Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/92

78 Eskimos and Danes; and seal hunters' kayaks often darted out from the fiords. Two hundred miles above the Arctic Circle they approached their next halt and the last port for the Viborg till its return, the tiny town of Godhaven, from which the Danish Inspector of Northern Greenland governs the lands from the Arctic Circle up the ice-clad coast to where even the temporary snow-hut camps of the migratory Eskimos cease.

Before Godhaven, as a harbinger of battles with the ice soon to come, barriers of grounded bergs blocked the channel. The Laeso, still leading, found a way in; the Viborg followed, and, anchoring beside the trading ship, replenished its gasoline tanks and took the deck load from the Danish ship. There last calls upon the Danish authorities were made; the dogs left there by the men from the Aurora, and other dog teams and sledges, were brought on board with supplies of the Northern Eskimo skin clothing for winter.

At midnight, in bright sunlight, the Viborg bumped out between the icebergs, alone, deep laden and heavy, and steered on up Baffin Bay.