206 ARCTIC RESEARCH EXPEDITION. 



CHAPTER XII. 



Writing under Difficulties. — No Fire or Lamp. — Only two Inches of Black Skin for 

 Food. — Ravenous Hunger of the Dogs. — Relief obtained. — Ebierbing's Return. — 

 A Seal captured. — Supplies from the Ship. — Grand Feast of raw Meat. — Hunger 

 needs no Sauce. — Great Consumption of Food at a time. — Old Ookijoxy Ninoo's 

 Dream. — An Innuit Mark of a Seal-hole. — Tobacco-juice useful. — Watching for 

 the Seal. — Innuit Endurance of Cold. — Eating frozen Seal's Entrails. — Mode of 

 cooking and partaking of Innuit Food. — Severe Cold. — The Angeko again. — 

 Burning the Fingers with cold Brass. — First Reindeer seen. — More Innuit Arri- 

 vals. — Improvidence of the Natives. — Generous Disposition. — Live to-day and 

 Want to-morrow. — Author Visits Kowtukjua — Clark's Harbor — and Ookoolear — 

 Allen's Island. — Return to the Igloo Village. — Departure for the Ship. — Too- 

 koolito's Sadness. — Quick Journey. — Plaintive Look of a Seal. — Arrive at the 



' George Henry. 



At this time, though I kept in general good health and spirits, 

 I was fast losing flesh. But almost worse than want of food was 

 the want of light and fuel. On several occasions, the only way I 

 had to keep myself from freezing was by sitting in bed with plenty 

 of tuktoo furs around me. The writing of my journal was done 

 with the thermometer +15° to less than 0, while outside it was 

 from —25° to —52°. During the day I several times went up 

 the hill to look for Ebierbing's reappearance from the vessel, but 

 no signs of him met my eye, and the night of January 24th (four- 

 teen days from the ship) saw us with our last ration of food, viz., 

 a piece of " black skin" 1J inch wide, 2 inches long, and f of an 

 inch thick. It was under these very " agreeable" circumstances I 

 went to sleep, hoping to dream of better things, even if I could 

 not partake of them. " Better things" fortunately did arrive, and 

 in a way that I could partake of them. 



At midnight I heard footsteps within the passage-way to our 

 igloo. Intuitively I knew it was Jack with ooksook — seal-blub- 

 ber. I sprang out of bed and drew back the snow-block door. 

 There was Jack, his spear covered with pierced seal-blubber 

 hanging in strips like string-dried apples. I had allowed my 

 poor starving dog "Merok" to sleep within the igloo that night, 

 and, directly I had opened the door, on his scenting the luscious 

 fat, quicker than thought he gave one leap — a desperate one, as 

 if the strength of a dozen well-fed animals were in him. In an 



