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Updated: June 26, 2025
Once we crossed an inlet where we had to climb over great blocks of ice that the tide in its force had piled there. Just at dusk the Eskimos halted. We had reached the place where the tupek should have been, but none was there. Afterward I learned that the people whom Potokomik expected to find here had been caught on their way from Whale River by the ice and their boat was crushed.
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.
I took pity on the Eskimos and on Sunday night invited all of them to sleep in our tent, but only Potokomik came, and on Monday morning, when I went out at break of day, I found the other two sleeping under a snowdrift, for the lean-to made of the boat sail had not protected them much. After that they accepted my invitation and joined us in the tent.
Potokomik left his rifle and some cartridges with us, and then with the promise that help should find us ere we had slept three times, we shook hands with our dusky friend upon whose honor and faithfulness our lives now depended, and the three were gone in the face of a blinding snowstorm.
Potokomik was really a remarkable man and proved most faithful to us. It is, in fact, to his faithfulness and control over the others, particularly Kumuk, that Easton and I owe our lives, as will appear later.
He remained our friend. Kumuk did not like the small ration that I dealt out, and if they could get the food out of our possession they would have more for themselves. That night a snow house was built, with the exception of rounding the dome at the top, over which Potokomik spread his blanket; but it was a poor shelter, and not much warmer than the open.
Another consultation was held, and as a result we started on again. After a two hours' march Potokomik halted and the others left us. Easton and I threw ourselves at full length upon the snow and went to sleep on the instant. A rifle shot aroused us, and Potokomik jumped to his feet with the exclamation, "Igloo!"
Finally the Eskimos stopped in a gully by a little patch of spruce brush four or five feet high, and while Iksialook foraged for handfuls of brush that was dry enough to burn, Potokomik and Kumuk cut snow blocks, which they built into a circular wall about three feet high, as a wind-break in which to sleep, and Easton and I broke some green brush to throw upon the snow in this circular wind-break for a bed.
Potokomik promised to send them with dogs to our rescue and then go on with a letter to Job Edmunds, the Hudson's Bay Company's agent at Whale River. This letter to Edmunds I scribbled on a stray bit of paper I found in my pocket, and in it told him of our position, and lack of food and clothing.
Potokomik reached for his and shot the fox, and in a few minutes its disjointed carcass was in our pan with a bit of pork, and we made a substantial breakfast on the half-cooked flesh. That was a weary day. We came upon a large creek in the forenoon and had to ascend its east bank for a long distance to cross it, as the tide had broken the ice below.
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