THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 459 



soon found himself on land again, whereupon he went back to the 

 island a second time and with the same result. 



By now it was morning, cloudy, and the storm had begun. He 

 stopped and waited for daylight, broke open a can of pemmican, fed 

 his dogs and ate some pemmican and snow himself. When he 

 knew that noon was approaching he commenced his search again 

 but was unable to find either the camp or the island, for now the 

 storm was very thick and he had great difficulty in making the 

 dogs face it. Still keeping his head he allowed the dogs to curl 

 up and sleep and tried to sleep himself on the drift beside them, 

 which was a little warmer than sleeping in the sled, since it was 

 nothing but a frame with a bottom eight inches above the ground, 

 and the wind had a chance to circle around you instead of merely 

 blowing over you. 



He confessed to finding the next night tedious and by the morn- 

 ing of the third he must have been thoroughly scared, for he had ob- 

 viously lost all the coolness and good sense that he had kept thus 

 far, apart from the initial foolishness of trusting his dogs to find 

 the way to camp. He was unable to give any clear account of 

 what had happened the next morning but Alingnak told me that 

 shortly after he and I parted he had climbed an ice hummock 

 and seen with his glasses Emiu and his team inland traveling 

 east. The weather was now clear, the reddening sky showed the 

 direction of south, Bernard Island and Norway Island were in 

 plain sight, both conspicuous landmarks that ought to have been 

 familiar to Emiu, and even Robilliard Island to the northwest, not 

 far from the Star, was in sight, and still he was traveling • away 

 from them, headed inland. In that direction lay no possible help; 

 in fact, no human habitation before the Bear on the other side of 

 Banks Island, and I know from knowing Emiu that he had no 

 idea of how the Bear could be reached by going towards her over- 

 land or any other way than retracing his route to Kellett and 

 thence around. 



I have several times come in as close touch as this, but fortu- 

 nately never closer, with the circumstances that lead to the ap- 

 parently inexplicable arctic tragedies. When people are found who 

 have been lost and frozen to death and when the signs show them 

 to have done various inexplicable things, it is assumed that their 

 minds were turned by extreme suffering and possibly the extreme 

 cold. But Emiu said, and evidently truthfully, that he was never 

 cold except for a moment when he awoke from his short naps, that 



