HOW AN ESKIMO SAILED THROUGH STORM 83 



This thought encouraged us a good deal, for it meant 

 that the run for our lives would be eighteen miles only 

 instead of thirty-five. 



Just after starting out in the morning we had changed 

 the large regular sail of the whaleboat for the smaller 

 storm sail. Later we had close reefed this, and we were 

 now running straight before the wind with the smallest 

 sail possible. Every now and then we took water on 

 both sides of our bow, and every now and then we took 

 water on both sides of our stern. We had cleared a place 

 in the middle of the boat to do some bailing and had to 

 bail steadily. 



There were two kinds of trouble with our cargo. One 

 was that certain goods which would soak up water were 

 in the bottom of the boat. It was not possible, there- 

 fore, to bail out all the water that' came in, for some 

 soaked into the baggage. Another trouble was that we 

 had certain bulky things on top of the load. Roxy and 

 I agreed we ought to throw overboard about half the 

 cargo, but we were every moment in such imminent 

 danger of being swamped that we never dared try to shift 

 the bulky and heavy things so as to get them overboard. 



It was a tense time as we approached King Point. We 

 saw the masts of the Bonanza clearly all the time but 

 for some reason her hull appeared and disappeared. At 

 first we thought she had been moved away from the 

 beach and was floating, lifted up and down by the waves. 

 But when we got nearer we saw that the situation was 

 entirely otherwise. She was still fast on the beach, but 

 the water was so steadily breaking over her that she was 

 for that reason hidden two-thirds of the time. Half a 

 mile before we got abreast we had decided that there 

 would be no shelter behind her, and when we ran by we 



