Chapter Twenty.
Sorrows Never Come Singly.
However cheerful Dr Barrett might try to appear, he was far from feeling easy at heart.
Hopeless he was not. He had seen too much of the world—the wide world, I mean—he had faced too many dangers not to know that there is seldom or never real reason to throw up one’s arms in despair.
But it behoved him to assume an air of cheerfulness, even under the distressing circumstances in which he and his companions were now plunged. The survivors of the unhappy Icebear were all his patients, all his charge and care, and he well knew the depressing effects of despondency, so he determined to do his duty, and keep up their hearts if possible.
“Give the men something to do,” he said to Claude on the same morning the news of the desertion of the Eskimos had been brought to camp by busy boy Bounce.
“I’ll overhaul stores to begin with.”
“Good?” said the doctor. “And during the time yen are working I’ll get on the top of the bench and play the fiddle to them.”
It may seem a menial kind of duty for a surgeon to fiddle to a ship’s crew; nevertheless, duty it was, and the doctor did it.