Edmunds was greatly relieved to find us safe. He knew exactly what to do. From his komatik box he produced a bottle of port wine and made us each take a small dose of it which he poured into a tin cup. He put a big, warm reindeer-skin koolutuk [the outer garment of deerskin worn by the Eskimos] on each of us and pulled the hoods over our heads. He had warm footwear—in fact, everything that was necessary for our comfort. Then he cut two ample slices of wheat bread from a big loaf, and toasted and buttered them for us. He was very kind and considerate. Edmunds has saved many lives in his day. Every winter he is called upon to go to the rescue of Eskimos who have been caught in the barrens without food, as we were. He had saved Emuk from starvation on one or two occasions.
After a half-hour’s delay we were off again, I on the komatik with Edmunds, and Easton with Emuk. We passed the snow house where Edmunds and his man had spent the previous night. They would have come on in the dark, but they knew Emuk was ahead and would reach us anyway.
Edmunds had a splendid team of dogs, wonderfully trained. The big, wolfish creatures loved him and they feared him. He almost never had to use the long walrus-hide whip. They obeyed him on the instant without hesitation—“Ooisht,” and they pulled in the harness as one; “Aw,” and they stopped. There was a power in his voice that governed them like magic. The wind had packed the snow hard enough on the barrens beyond the Tuktotuk—and the country there was all barren—to bear up the komatik; the dogs were in prime condition and traveled at a fast trot or a gallop, and we made good time. Once Emuk stopped to take a white fox out of a trap. He killed it by pressing his knee on its breast and stifling its heart beats.
Big cakes of ice were piled in high barricades along the rivers where we crossed them, and at these places we had to let the komatik down with care on one side and help the dogs haul it up with much labor on the other; and on the level, through the rough ice hummocks or amongst the rocks, the drivers were kept busy steering to prevent collisions with the obstructions, while the dogs rushed madly ahead, and we, on the komatik, clung on for dear life and watched our legs that they might not get crushed. Once or twice we turned over, but the drivers never lost their hold of the komatik or control of the dogs.
It was dark when we reached Emuk’s skin tupek and were welcomed by a group of Eskimos, men, women and children. Iksialook was of the number, and he was so worn and haggard that I scarcely recognized him. He had seen hardship since our parting. The people were very dirty and very hospitable. They took us into the tupek at once, which was extremely filthy and made insufferably hot by a sheet-iron tent stove. The women wore sealskin trousers and in the long hoods of their adikeys, or upper garments, carried babies whose bright little dusky-hued faces peeped timidly out at us over the mothers’ shoulders. A ptarmigan was boiled and divided between Easton and me, and with that and bread and butter from Edmunds’s box and hot tea we made a splendid supper. After a smoke all around, for the women smoke as well as the men, polar bear and reindeer skins were spread upon spruce boughs, blankets were given us for covering, and we lay down. Eleven of us crowded into the tupek and slept there that night. How all the Eskimos found room I do not know. I was crowded so tightly between one of the fat women on one side and Easton on the other that I could not turn over; but I slept as I had seldom ever slept before.
The next forenoon we crossed the Mukalik River and soon after reached Whale River, big and broad, with blocks of ice surging up and down upon the bosom of the restless tide. The Post is about ten miles from its mouth. We turned northward along its east bank and, in a little while, came to some scattered spruce woods, which Edmunds told me were just below his home. Then at a creek, above which stood the miniature log cabin and small log storehouse comprising the Post buildings, I got off and climbed up through rough ice barricades.
Never in my life have I had such a welcome as I received here. Mrs. Edmunds came out to meet me. She told me that they had been watching for us at the Post all the morning and how glad they were that we were safe, and that we had come to see them, and that we must stay a good long time and rest. For two-score years they had lived in that desolate place and never before had a traveler come to visit them. In all that time the only white people they had ever met were the three or four connected with the Post at Fort Chimo, for the ship never calls at Whale River on her rounds. Edmunds brings the provisions over from Fort Chimo in a little schooner. There are five in the family—Edmunds and his wife, their daughter (a young woman of twenty) and her husband, Sam Ford (a son of John Ford at George River), and Mary’s baby.
A good wash and clean clothing followed by a sumptuous dinner of venison put us on our feet again. I suffered little as a result of the fasting period, but Easton had three or four days of pretty severe colic. This is the usual result of feast after famine, and was to be expected.
And now I learned the details of Potokomik’s journey out. When the three Eskimos left us in the shack they started at once in search of Emuk’s tupek. The storm that raged for two days swept pitilessly across their path, but they never halted, pushing through the deep-ening snow in single file, taking turns at going ahead and breaking the way, until night, and then they stopped. They had no ax and could have no fire, so they built themselves a snow igloo as best they could without the proper implements and it protected them against the drifting snow and piercing wind while they slept. On the second day they shot, with their rifles, seven ptarmigans. These they plucked and ate raw. They saw no more game, and finally became so weak and exhausted they could carry their rifles no farther and left them on the trail. Each night they built a snow house. With increasing weakness their progress was very slow; still they kept going, staggering on and on through the snow. It was only their lifelong habit of facing great odds and enduring great hardships that kept them up. Men less inured to cold and privation would surely have succumbed. They were making their final fight when at last they stumbled into Emuk’s tupek. Kumuk sat down and cried like a child. It was two weeks before any of them was able to do any physical work. They looked like shadows of their former selves when I saw them at Whale River.
It was after dark Sunday night when my letter to Edmunds reached the Post. Earlier in the evening Edmunds and his man had crossed the river, which is here over half a mile in width, and pitched their camp on the opposite shore, preparatory to starting up the river the next morning on a deer hunt, herds having been reported to the northward by Eskimos. Mrs. Edmunds read the letter, and she and Mary were at once all excitement. They lighted a lantern and signaled to the camp on the other side and fired guns until they had a reply. Then, for fear that Edmunds might not understand the urgency of his immediate returns they kept firing at intervals all night, stopping only to pack the komatik box with the clothing and food that Edmunds was to bring to us. Neither of the women slept. With the thought of men starving out in the snow they could not rest. The floating ice in the river and the swift tide made it impossible for a boat to cross in the darkness, but with daylight Edmunds returned, harnessed his dogs, and was off to meet us as has been described.