Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/265

246 storm that seemed only hugging the earth. For the last nine miles which I made along the west side of the fiord and Peter Force Sound, the mountains would every few minutes show a shaded contour—a ghost-like faintness—by which I was enabled to make my course without the compass. When within two miles of the igloos I came upon our sledge-tracks of the day before, and these I followed carefully while they were visible; but, with all my care, the track was soon lost; and as the land was again closed from view, we should have been in grievous difficulty had not the compass guided me. The risk was great indeed; for in such a storm we might easily have gone out to sea, or the ice of the bay on which we were travelling might have broken up and carried us away. Providentially, we reached the encampment—my fifth, as I called it, which was the same as the third—at 5.10 finding Sharkey on the look-out, anxiously awaiting us, while Koojesse was out in search of me. The Innuits, all through the previous night, had kept my lantern suspended to a pole by the igloo as a beacon light. Hot suppers were quickly prepared for us by the women, and we soon retired to rest.