WINTER LIFE AND INNUIT FRIENDS
That night as they lay sheltered from cold and from sound, snug in their
snow igloo, the four boats of the Bowhead battled past them on their way
down the coast, leaving no trace behind in the shifting ice and mush
of the narrowing waterway; the difference of a few hours in time, of a
few furlongs in distance, was so little, yet it meant so much! With the
passing of those four boats civilization shut her door upon the two boys,
and was to open it no more for a year and a half.
Yet they knew nothing of this, and slept serene in the hope of soon
rejoining their comrades. They woke to find the sun already up, and the
Eskimo gone. His tracks lay through the snow inland. While they wondered
if he had abandoned them he reappeared, bearing a scant handful of willow
brush which he had dug out of the snow in the valley beyond. With this
they managed to roast some strips of seal meat and make a satisfactory
breakfast. The wind had ceased, the air was keen but bracing, and they
did not mind the cold, which, after all, was not great. The first warning
of the terrible winter was on them, but it was not yet severe. Their
young blood leaped in the keen air, and they felt a relief from danger
that made them fairly frolicsome. The ship could not be far away, they
were sure, and they would find it and all would be well.
“There is one comfort about this way of living,” said Harry
philosophically; “you don’t have any dishes to clean up.”
“No,” replied Joe; “nor much to put in them, either.”
Then both boys noted the Eskimo’s manner. He stood looking toward the
north with a strange intensity. Over in that direction the snowy fields
of the pack ice stretched away to the limitless haze of the horizon. In
the distance these ice-fields seemed to quiver as the air quivers in
summer when the heat is intense. They trembled and wavered, and changed
from ice-fields to open sea that shone fair under the morning sun. This
sea was calm and free from ice, and seemed to move eastward, melting the
ice and snow before it as it went. They turned to watch this eastward
movement, and after a little a headland appeared in it, and both boys
gave a cry of delight.
“The ship! the ship!” they cried, and danced and swung their hats and
hurrahed. There she was at anchor by the headland, safe and sound as they
had left her, and their hearts glowed within them at the thought of home
coming.
“There she is!” cried Joe exultantly, “right north by Icy Cape! I
remember the headland there. Good Lord! What’s she doing?”
The Bowhead moved out from her anchorage on this quivering open sea with
never a sail set, and no smoke from her engines, and lifting up and up
seemed to climb the horizon to the northeast and disappear, a speck in
the high heavens; and as she did so the shimmering waters vanished,
leaving only the rough, snow-clad ice-fields, bleak and impenetrable.
Joe and Harry looked at each other. It was mirage, they knew that, yet
there had been the headland, and the ship, her every spar and rope
familiar to them. It was magic; that was what the Eskimo said, but he was
quite confident that it was bad magic, and that this was to show them
that ship and crew were lost, —had sailed far away to the unknown, never
to return. He would go to Icy Cape with them if they wished, but they
would find only winter ghosts there.
Nevertheless it was their only clue, and they decided to go. With their
friends camped only a few short miles to the southwest, they headed in
the opposite direction and began struggling through the mush ice, across
floes, making a toilsome but sure progress to the northeast. At noon they
camped on a floe, ate seal meat, and, after a brief rest, toiled on. At
night they camped as before. Thus for two days they steadily worked up
the coast. At nightfall of the second the wind came in again from the
west, with squalls of snow and a recurrence of severe cold, but the next
day they went on still, and by noon were rounding the headland. The air
was thick with snow, but in a lull they sighted what seemed to be the
ship, and cries of thanksgiving went up from the weary wayfarers.
“The ship! the ship!” they cried once more, confident that this could be
no mirage. The Eskimo shook his head.
“Bad magic,” he said; “ghost ship.” But the boys knew better. The Bowhead
lay at anchor in mush ice and among floes, ghostly enough in the whirl
of flying snow that made the outlines of spar and sail white against the
leaden sky, but the ship in very truth, and never so welcome a sight in
any man’s eyes. They shouted and hallooed, and listened in vain for any
response as they neared her, and their exultant hearts grew cold with
fear as they got none. A terrible weird loneliness brooded over her, and
it seemed to the exhausted boys as if they struggled to her side through
a bad dream.
