XIX[ToC]
AT THE MERCY OF THE WIND
In the starlight of Monday morning Akonuk and Matuk harnessed their twelve big dogs. Fierce creatures these animals were, scarcely less wild than the wolves that prowled over the hills behind the Fort, of which they were the counterpart, and more than once the Eskimos had to beat them with the butt end of a whip to stop their fighting and bring them to submission.
The load had already been lashed upon the komatik and the mud on the runners rubbed over with lukewarm water which had frozen into a thin glaze of ice that would slip easily over the snow.
Mr. MacPherson gave Bob the package of letters, with a final injunction not to lose them when at length the dogs were harnessed and all was ready. Good-byes were said and Bob and his two Eskimo companions were off.
The snow was packed hard and firm, so that neither the dogs nor the komatik broke through, and the animals, fresh and eager, started at a fast pace and maintained an even, steady trot throughout the day.
Occasionally there were hills to climb, and some of these were so steep that it was necessary for Bob and the Eskimos to haul upon the traces with the dogs, and now and then they had to lift the komatik over rocky places, and on one river that they crossed they were forced to cut in several places a passage around ice hills, where the tide had piled the ice blocks thirty or forty feet high. But for the most part the route lay over a rolling country near the coast.
Only at long intervals were trees to be seen, and these were very small and stunted, and grew in sheltered hollows. At noon they halted in one of these hollows to build a fire, over which they melted snow in one of the kettles and made tea, with which they washed down some hardtack and jerked venison.