388 CONQUERING THE ARCTIC ICE 



trim, the trail was hard, and on Monday, the 2Oth, we stopped 

 at Golofin as the guests of a Danish trader, Mr. Hansen. 



The next morning the weather did not look tempting, but we 

 started along the hard-beaten mail trail. The leaden-coloured 

 sky became darker and darker. An ominous noise was heard 

 from the mountains, where the snow was drifting heavily, 

 raising large clouds of pure white snow against the dark sky. 

 But bad though it looked, we had never for a minute thought 

 that it would really become as bad as it did. It was just when 

 we reached the land on the other side of a bay, where the trail 

 went up over the hills, that the blizzard broke. Like lightning 

 it was upon us. Before many seconds everything was 

 obliterated from our view ; we could not see 10 feet ahead in 

 the blinding snow which was beating in our faces. We lost the 

 trail and were just sitting down to look about us a little, or, 

 rather, regain our breath, which some minutes of fighting against 

 the gale had almost beaten out of us, when we heard only a 

 few yards distant it seemed " Gee ! God damn you, gee ! " 

 (" Gee " is the word of command which makes the trained dogs 

 turn to the right.) We knew that some one was near and 

 probably in the same plight as ourselves. Our dogs jumped up, 

 pulled over to the left, and then stopped. On account of the 

 snowdrift I could only see half of the team, and went along the 

 line of the dogs (they were hitched two and two on a central 

 trace) ; on reaching the leader, about 15 feet from the sledge, 

 I saw him standing in front of a strange dog. I crawled to 

 the sledge which the strange dog belonged to, and found a 

 man sitting in it, swearing in the most lurid language at his 

 dogs, the weather, and the country in general. 



We communicated with each other by yelling at the top of 

 our voices, and I found out that his name was Carson, that he 

 owned the road-house which we were making for, and that he 

 was willing to take us there. But the weather was so bad that 

 we had to wait for some time ; we found an old house which 

 was full of snow, but could at least afford us some shelter. The 

 weather abated a little, and we started, though it was rather a 

 foolhardy thing to do. We could not see the trail, and the 

 snowdrift was so strong that we could not distinguish the land- 

 marks either. Carson and I took turns to go ahead, which was 

 almost better than driving the dogs, as the whip had to be used 



