258 HUNTING WITH THE ESKIMOS 



read a great deal. Fred Norton gave me a box of 

 books when the Erik left for the south, and Mr. 

 Peary and Captain Bartlett gave me several more. 

 All of these I had read some of them more than 

 once and now when the storms held me indoors I 

 longed for more. The old ones had become stale. 

 This was a reason why confinement indoors seemed 

 harder to bear than at any previous time during the 

 winter. 



On the afternoon of April second one of the worst 

 storms of my whole Arctic experience broke upon 

 us. On the morning of that day Billy and I, with 

 snow-shoes, turned southward for a walk. The sky 

 was cloudy when we left camp and a light south 

 breeze was blowing. We had gone but a short dis- 

 tance when the wind, steadily increasing, had assumed 

 the proportions of a gale. Snow began to fall and 

 the drift was so bad it blinded us. Every moment 

 the storm grew in force and we were glad indeed 

 when we finally gained the shelter of camp. A lit- 

 tle later Billy went outside for a bucketful of coal, 

 and when he returned declared that in those few 

 minutes the storm had grown to such proportions he 

 could not breathe while facing it. 



Although I had encountered some terrible storms 

 and gales during the preceding eight months, this I 

 can safely say was the worst of my experience. I 

 had never seen anything to compare with it. The 

 cold was intense. Beyond the shelter of the igloo no 

 man could have survived for more than an hour or 

 two. By half -past nine in the evening we began to 



