4B6 FARTHEST NORTH 



made an end of, as we had had it lying spread over our 

 meat and blubber heap in the autumn to protect it 

 asainst the o;ulls. The foxes had s^nawed and torn it in 

 all directions, and had carried off great strips of it, which 

 we found scattered around. We speculated a great deal 

 as to how we could make ourselves a new tent. The 

 only thing we could think of was to put our sledges, 

 with the kayaks upon them, parallel to each other at the 

 distance of about a man's height, then pile snow around 

 them at the sides until they were closed in, lay our snow- 

 shoes and bamboo staffs across, and then spread our two 

 sails, laced together, over the whole, so that they should 

 reach the ground on both sides. In this way we man- 

 aged to make ourselves a quite effective shelter, the 

 kayaks forming the roof ridges, and the sails the side 

 walls of the tent. It was not quite impervious to drift- 

 in q; snow, and we had usuallv a Q-ood deal of trouble in 

 stopping up cracks and openings with our wind clothes 

 and things of that sort. 



But the most important part of our equipment was, 

 after all, our firearms, and these, fortunately, we had 

 kept in tolerably good order. We cleaned the rifles 

 thoroughly and rubbed them with train - oil. We had 

 also a little vaseline and gun-oil left for the locks. On 

 taking stock of our ammunition, we found, to our joy, 

 that we still had about lOO rifle cartridges and i lo small- 

 shot cartridges. We had thus enough, if necessary, for 

 several more winters. 



