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This argument seemed unanswerable. At all events the old man did not answer it, but sat frowning at the cooking-lamp under the influence of intense thought. After a prolonged meditation during the course of which father and son each consumed the tit-bits of a walrus rib and a seal's flipper Chingatok remarked that the white men were totally beyond his comprehension.
The sled carried one day's provisions, a couple of walrus harpoons, with a sufficient quantity of rope, four muskets, with the requisite ammunition, an Esquimaux cooking-lamp, two stout spears, two tarpaulins to spread on the snow, and four blanket sleeping-bags. These last were six feet long, and just wide enough for a man to crawl into at night, feet first.
When the Eskimo women, as before related, made up their minds to discard the cooking-lamp and indulge in the luxury of a wood fire, they sent one of their number into the bush to gather sticks. The one selected for this duty was Rinka, she being active and willing, besides being intelligent, which last was a matter of importance in one totally unaccustomed to traversing the pathless woods.
It stretched away before him, seamed by fissures and serrated ridges here and there, for a few hundred yards, and then was lost in the snow. As he gazed at it he shrank from the prospect of the journey through the frozen desolation. With a shiver he crawled back into the tent where his two companions were crouching beside the cooking-lamp.
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