One blanket each
carried about his shoulders. At night they built a fire and crouched
over it till morning. They had a little flour. This they stirred in
warm water and drank. The man showed me eight cups of flour--all they
had, and Pelly, stricken with famine, two hundred miles away. They said,
also, that there was an Indian behind; that they had whacked fair, but
that he could not keep up. I did not believe they had whacked fair, else
would the Indian have kept up. But I could give them no grub. They
strove to steal a dog--the fattest, which was very thin--but I shoved my
pistol in their faces and told them begone. And they went away, like
drunken men, through the Silence toward Pelly.

"I had three dogs now, and one sled, and the dogs were only bones and
hair. When there is little wood, the fire burns low and the cabin grows
cold. So with us. With little grub the frost bites sharp, and our faces
were black and frozen till our own mothers would not have known us. And
our feet were very sore. In the morning, when I hit the trail, I sweated
to keep down the cry when the pain of the snowshoes smote me. Passuk
never opened her lips, but stepped to the fore to break the way. The man
howled.

"The Thirty Mile was swift, and the current ate away the ice from
beneath, and there were many air-holes and cracks, and much open water.
One day we came upon the man, resting, for he had gone ahead, as was his
wont, in the morning. But between us was open water. This he had passed
around by taking to the rim-ice where it was too narrow for a sled. So
we found an ice-bridge. Passuk weighed little, and went first, with a
long pole crosswise in her hands in chance she broke through. But she
was light, and her shoes large, and she passed over. Then she called the
dogs. But they had neither poles nor shoes, and they broke through and
were swept under by the water. I held tight to the sled from behind,
till the traces broke and the dogs went on down under the ice. There was
little meat to them, but I had counted on them for a week's grub, and
they were gone.

"The next morning I divided all the grub, which was little, into three
portions. And I told Long Jeff that he could keep up with us, or not, as
he saw fit; for we were going to travel light and fast. But he raised
his voice and cried over his sore feet and his troubles, and said harsh
things against comradeship. Passuk's feet were sore, and my feet were