592 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



able to eat more fat than any Eskimo in the party. As for that 

 he could, but it was merely because he was a big man and working 

 hard. Eskimos on the average eat neither more nor less fat than 

 white men or negroes do under the same circumstances. 



Full moon came on the 9th or 10th of November and we ex- 

 pected Storkerson to leave Cape Grassy and arrive in a week at 

 the isthmus where the crossing is made from Liddon Gulf to Win- 

 ter Harbor. He would have with him Natkusiak and the crippled 

 sled. Lopez and Charlie were to meet them there and the several 

 sleds would go over to Winter Harbor where the party would stay 

 long enough for these to be all repaired and in thoroughly good 

 shape for the spring work. It is one of the conveniences of the 

 Arctic that some of the moons in this latitude do not set for as 

 much as four or five days, affording when the sky is clear almost 

 as good traveling conditions as perpetual daylight. 



Charlie and Lopez left for the rendezvous on the 17th and by 

 the 30th they had been away so long that I was beginning to expect 

 at least one team back. That evening both men returned with the 

 astonishing news that Storkerson had not yet arrived from the North. 

 With the dried meat that was to be relayed to Grassy they had 

 gone to the Liddon Gulf end of the portage and had camped there 

 waiting for Storkerson until they and the dogs had eaten up the 

 whole load, and now they came home with an empty sled. We 

 could not guess what had happened and had another time of 

 worry, until December 9th Natkusiak arrived with a letter. This 

 made everything clear but the news was not good. 



On the way north, Storkerson wrote, they had been delayed by 

 head winds and by weather so cold that some of the dogs froze 

 their flanks. This can never happen from mere cold but only 

 from a combination of low temperature with high wind. On the 

 way north they had lingered to search for game on the portage 

 between Liddon Gulf and Hecla Bay but had been unsuccessful, 

 owing to cloudy weather and absence of daylight. When they 

 reached Grassy Natkusiak had made attempts to fetch meat from 

 inland and there had been further delay through his inability to 

 find his depots promptly, this again because of storms and darkness. 



At last they started back, and there was no untoward incident 

 until in crossing south from Hecla Bay they steered too far west 

 and did not come down to sea ice until in Barry Bay. This re- 

 sulted in one of the serious misfortunes of the expedition, though 

 it might have been only trivial under different circumstances. 



