ich we encouraged him. 'Me
speakum much bad,' he would say sometimes, which was very true; but so
long as we understood him it made little matter.

"And now it was that we got to find out how he had picked up the few
words such as _me drinkum_, _me eatum_, and so on, that he had used at
first; for he gave us to know that we were not a long way from where
ships came every year, and that some of his people saw the ships when
they passed, and sometimes went aboard of them. 'Ship' was what he meant
by '_Oomeaksuak_', which word he had at first used so often. He had
frequently been aboard of an _Oomeaksuak_, he said.

"Now this was great news for us, and we began at once to devise means of
escape from the island. We made Eatum understand as much of what we
wanted as possible. All this time I must not neglect to mention,
however, that Eatum was of the greatest service to us; for when the
weather was good he would fasten his dogs to the sledge, and all three
of us would go out together on the sea to hunt,--Eatum driving. It was
very lively sport; and sometimes, when the ice was very smooth and the
snow hard, we went very fast, almost as fast as a horse would run, even
with the three of us upon the sledge. The sledge, by the way, I must
tell you, was made out of bits of bones, all cunningly lashed together
with seal-skin thongs. Once we were caught in a severe gale a good way
from home, and had to make a little house to shelter ourselves from it
out of snow; and in this, with our furs on, we managed to sleep quite
comfortably, and remained there about twenty-four hours before the
weather would permit us to go on again.

"While in the snow hut we had a lamp to give us light and warmth; and
this lamp (which was Eatum's) was made like ours, and Eatum made a
spark, and started a flame, and kept it burning just as we had
done,--the tinder being the down of the willow blossom (which he carried
wrapped up in several layers of seal-skin), with moss for wick and the
blubber for fuel. The pot in which he melted snow for water, and cooked
our supper, was made, like ours, of soapstone.

"When the storm broke, we left the snow hut, and set out for the island;
catching two seals by the way, and in the very same manner, too, that
the Dean and I had done long before we ever knew there was such a person
as Eatum in the world. We were much disappointed at not discovering any
bears, and so were the dogs.

"But not many days afterward, the we