Then all at once there was an extra big wave and a puff of wind, and suddenly she gave a sort of groan and slid free of the rocks. After twenty-five hours we were off! We sure were glad.
Dad, Carl and myself went ashore to get the stores in order in case it rained, while the Morrissey was taken around to leeward some place where they could care for her better and see how things were. She seemed to be leaking a lot, and the plan was, in case of the water getting away from the pumps, to beach her.
When the Eskimos Came to Shipwreck Camp on Northumberland Island.
We turned in right away, at about half-past two, I suppose. And when we woke up [[82]]it was two in the afternoon! We were pretty tired, I reckon. And then, too, Carl had been quite sick and had had a pretty hard time to keep going at all.
The Morrissey had disappeared. Of course we didn’t have any idea where she was, but there was nothing to do but wait and fix things up as best we could. The next day, in the fog Carl and Dad went out in the motor launch to try to locate the crowd, but they did not find the vessel.
So we built a sort of house, the craziest house you ever thought of. Robinson Crusoe never saw a funnier one. It had three walls, all made of food, mostly, with a big sail pulled over for a roof and some tarps to help out. The strongest wall, where the wind blew from, was built of flour sacks laid up on boxes of tinned vegetables. There were bags of potatoes, crates of onions, barrels, dunnage bags, hams and bacons in those walls. Anyway, we felt we had plenty to eat for quite a time. [[83]]We were especially glad to have a fine lot of specially made Armour pemmican, presented by Dad’s friend, Herman Nichols.
We had two big bear skins and these we put on the damp ground with a tarp for a sort of floor. With a primus stove, which works with kerosene, we were quite comfortable even though the wind did blow the sails nearly off the roof. We weighted them down with big rocks, and tied heavy hams that Mr. Swift had given us by ropes at the sides.
I got quite sick and had to keep in my sleeping bag about the whole time we were at “Shipwreck Camp.” It was pretty cold with no fire at all to give heat, but we got along first rate. Dad explained that by that time almost surely word would have gotten through from our wireless that the vessel was off the rocks. The trouble was that the water, at the time of the accident, put our wireless out of commission. It took Ed Manley a couple of days to get it going right again. [[84]]
The third day about noon, when Carl was cooking up some tea on the primus, he glanced out of the door of our hut and saw four Eskimos coming toward us a long way off on the side of the mountain. As they got nearer we could see they all were carrying big packs.