d, which, being more exposed to the sun's rays, was now
free from snow.

They had not been encamped here more than three days when an event
occurred which threw the camp into deep grief for a time. This was the
loss of their great hunter, Annatock, the husband of Kaga. One of those
tremendous north-west gales, which now and then visit the arctic seas
and lands with such devastating fury, had set in while Annatock was out
on the ice-floe in search of seals. Many of his comrades had started
with him that day, but being a bold man, he had pushed beyond them all.
When the gale came on the Esquimau hunters prepared to return home as
fast as possible, fearing that the decaying ice might break up and drift
away with them out to sea. Before starting they were alarmed to find
that the seaward ice was actually in motion. It was on this ice that
Annatock was employed; and his countrymen would fain have gone to warn
him of his danger, but a gap of thirty feet already separated the floe
from the main ice, and although they could perceive their friend in the
far distance, busily employed on the ice, they could not make their
voices heard. As the gale increased the floe drifted faster out to sea,
and Annatock was observed running anxiously towards the land; but before
he reached the edge of the ice-raft on which he stood, the increasing
distance and the drifting clouds of snow hid him from view. Then his
companions, fearful for their own safety, hastened back to the camp with
the sad news.

At first Kaga seemed quite inconsolable, and Edith exerted herself as a
comforter without success; but as time wore on the poor woman's grief
abated, and hope began to revive within her bosom. She recollected that
the event which had befallen her husband had befallen some of her
friends before in exactly similar circumstances, and that, although on
many occasions the result had been fatal, there were not a few instances
in which the lost ones had been driven on their ice-raft to distant
parts of the shore, and after months, sometimes years, of hardship and
suffering, had returned to their families and homes.

Still this hope was at best a poor one. For the few instances there
were of return from such dangers, there were dozens in which the poor
Esquimaux were never heard of more; and the heart of the woman sank
within her as she thought of the terrible night on which her husband was
lost, and the great, stormy, ice-laden sea, over whose