184 THENORTHPOLE 



journey north. In the afternoon all the Eskimos were 

 assembled on deck, and I went to them with my watch 

 in my hand, telling them that the sun was now coming 

 back. Marvin rang the ship's bell, Matt Henson fired 

 three shots, and Borup set off some flashlight powder. 

 Then the men, women, and children formed in line and 

 marched into the after deck house by the port gangway, 

 passing the galley, where each one received, in addition 

 to the day's rations, a quart of coffee, with sugar and 

 milk, ship's biscuit, and musk-ox meat; the women were 

 also given candy and the men tobacco. 



After the celebration, Pingahshoo, a boy of twelve 

 or thirteen, who helped Percy in the galley, started con- 

 fidently south over the hills to meet the sun. After a 

 few hours he returned to the ship, quite crestfallen, and 

 Percy had to explain to him that while the sun was really 

 on its way back, it would not get to us for nearly three 

 months more. 



The next day after the winter solstice, our supply 

 of water from the Cape Sheridan River having failed, 

 Eskimos were sent out to reconnoiter the ponds of the 

 neighborhood. The English expedition on the Alert 

 had melted ice during their entire winter, and on the 

 expedition of 1905-06 we had been obliged to melt ice 

 for a month or two; but this year the Eskimos sounded 

 the ponds, and about fifteen feet of water was found 

 in one a mile inland from the Roosevelt. Over the 

 hole in the ice they built a snow igloo with a light 

 wooden trap-door, so as to keep the water in the hole 

 from freezing too quickly. The water was brought to 

 the ships in barrels on sledges drawn by the Eskimo 

 dogs. 



