into oakum and mixed it with the fat from the
intestines of my dogs. But, alas, I found that the matches in my box,
which was always chained to me, were soaked to a pulp and quite
useless. Had I been able to make a fire out there at sea, it would
have looked so uncanny that I felt sure that the fishermen friends,
whose tiny light I could just discern twinkling away in the bay, would
see it. The carcasses of my dogs I piled up to make a windbreak, and
at intervals I took off my clothes, wrung them out, swung them in the
wind, and put on first one and then the other inside, hoping that the
heat of my body would thus dry them. My feet gave me the most trouble,
as the moccasins were so easily soaked through in the snow. But I
remembered the way in which the Lapps who tended our reindeer carried
grass with them, to use in their boots in place of dry socks. As soon
as I could sit down I began to unravel the ropes from the dogs'
harnesses, and although by this time my fingers were more or less
frozen, I managed to stuff the oakum into my shoes.

Shortly before I had opened a box containing some old football clothes
which I had not seen for twenty years. I was wearing this costume at
the time; and though my cap, coat, and gloves were gone, as I stood
there in a pair of my old Oxford University running shorts, and red,
yellow, and black Richmond football stockings, and a flannel shirt, I
remembered involuntarily the little dying girl who asked to be dressed
in her Sunday frock so that she might arrive in heaven properly
attired.

Forcing my biggest dog to lie down, I cuddled up close to him, drew
the improvised dogskin rug over me, and proceeded to go to sleep. One
hand being against the dog was warm, but the other was frozen, and
about midnight I woke up shivering enough, so I thought, to shatter my
frail pan to atoms. The moon was just rising, and the wind was
steadily driving me toward the open sea. Suddenly what seemed a
miracle happened, for the wind veered, then dropped away entirely
leaving it flat calm. I turned over and fell asleep again. I was next
awakened by the sudden and persistent thought that I must have a flag,
and accordingly set to work to disarticulate the frozen legs of my
dead dogs. Cold as it was I determined to sacrifice my shirt to top
this rude flagpole as soon as the daylight came. When the legs were at
last tied together with bits of old harness rope, they made the
crookedest flagstaff that it has e