HOW AN ESKIMO SAILED THROUGH STORM 85 



from the cape while the land runs southeast. This finger 

 of sand had gradually lengthened and lengthened until 

 now it was nearly two miles long with a good-sized tri- 

 angular bay behind it. A quarter of a mile beyond the 

 finger tip of this sandspit was a little island and between 

 it and the spit was a channel about nine feet deep for 

 a hundred yards of its width. 



The village, consisting of Sten's house, some old 

 Eskimo houses, and some tents, stood at the landward 

 end of the sandspit net far from the mainland cliff. 

 The sandspit itself is here probably some eight or 

 twelve feet above sea level, and Sten's house was twelve 

 feet high on top of that. We were still several miles 

 away when we began to see the top of Sten's house as 

 we were again and again lifted to the crests of the waves. 

 When we went down into the troughs between them, the 

 house went out of sight. Not only that, but even the 

 land along which we were running was occasionally 

 hidden. We were about a quarter of a mile from the 

 beach and the land was two or three hundred feet high. 

 Even so, the waves between us and the land were fre- 

 quently high enough to hide the cliff completely. 



When we came near the village we could see all the 

 people outside, and among them Sten standing at the 

 beach and waving to us. We could not hear what he 

 was shouting but his signals meant clearly that we were 

 to run the boat ashore right where he stood and he and 

 the Eskimos would stand by and try to rescue us from 

 the undertow of the surf. Roxy and I discussed this 

 and decided that if we landed we would be sure to wreck 

 the boat, that most or all of the cargo would be lost, 

 and that the chances were that we should all be drowned. 

 He pointed out we had already run more than thirty 



