Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/285

264 Ugarng, Ebierbing, and Tookoolito; and I was glad to find them well, though the latter two had suffered considerably since I had been with them. Tookoolito informed me that a short time after my departure from Cornelius Grinnell Bay, the Innuit "Jack," while out sealing, had nearly lost his life by falling through the ice into the swiftly-running tide. He only saved himself by catching his chin on to the edge of some firm ice just as the current was sweeping him under, but his gun, powder, and everything else belonging to him was carried away. She also told me that the angeko, whom I have formerly mentioned as being so lazy, had, with his two wives and this same "Jack," nearly perished by being driven out to sea on some ice that broke away. They had gone on a sealing excursion several miles up the coast, northerly and easterly of where I had spent my time during the trip of January and FebruaryFebruary. [sic] All at once the ice on which they were became detached, and away they drifted to sea. In a few days wind and tide set the floe back again, and thus they escaped a terrible death. Ebierbing related to me several incidents of the fearful exposure of his Innuit friends, who had, at various times, been swept away from land on the sea-ice. In the winter of 1859, the Innuit "Sampson," and a party of fifteen others, were out walrus hunting on the ice in Frobisher Bay, when a gale came on, and drove the ice out to sea. Escape was impossible. On and on the ice moved. The despairing Innuits erected an igloo, and then awaited their fate. The cold was so terribly severe that most of the dogs perished. Two survived for some time, but had finally to be eaten as food. Thus for thirty days the Innuits continued, until at length the ice upon which they were floating united to some near the land, and they were enabled to reach an island in the bay. Thence they got upon the main shore, and returned to their families alive, but such skeletons in form that they were hardly recognisable by their friends. One of the party, from weakness, had fallen into the sea, but was taken out again, his garments immediately freezing hard