SEEKING HELP 



There must be a good 100 kilometres to Etah, and we are 

 sure to manage this distance in three days. 



We are slow in getting up speed to-day ; we are unaccus- 

 tomed to being satiated and heavy, besides which we have 

 reversed our old order of day and night, as we are walking dur- 

 ing the warm day and sleeping in the colder night. We must 

 therefore walk along slowly, and try to go for twenty-four 

 hours, not resting until the forenoon of to-morrow. 



The going is better and better, more even than before ; but 

 we pass a stony clough where we must hop and jump from one 

 large block to another until our foot-soles burn. We traverse it 

 and come out on a plain stretching widely and openly ahead, 

 with little rivers and occasional vigorous grass-meadows shining 

 sun-gilt against the dark crimson stone-heaps. Here the fog 

 once more overtakes us. It is four o'clock in the afternoon, 

 and as we can get no view ahead we sit down with our backs 

 towards a cliff wall, hoping that the fog will soon lift. 



We meet the " Eider duck." 



I sit and doze, and am awakened by Ajako jumping up ; I 

 hardly believe my own ears when I hear the shout : " Inugssuaq ! 

 Takiik, inugssuaq!" 



A start went through me. A man! Where? Who? 

 From where? I got to my feet in a hurry. 



A short distance away I plainly saw a man coming out of 

 the fog, a reindeer hunter with a little bundle on his back. A 

 skin and some meat — perhaps ! 



One can imagine what impression this made on us two wan- 

 derers, who, like shipwrecked men struggling along on this 

 stony moraine, suddenly see salvation and meet a man for the 

 first time after half a year's absence. 



We both shouted. The man stopped, listened, and dis- 

 covered us when we repeated our shout. 



A few minutes later we met and found that it was Miteq, the 

 " Eiderduck," who had come up here from Kukat, one of the 

 camps near Inglefield Gulf, to hunt reindeer. He was in the 



247 



