We then retired to rest. As there was no snow about that was sufficiently hard to cut blocks with which to erect snow houses, the natives placed themselves in semi-reclining positions on their sledges and slept in their traveling clothes. After a few hours they awoke and partook of chopped frozen meat and blubber; two hours later, they made a fire in a tin can, with moss and blubber as fuel, and over this prepared a pot of parboiled meat. A crescent-shaped wall of snow was built to break the wind; in the shelter of this they sat, grinning delightedly, and eating savagely, with much smacking of the lips, the steaming broth and walrus meat. All this I studied with intense interest. I desired on this trip not only to test my tent, but to learn more of the native arts of the Eskimo, knowing that I, on my Polar trip, must, if I would be successful, adapt myself to just such methods of living.
This was my first winter experience of camping out in the night season for this year, and, with only a diet of meal and bacon, I was miserably cold. I was now testing also for the first time the new winter clothing with which I and all my companions were dressed. Our shirts were made of bird skins. Over these were coats of blue fox or caribou skins; our trousers were of bear, our boots of seal, and our stockings of hare skins. This was the usual native winter costume, but under it I had added a suit of underwear.
Retiring again for rest, I left instructions to be called for an early start. It seemed that I had hardly settled comfortably in my sleeping bag when the call for action came.
We hastily partook of tea and biscuits, harnessed our teams and started through the dark. The Eskimos, having eaten their fill of fat and frozen meat, to which I must yet accustom myself, were thoroughly comfortable. I was miserably cold.
By running behind my sledge I produced sufficient bodily heat after awhile to feel comfortable. My face suffered severely from the cutting slant of the winds. We passed the perpendicular walls of Cape Seiper at dawn. We ran along the long, straight coast into Bancroft Bay during the six hours of twilight. The journey was continued to Dallas Bay by a forced march of fifty miles before we halted.
The scene displayed the rare glory of twilight charms as it had the day before, but the snow was deeper, the temperature lower. The wind steadily increased and veered northward. We made several efforts to cross the bay ice, but cracked ice, huge uplifted blocks and deep snows compelled a retreat to the ice-foot.
The ice-foot along Smith Sound is a superb highway, where otherwise sledge travel would be quite impossible along the coast.
Along Dallas Bay we found a great deal of grass-covered land in undulating valleys and on low hills, which offered grazing for caribou and hare. The preceding glimmer of the new moon, which was to rise a few days hence, offered sufficient light to search for game.
We now fed our dogs for the first time since leaving Annoatok. After a liberal drink of snow water, we started to seek our luck in the chase. In the course of an hour my companions returned with four hares which, when dressed, weighed about forty-eight pounds. Two of these were cached. The others were eaten later.
Before dawn of the day-long twilight the wind increased to a full gale. The sky to the north, smoky all night, now blackened as with soot. The wind came with a howl that brought to mind the despairing cries of the dying explorers whose bleached bones were strewn along the shore. The gloomy outline of the coast remained visible for awhile; but soon the air thickened and came weighted with snow that piled up in huge drifts.