being level enough for the nurse to act as
her own helmsman, a tremendous "whurr! whurr!" under my feet restored
sufficient leaping power to my weary legs to leave me head down and
only my racquets out of the snow--all for a covey of white partridges
on which I had nearly trodden. At length we made a tiny winter
cottage. The nurse slept on the bench, the doctor on the floor, the
driv