THE LARCENY. 
365 
to elude the officer of the deck and escape unsearched. 
They repaid my liberality by stealing not only the 
lamp, boiler, and cooking-pot they had used for the 
feast, but Nannook also, my best dog. If the rest of 
my team had not been worn down by over-travel, no 
doubt they would have taken them all. Besides this, 
we discovered the next morning that they had found 
the buffalo-robes and India-rubber cloth which McGary 
had left a few days before on the ice-foot near Six-mile 
Ravine, and had added the whole to the spoils of their 
visit. 
The theft of these articles embarrassed me. I was 
indisposed to take it as an act of hostility. Their pil- 
ferings before this had been conducted with such a 
superb simplicity, the detection followed by such honest 
explosions of laughter, that I could not help thinking 
they had some law of general appropriation, less re¬ 
moved from the Lycurgan than the Mosaic code. But 
it was plain at least that we were now too few to watch 
our property as we had done, and that our gentleness 
was to some extent misunderstood. 
I was puzzled how to inflict punishment, but saw 
that I must act vigorously, even at a venture. I de¬ 
spatched my two best walkers, Morton and Riley, as 
soon as I heard of the theft of the stores, with orders 
to make all speed to Anoatok, and overtake the thieves, 
who, I thought, avou Id probably halt there to rest. 
They found young Myouk making himself quite com¬ 
fortable in the hut, in company with Sievu, the wife 
of Metek, and Aningna, the wife of Marsinga, and my 
