CHAPTER XXXVIII 



WE ARE "rescued" BY CAPTAIN LOUIS LANE 



AUGUST 11th was a momentous day. About quarter to four 

 in the afternoon a schooner was sighted coming from the 

 southeast and heading for Cape Kellett, some ten miles 

 to the west. There was a heavy sea running, for a gale of the pre- 

 vious day had not yet abated, and we at first took the ship to be 

 the Star bound for the shelter of the bight behind the Kellett sand- 

 spit. But a good look through the glasses showed the snub nose 

 and the characteristic outlines of Captain Louis Lane's Polar Bear. 

 We should have preferred the Star, but the coming of any ship was 

 an event. I set out along the beach to get an interview, should 

 the Bear run into shelter behind Kellett as I expected she would. 



Driven by the strong wind she made much better speed than I, 

 and dropped anchor behind the sandspit while I was four or five 

 miles away. I learned later that they sighted me at about three 

 miles. One of the Eskimos aboard saw me when looking the land 

 over through his glasses for possible caribou. The captain and the 

 ship's company then took a look and speculated upon who it could 

 be. The opinion was evenly divided. Half the Bear's crew guessed 

 I was a shipwrecked sailor off the Sachs. Somehow the idea had 

 got abroad that the Sachs had been wrecked at Banks Island. How 

 it started is hard to say unless somebody dreamed it, for she had 

 come north the previous year with the intention of wintering, and 

 naturally nobody could have heard from her since, one way or the 

 other. The second half of the Bear's crew thought the man on the 

 beach was one of the Victoria Island "blond Eskimos," over here 

 on a summer hunt. 



When I got to the end of the sandspit, half a mile from the ship, 

 a whaleboat was lowered and came towards land with six men 

 rowing and three or four passengers. Through my binoculars I rec- 

 ognized Captain Lane, Constable Jack Parsons of the Herschel Is- 

 land Mounted Police, and Herman Kilian, engineer of the Polar 

 Bear. Presently I heard from the approaching boat shouts of 

 "He's not an Eskimo. He's got field glasses — he must be one of 



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