There was no greeting as they stepped on deck, only the wail of the wind
through the icy shrouds. The deck was drifted with snow that held no
tracks. The cabin, the forecastle, the galley, all showed signs of hasty
leave-taking, and were untenanted. Then, once more in the cabin, the
truth came upon them with stunning force. The ship had been abandoned,
and they with it were left to face the long loneliness of the coming
Arctic night as best they could. Joe sat down with a pathetic slump in
his broad shoulders and buried his face in his hands, losing his cheerful
courage for the first time; nor did he note for quite a while that
Harry was face down on the captain’s berth sobbing with homesickness,
loneliness, and utter physical exhaustion. Of the hour that these two
spent in the full realization of their misfortune, it were best to say
little. Up to that hour they had been boys. In it they passed through the
crucible that melts and reshapes souls, and they came out of it men.
His anguish over and once more master of himself, Joe rose, and, stepping
to Harry’s side, laid a hand on his shoulder. Then he saw that Harry had
found peace in sleep, and knowing how much he needed it, he threw a quilt
over his shoulders and left him, going on deck.
The Eskimo had gone, and with him the dingey.
It did not change the look of serenity in Joe’s face. He had met and
conquered all fears and apprehensions in the hour that had just passed,
and one more misfortune could have no effect on him. He turned to the
galley, where he started a fire, and from the cook’s stores took the
material for a first-class hot supper. When this was ready, he went and
wakened Harry. The two did not say much, but they clasped hands in the
dusk of the cabin, and each saw the change toward manhood in the other’s
face,—the look of greater sturdiness, greater self-reliance, together
with a certain serenity which surely marks the man. Some fortunate men
acquire this serenity, self-poise, in the face of fortune, good or ill,
early in life; some never acquire it, and they, as well as the world, are
the worse off for that.
They slept warm and long that night, had a good hearty, hot breakfast the
next morning, and felt fit to face the world. It was a bright morning,
with the sun struggling through frost mists, and as they came on deck
they found quite a change in the position of the small floes overnight,
and some open water near the ship. Out of this open water came a
quavering hail.
“Kile, innuit” (Come here, man); “kile, innuit,” cried Joe with delight,
and the Eskimo paddled alongside in the dingey. He touched the ship
gingerly, but it neither flew away nor burned him. He climbed aboard and
looked earnestly at Joe and Harry, who shook his hand cordially. Then his
face lighted up with a broad grin.
“Nagouruk,” he said. “No more ghosts. Good magic. White man great ankut”
(wizard).
That was all. He thought it great magic that the boys had made the ghost
ship real and were living aboard it in safety. Henceforth he did not
question his own safety there, but the night before he had feared to go
aboard lest it sail off with him into the undiscovered country, as it had
in the mirage.
That day the two boys—we will call them boys still, though, remember,
they have the hearts of men—took stock of their situation, and found
it not so bad after all. The captain and crew were gone southward,
probably to safety, but they had left behind the ship, with abundance of
provisions and all sorts of supplies, including a good amount of coal.
There was really no reason why they should not be warm and comfortable
all winter long, and find safety with the returning whalemen the next
summer. If they had been short of provisions or without the splendid
shelter and the coal that they had, it might have been wise to attempt to
work south on the chance of catching a belated whaleship at Point Hope.
As it was, the chance was too slender, and it was best to face the winter
just where they were.
Thus they planned their life anew, and went leisurely about their
preparations. The Eskimo wished to leave them for a time. His family were
at the village at Point Lay, and he would see them again. He would come
back, perhaps bring his friends with him, and they would build another
village ashore, so that he might be near his white brothers. The boys
thought well of this. The friendly Eskimos might be of great help to
them, and already there was in Joe’s mind a half-formed plan in which
they were to be partners. So, loading him down with such provisions as
he could best carry, a rifle, and abundant ammunition, to his great
delight, they bade him good-by, and he started bravely through the snow
alongshore. They had no fear for his safety. He would burrow deep in the
drifts at night or in case of severe weather, and reach the village safe
and sound.
As if for his encouragement and their own, there followed several days of
halcyon weather. It was calm and the sun shone brightly; and though the
temperature remained below freezing and the thermometer went below zero
at night, the air was so dry that it did not seem nearly as cold as it
was. Yet they knew they were soon to face deadly cold, when the mercury
would drop to fifty below and fierce gales sweep over them for weeks,
and they must prepare for it. The position of the ship they could not
change, but it seemed reasonably safe. It was well behind the headland,
in shallow water; aground, as they soon discovered. The shore ice would
form thick about it, and it could not be touched by the moving pack,
which would grind back and forth all winter half a mile to seaward. Their
next care was to decide in what part of the ship they could live most
comfortably. The galley was large enough; it had the range, on which
they could best cook, and there were two bunks in it which the Chinese
steward and his assistant had occupied. No one is cleaner than a cleanly
Chinaman, and these bunks bore inspection. They might fumigate them and
bring up their own bedding and supplies, and it was by all odds the most
convenient place. For all this, Joe shook his head.
