within a few miles, if it be not
immediately at hand, and no one properly appreciates the hospitality of
a clump of spruce-trees until he has spent a night of storm lying out on
this barren coast. We turned the dogs loose and threw them a fish
apiece, unlashed the sled, and got out our bedding. I had been sleeping
in robes, Hans in a shedding caribou-hide sleeping-bag that was my pet
aversion. When he crawled out in the morning he was so covered with hair
that he looked like a caribou, and the miserable hairs were always
getting into the food. We fished them out of the coffee, pulled them out
of the butter, and picked them out of the bread. But now in that
sleeping-bag he had an enormous advantage. We lay side by side on the
snow in the lee of the sled, and, tuck myself up with blanket and robe
as I would, it was impossible to keep the swirling snow from coming in.
I called the dogs to me and made them lie on my feet and up against my
side, and so long as they lay still I could get a little warmth, but
whenever they rose and left me I grew numb again. But Hans in his
sleeping-bag was snoring. The bag is the only bedding on the coast.
Added to the physical discomfort of that sleepless, shivery night was
some mental uneasiness. There was no telling to what height the storm
might rise, nor how long it might continue. Sometimes travellers
overtaken in this way on the coast have to lie in their sleeping-bags
for three days and nights before they can resume their journey. The only
interest the night held was the thought that came to me that as nearly
as I could tell we camped exactly on the Arctic Circle. The long night
dragged its slow length to the dawn at last and the wind moderated a
little at the same time, so with the first streak in the east I awoke
Hans, we gathered our poor dogs together, rolled up the snow-incrusted
bedding, and resumed our journey. Two miles farther on was the igloo!
Our calls awoke some one and we were bidden to enter. Descending a
ladder and crawling through a dark passage we came in to the grateful
warmth and shelter. The chamber was crowded with sleeping Esquimaux and
reeked with seal oil and fish, but Hans said it "looked good and smelled
good to him," and so it did to me also. One has to lie out on that coast
in a storm to appreciate the value of mere shelter. We went at once to
cooking, for we had eaten nothing but a doughnut or two in twenty-four
hours, and surely never meal was more relished