body when it should arrive at the
post.

George was to have driven Dr. Hardy and me to Kenemish on January 3d,
but as there was a stiff wind blowing and the thermometer registered 40
degrees below zero, we postponed our departure until the following day.
The morning was clear, and the temperature was 34 below. The dogs,
with a great howling and jumping, had hardly settled down to the slow
trot which with only fair travelling is their habitual gait, when we
observed that the sky was clouding, and in an incredibly short time the
first snowflakes of the gathering storm began to fall. Soon the snow
was so thick that it shut us in as with a curtain, and eventually even
old Aillik, our leader, was lost to view.

"Bear well t' th' east'ard, an' keep free o' th' bad ice; the's sure t'
be bad ice handy t' th' Kenemish," had been Mark Blake's parting
injunction. So George kept well to the eastward as, hour after hour,
we forged our way on through the bending, drifting snow. At length we
came upon land, but what land we did not know. The storm had abated by
this time, and a fresh komatik track was visible, which we proceeded to
follow. On all sides of us ice was piled in heaps as high as a house.
We had been travelling altogether about six hours, and the storm had
ceased, when we came upon a tilt on the shore of a deep bay, and, close
by it, a man making passes with a stick at a large wolf, which,
apparently emboldened by hunger, was jumping and snarling about waiting
for a chance to spring in upon him.

The noise of our approaching komatik caused the wolf to slink off, and
then the man hurried to the tilt, reappeared with a rifle and shot the
beast as it still prowled among the ice hills. He proved to be Uriah
White, a trapper. Not at all excited by his adventure, he welcomed us
to his tilt. In throwing off his mittens to fire his rifle at the
wolf, he had exposed his naked hands to the bitter cold, and they had
been frost-bitten. While thawing out his hands at a safe distance from
the stove, he informed us that he had been "handy 'nuf to he [meaning
the wolf] to see that he were a she."

The condition of my feet had not permitted me to leave the komatik
during our long journey, and I suffered severely from the cold. George
and, alas! Hardy, were also thoroughly chilled, though they had
occasionally exercised themselves by running behind. Uriah prepared
for us some hot tea and hardtack, and gave us our bearings. W