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No, not sixty! It was me killed the bear, an' we're goin' back to the schooner for a sled. I stayed behind to bleed the brute. All of a sudden, like it always hits you, snow-blindness gits me, an' I shouts to Honest Simms. I'm blind, with my eyeballs on fire, an' the fire burnin' back inter my brain. "Along comes a Point Arrow blister.
My eyes were troubling me a good deal; it was snow-blindness, but, as I had never heard of it, I was frightened, not knowing what to think. I could see the horses standing in a bunch in the open square between the depot and town, but the men were nowhere in sight, and I doubted not they were hard at work on the safe.
Niphablepsia, they call snow-blindness. I'll bet you never heard of it. Yo're only a woman-conning dope-shooter! Else you'd have known that niphablepsia ain't permanent! I've bin' gettin' my sight back ever sence I left Seattle. An' now, damn you for a moldy hearted, slimy souled fakir, stand up an' say yo're my equal!"
I had a bad attack of snow-blindness and had to use cocaine. Hayward also had a bad time. I was laid up and had to keep my eyes bandaged for three days. Hayward, too." The two men were about again on November 24, and the party started south on its third journey to the Bluff on the 25th. Mackintosh was some distance ahead, but the two parties met on the 28th and had some discussion as to plans.
Hard and dangerous climbs, killing work, considerable hardship and discomfort had at length their reward. I could now take a rest. The day was young, and I contemplated with something like rapture a return to camp, and a good puttery day skinning out that goat. In addition I was suffering now from a splitting headache, the effects of incipient snow-blindness, and was generally pretty wobbly.
"What follows is very sad; it is touchingly told in the journal, and I will read the account as it is there given: 'The atmosphere now became so thick, that, had we not been troubled with snow-blindness, we could not have seen more than a few yards, and could not possibly have made our way in an unknown country.
They tramped all that day, shaping their course to take them out of the valley on a side well away from where the hostile natives lived. At night they made rude shelters of snow and blocks of ice and ate cold victuals. The second day it grew colder, and they were slightly affected by snow-blindness, for they had lost their dark glasses in the cave.
Apart from partial snow-blindness, which fell at intervals upon the Colonel, the tiredness of the eyes was like a special sickness upon them both. For many hours together they never raised their lids, looking out through slits, cat-like, on the world. They had not spoken to each other for many days or was it only hours? when the Colonel, looking at the Boy, said: "You've got to have a face-guard.
He turned to the Hudson's Bay agent. "You ought to know something about the matter. On the whole, the Hudson's Bay treat the Indians well; there was a starving lad you picked up suffering from snow-blindness near Jack-pine river and sent back safely to his tribe." "That's so, but I can't tell how you knew. I don't remember having talked about the thing; and my clerk has never left the factory.
Day after day they trudged on, employed for two hours each evening, before they could take their food or go to rest, in building their snow huts, exposed to biting winds, to snow and sleet, and often to dense fogs. On one occasion one man alone of a whole party escaped being struck by snow-blindness; and he had to lead them with their packs, and to guide them back to the vessel.
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