Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/307

286 red in the face! But the higher up she got, the better was her appearance, and the greater was her usefulness to us night-travellers. At length, about half-past ten, and when we had gone some three miles farther, Kokerjabin brought us to a small island called An-nu-ar-tung, where she expected to find the Innuits. We listened; we strained our eyes for an igloo light, but in vain; not a sound, not a glimmer of anything we had hoped for met our ears or our eyes. Still, we determined to be thoroughly convinced, and accordingly tried to get on shore. This, however, even in daylight, would have been a difficult task where there was so great a rise and fall in the tide as thirty feet, but at night we found it a terrible job. At last it was accomplished; and looking about for the igloos, and meeting with none, it was finally settled that we should have some supper before trying anything more.

Our stock of food consisted of a small piece of "salt-junk" and some few pieces of hard bread, all of which I had brought from the vessel with me; nevertheless, every mouthful we took was delicious to our hungry appetites. But the thirst! how could we quench it? We had nothing by which to make snow-water, and we had vainly searched the rocks around for some. Every particle was firmly locked up in the fingers of zero cold. "Thirst, most thirsty!" we had to say, and, in sooth, to remain thirsty.

The next thing we did was to build an igloo, where, at all events, something like shelter could be obtained, and warmth by clustering together. Four human stoves, besides as many heating, smoking tobacco-pipes, would help to make us passably comfortable; and so we found. Kokerjabin, the master-mason, aided by Sterry, built the igloo out of a snow-bank which faced a ledge of rocks running lengthwise of the island—under the lee of which, fortunately, it was—while I and the Innuit boy went upon the higher part of the land seeking for water. The igloo completed, on lying down we found that it was too limited, and that we should be inconveniently and perhaps injuriously cramped;