“See them huskies Jack? See the way they’ve crawled in on the south side? That means a high wind from the north to-night and I prognosticates a blizzard comin’. I hates to think o’ it but I guess we’d better build a igloo,” was Bill’s advice.
“Not so bad when you can use a dog for a barometer, what say Bill?” remarked his partner.
“Sure, they’re great animules all right. You can use ’em for Christmas presents, a pair o’ suspenders or eat ’em, accordin’ to your needs,” added Bill to his partner’s eulogy on the wide range of usefulness of the husky as an all round convenience.
Now the dogs of the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions are the greatest weather forecasters in the world for when they want to go to sleep they dig a hole out of the snow so that the opening will be to the leeside, that is, to the side opposite that which the wind strikes when it blows up in the night.
The dogs forecasted the direction the wind would blow that night with their usual accuracy and Bill’s acumen of mind in foreseeing the necessity of an igloo was justified, for a blizzard hurled itself down on them from the north, the thermometer dropped to seventy below, the wind raged and tore around like mad, while the sleet beat down upon and around them with mighty fury for four whole days and nights without a let-up.
In the meantime the boys stood it, or rather laid down to it, uncomfortably in their igloo, for it was altogether too small for such a prolonged stay. At that they would have gotten along all right but for their short rations, which, if the blizzard had kept up much longer, would have starved them to death. During all this time the dogs had stayed in their holes without so much as a bite of fish to eat.
When on the morning of the fifth day the boys pulled away the block of snow that closed the opening to their igloo they found they were snowed under, and after a couple of hours of hard work they succeeded in digging their way out through ten feet of snow. Then they called their dogs who were likewise sewed up in the blanket of snow. One by one they dug their way out but they were so hungry they were in a mean humor.
Since they had not had anything to eat for so long a time the boys generously gave them half of their fish rations for the time they were entombed, when they became something like their old selves again. It didn’t take the boys long to hitch up and get started but the going was painfully slow and tedious, though they hoped for better sledding when they struck the tundra that lay beyond.
“All I’m asking is that we run into an Indian village, for as our grub-boxes now stand, we’ll soon be without anything to eat,” said Jack half to himself, as they moved along.
“Funny as how this blizzard couldn’t have held off for a couple of days and given us a chanst to get back to our base,” groused Bill just as though the weather cared anything for them; “but what’s that I spies down yonder in the valley.”