THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 643 



had no doubt the Sachs would wait up to the 25th and even later, 

 he felt very sure that the Bear would "take no chances" and would 

 start as soon as they saw any excuse for doing so. He reminded 

 me that by my own appointment the captain of the Bear was senior 

 officer in my absence and that he might order the Sachs to sail out 

 also. I used to argue with Knight that there was no motive for 

 anybody doing this, but he stuck to his point. The result was 

 that I, too, began to be concerned about the situation and when 

 Emiu could not travel on the 16th I decided to walk ahead. With 

 the pack dogs we could not make more than ten or twelve miles 

 in a day and at that rate it would take five days to reach Kellett. 



Before separating from the party I took an observation for 

 latitude at noon August 16th and asked Noice to take time sights 

 in the afternoon, for he had already had ample practice both in 

 using the instruments and in making the computations. We did 

 not have with us the nautical almanac for the current year and 

 our computations were never intended to be anything more than 

 approximate. They would all have to be checked up when maps 

 came to be made on the basis of them. 



Of the prejudices with which I came North in 1906 I have 

 succeeded in shedding most, but one I have never tried to get rid 

 of — a disinclination to eat alone. There are numerous instances 

 where I have been gone from camp thirty or more hours on caribou 

 hunts, and on none of them have I ever eaten unless there was 

 some one to share the meal. I expected now to walk without 

 a break and without food to Kellett. This was a longer walk 

 than I had ever attempted before and the men very thoughtfully 

 had boiled some caribou tongues which I found in my pack bag. 

 I first took them out to leave them behind but my companions 

 seemed so hurt that their forethought was not appreciated that I 

 concluded I had better take them along. 



It was shortly after noon when I started, a beautiful Banks 

 Island day. Fair weather continued up to seven or eight o'clock 

 in the evening, when fog came on as it often does at night at this 

 time of year. I now found it more difficult to keep a course, and 

 about midnight the fog became so thick that I had trouble with 

 the little lakes that are scattered everywhere. The ones of regular 

 outlines were not so bad, although there is no doubt that I often 

 turned to the wrong side, thus making the detour longer than nec- 

 essary. But a real nuisance was to walk out on a peninsula on the 

 assumption that the water to the right and left were two different 

 lakes. On some occasions I had to go back as much as half a mile 



