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WINTER ON WETALLTOK’S ISLANDS 63
old women catch in the ponds near by, is all the food they have.” But they all forgot their troubles in their delight at seeing us. Wetalltok and they, with one of my flickering candles and the kablunak’s good tea twice boiled between them, yarned half the night through.
For two days we crawled over the mouths of deep bays and in-draughts of the island’s south coast. Valueless days for reconnaissance, however, for impenetrable drift still drove through the air.
The glimpse of showers of sparks which a chimney vomited to the gale told us that at last we were home. In a moment more I was standing before the crackling stove, rubbing cheeks, ears, and nose, which felt as if they were made of parchment and burning warm.
Until midnight, to the tune of the drift lashing the cabin walls and the wailing of the wind among the eaves, we talked. “ ’Tis the land of the gales, sir,” said Salty Bill. “In the last nine days you has been gone but one day come clear. In the cracker last night, rifle shots woke me. ’Twas the big provision tent strippin’ to pieces. An’ these winds makes it hard for the huskies, sir. Every time there is a knockin’ on the door I knows that one of them is on the other side an’ with ‘kopunga’ (hungry), on his lips. They says there is no seals, save out in the rough ice, an’ they’re not venturin’ there now for fear of bein’ swept to sea. ’Tis the rare salmon or two what pulls them through, sir, an’ what little grub I has been givin’ ’em.
“But we’ve got to close down on dolin’ out more grub, for ’tis meltin’ away. I have to ration Wetalltok’s family in the hut now, for the huskies has been hangin’ around an’