A DRIVE IN A GALE.
On our homeward journey we camped again at Cairn Point, and made there a long halt, as I desired to get another view, from a loftier position than before. Jensen was fortunate enough to shoot a deer, and our weary and battered dogs were refreshed with it. Thence to the schooner was one of the wildest rides that I remember ever to have made. A terrible gale of wind set upon us, and, with the thermometer at -52°, it carried a sting with it. The drifting snow was battering us at a furious rate; but the dogs, with their heads turned homeward, did their best, and the thirty miles were made in three and a half hours.
CHAPTER XXV.
SENDING FORWARD SUPPLIES.—KALUTUNAH AS A DRIVER.—KALUTUNAH CIVILIZED.—MR. KNORR.—PLAN OF MY PROPOSED JOURNEY.—PREPARING TO SET OUT.—INDUSTRIOUS ESQUIMAU WOMEN.—DEATH AND BURIAL OF KABLUNET.—THE START.
During the next few days the dog-sledges were going and coming between the schooner and Cairn Point continually, carrying to the latter place the stores needed for our summer campaign. The temperature still held very low, and I did not deem it prudent to send out a foot party. I knew by former experience how important it is for a commander to keep inexperienced men under his own eye, for one frozen man will demoralize a dozen, and a frosted foot is as contagious as the small-pox.
KALUTUNAH CIVILIZED.
Kalutunah's team was turned over to Mr. Knorr, and in doing this I gratified both parties and served my own interests. The novelty of serving me, and of traveling with me, had by this time worn off, and I could plainly see that the chief was quite as well satisfied to remain with his wife and babies as to trust himself to the uncertain fortunes of the ice-fields, more especially as his curiosity to see how this man that he called the big chief behaved himself had been fully gratified. The recent journey had convinced him that I was fully entitled to his respect, since I did not freeze, and altogether conducted myself as well as an Esquimau would have done under like circumstances; and this was a great deal in his eyes. It was not difficult to perceive that Kalutunah started with me expecting to take me under his protecting wing; and if he did not have the pleasing satisfaction of seeing me groaning with the cold, at least he should have the opportunity to instruct me how to live and how to travel; but when I began to instruct him, and turned the tables on him, he was much disappointed; and when to this violation of propriety I added the still more unpardonable offense of refusing him a bear-hunt, his enthusiasm oozed out very rapidly; and if he admired the Nalegaksoak the more he desired to follow him the less, particularly as the dangers of the service preponderated over the emoluments. Indeed, the fellow was disposed to avail himself fully of the advantages of his new situation, and I soon made up my mind that he was henceforth a pensioner upon my bounty, so I doubled his riches and made him the happiest Esquimau that ever was seen. My thoroughly energetic, daring and skillful hunter, who prided himself upon the excellence of his equipments and the abundance of his supplies, for once in his life found himself so situated that he was freed from all necessity of giving thought to the morrow. It was truly a novel sensation, and it is not surprising that he should wish to enjoy the short-lived holiday. He was greatly amused,—amused with himself, amused with the Nalemaksoak who had made him so rich and allowed him to be so lazy, and amused with the white man's dress with which he was bedecked, and in which he cut such a sorry figure. His face was never without a full-blown grin. I gave him a looking-glass, and he carried it about with him continually, looking at himself and laughing at his head with a cap on it, and at his reel shirt which dangled beneath an old coat. It was all very fine and very wonderful. "Don't I look pretty?" was the poser which he put to everybody.
KALUTUNAH UNCIVILIZED.
But this pleasing state of mind into which he had been thrown by this new style of costume was doomed to be short-lived. The novelty wore off in a few days. It ceased to amuse him; and he discovered, no doubt, that in gratifying his vanity he was vexing the flesh. One day he appeared on board in his old suit of furs. "What has become of the cap and red shirt and coat?" "Oh! I tumbled into the water, and my wife is drying them!" The truth leaked out afterward that he had gone home, changed the white man's finery for the cold-resisting fox-skins, and had chucked the whole suit among the rocks.
Kalutunah's team fell to Mr. Knorr from sheer necessity, since there was no one else in the ship except Hans who could handle the whip. Knorr, with commendable foresight, had commenced his exercises early in the winter, plainly foreseeing that his chances of accompanying me throughout my northern journey were not likely to be diminished by knowing how to drive dogs. The labor properly devolved upon one of the sailors; but the field was open to all alike; and the young gentleman, finding that official dignity stood in the way of his ambition, with a spirit which I was not slow to appreciate, did not long hesitate in his choice.