attahtok’s hunt. 
213 
of returning joyfully to their village, when a north 
wind broke up the ice, and they found themselves 
afloat. The impulse of a European would have been 
to seek the land; but they knew that the drift was 
always most dangerous on the coast, and urged their 
dogs toward the nearest iceberg. They reached it 
after a struggle, and, by great efforts, made good their 
landing with their dogs and the half-butchered carcass 
of the walrus. 
Poor Myouk, as he told the story to Petersen, made 
a frightful picture of their sufferings, the more so from 
the quiet, stoical manner with which he detailed the 
facts. It was at the close, he said, of the last moon¬ 
light of December, and in the midst of the heavy storm 
which held Petersen and myself prisoners at Anoatok. 
A complete darkness settled around them. They tied 
the dogs down to knobs of ice to prevent their losing 
their foothold, and prostrated themselves to escape 
being blown off by the violence of the wind. At first 
the sea broke over them, but they gained a higher 
level, and built a sort of screen of ice. 
On the fifth night afterward, judging as well as they 
could, Myouk froze one of his feet, and Awahtok lost 
his great toe by frostbite. But they kept heart of 
grace, and ate their walrus-meat as they floated slowly 
to the south. The berg came twice into collision with 
floes, and they thought at one time that they had 
passed the Utlak-soak, the Great Caldron, and had 
entered the North Water of Baffin’s Bay. It was 
toward the close of the second moonlight, after a 