“It won’t do, Harry,” he said; “the place will be too cold. It is on
deck; and when the thermometer gets way down and the gales blow for a
month steady, we shall surely freeze to death.”
“I suppose so,” said Harry doubtfully; “but it is low amidships here
between the bulwarks. If we could only build a double house right around
it, the air space between the two would be a great protection,—and it is
_so_ handy. Tell you what, there’s some spare boards and stuff down in
the main hold. Couldn’t we do it with them?”
“Couldn’t make it tight enough,” replied Joe. “The wind would shoot
through and get at us. If it was buried deep in snow—but the snow would
blow away in the wind.” He pondered a moment, and shook his head.
“What’s the matter with ice, then?” answered Harry. “We’ve got all the
ice we want, right handy.”
Joe sprang to his feet with a laugh. “I believe you’ve got it, this
time,” he said. “We’ll make a regular Eskimo igloo all around it with ice
blocks, same as we used to read about in the schoolbooks. We’ll chink
them with snow and pour water on, and when it freezes we’ll be snug as
need be.”
They went immediately to work while the weather favored them. From the
floes alongside they cut cubical blocks which they hauled aboard with a
whip rigged to the main yard. These they piled one above another, about
three feet from the galley sides. A second row was then set up a foot
outside these, and the space between filled with snow. Thus they had two
ice walls with a free air space next the building. Spare spars placed
across this served for rafters, and they covered these with ice cakes
also. For cement, snow with water poured on was excellent, and at the end
of three days their protecting igloo was nearly finished. It filled the
space amidships from bulwark to bulwark, and the two architects were very
proud of their creation.
“When you are in Rome,” said Harry, “you must do as the Romans do,” and
in this he had solved the real secret of successful winter life in the
Arctic. Through a thousand generations stern necessity has taught certain
things to the Eskimos, and the explorers who most nearly follow their
methods are the ones who winter in safety and with least loss of life and
comfort.
Still in imitation of the ice-dwellers of the far north, they made the
only entrance to this big igloo through a low tunnel of ice cakes, well
chinked and mortared with snow and water, and with a deerskin doorway
that dropped curtainwise and could be fastened tight. Had Sir Christopher
Wren been viewing the completion of St. Paul’s Cathedral, he could have
done so with no greater thrill of pride than did these two beginners in
Arctic life their rough ice shelter from the cold to come.
“I think that makes it all right,” said Joe, with great satisfaction. “If
it doesn’t work we can retreat below, but with a good fire in the galley
stove it seems as if we might be comfortable here, even in the coldest
weather.”
They took stock of their provisions and coal and, as was to be expected,
found both ample for a large number of men. Trade goods still held out,
and they could purchase what the Eskimos had to offer during the winter,
if they cared to. Joe sighed as he looked at the whaling implements,
harpoons, bomb guns, and line, left just as they had been abandoned,
ready for instant use. He picked up a harpoon and handled it lovingly.
“I’ll have a shot or two with you, yet,” he said, “before we get out of
the wilderness.”
“How do you mean?” asked Harry; “there’s no chance to get whales in
winter, is there?”
A half-formed plan in Joe’s head took shape in that instant.
“No,” he said, “not in winter, but the whales begin to appear in the
leads in the ice very early in the spring. Long before the ships can get
up here to get at them, the most of them have gone north. Now, situated
as we are, we can do whaling right from the ice, if we can get the
Eskimos to help us. They will gladly do it for the blubber and meat,
and we shall have the bone. That is the best part of a whale nowadays,
anyway. Here’s what I plan for the spring and summer. We will get all the
bone and furs we can this winter to add to the cargo. We’ll be as careful
of the coal as we can, and if the Bowhead comes through the winter all
right, as I hope she will, we will try and take her south ourselves, with
the help of the Eskimos, when the ice opens next summer.”
