THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 561 



purposes on a dark night we could not with our limited resources 

 devise any means equal to a kerosene lantern. 



It was wonderful luck that on the evening of landing in Mel- 

 ville Island we had enough clear weather to see the ovibos herd 

 and the next morning enough to kill them, although after noting 

 the topography in the evening I might have been able to find them 

 even in a storm. But just afterward the weather became so thick 

 that, although the men with the team were only a mile away and 

 in full sight coming towards me, they got lost and half an hour 

 later in a clear spell I saw them a mile to one side. I was just 

 able to signal to them before the weather thickened again and by 

 going to meet them and shouting was able to guide them to the 

 kill. It was impenetrably thick the rest of the day and the day 

 following, so that we talked a good deal about having secured 

 the meat in the nick of time. 



While Charlie was mending snowshoes, October 4th [1916], I 

 made a long diary entry of which the following is a part: 



"Plans and worries are mixed badly in our minds just now. 

 Really we can have no plans till we learn just what has gone 

 wrong and how badly with the Bear and in Melville Island. We 

 make new guesses each day of what will be wrong but they are in- 

 fluenced by how we feel and vary so much in tone that they are 

 not worth writing down. They range from assuming complete dis- 

 aster due to natural causes, to complete inactivity due to human 

 frailty. A thing suggested by Noice I sincerely hope may not be 

 so — that Castel's party may have had sickness soon after leaving 

 us and may be still in Isachsen Land. If that be so, we shall learn 

 it in Melville Island so late it will be difficult to reach them in 

 Isachsen Land till the sun comes back. If Natkusiak is the sick 

 one or if both the others are sick, it might mean disaster. We 

 should, of course, try to reach them but the difficulty would be to 

 find them in the dark even after getting up to Isachsen Land." 



