CHAPTER XV 



DANIEL A HUNDRED MILES IN AN OPEN BOAT DANIEL 

 AS COOK DANIEL'S HOUSE THE OLD WIDOW 



A<TER the bustle of winter sledge travel, the 

 early days of July seemed to me the dreariest 

 time of the whole year. The ice on the bay was 

 broken, and the water was packed close with the 

 floating pieces. It seemed a dreary time, because we 

 were so shut in ; no sledges, no boats, no exercise but 

 walks on the sloppy beach or the softening snow on 

 the hills. Most of the people had gone to their 

 sealing camps, and the few who were left in the 

 village had turned their sledges upside down on the 

 roofs of their houses and were busy at the tarring of 

 their wooden boats, waiting eagerly for the ice to 

 float away and leave the water clear for them. And 

 yet it was on a July day in 1905 that there came 

 the excitement of a shout of "Umiat, umiat" (a 

 boat). 



It had nearly reached the jetty before we saw it, i 

 a big white boat with a crew of four sturdy Eskimos, 

 who poled their precarious way between the ice- 

 pans ; and when the Okak people saw the faces of the 

 men they gave a great shout of " Nainemiut" (Nain 

 people). 1 1 



I met the four men as they trotted up the jetty, 

 and found, as I had expected, that it was an urgent 

 call that had brought them across a hundred miles of 



ice-packed sea at a time of year when the Eskimos 



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