THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 617 



The next day the program was the same. Emiu with the two 

 sick men and the teams would follow the land from point to point 

 and make as good a day as he could while I hunted overland. On 

 crossing the first bay and landing beyond I immediately found 

 abundant vegetation. Not long after that I saw old caribou tracks 

 and presently some that were fresher, and within three or four 

 hours after leaving camp I was on the nearly new trail of a band 

 of about twenty. There was no wind so that it was not safe to 

 follow this trail, for the animals might hear me. I hunted most 

 carefully, going away from the locality where I supposed the cari- 

 bou to be and examining it with the glasses from high hills two 

 or three miles away. Eventually I saw them and made my ap- 

 proach. 



It occurred to me when I saw some of the animals on top of a 

 hill that they might have been seen from the sleds, and I hoped the 

 men would have the self-control not to try to get them for them- 

 selves, for nothing is more likely to lead to failure than an uncon- 

 certed attempt by two or more men from different directions to get 

 at a band of caribou. One man always hunts them better than two 

 and the drawback of two hunting separately is greatly multiplied if 

 they have no plan of cooperation. After I had devoted much of the 

 day to the approach and had commenced shooting, I heard shots 

 from above and behind me. Evidently this was Emiu, who could 

 not hit very many from the distance from which he was shooting. 

 Still he was doing no harm. Between us we killed the entire twenty- 

 three. 



When it was over he came and told me what was really an ad- 

 mirable story. They had seen the caribou from the ice five or six 

 hours before and the sick men had urged him to go and try for 

 them, saying that I might overlook them. He said he had been 

 reluctant to go, knowing my views on the inadvisability of two men 

 going after the same band, but as the others insisted, he went. 

 But instead of going to look for the caribou he went to look for 

 me. He eventually found me but could not get to me without 

 going near the caribou, so he had to make a wide circle, with the 

 result that he had been unable to catch up. During the last hour 

 he had been crawling two or three hundred yards behind me, 

 never daring to make enough noise to attract my attention and 

 with the idea merely of keeping so far behind that he was sure 

 he would not interfere with my success. 



Knight and Noice had pitched camp out on the ice. We hur- 

 ried out to them with merely some of the tongues which we cut 



