HOW AN ESKIMO SAILED THROUGH STORM 81 



The next morning Roxy awoke me, saying that there 

 was a fair wind blowing but that the weather later in 

 the day would probably be bad. To me it seemed rather 

 bad already. There were periods of calm and between 

 them squalls of strong wind with flurries of snow. Along 

 the coast just east of us there were several harbors, 

 and Roxy and I agreed that on so threatening a day we 

 would not proceed beyond Kay Point, for on the thirty- 

 five-mile stretch from there to Shingle Point there is no 

 shelter or any possibility of landing in case of a gale. 



Had we jumped into the boat promptly on waking 

 up, I think all might have gone well. The Eskimos were 

 eating a breakfast of dried fish and whale blubber. Had 

 I been a good Eskimo also, I should have shared that 

 with them and we might have been on the road in a few 

 minutes. Thinking, however, that we could not proceed 

 beyond Kay Point in any case, I took an hour to fry a 

 small piece of pork that Captain Leavitt had given me 

 and made a meal of that. When we finally started the 

 gusts of wind had become so strong that had we been 

 wise we would not have started at all. 



Everything was plane sailing for a few miles. When 

 we were about halfway to Kay Point, Mrs. Roxy sug- 

 gested that we had better turn into shelter by Stokes 

 Point, but Roxy answered that this would not be neces- 

 sary for we would find shelter behind Kay Point. This 

 seemed reasonable. We were sailing northeast straight 

 before a southwest wind. At Kay Point we were going 

 to round a corner of the coast, turning southeast. A 

 southwest wind would then be blowing off the land, giving 

 us quiet water to beach the boat. 



Before we got to Kay Point it was a real gale. In all 

 his experience Roxy had never sailed this sea in such a 



