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Updated: May 25, 2025
Emuk noticed a hole in the bottom of one of my seal-skin boots. He promptly pulled off his own and made me put them on. He had another though poorer pair for himself. It was a delight to be moving again. We were on the trail before dawn, Emuk with his snowshoes tramping the road ahead of the dogs and Amnatuhinuk driving the team. The temperature must have been at least ten degrees below zero.
Without any preliminaries Emuk pushed right into the shack and, from a bag that he carried, produced some tough dough cakes which he gave us to eat, and each a plug of tobacco to smoke. He was all activity and command, working quickly himself and directing Amnatuhinuk. A candle from his bag was lighted.
Clinging to the eyelashes and faces of the men it gave them a ghostly appearance, our skin clothing was white with it, long icicles weighted our beards, and the sharp atmosphere made it necessary to grasp one's nose frequently to make certain that the member was not freezing. When we stopped for the night our snow house which Emuk and Sam soon had ready seemed really cheerful.
He told us that Potokomik and the others, after suffering great hardships, had reached his tupek near the Mukalik the day before, but I could not understand his language well enough to draw from him any of the details of their trip out. At midnight Emuk made tea again and roused us up to partake of it and eat more dough cakes and beans with seal oil.
The wind had packed the snow hard enough on the barrens beyond the Tuktotuk and the country there was all barren to bear up the komatik; the dogs were in prime condition and traveled at a fast trot or a gallop, and we made good time. Once Emuk stopped to take a white fox out of a trap. He killed it by pressing his knee on its breast and stifling its heart beats.
Sometimes the ice hills are piled so high here by the tide that it takes a day or even two to cut a komatik path through them and cross the river, but fortunately we had very little cutting to do. Not long after dark we coasted down the hill above the Post, and the cheerful lights of Edmunds' cabin were at hand. Here we had to wait two days for Emuk, and in the interim Mrs.
He had saved Emuk from starvation on one or two occasions. After a half-hour's delay we were off again, I on the komatik with Edmunds, and Easton with Emuk. We passed the snow house where Edmunds and his man had spent the previous night. They would have come on in the dark, but they knew Emuk was ahead and would reach us anyway. Edmunds had a splendid team of dogs, wonderfully trained.
Amnatuhinuk was sent for a kettle of water; wood was piled into the stove, and the kettle put over to boil. The stove proved too slow for Emuk and he built a fire outside where tea could be made more quickly, and when it was ready he insisted upon our drinking several cups of it to stimulate us.
So they hurried on as best they could in the hope of rounding the walls and making land before the inevitable break came. Presently Aluktook shouted, "Emuk! Emuk!" the water! the water! Bob and Netseksoak looked, and a ribbon of black water lay between them and the shore. They lashed the dogs and shouted at them until they were hoarse, in a vain effort to urge them on.
We ate some of it but were as temperate as Emuk with his urgings would permit us to be, for I knew the penalty that food exacts after a long fast. A comfortable bed of boughs and blankets was spread for us, and we were made to lie down. Emuk, on more than one occasion, bad been in a similar position to ours and others had come to his aid, and he wanted to pay the debt he felt he owed to humanity.
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