Thus, well provided for in the present, and with roseate plans for the
future, they began the winter. Daily the sun got lower; so did the
mercury in the thermometer; and often for days there was no sight of the
former because of flying snow and the deep haze of frost-fog. The ice set
more and more firmly about the Bowhead, and the pack which ground and
crushed against the edge of the shore ice outside the headland no longer
made any answering movement in the frozen stretch about her. The winter
was upon them, and there were times when their ice igloo was put to
severe tests as a frost defender. It stood them all well, and with a good
fire in the galley range, it was always comfortable within. In the open
space between the galley and the igloo frost crystals collected, till,
in the glow of lamplight, the narrow way looked like a fairy grotto, all
hung with spangles and frost gems.
The temperature there was always below freezing, and Joe prosaically
suggested that it would be a good place to hang their fresh meat, if they
had any to hang.
“I wish our Eskimo friend would come back and spear a seal for us,” said
Harry. “We’ve had no fresh meat since he left. Suppose he got home safe?”
They were to have fresh meat soon, however, by way of a most interesting
adventure that began the very night after.
October had come, and with the middle of it a few brief days of mild
weather. The sun slanted upward in a low sweep from the southern horizon,
then down, after scarcely three hours, leaving behind it, as it set, a
running fire of beams that swept along the horizon like a prairie fire,
then the dancing splendor of the aurora and a full moon that swung the
circuit of the sky without setting. The refraction in the air, first
cousin to the mirage, gave this moon odd shapes that were indescribably
weird. Sometimes it was cubical, sometimes an elongated oval, and often
there were rainbows in the frost about it that made mock moons, two or
three ranged in irregular order, with encircling fires that were as
beautiful as ghostly. The boys, warmly wrapped in furs chosen from their
stock, would, on these calm nights, often promenade the deck for an hour,
viewing these phenomena and listening to the crash and grind of the pack
against the shore ice beyond the headland. This night they had done so,
then retired to the glow of their evening lamp, with books from their
stock. They were studying navigation, and a book on engineering and
seamanship from the engineer’s locker, that they might be better able to
handle the vessel if the chance came to them in the summer.
Weariness overcame them there, and Joe had already turned in, while
Harry dozed in the chair over his book. He started up once, thinking he
heard footsteps, then settled down again, sure that it had been only
imagination. There he slept while the footsteps came along the deck,
hesitated at the deerskin curtain, and then something tore it down. Harry
stirred uneasily, but did not wake. The steps, padded but scratchy,
came along the ice tunnel and hesitated again at the closed door to the
galley. Then something clawed at this door and shook it, sniffling. Harry
came to his feet with a bound and listened, uncertain whether he had
heard or dreamed. Then the sound went round the side of the galley, as if
something were crowding through the ice passage to the window.
“Joe!” cried Harry; “Joe, there’s something here!” Joe roused sleepily,
then tumbled out of his bunk with a rush, for there was a crash of glass
and a great white forearm came through the little window with a black
palm and long, hooked nails. Then the lamp went out.
Darkness, and the sound of heavy breathing, with a terrifying
recollection of that great arm and the palm with long nails!
The two boys crowded together in the corner of the galley, quivering and
terrified. The thought of the winter ghosts that the Eskimo had said they
would find at Icy Cape came to both, and did not seem like a foolish
superstition now.
“What is it? What is it?” cried Harry in terror. His voice sounded faint
and far away to him.
“Can’t you find a match?” replied Joe between his set teeth. He was
trying hard to conquer this superstitious terror, but he only partly
succeeded.
Harry tremblingly pulled a match from his pocket and struck it. The arm
was there, reaching and clawing, and behind it gleamed two fierce little
eyes. Joe snatched the 45-70 from the corner and began pumping shot after
shot at the little window. In the confines of the little room the report
was deafening, and the match went out at the first shot.
Harry lighted another. The arm hung limp and there was a heaving and
straining without that fairly cracked the galley walls, then silence.
“Ghost or devil or what all, I’ve finished him,” said Joe, after watching
for a moment with pointed rifle.
Harry relighted the lamp. His courage was coming back, but his nerves
were still shaky. Then he flung wide the door while Joe held the rifle in
readiness. Darkness was there, but neither sound nor ghost. Cautiously,
lamp in hand and rifle ready, they entered the space between the ice and
the galley sides, and there they saw their ghost motionless. He was bulky
and white, so bulky that he filled the three-foot space tight, with his
arm still stuck through the cabin window.
