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Here the Esquimaux lives in his skin-tent during the warmer months, and in his snow-hut in winter, existing on the seals which he catches with his harpoon, the whales occasionally cast on shore, and the bears, deer, and smaller animals he entraps. The numerous rivers flowing from the mountain-ridges mostly make their way northward.
After a while that fire went out too and I was left alone with my past. Alone quite alone; for he had never really been with me. The intellectual union counted for nothing now. It had been soul to soul, but never hand in hand, and there were no little things to remember him by. Then there set in a kind of Arctic winter. I crawled into myself as into a snow-hut.
"I have seen the natives build a snow-hut in the course of an hour, and have been as warm as I could wish within it during the hardest frost. They call it an igloo, and they fashion it much after the way the seals make their houses, so that it is well suited to the climate. We may depend on that, as God himself taught the seals.
Long and earnest was the thought bestowed by this little child on the subject ere she ventured to leave her companion alone in the snow-hut.
A detailed description of that five days' journey over the mountains would of itself suffice to fill a book, for it would be a record of continuous adventure and hairbreadth escapes from avalanches that were constantly threatening to overwhelm them; of treacherous snow-bridges that crumbled away beneath their feet; of furious, icy winds that, seeming to be imbued with demoniac intelligence and malignity, always assailed them in some especially perilous situation, and sought to buffet them from their precarious hold; and of long hours of intolerable suffering when, during the hours of darkness, they were compelled to camp on some snow-patch and build themselves a snow-hut as a partial protection from the howling, marrow-piercing, snow-laden gale.
On looking round for a sheltered spot on which to build the snow-hut he observed three objects in the distance which bore a strong resemblance to Eskimo dwellings. Pushing forward eagerly, he soon reached them, and found that they were indeed huts of these children of the ice, but that they were deserted. The disappointment was very great, yet our chief bore up against it manfully.
But I think Sherlock Holmes would have found it a hard-nut to crack if he had been set down blindfold on the Antarctic Barrier, as I was, so to speak, and asked to explain the situation. It was one of those folding American vapour-baths that Hassel sat in. The bathroom, which had looked so spacious and elegant in the fog, reduced itself to a little snow-hut of insignificant appearance.
Frank obeyed almost mechanically, and creeping upon the sled with difficulty, he fell instantly into a profound sleep. Edith's chief anxiety was past now. Harnessing Chimo to the sled as well as she could, she ran on before, and a very few minutes brought them to the snow-hut.
To add to their misfortunes their provisions ran out, and they were obliged to abandon the hut and push forward towards the ship with the utmost speed. Night came on them while they were slowly toiling through the deep drifts that the late gale had raised, and to their horror they found they had wandered out of their way, and were still but a short distance from their snow-hut.
Then Okiok and his party hastily constructed a rude snow-hut to protect them from the storm. Here for two more days and nights they were imprisoned, and much of that time they passed in listening to the pleasant discourse of Hans Egede, as he told the northern natives the wonderful story of redemption through Jesus Christ, or recounted some of his own difficulties in getting out to Greenland.
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