Thus they planned their life anew, and went leisurely about their preparations. The Eskimo wished to leave them for a time. His family were at the village at Point Lay, and he would see them again. He would come back, perhaps bring his friends with him, and they would build another village ashore, so that he might be near his white brothers. The boys thought well of this. The friendly Eskimos might be of great help to them, and already there was in Joe’s mind a half-formed plan in which they were to be partners. So, loading him down with such provisions as he could best carry, a rifle, and abundant ammunition, to his great delight, they bade him good-by, and he started bravely through the snow alongshore. They had no fear for his safety. He would burrow deep in the drifts at night or in case of severe weather, and reach the village safe and sound.
As if for his encouragement and their own, there followed several days of halcyon weather. It was calm and the sun shone brightly; and though the temperature remained below freezing and the thermometer went below zero at night, the air was so dry that it did not seem nearly as cold as it was. Yet they knew they were soon to face deadly cold, when the mercury would drop to fifty below and fierce gales sweep over them for weeks, and they must prepare for it. The position of the ship they could not change, but it seemed reasonably safe. It was well behind the headland, in shallow water; aground, as they soon discovered. The shore ice would form thick about it, and it could not be touched by the moving pack, which would grind back and forth all winter half a mile to seaward. Their next care was to decide in what part of the ship they could live most comfortably. The galley was large enough; it had the range, on which they could best cook, and there were two bunks in it which the Chinese steward and his assistant had occupied. No one is cleaner than a cleanly Chinaman, and these bunks bore inspection. They might fumigate them and bring up their own bedding and supplies, and it was by all odds the most convenient place. For all this, Joe shook his head.
“It won’t do, Harry,” he said; “the place will be too cold. It is on deck; and when the thermometer gets way down and the gales blow for a month steady, we shall surely freeze to death.”
“I suppose so,” said Harry doubtfully; “but it is low amidships here between the bulwarks. If we could only build a double house right around it, the air space between the two would be a great protection,—and it is so handy. Tell you what, there’s some spare boards and stuff down in the main hold. Couldn’t we do it with them?”
“Couldn’t make it tight enough,” replied Joe. “The wind would shoot through and get at us. If it was buried deep in snow—but the snow would blow away in the wind.” He pondered a moment, and shook his head.
“What’s the matter with ice, then?” answered Harry. “We’ve got all the ice we want, right handy.”
Joe sprang to his feet with a laugh. “I believe you’ve got it, this time,” he said. “We’ll make a regular Eskimo igloo all around it with ice blocks, same as we used to read about in the schoolbooks. We’ll chink them with snow and pour water on, and when it freezes we’ll be snug as need be.”
They went immediately to work while the weather favored them. From the floes alongside they cut cubical blocks which they hauled aboard with a whip rigged to the main yard. These they piled one above another, about three feet from the galley sides. A second row was then set up a foot outside these, and the space between filled with snow. Thus they had two ice walls with a free air space next the building. Spare spars placed across this served for rafters, and they covered these with ice cakes also. For cement, snow with water poured on was excellent, and at the end of three days their protecting igloo was nearly finished. It filled the space amidships from bulwark to bulwark, and the two architects were very proud of their creation.
“When you are in Rome,” said Harry, “you must do as the Romans do,” and in this he had solved the real secret of successful winter life in the Arctic. Through a thousand generations stern necessity has taught certain things to the Eskimos, and the explorers who most nearly follow their methods are the ones who winter in safety and with least loss of life and comfort.
Still in imitation of the ice-dwellers of the far north, they made the only entrance to this big igloo through a low tunnel of ice cakes, well chinked and mortared with snow and water, and with a deerskin doorway that dropped curtainwise and could be fastened tight. Had Sir Christopher Wren been viewing the completion of St. Paul’s Cathedral, he could have done so with no greater thrill of pride than did these two beginners in Arctic life their rough ice shelter from the cold to come.