re
they sought cover from the storm which moaned and whistled round the
low houses. Endless ragged folds of sleet whirled out of the north,
then writhed and twisted past, vanishing into the grey veil which
shrouded the landscape in a twilight gloom.

The fierce wind sank the cold into the aching flesh like a knife and
stiffened the face to a whitening mask, while a fusillade of frozen
ice-particles beat against the eyeballs with blinding fury.

As Captain emerged from his cabin, furred and hooded, he found a long
train of crouching, whining animals harnessed and waiting, while
muffled figures stocked the sled with robes and food and stimulants.

Big George approached through the whirling white, a great squat
figure with fluttering squirrel tails blowing from his parka, and at
his heels there trailed a figure, skin-clad and dainty.

"It's my wife," he explained briefly to Captain. "She won't let me
go alone."

They gravely bade farewell to all, and the little crowd cheered
lustily against the whine of the blizzard as, with cracking whip and
hoarse shouts, they were wrapped in the cloudy winding sheet of snow.

Arctic storms have an even sameness; the intense cold, the heartless
wind which augments tenfold the chill of the temperature, the air
thick and dark with stinging flakes rushing by in an endless cloud.
A drifting, freezing, shifting eternity of snow, driven by a ravening
gale which sweeps the desolate, bald wastes of the Northland.

The little party toiled through the smother till they reached the
"egloos" under the breast of the tall, coast bluffs, where coughing
Eskimos drilled patiently at ivory tusks and gambled the furs from
their backs at stud-horse poker.

To George's inquiries they answered that their largest canoe was the
three-holed bidarka on the cache outside. Owing to the small
circular openings in its deck, this was capable of holding but three
passengers, and Captain said; "We'll have to make two trips, George."

"Two trips, eh?" answered the other. "We'll be doin' well if we last
through one, I'm thinking."

Lashing the unwieldy burden upon the sled, they fought their way
along the coast again till George declared they were opposite the
point where their friends went adrift. They slid their light craft
through the ragged wall of ice hummocks guarding the shore pack, and
dimly saw, in the grey beyond them, a stretch of angry waters mottled
by drifting cakes and floes.

George sp