Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/287

268 Sharkey, however, shot and secured one seal which weighed about three hundred pounds, and also killed several brace of ducks. While the hunters were engaged at this work I took my instruments and went upon the hill of an island to have a look around and to triangulate. When at the summit and quietly taking a survey, I heard a deep tiger-like growl. I listened, and glanced quickly in the direction whence it came. I saw nothing, and soon raised my sextant to my eye, when another and another growl assailed my ear. Again I looked around, but could see nothing, though I concluded it must be either a polar bear or a wolf. Therefore, considering my unarmed state, and the distance I had climbed up the mount, away from all assistance, I thought the better part of valour in such a case was to beat a hasty retreat. The distance to the sea-ice was one mile, and thence to where my companions were, another mile. I shall not soon forget that day's adventure. I awaited the fourth growl, and when that came I quickly packed up instruments and started on a run, turning every few moments to see whether I was ahead. In my course was a long drift of snow, and as I was making a rapid transit of this, a spot in it proved treacherously soft, which gave me a fall, and heels over head I went to the bottom of the hill. Fortunately it was the quickest and most direct passage I could make, and, as it happened, no bone or anything else was broken. When I arrived back and told my companions what I had heard, they declared I had had a narrow escape from either hungry wolves or a polar bear. It was 4.30 when we resumed our way across Frobisher Bay. Having got fairly through the passage between the islands on the ice-foot, we turned southerly. We soon saw ahead immense numbers of seals out on the ice. They extended over a large area, and were so numerous that with my glass I could not count them.

Just as we were turning off the ice to an island—J. K. Smith Island, as I named it—on which we had proposed to make our seventeenth encampment, three wolves appeared in