358 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



thawed the ice too fast and he slid in when I was ten yards off. 

 Camped on seeing two more seals but before I got near them the 

 dogs started barking at something, which scared them and they dis- 

 appeared." 



July 13th we were still six or eight miles from land when we 

 stopped to eat the last of our food. It is a bit exaggerated to say, 

 as the diary did above, that we were on short rations. Rather we 

 were eating things that were not particularly agreeable. Our last 

 lunch was a piece of sealskin with a little blubber attached. We 

 enjoyed it, although we could think of things we might have pre- 

 ferred. 



After about eight hours of wading through water and scrambling 

 across wet ice hummocks we finally camped within two hundred 

 .yards of the shore, separated from the land by a shore lead of that 

 width. This lead was full of seals. We expected them to sink, for 

 the water was so fresh that you could almost drink it because of 

 the river water that was coming off the land. But we were hungry 

 and, after all, the laws of nature might not work, so I shot about 

 a dozen seals before I made up my mind that the laws really were 

 working. By that time the men had converted the sledge into a 

 boat and Thomsen and I paddled ashore while Storkerson went in 

 pursuit of other seals basking on the ice to the west. 



Thomsen and I went in different directions, and shortly after 

 landing he killed a hare. He saw then two caribou, whereupon he 

 set off in pursuit of me and at his signs I turned back, although I 

 had myself seen three old bulls in a different direction. Thomsen's 

 caribou were young and lean but the lunch of sealskin made me 

 incline to the view that a bird in the hand was worth two in the 

 bush, so I went after and shot them. While Thomsen was doing 

 the skinning I went in search of the bulls but they were not seen 

 again. When we returned to the coast laden with caribou meat 

 we found that "It never rains but it pours" was as much in order 

 as it had been two days earlier although in a different sense, for 

 Storkerson had killed a big seal. 



It speaks well for the arctic lands that our landing this year 

 should have been as propitious as last. In 1914 we had landed with 

 half a meal of food and I had secured six caribou before sleeping. 

 This time we landed with no food at all and had two caribou, a 

 hare and a seal within six hours. 



