During the night it faired; and the morning was sunny. Wade had become very unwell. He had taken cold from his drenching, and was shivering and feverish by turns. His courage, too, was clean down to zero. He knew we should never see home again, and didn't seem to care whether he lived or not. That is about as bad a way as a fellow can get into ever. I was little better than sick myself; and, while the others went off after eggs and game, I stayed to keep the fire going and take care of Wade. No small stint I had of it too; for he was peevish and touchy as a young badger. I knew he ought to take something hot of the herb-tea sort, and so started off and gathered a dipperful of the tea-plant leaves. Then, getting a lump of ice, I melted it, and made a strong dish of the "tea." Wade was lying under the shelter, face down into his coat-sleeve. Carrying in the steaming dipper, I told him I thought he had better take some of it: it would, I hoped, help his cold, &c.
No: he wouldn't touch it!
I then reasoned a while. This not having any perceptible effect, I next resorted to coaxing.
No: he wouldn't drink the stinking stuff!
Now, no doctor, I take it, likes to have his potions called "stinking stuff." I began to remonstrate; and from that—not being in a very amiable frame of mind—I ere long got mad, and was on the point of pitching into the sufferer, when it occurred to me that for a doctor to be caught thrashing his patient would be a very unbecoming spectacle! So I contented myself with giving him a "setting-up;" calling him, according to the best of my recollections, supported by the subsequent testimony of the patient, an "ungrateful dog," "peep," "nincompoop," et als.: after listening to which for a space, Wade got up and drank the tea. Peace was immediately restored with this act of obedience; and I proceeded to get him to bed. Pulling down the boat, I filled it half up with such of the shrubs and moss as had not been besmirched with the blood of the walrus. Wade then got into it. I made him a pillow of the geese-feathers by piling them into the bow under his head, and spreading over them my pocket-handkerchief. I next had him take off his boots, and set a hot rock from the fire at his feet. What to cover him up with was something of a problem. I managed it by putting on a layer of the moss, and laying the thwarts of the boat over this. Then, feeling somewhat fatigued after my labors, I crept in with him; and, ere long, we both went to sleep. The hunting-party coming back, two or three hours after, laden with eggs and brant geese, awoke me. Wade was sweating profusely beneath the boards and moss. We took care not to wake him till near eight o'clock, evening; when he got up, considerably better.
The next day (July 26) was spent in the manufacture of salt; not the manufacture of it exactly, either, but the extraction of it from sea-water. We were getting perfectly frantic for salt. The fresh food sickened us. I think we should soon have been really ill from the want of it. Filling the hollow in the ledge with the sea-water, we first tried to get fire enough about it to make the water boil. This we found it impossible to do, and so had recourse to a plan suggested by Kit. It was to get eight or ten stones about the size of the tin bumper, and heat them in the fire. When red-hot, these were successively rolled into the water in the hollow, raising great clouds of steam, and soon causing it to boil furiously. Continuing this stone-heating process for three or four hours, we succeeded in boiling away fully half a dozen pailfuls of water. There was then found to be a thin stratum of salt deposited along the bottom of the hollow. How we crowded around it, wetting the ends of our fingers, and licking it up! Eggs were then fried by the dozen, and eaten with a relish that only salt can give. I should add, however, that this appeared to me to be a very poor quality of salt; or else it had other mineral matter mixed with it, giving it a slightly bitter taste.
The quantity obtained at this our first boiling was so small, that we ate it all that night, and with our breakfast next morning.
The next forenoon was passed boiling down a second vatful. Wade and I attended to the salt-making, while the rest of the party went off to the islet next to the west after eggs and game. In the evening we provided ourselves with fresh "shake-downs" of moss and the tea-plant.
The 28th was devoted by Raed, Kit, and Donovan to a trip down to the mainland on the south. Raed wanted to see what sort of a country it was, with a view to our attempt at going down to Nain in case "The Curlew" should not come back. They did not get back till nine in the evening. They had found the hills and mountains along the coast to be mere barren ridges of lichen-clad rock, with moss-beds in the hollows. But from the summit of the high ridge, about two miles in from the shore, they had seen with the glass, to the southward, what seemed to be low thickets of stunted evergreen,—fir or spruce. From this Raed argued that fuel might be obtained by a party travelling through the country; and, from that, went on to picture these thickets to abound with deer and hares.