ACROSS THE MOVING ICE 
181 
the little hatchet which we had for opening pem- 
mican tins. When we missed it, we left the dogs, 
thinking that it might have been dropped only a 
short distance away, and walked back to look for it, 
but we found the ice changing materially and were 
afraid to go far from our sledge, so we had to aban¬ 
don the search, and thereafter had to use a knife in 
its place. At half past five, when we stopped and 
built our igloo, a job that always took about three 
quarters of an hour at the end of our day’s march, 
we had advanced during the day not over four miles. 
At this rate the journey from shore to shore would 
be a long one. The wind was moderating some¬ 
what, however, when we turned in, and we hoped 
for better weather next day. 
Sure enough when we broke camp the following 
morning we found the wind a light easterly and 
the weather fine. It looked as if good going must 
now be in store for us; we had had almost continu¬ 
ously stormy weather from the moment of our de¬ 
parture from Icy Spit. Another encouraging 
thing was that shortly after we started on our way, 
we shot a seal in a wide lead of water. The Eskimo 
used a native device for retrieving the seal. This 
device consists of a wooden ball, as large as a man’s 
fist, made something like a stocking darner, with 
hooks projecting from it on all sides; there is a 
handle eight or ten inches long, with a white cotton 
