330 FOUR YEARS IN THE WHITE NORTH 



Hence, every day when we came in hungry from 

 our long tramps, we brewed tea, which we drank with- 

 out sugar or milk — of which we had neither — and ate 

 our four prunes. Tank always carefully gathered the 

 seeds together and took them out to a big flat rock be- 

 fore the house, where he cracked them and ate the ker- 

 nels. He told me several times that he derived a lot 

 of nourishment from them and that he expected them 

 to keep him alive at least a week after I had succumbed. 

 As it was, we had eaten our last prune almost two weeks 

 before relief finally came. 



The only untoward event of the summer was a near- 

 drowning in which I was the lone actor without any 

 spectators. I was returning from Saunders Island the 

 last day of June, over a route by which I had gone out 

 quite safely only two days before. A warm sun and 

 high tides had rotted the ice in the interval, so that 

 on my return I had to pick my way most carefully 

 among the pools of open water and thin ice. At one of 

 the most treacherous reaches I thought I saw a long 

 stretch of good going that lay between two icebergs 

 about a hundred yards apart. I started across it, and 

 had just about got to the middle when the whole busi- 

 ness dropped into the water. It was but the shell of 

 a drift, with all the ice underneath worn away by the 

 tide sweeping between the bergs. 



My dogs and sledge and I dropped Into the slush; 

 I hung on to the sledge, but I felt sure that it was only 

 a question of time until the scene would be ended and 

 the curtain dropped. The slush was too thick to get 

 through. My king-dog, a big, shaggy, white fellow, 

 with Newfoundland blood in his veins, did not give up, 

 however, though the rest of the dogs in the team de- 



