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Updated: May 6, 2025
The arrangements for supping and spending the night made rapid progress, and, under the influence of fire and animal heat for the dogs were taken in beside them the igloe became comfortably warm. Yet the snow-walls did not melt, or become moist, the intense cold without being sufficient to counteract and protect them from the heat within.
Be that as it may, the snow igloe affords not only security from the inclemency of the weather, but more comfort than either stone or wooden building without fire. The operation requires considerable tact and experience, and is always performed by the men, two being required for it, one outside and the other inside.
Gartok was insensible, and it was a considerable time before he fully recovered consciousness. Then it was found that he could not rise, and that the slightest motion gave him intolerable pain. "He will die!" exclaimed Anteek, with a look of painful anxiety. "Yes, he will die if we do not quickly get him home," said Cheenbuk. "He cannot walk, and he would freeze long before we could make an igloe.
The entrance to the igloe is effected through a winding covered passage, which stands open by day, but is closed up at night by placing slabs of ice at the angle of each bend, and thus the inmates are perfectly secured against the severest cold.
He came back, however, faster than he went, with a look of consternation, for the first object that confronted him on looking out was the enormous head of a Polar bear. To glance round for their firearms was the first impulse, but these had unfortunately been left on the sledge outside. What was to be done? They had nothing but their clasp-knives in the igloe.
Although ignorant of the meaning as well as the uses of almost everything they saw, those natives were quite sufficiently intelligent to guess that the white man's big canoe had been set fast in the ice the previous autumn, and laid up for the winter in this place of safety to serve as a big igloe or hut.
"Mine is Cheenbuk." "They call me Adolay; that, in our language, means the summer-time." "Well, Adolay, I don't know what my name, Cheenbuk, means perhaps it means winter-time. Anyhow, listen to me. If there is any chance of you being killed you must not go back. I will take you to my mother's igloe and you will live with her." "Have you, too, got a mother?" asked Adolay with interest.
The absence of Cheenbuk may have had something to do with her absence, but, as she was seated in Mangivik's igloe moping over the lamp, it is more charitable to suppose that a longing for home sweet home was weighing down her spirits.
"The boys," remarked Anteek; "I know them!" Adolay laughed. "Yes," she said, "I know them too, and they meddle with everything." "Come, man-of-the-woods," said Cheenbuk, "and see my father's igloe. He is hiding inside of it since the spouter made its noise. This is my sister, Nootka, and that," he added, pointing to Mrs Mangivik, who was gradually becoming untransfixed, "is my mother."
"We will camp here," said Cheenbuk, jumping off and stretching himself. "Make the igloe there," he added, pointing to a convenient spot in the lee of a small berg. The whole party went to work, and in a wonderfully short time had constructed one of their snow bee-hives large enough to contain them all.
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