“But now our minds were wholly changed. ‘We are worse off than ever,’ said the Dean, ‘for this little hope the savage gave us, and the fear, besides, that he has put into us,’—which was true enough.
“Stimulated now by the memory of that hope and the presence of that fear, we prepared to undertake the bold task of rescuing ourselves. The savage had pointed out to us the direction of the place where the ships passed, ‘And now,’ we thought, ‘if we can only reach the land there before the summer comes we shall be all right.’ But if we should not get to the proper place, or if the ships did not come along, then the chances were that we might starve or freeze to death. Nothing daunted, however, by the contemplation of that gloomy side of the picture, we went earnestly to work, and very soon had contrived a plan.
“Of course we must have a sledge, as we were obliged to travel a long distance, and must carry not only food to eat by the way, but blubber for a lamp with which to melt water from the snow, and furs to keep us warm while we slept. Eatum had taught us how to construct a snow hut, so that we felt sure of being able to shelter ourselves from the storms.
“But the sledge was the great difficulty. How should we make a sledge? was the question which most occupied our thoughts, and taxed our ingenuity. Apparently we had nothing to make it of, nor tools to make it with. To fasten together pieces of bone in the manner that Eatum had done, and thus construct a runner, was not possible, as we had no drill to make holes with,—and besides, if we had, the work would have required too long a time for our present necessities. Our purpose was to get away from the island with all possible haste.
“We made a sledge, however, at last, and in a very ingenious way as we thought, though not a particularly good way as we afterwards discovered. First we cut two strips of seal-skin, and sewed them into tubes. Then we filled the tubes with hair, and pieces of meat chopped very fine, and also bits of moss. Then we poured water into the tubes, and flattened them down by stamping upon them. Very soon the whole froze together, solid as a board, and these we soon fashioned into the proper shape for runners. We found no difficulty in fastening the two together with cross-ties of bone, which we lashed firmly to the runners. Thus, in seven days from the time of beginning to work upon it, our sledge was complete.
“Very much rejoiced over this triumph, we put a load on the sledge, and set out to give it a trial. But one runner gave way before we had gone a dozen fathoms, and we were in a state of great perplexity. We resolved now to bundle up everything we needed in a bear-skin, and drag that over the snow after us, so great was our haste to get away. We would drag the bear-skin head-foremost, so that the fur would slip more easily over the snow. But when we had done this, we discovered that, to say nothing of dragging the load, we could not even start it. Our united efforts were wholly unequal to the task of moving it even so much as an inch; and, like Robinson Crusoe with his boat, we had wholly miscalculated the means, thinking only of the end. And so it is sometimes, even with wiser heads than ours.
“We were now in even greater trouble than ever; but being at length fully satisfied of the utter hopelessness of proceeding in this manner, we went back next day to the sledge, and began to work upon it again; all the while looking out for the savages, and expecting them every minute to come and murder us.”