“Well,” said Joe, “he’s white enough for a ghost, but he isn’t one. He’s
a white bear, and a fine one. Let’s get him out of that and skin him
before he freezes.”
In the light of the ship’s lanterns they tugged and wrestled for an hour
to get the great creature out through the igloo entrance to the deck.
There they skinned him and cut him up, hanging the four quarters in what
they henceforth named their refrigerator. The pelt was a fine one, in the
full strength of the winter coat. In spite of the cold and dim light,
they took it off carefully, muzzle, claws, and all.
“There,” said Joe, “that skin will bring a hundred dollars in San
Francisco, if we can ever get it there. It is a good night’s work, if we
were scared to death. What do you suppose brought him?”
“Don’t know,” replied Harry, “unless it was the smell of that salmon.”
Both sniffed, and on the air from the igloo caught the faint odor of
the salted salmon that they had put on the galley range to simmer and
freshen. He was probably right. The white bear has a keen scent, and the
odor of cooking will draw him a long way across the ice.
They repaired the window, re-closed the igloo entrance, and though
somewhat apprehensive, slept soundly and unmolested until daylight. Then
they sought and found tracks showing where the bear had climbed a drift
and come aboard by way of the stern. Other tracks seemed to show that
their intruder had a companion that had circled the ship on the snow but
had not boarded it. This adventure gave them fresh meat, the first for a
long time, and they ate bear steaks till they were weary of them; but it
also gave them an idea for the capture of more valuable pelts.
“If white bears are coming our way,” said Joe, “we’ll try and fix things
so they’ll stop with us. We must make a little shelter on the deck aft,
and set a whale-oil lamp burning in it with a kettle of salmon stewing
over it. Then we’ll fix things so that if his bearness approaches it,
he’ll breast a string and set off a rifle. One of those old Springfield
muzzle-loaders that dad couldn’t sell, even to the mersinkers, will be
just the thing. We can load it half full of bullets, and it don’t matter
if it does burst. There’s plenty more of them.”
“Good idea,” said Harry. “If bears are coming, I’d like to have something
stop them before they get far enough aboard to scare me the way the last
one did. We’ll do it to-day.”
They did, but that night one of the terrible Arctic blizzards set in,
and it never let up for a month. Their trap was rigged, but they could
do nothing toward baiting it in such tremendous weather; they scarcely
ventured outdoors, and got along as best they could by the galley fire.
Yet the time did not hang very heavily on their hands. They read and
studied, played all the games there were aboard the vessel, and slept a
great deal. In the gloom and cold of the full Arctic night the tendency
to hibernate seems to come on men as well as animals, and they sometimes
slept the round of the clock at a stretch.
The fifteenth of November the gale ceased as suddenly as it had come up,
and they ventured out at high noon. The air was still, but intensely
cold. Clad in reindeer-skin suits from head to toe, with fur hoods, and
little but the eyes exposed to the frost, they looked about. A luminous
twilight hung over all the wastes of snow. To the north the sky was
purple black, flushing pink in quivering streams of light toward the
zenith, where glowed great stars. The heavens seemed, through this
luminous pink haze, these quivering bars of aurora, to have wonderful
depth and perspective. Great golden stars shone there, some far, some
seemingly very near, and the distance between the two was very marked.
The wonderful depths of infinite space were revealed to them as never
before, and they gazed in awe and delight.
“I never knew before,” cried Harry, “what was meant by the depths of the
heavens. At home the sky is a flat surface with holes poked in it that
are stars. Here you see them worlds, with millions of miles of space
before and behind and around them. It is wonderful. See the south, too;
it is afire!”
A little to the east of due south lambent flames sprang above the horizon
as if a great fire burned there. They shot up and moved westward as
though a great forest was going down before a smokeless conflagration. On
to the west they moved, and sank, glowed, and disappeared—burnt out.
It was the last of the midday sun, and they were not to see it again
until well into February. A faint breeze seemed to blow in from the
south, as if bearing a message and a promise that the sun would come
again. Joe sniffed this breeze.
“Come,” he said; “let’s set that bear trap. This wind from the south will
send the smell of burnt salmon miles and miles out on the ice. It ought
to bring a lot of bears.”
They did as Joe suggested, and as the south wind blew gently and a spell
of mild weather ensued, kept the toll-dish stewing for a long time. It
was two days before anything happened. Then they were both called from
the cabin by a tremendous explosion. They rushed to the trap and found
a bear sprawled before it, dead, with a big hole torn in his neck.
