THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 225 



among whites and Eskimos alike of the possibility of making the 

 five- or six-hundrcd-mile journey over frozen ocean to northwest 

 Banks Island had somehow soaked into our bones. So far we had 

 never slept without feeling, although there was no evidence to our 

 senses, that our beds were drifting. Sometimes it was a drift favor- 

 able to us and sometimes against, but there was always the gam- 

 bler's tenseness about these erratic camping places that were always 

 carrying us either toward or away from our goal. The passive se- 

 curity of the land-fast ice was a feather bed and down pillow which 

 brought the first real relaxed sleep for three months. 



