844 THE VOYAGE OF THE JEANNETTE. 



" I started at three or four o'clock in the morning to 

 follow the river bank down as far as the hut Mat Vai. 

 This is where I was doubling on my own track. It 

 was now thirty or thirty-two days after the time that 

 Nindemann and Noros had left them there poorly clad, 

 and I had made up my mind by this time that after 

 thirty days' starvation they were all probably starved 

 or frozen to death ; that in the mean time if they had 

 found the natives, or if the natives had found them, 

 they were as safe as our party were ; but if they had 

 not found the natives they would surely be dead. I 

 then made up my mind to make as quick time as I 

 could by way of the hut Mat Vai back to Bulun. Now 

 that the weather was fine, I intended to run by the 

 hut, as it was but forty versts (twenty-six miles) even 

 if it stormed. I concluded to stop at Mat Vai as short 

 a time as possible, as we were out of provisions except 

 the offal that I had picked up in the huts. After leav- 

 ing Qu Vina about two hours the natives stopped their 

 teams and dug up a cache of venison bones that they 

 had buried the summer before. They added this to 

 our load, and we sledded along, passing Mat Vai in the 

 afternoon. 



" About seven o'clock in the evening, in entering a 

 mountain gorge where the river debouched into the 

 bay, the storm blew from the southward, so that we 

 were compelled to camp down. It is impossible to 

 move when it storms and blows, because the dogs can- 

 not be made to face the wind. They simply lie down 

 and howl ; and beat them as you may you cannot make 

 them move. The natives dug a hole in the snow about 

 six feet square, three or four feet deep, turned the 

 sleds up to the windward of the hole, and got into their 

 sleeping bags in the snow bank. The storm continued 



