CAMPED IN THE OPEN]

We were bound for an igloo forty-five miles from the mission, the only
shelter between Kikitaruk on the peninsula and Kewalik on the mainland,
and we had been warned that the igloo would be easy to miss if it grew
dark as it would be almost indistinguishable from the snow-drifts of the
shore. Some directions from a multitude of counsellors remembered in one
sense by Hans and in another by me, added to our uncertainty as to just
where the igloo lay. The wind increased in force as the evening advanced
and the last time I looked at the thermometer it still registered -38 deg..
The sun set over the sound with another of those curious distortions
which had before proved ominous to us. It was flattened and swollen out
like a pot-bellied Chinese lantern, with a neck to it and an irregular
veining over its surface that completed the resemblance. The wind
increased until the air was full of flying snow and it grew dark, and
still there was no sign of the igloo. Only slowly and with much
difficulty could the trail be followed, and that meant we were soon not
moving fast enough to keep warm in the fierce wind. At last we lost the
trail altogether, and sometimes we found ourselves out on the rough ice
of the sound and sometimes wallowing in a fresh snow-drift on the shore.
I became possessed with the fear that we had passed the igloo. I was
positive that we were told at the mission that we should reach it
_before_ the high bluffs were passed, and we had passed them a long way
and had now but a shallow shelf to mark the coast-line. It is strange
how long that delusion about passing his destination will pursue the
Alaskan traveller. Presently the dogs dropped off a steep bank in the
dark, and only by good fortune we were able to keep the heavy sled from
falling upon them, for they were dead tired and lay where they dropped.
With freezing fingers I unhitched the dogs while Hans held the sled, and
we lowered it safely down. But it was plain that it was dangerous to
proceed. We could not find the trail again and were growing alarmingly
cold. We were "up against it," as they say here, "up against it good and
strong." We had a tent but no means of putting it up, a stove but
nothing to burn in it, a grub box full of food but no way to cook it. So
the first night of coast travel was to show us the full rigour and
inhospitality of the coast and to make us long for the interior again.
Wood can almost always be found there