for the scarce squirrel and the shy ptarmigan. They
tried, with signal lack of success, to catch fish, Indian fashion,
through a hole in the ice.

But, for the most part, as winter darkened round them, they lounged
from morning till night about the big fireplace, and smoked, and
growled, and played cards, and lived as men do, finding out a deal
about each other's characters, something about each other's opinions,
and little or nothing about each other's history.

In the appalling stillness of the long Arctic night, any passer-by was
hailed with enthusiasm, and although the food-supply in the Big Cabin
was plainly going to run short before spring, no traveller--white,
Indian, or Esquimaux--was allowed to go by without being warmed and
fed, and made to tell where he came from and whither he was
bound--questions to tax the sage. Their unfailing hospitality was not
in the least unexpected or unusual, being a virtue practised even by
scoundrels in the great North-west; but it strained the resources of
the little camp, a fourth of whose outfit lay under the Yukon ice.

In the state of lowered vitality to which the poor, ill-cooked food,
the cold and lack of exercise, was slowly reducing them, they talked to
one another less and less as time went on, and more and more--silently
and each against his will--grew hyper-sensitive to the shortcomings and
even to the innocent "ways" of the other fellow.

Not Mac's inertia alone, but his trick of sticking out his jaw became
an offence, his rasping voice a torture. The Boy's occasional
ebullition of spirits was an outrage, the Colonel's mere size
intolerable. O'Flynn's brogue, which had amused them, grew to be just
part of the hardship and barbarism that had overtaken them like an evil
dream, coercing, subduing all the forces of life. Only Kaviak seemed
likely to come unscathed through the ordeal of the winter's captivity;
only he could take the best place at the fire, the best morsel at
dinner, and not stir angry passions; only he dared rouse Mac when the
Nova Scotian fell into one of his bear-with-a-sore-head moods. Kaviak
put a stop to his staring angrily by the hour into the fire, and set
him to whittling out boats and a top, thereby providing occupation for
the morrow, since it was one man's work to break Kaviak of spinning the
one on the table during mealtime, and sailing the other in the
drinking-water bucket at all times when older eyes weren't watching.
The Colonel wrote u