CHAPTER XXV. 
TIIE FAREWELL — ATTEMPT TO EMBARK. 
/ 
We had our boats to prepare now for a long and 
adventurous navigation. They were so small and 
heavily laden as hardly to justify much confidence in 
their buoyancy; but, besides this, they were split with 
frost and warped by sunshine, and fairly open at the 
seams. They were to be calked and swelled and 
launched and stowed, before we could venture to em¬ 
bark in them. A rainy southwester too, which had 
met us on our arrival, was now spreading with its black 
nimbus over the bay, and it looked as if we were to 
be storm-stayed on the precarious ice-beach. It was a 
time of anxiety, but to me personally of comparative 
rest. I resumed my journal:— 
“July 18, Monday.—The Esquimaux are camped by 
our side,—the whole settlement of Etali congregated 
around the ‘big caldron’ of Cape Alexander, to bid us 
good-bye. There are Metek, and Nualik his wife, our 
old acquaintance Mrs. Eider-duck, and their five chil¬ 
dren, commencing with Myouk, my body-guard, and 
247 
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