ippers, gazed at us for a moment with frightened curiosity,
and coiled himself for a plunge. At that instant, simultaneously with
the crack of our rifle, he relaxed his long length on the ice, and, at
the very brink of the water, his head fell helpless to one side.

I would have ordered another shot, but no discipline could have
controlled the men. With a wild yell, each vociferating according to his
own impulse, they urged both boats upon the floes. A crowd of hands
seized the seal and bore him up to safer ice. The men seemed half crazy;
I had not realized how much we were reduced by absolute famine. They ran
over the floe crying and laughing and brandishing their knives. It was
not five minutes before every man was sucking his bloody fingers or
mouthing long strips of raw blubber.

Not an ounce of this seal was lost. The intestines found their way into
the soup-kettles without any observances of the preliminary home
processes. The cartilaginous parts of the fore-flippers were cut off in
the _melee_ and passed round to be chewed upon; and even the liver, warm
and raw as it was, bade fair to be eaten before it had seen the pot.
That night, on the large halting floe, to which, in contempt of the
dangers of drifting, we happy men had hauled our boats, two entire
planks of the "Red Eric" were devoted to a grand cooking-fire, and we
enjoyed a rare and savage feast.

This was our last experience of the disagreeable effects of hunger. In
the words of George Stephenson, "The charm was broken, and the dogs were
safe." The dogs I have said little about, for none of us liked to think
of them. The poor creatures Toodla and Whitey had been taken with us as
last resources against starvation. They were, as McGary worded it, "meat
on the hoof," and "able to carry their own fat over the floes." Once,
near Weary Man's Rest, I had been on the point of killing them; but they
had been the leaders of our winter's team, and we could not bear the
sacrifice.

I need not detail our journey any farther. Within a day or two we shot
another seal, and from that time forward had a full supply of food....
Two days after this, a mist had settled down upon the islands which
embayed us, and when it lifted we found ourselves rowing, in lazy time,
under the shadow of Karkamoot. Just then a familiar sound came to us
over the water. We had often listened to the screeching of the gulls or
the bark of the fox and mistaken it for the "Huk" of the Esquimaux,