The top gained, a space was quickly selected and cleared, and a simple hut of flat stones begun, while the Captain unpacked his box. It contained a barometer, a maximum and minimum self-registering thermometer, wet and dry bulb, also a black bulb thermometer, a one-eighth-inch rain-gauge, and several other instruments.
“I have another box of similar instruments, Alf, down below,” said the Captain, as he laid them carefully out, “and I hope, by comparing the results obtained up here with those obtained at the level of the sea, to carry home a series of notes which will be of considerable value to science.”
When the Captain had finished laying them out, the Eskimos retired to a little distance, and regarded them for some minutes with anxious expectancy; but, as the strange things did not burst, or go up like sky-rockets, they soon returned with a somewhat disappointed look to their hut-building.
The work was quickly completed, for Eskimos are expert builders in their way, and the instruments had been carefully set up under shelter when the first symptoms of the storm began.
“I hope the sportsmen have returned,” said the Captain, looking gravely round the horizon.
“No doubt they have,” said Alf, preparing to descend the mountain. “Leo is not naturally reckless, and if he were, the cautious Anders would be a drag on him.”
An hour later they regained the Eskimo village, just as Benjy came running, in a state of dripping consternation, from the sea.
Need it be said that an instant and vigorous search was instituted? Not only did a band of the stoutest warriors, headed by Chingatok, set off in a fleet of kayaks, but the Captain and his companions started without delay in the two remaining india-rubber boats, and, flying their kites, despite the risk of doing so in a gale, went away in eager haste over the foaming billows.
After exerting themselves to the uttermost, they failed to discover the slightest trace of the lost boat. The storm passed quickly, and a calm succeeded, enabling them to prosecute the search more effectively with oar and paddle, but with no better result.
Day after day passed, and still no member of the band—Englishman or Eskimo—would relax his efforts, or admit that hope was sinking. But they had to admit it at last, and, after three weeks of unremitting toil, they were compelled to give up in absolute despair. The most sanguine was driven to the terrible conclusion that Leo, Anders, and timid little Oblooria were lost.