FOUND BY THE NATIVES 121 



language it was clear that the native had no food with 

 him, and holding up three or four fingers to show that 

 he would return in so many hours or days he drove off. 

 About six o'clock in the evening, while they were pre- 

 paring their fish dinner, the visitor returned with two 

 other men, one of whom brought in a frozen fish which 

 he skinned and sliced, and while the sailors were eating 

 it the first healthy meal they had had for weeks the 

 natives invited them to accompany them, and brought 

 in deerskin coats and boots and finally got them into 

 the sledges and drove off to the westward for about 

 fifteen miles. Here there were two tents, and Ninde- 

 mann was taken into one, Noros into the other, and 

 both were well looked after, the natives doing their 

 very best to get them well. 



This was intelligible on both sides, for the language 

 of kindness is universal, but as the sailors knew not the 

 language of their hosts, and the natives knew not the 

 language of their guests, the difficulty of being under- 

 stood by each other was great, and the delivery of the 

 urgent message in signs was almost impossible. Ninde- 

 mann did his best ; he appealed to the man who seemed 

 to be the head of the party, and drawing in the snow a 

 map of the places where he had been, with every com- 

 bination of signs he could think of, he tried to explain 

 what he wanted. That he succeeded to a certain 

 extent was clear, though he did not think so at first, for 

 the natives loaded up their sledges, twenty-seven in 

 number, with reindeer meat and skins and fish, and 

 struck their tents, and, with over a hundred head of 

 deer harnessed up, started for the south. At noon, 

 when the deer were resting, the man for whom the 



