Broom gazed stupidly at the still form for a moment, then with a cry like that of a hunted animal he rushed from the scene.
CHAPTER XII.
AN ESKIMO ENCAMPMENT.
Contrast to Delgezie’s fears the wind played no pranks with them that night, but after coquetting around all points of the compass, suddenly died out altogether.
Still it was with a grunt of disgust that he threw back his blankets next morning, for a heavy rime was falling and everything appeared white and cold to his gaze. Glancing up at that celestial clock—the North Guards—and finding its tail pointing well toward the south, he arose and set about building a fire. But the kindlings were coated with rime and he experienced much difficulty in persuading them to ignite. However after much patient coaxing the mass was at last got into a blaze, and, unceremoniously awakening his assistant with a dexterous kick, he proceeded to prepare breakfast. Thus rudely awakened Minnihak reluctantly drew himself from his warm robes—he had no objection to the intense cold, but a decided antipathy to early rising.
Hearing the men astir, Roy arose also and shook his bedding clear of the cloying rime before packing it away in his bag. To take a hasty breakfast, “ice” the com-it-uks, lash the loads, and harness the dogs was the work of fully an hour, for the morning was intensely cold, and everything unpleasantly chilly and icy to the touch; falling on exposed parts of the warm person, the rime at once became damp, then froze, clogging the eyebrows and eyelashes, and any hair on the face, with icy particles. It was one of the coldest mornings of that winter, and the tenacious clinging of the rime accentuated its chill.
Roy and Delgezie completed their disagreeable task of harnessing the dogs as quickly as possible, then jumped into camp to warm their benumbed fingers, while Minnihak followed more leisurely, smiling and unperturbed.
“Ik-ki-mai” (It is very cold), he said laconically.
Roy in his haste to lash the sled had inadvertently touched the head of an axe with his naked hand, thereby “burning” his fingers, and he now stood nursing them with a rueful countenance, making, because of this, a brief pause at the fire. But soon a start was made, and by the time the sun had thrown its cheering rays over the desolate wilderness, the trippers were well on their journey.
Their course for some distance followed the river, then branched off sharply and ran along a little creek, at the mouth of which Minnihak was seen to stop, turn aside, and walk across to a partly built iglo, which, from its appearance, Roy judged to be the one in which Oulybuck had hanged his father and brother, and when his dogs got abreast of it, he stopped them and walked across to view this primitive gallows.
The walls of this iglo apparently remained as they had been first built, but the gruesome paraphernalia was missing, the crossbar and line being probably buried with the defunct Eskimos, and the block of snow from whence they had launched themselves into eternity thrown aside and drifted over. Deep imprints on the snow walls told that death had come only to the suicides after desperate struggles, and two distinct mounds of snow a little to one side and close together clearly marked the suicides’ graves. A fox had been digging at one of them, and the excavations had left the handle of a saw exposed to view; for the belongings of the deceased Eskimos had been buried with their bodies, after the custom of their race.