We were now on the ice again beyond the neck. Perpendicular, clifflike walls shut us off from retreat to the land and there was not a possibility of shelter anywhere. Previous snows had found no lodgment into banks, and an igloo could not be built. Our throats were parched with thirst, but there was no water to drink and nowhere a stick of wood with which to build a fire to melt snow. The dogs were lying down in harness and crying with distress, and the Eskimos had continually to kick them into renewed efforts. On we trudged, on and endlessly on. We were still far from our goal.
All of us, even the Eskimos, were utterly weary. Finally frequent stops were necessary to rest the poor toiling brutes, and we were glad to take advantage of each opportunity to throw ourselves at full length on the snow-covered ice for a moment’s repose. Sometimes we would walk ahead of the komatik and lie down until it overtook us, frequently falling asleep in the brief interim. Now and again an Eskimo would look into my face and repeat, “Oksunae” (be strong), and I would encourage him in the same way.
Darkness fell thick and black. No signs of land were visible—nothing but the whirling, driving, pitiless snow around us and the ice under our feet. Sometimes one of us would stumble on a hummock and fall, then rise again to resume the mechanical plodding. I wondered sometimes whether we were not going right out to sea and how long it would be before we should drop into open water and be swallowed up. My faculties were too benumbed to care much, and it was just a calculation in which I had no particular but only a passive interest.
The thirst of the snow fields is most agonizing, and can only be likened to the thirst of the desert. The snow around you is tantalizing, for to eat it does not quench the thirst in the slightest; it aggravates it. If I ever longed for water it was then.
Hour after hour passed and the night seemed interminable. But somehow we kept going, and the poor crying brutes kept going. All misery has its ending, however, and ours ended when I least looked for it. Un-expectedly the dogs’ pitiful cries changed to gleeful howls and they visibly increased their efforts. Then Korganuk put his face close to mine and said: “Ramah! Ramah!” and quite suddenly we stopped before the big mission house at Ramah.
CHAPTER XXII
ON THE ATLANTIC ICE