Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/264

Rh deposit under piles of ice was a work of time. Brown was anxious to proceed without the delay requisite to make the cache. He made known his determination to proceed alone. The two Innuits, who foresaw the dangers to which Brown was about to expose himself, advised that he should wait for them. All that these experienced, storm and cold proof men of the North could say in warning him, did not suffice to cool the ardent desire of Brown to join as early as possible his cheer companions at the George Henry. "Seeing that Brown was about to take his departure, Koojesse and Charley persuaded him to take along one of the dogs, that it might guide him in the direct route to the ship. Koojesse disengaging the single trace from the peto, the same was passed to Brown's hand. Thus he had a guide, a leader in harness, whose instinct was truer than that of any man, with all his boasted intelligence. But this dog Brown exchanged for a younger one unused to the route. With heart bounding with hopeful throbbings that he would soon be among his home companions—that he would soon be participating in the longed-for food of civilization (for which he had acquired a hundred-fold stronger desire than he ever had before, in the course of his brief stay among the Innuits, whose almost sole living is fresh animal food), Brown started on, travelling with vigorous step the rough ice-road before him. Long before the safe ice-covering had been made over the meat deposit, Brown was out of sight of Koojesse and Charley.

"A few minutes after twelve o'clock that night (Saturday) I retired. A little later, I heard first the cry of the dogs; then the loud, peculiar, and unmistakable voice of the Innuit dog-driver; and then the musical sledge, whose glassy bone-shoeing rung to the music of the snows.

"Previous to my turning in, all hands had retired. No one was up to learn the news from Frobisher Bay settlements.

"The sledge was driven up alongside of the George Henry; the dogs were quickly unharnessed; the small portion of the