"A white man is more used to putting out energy. After all, natives are lazy, an' a white man on an exploring expedition or a rescue is pushing natives faster than they have ever been used to going."
"He's taking the same trouble himself!" objected the boy.
"Sure, he is. But then, in one way or another, he's pushing all the time. Jarvis told me that the next two or three days were bad. Off Point Romanoff the ice-crush was piled high an' they had to lift the sleds over the hummocks for two days on end. A snowstorm came up in the middle of it, an' I guess it was touch and go until they made Pikmiktallik, nine miles further on. Next day, late in the afternoon, they drove into St. Michael's, havin' covered three hundred and seventy-five miles in twenty-one days, with only one day's rest.
"The story of how Jarvis got teams at St. Michael's and Unalaklik is a yarn all by itself. Anyway, he got 'em, and on January fifth left Unalaklik, by a mountainous trail along the shore. A wild bit of road delayed 'em before they reached Norton's Bay. On the further shore, I guess they had real trouble. Jarvis told me—and the phrase has stuck in my mind ever since—that the ice looked like a cubist picture. I've seen stuff like that, but I never had to travel over it."
"It sounds awful," said Eric.
"It's worse than that," was the reply. "I don't want any of that sort of travel in my dish, thanks. Well, to go on. It was right there that Jarvis' an' Bertholf's trail divided. Orders had been left at Unalaklik for Bertholf to go on an' meet Jarvis at Cape Blossom, on the north side of Kotzebue Sound, with a thousand pounds of provisions."
"How could he catch up with Jarvis with a load like that," queried the boy, "when the first part of the expedition was traveling light?"
"Jarvis had to make a nine-hundred-mile roundabout, clear the way round the Seward Peninsula," explained the whaler.
"What for?"
"To get the reindeer."