Nothing, moreover, was left of the Springfield musket but the breech. The
tremendous charge with which it had been loaded had blown the barrel to
pieces and shattered the bait stew as well.
“Whew!” exclaimed Joe. “We did things that time, didn’t we! How much did
you put in that old musket, anyway?”
Harry looked a little guilty. “Why,” he answered, “you said to fill her
about half full, and I did. There were nine bullets, I think.”
“Well, I should say so,” replied Joe, “by the looks of the bear. Guess we
won’t load quite so heavy next time. I don’t care for the old musket,
there’s plenty more, but it don’t do to tear up the pelt too badly. Great
Scott, what’s that!”
Both jumped, for, silhouetted against the aurora, figures stepped from
the drift to the deck and approached. The thoughts of both were of bears,
but a second glance showed these figures to be men, and in a moment they
were greeting their Eskimo friend of the ice and several others who had
come with him. Moreover, as they soon learned, the entire village was
ashore, having decided to move to the neighborhood of the ship, where
food and trade goods were plenty. They had come up with dog teams, and
the women were already carving huts from the deep snow just back of the
beach, in a spot sheltered from the north winds.
It was not until these other human beings appeared that the boys realized
how lonely they had been, and in their joy at the sight of fellow
creatures they planned a feast, to which they invited the whole village.
This took place the next day, and though the village numbered scarce
fifteen adults, they ate up pretty nearly the whole bear. However, it
made them very friendly toward the two Crusoes of the ship, and the boys
did not grudge the feast in any case.
You must not directly ask an Eskimo his name; they have a superstitious
dread of telling it to your face, but you may ask another, even in his
presence, and etiquette is in no wise outraged. So now, for the first
time, they learned that the one they had rescued from the floating cake
months before was Harluk, that his wife was Atchoo, while other men of
the village were Kroo, Konwa, Neako, and Pikalee.
[Illustration: HARLUK AND KROO]
They had plenty of dogs, sleds, two umiaks which they had brought on
the sleds, clothing, and a small amount of blubber and seal meat. That
was all; but they were happy, and viewed with no fear the narrow margin
which separated them from starvation in the Arctic midwinter. Their
snow igloos, carved deep in the drifts on the leeward side of a little
hill, and warmed by a stone lamp full of seal oil, were comfortable and
at first clean. When they were no longer so, they moved a few rods and
carved another without much labor. If the weather was not too severe,
the men watched the margin where the pack ice was ground back and forth
by the shore ice, and were sometimes rewarded with a seal. They tracked
white foxes, ermine, and now and then a wolf or a bear, and exchanged
the pelts with the boys for hard-tack, or blankets, or other necessaries
of life, and were singularly placid and good-humored. Everything with
them was “Nagouruk,” and their chief delight was to visit the ship, and
spend hours in the company of their white friends. The outer sheltering
igloo of ice cakes, which the boys had built over the galley, won their
admiration at once, and they gave it the greatest compliment that an
Eskimo can pay. Kroo, the oldest man, and in that respect the chief,
as chiefs go in a little Eskimo community, inspected it carefully and
solemnly, and then announced oracularly in his own tongue:
“It is good. The white brothers are almost as wise as Eskimos.”
Many conferences were held between Harluk and Kroo and the two boys as
to the prospects and methods of spring whaling in the ice, and as they
learned the ways of the whale from their dusky friends and the ease with
which they are captured by the Eskimos with their primitive weapons,
Harry and Joe became very enthusiastic as to the success which awaited
them with modern appliances. Harluk and Kroo were also greatly pleased.
The plan meant for them unlimited supplies of whale meat and blubber, and
both parties were impatient of the long night of fierce cold that must
still pass before they could begin. They got no more bears for a long
time, because the cold was so severe that their blubber lamps went out
and the tolling smell of stewing salmon failed them. Joe remedied this
in part by mixing the whale oil with kerosene, which did not freeze even
in the most severe weather, and finally he enlarged his lamp greatly,
using a square kerosene can for a reservoir, and filling it with kerosene
alone. This worked much better, and an occasional white pelt was added
to their store by this means. Out of this, too, came a most singular
adventure, which was of great service to the Eskimos, and no doubt saved
the lives of both boys, though it lost them a valuable bearskin.
It happened late in February, after the sun had begun again to smile at
them for a moment above the southern horizon, though his brief daily
presence seemed in no wise to abate the cold.