NELLIE

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 23, 11 June 1908, Page 37

NELLIE

Nellie was a little Polar dog, and it was her fate to be sentenced to death because of the scarcity of food one dreadful winter in Alaska. 'It was decided that little Nellie should be killed for the other dogs to eat,' writes, her master in the ' Youth's Companion,' ' and my crown of woe was that it was I who was selected to do the work— for_ the alleged reason that I, being a surgeon, " was used to blood." ' The other men had gone to bed, and I was alone with my little dog. The rest of the team had gone a little way out from the fire, and were- lying in the snow, asleep. Nellie, was at my feet, and when I spoke her name she wagged her tail and came over to rub her soft wool on my knee ; she was far too weak to climb up on my lap now. When she looked up in my face, as if to ask why we- were suffering so, the horror of my, silence, while^ she was being condemned, came upon me, and to escape the rush of blood to my head I walked from the fire and out into the night and snow. When I returned she was gone, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps she -had already lain down somewhere and died, and so. I, 1 might be saved the sickening alternative. But my knees were giving way, and I slid idown to the log again, and soon was lost in a half-sleep and half-coma from my weakened condition. ( How long I was stretched out there I do -noij know, but I ."was awakened by a sharp -little bark that I knew wel). It was my little dog. She had returned, and my first thought was that now I should have to choose between my pet und my comrades — perhaps; the lives of "all of us, even of the sick girl. . 'When I finally " looked up, at_ the continued whine and tlw affectionate rubbing against my knee, there stood the little dog, and in her mouth she held a big fish. I could not believe my eyes, and feared that I had got to the point of- seeing in my mind things that had no existence. , But there it was, a big white fish; and when I caught hold of it, it was still unfrozen, as •if it had just come" from the water, and Nellie's fur was wet and already freezing in little icicles about her body. So she had got the fish out of" the water:* 1 I thought, of course, that was all there was to

it, but- I had grasped at the chance I had to offer in Jf H morn ing for not carrying out the agreement-she 5nl br TT UU f h i S? '^h, .which we would |ive to -the aw fl y *L , he?h c ? rOm ' her c ? at ' when she started -wS Li , V he * w £ 8 ° ut Of the fireli S h t» began to. 1 ™ n l So I '©Hewed her into the night, taking with me one candle and some matches. <? wX! ly . we "' reached* a spot which she seemed to be looking for. She- stopped, and I heard a plunee into the water. I- lighted the candle, and as soon a my eyes were accustomed to the light I saw the litther PP ° g w P l my fee \ wUh an °«*r fish in her South. So there were mare where the first came from. I went ouTnf «£ Ti d - See d }!^^y a hole apparently^ out of the solid ice. It was not more than ten feet tg°Z»? "55 dir f tion ; !* evidently shallow, ani I^ouTd^eVan; of^em* thrCe ° r f°-~->-'I almost ran back to the Camp, calling the boys as I stumbled along. Soon we were all back at the hole. It was one of -the so-called " lungs " of the lake-air holes m the ice that open up in every body of Alaskan water small or large, whenever the 7 temperature goes thirty or more degrees below zero. w + i! c SeXJ5 eX J U l° days we had take u out of that hole two hundred and nineteen fish. Dogs and men feasted to the full, the dogs taking theirs raw and .we men taking turns cooking and eating. We took along 'thf L! -i f when \ e finalljr moved on > and got into the hospital camp of the Northwest Mounted? Police all right, and with our little patient in good shape. - Nellie has been stolen many times since that night by newcomers in. the Alaska country who had -helrd about her, and^ one time the thieves got "nearly two hundred miles -down the river before they met anybody ; but that was as far as they got. A committee was formed in half ah hour, half a dozen dog teams were " hooked " up, and within an hour the thieves, under escort, were on their way back up the 'Nellie still belongs to me, and is the special ward ot the Yukon mining camps.'