Leaving for a moment the white men, let us look into the Esquimo huts and see how the terrible condition of things affects them. The men are almost always out hunting, but just now, as we step into Joe's snow dwelling, he is at home. The only light or fire is that which comes from the scanty supply of seal oil. Captain Tyson is trying to write with a pencil in his journal, but he appears cold in his scanty covering of furs, and looks weak and hungry. Joe and Hannah are striving to pass away the weary hours by playing checkers on an old piece of canvas which the captain has marked into squares with his pencil. They are using buttons for men, and seem quite interested in the game. Little Puney is sitting by, wrapped in a musk-ox skin, uttering at intervals a low, plaintive cry for food. It is the most cheerful home "on board" the floe, but surely it is cheerless enough.
We shall not wish to tarry long in the hut of Hans, for besides the unavoidable misery of the place, Mr. and Mrs. Hans are noted for the boarders they keep—about their persons. Under the most favorable circumstances they regard bathing as one of the barbarous customs of civilization. The reader will recollect that the first experience Mrs. Hans had of a personal cleansing was on board Dr. Hayes's vessel, and she then thought it a joke imposed by the white people's religion, too grievous to be borne. On another exploring vessel she and her husband were cruelly required to put off their long-worn garments, wash and put on clean ones, and put the old "in a strong pickle," for an obvious reason. It is not certainly known that they were ever washed at any other times.
Mrs. Hans's hut is not in the most tidy order, but the circumstances must be taken into the account, and also the fact of the sad neglect of her early domestic education. We have just drifted from her native land—or, rather, ice—where she was married, in Dr. Kane's time, it being a runaway match, at least on the part of the husband.
Well, here they are, father, mother, and four children, on a voyage unparalleled in the history of navigation. Mr. and Mrs. Hans do not play any household games; they do not know what to do at home, except to eat, and feed the children, and make and mend skin clothing. We know full well to what sad disadvantage the eating is subjected at the time of our call, and we are authorized to say, to the credit of Mrs. Hans, that as to the making and mending, she has been of real service to the men on this voyage.
The children of Hans cannot fail to attract our attention and sympathy. Augustina, the first-born, usually fat and rugged if not ruddy, is thin and pale now, and sits chewing a bit of dried seal skin, or something of the sort, and trying to get from it a drop of nourishment; her brother, Tobias, has thrown his head into her lap as she sits on the ground. The poor little fellow has been sick, unable to eat even the small allowance of meat given him, and has lived, one hardly knows how, on a little dry bread. Succi, the four-year-old girl, squats on the ground—that is, the canvas-covered ice floor—hugging her fur skin about her, and in a low, moaning tone repeats, "I is so hungry!" Her mother is trying to pick from the lamp, for the children, a few bits of "tried-out" scraps of blubber. Little Charlie's head is just discernible in the fur hood which hangs from the mother's neck at her back. If he gets enough to eat, which we fear is not the case, he is sweetly ignorant of the perils of this, his first trip, in the voyage of life. We shall not want to stay longer in this sad place.
February was a dreadful month on board the floe. The huts were buried under the snow. It was with difficulty that Joe and Hans, almost the entire dependence of the party, could go abroad for game, and when they did they secured a few seals only, very small, and now and then a dovekie, a wee bit of a pensive sea-bird. Norwhal, the sea unicorn, were shot in several instances, but they sunk in every case and were lost. Hunger and fear seemed to possess the men in the large tent, and Joe and Hannah began to be again terrified by the thought that these hunger-mad men would kill and eat them.
Now, will not God appear to help those in so helpless a condition? Yes, his hand has ever been wonderfully apparent in all Arctic perils. On the second of March, just when the dark cloud of these drifting sufferers was never darker, it parted, and a flood of light burst upon their camp. Joe shot an oogjook, belonging to the largest species of seal. He was secured and dragged by all hands to the huts. He measured nine feet, weighed about seven hundred pounds, and contained, by estimation, thirty gallons of oil. There was a shout of seal in the camp! The warm blood was relished like new milk, and drank freely. All eat and slept, and woke to eat again, and hunger departed for the time from the miserable huts it had so long haunted. Joe and Hannah dismissed their horrid visions of cannibalism. God was, the helper of these hungry ones, and they were helped.