its irregularities are planed smooth, and it slips easily over the
snow and ice.

Finally, all the preparations were completed, and Bob looked forward
in a high state of excited anticipation to the great journey of new
experiences and adventures that lay before him to be crowned by the
joy of his home-coming.

But a thousand miles separated Bob from his home and danger and death
lurked by the way. Human plans and day-dreams are not considered by
the Providence that moulds man's fortune, and it is a blessed thing
that human eyes cannot look into the future.

XIX

AT THE MERCY OF THE WIND

In the starlight of Monday morning Akonuk and Matuk harnessed their
twelve big dogs. Fierce creatures these animals were, scarcely less
wild than the wolves that prowled over the hills behind the Fort, of
which they were the counterpart, and more than once the Eskimos had to
beat them with the butt end of a whip to stop their fighting and bring
them to submission.

The load had already been lashed upon the komatik and the mud on the
runners rubbed over with lukewarm water which had frozen into a thin
glaze of ice that would slip easily over the snow.

Mr. MacPherson gave Bob the package of letters, with a final
injunction not to lose them when at length the dogs were harnessed and
all was ready. Good-byes were said and Bob and his two Eskimo
companions were off.

The snow was packed hard and firm, so that neither the dogs nor the
komatik broke through, and the animals, fresh and eager, started at a
fast pace and maintained an even, steady trot throughout the day.

Occasionally there were hills to climb, and some of these were so
steep that it was necessary for Bob and the Eskimos to haul upon the
traces with the dogs, and now and then they had to lift the komatik
over rocky places, and on one river that they crossed they were forced
to cut in several places a passage around ice hills, where the tide
had piled the ice blocks thirty or forty feet high. But for the most
part the route lay over a rolling country near the coast.

Only at long intervals were trees to be seen, and these were very
small and stunted, and grew in sheltered hollows. At noon they halted
in one of these hollows to build a fire, over which they melted snow
in one of the kettles and made tea, with which they washed down some
hardtack and jerked venison.

That night when they stopped to make their camp, sixty miles lay
behind them. The going had