The Eskimo answered this in English as he got up, rather waveringly. “No,” he said; “bimeby want.”
Born of generations inured to famine, no one recovers from it more quickly than the Eskimo, and within half an hour he was able to walk about and take a hand, in a feeble way, in patching up the injured dingey. They found that he was a Point Hope man by birth, and had learned a little English at the mission there. He had come north with some of his tribe a summer or two before, and finding a place to his liking near Point Lay, had settled there with them. He had been out after seal among the floes and lost his kayak, and had drifted on the cake for nine days. A day or so before, he had given himself up for lost, and calmly covered his head with his skin coat, waiting for death, as an Eskimo will. He had taken the boys at first for the ghosts of the ice world, come for him, and had gone to sleep at sight of them. Now he knew them to be men, his friends, and some day he would save their lives as they had his.
All this he explained, bit by bit, partly in brief English, partly in Eskimo which they understood, as the boat was being patched with a bit of canvas tacked over the break in the planking. They had no tacks, but Harry had a many-bladed knife with an awl in it, and they made holes with this and used pegs whittled from a thwart. These they made a trifle long for the awl-holes, and hammered the protruding ends to a fuzzy head. It was not a good job, but it would do.
Harry was eager to start back for the ship at once, but Joe, wiser in the ways of the Arctic, wanted to wait. He knew that in that driving snow it would be almost impossible to reach her unless constantly guided by sound. Without that they might row within a dozen yards of her and not see her. More than one whaleman has lost his ship while wintering in the Arctic, and died in the storm within a few rods of her, never knowing that he was so near safety. So Joe, backed by the Eskimo, judged that they would better wait until they were sure in what direction to go. As a matter of fact, the ship, floe-bound near the shore, had drifted but slowly in the southerly wind, while the cake on which they were had gone northward quite rapidly. Hence when the shots and whistle sounded they heard them only faintly, and could not tell, in the drive of the storm, from what direction they came.
Thus time slipped by and they still clung to their floating cake, a pitiful little ice world in a gray universe of flying snow. They were warmly dressed, but the inaction in the chill wind soon set the white men to shivering. The Eskimo, on the contrary, seemed comfortable in his furs, and regained strength every moment. He noted how cold they were, and, motioning them to his assistance, they turned the boat over, keel to the wind, spread the sail beneath it, and drew part of it up so as to close the opening. With the movable thwarts they blocked the wider apertures, and then, still at the bidding of the Eskimo, heaped the fast gathering snow about it. This gave them a narrow igloo, where they huddled for warmth. From now on the dusky brother they had rescued proceeded to rescue them, and they soon learned to trust his judgment implicitly.
As time passed more snow accumulated and was banked about, until their cave was well fortified and quite comfortable.
Gradually dusk came on, but still the snow fell as thick as ever, and there was no alternative but to remain where they were. Matters did not look very cheerful, and Harry, for one, heartily wished he had never seen the Arctic, or, for that matter, left the pleasant confines of Quincy Point. However, a healthy boy grows hungry at supper time, wherever he is, and he pulled one of the three or four tins of canned meat out of the locker, together with about half the hard-tack.
“Let’s have some supper,” he said; “I’m hungry.”
They divided the meat, and each ate several squares of hard-tack. Joe made shift to boil some water with the little oil stove, and they made tea. The glow of the flame lighted their shelter with cheer and helped to warm it. The drifting snow wrapped it closer, and, in spite of the keen nip of the frost and the icy gale without, they had a sense of warmth and comfort. Joe, however, put out the flame as soon as the tea was done.
“We may need that oil badly before we get back,” he said, “and it won’t do to waste it. No, we’d best sleep if we can till daylight. The storm may break by that time, and we can see better what to do. This ice cake is big enough to hold us safe till the blow is over, and that is the best we can do at present.”