Page:The Worst Journey in the World volume 2.djvu/223

470 for when the team of which he was a member was halted he constantly whined and tugged at his harness in his eagerness to go on: this did not allow the rest of the team to rest, and they were justifiably resentful. Sometimes a team got a down upon a dog without our being able to discover their doggy reason. In any case we had to watch carefully to prevent them carrying out their intentions, their method of punishment always being the same and ending, if unchecked, in what they probably called justice, and we called murder.

I have referred to the crusts on the Barrier, where the snow lies in layers with an air-space, perhaps a quarter of an inch, or more, between them. These will subside as you pass over them, giving the inexperienced polar traveller some nasty moments until he learns that they are not crevasses. But the dogs thought they were rabbits, and pounced, time after time. There was a little dog called Mukaka, who got dragged under the sledge in one of the mad penguin rushes the dog-teams made when we were landing stores from the Terra Nova: his back was hurt and afterwards he died. "He is paired with a fat, lazy and very greedy black dog, Noogis by name, and in every march this sprightly little Mukaka will once or twice notice that Noogis is not pulling and will jump over the trace, bite Noogis like a snap, and be back again in his own place before the fat dog knows what has happened."

Then there was Stareek (which is the Russian for old man, starouka being old woman). "He is quite a ridiculous 'old man,' and quite the nicest, quietest, cleverest old dog I have ever come across. He looks in face as though he knew all the wickedness of all the world and all its cares, and as if he were bored to death by them." He was the leader of Wilson's team on the Depôt Journey, but decided that he was not going out again. Thereafter when he thought there was no one looking he walked naturally; but if he saw you looking at him he immediately had a frost-bitten paw, limped painfully over the snow, and looked so pitiful that only brutes like us could think of putting