Under the Great Bear Part 20

So they came, bag and baggage, babies, dogs, and all, and at once set to work constructing snug habitations, in which, with plenty of food and plenty of seal oil, they could live happily and comfortably during the long winter months. These structures were neither large nor elegant. In fact they were only hovels sunk half underground, with low stone walls, supporting roofs of whale ribs, covered thick with earth.

A little later they would be buried beneath warm, shapeless mounds of snow. To most of them outside light and air could only be admitted through the low doorways, but one, more pretentious than the others, was provided with an old window sash, in which the place of missing panes was filled by dried intestines tightly stretched. In every hovel a stone lamp filled with seal oil burned night and day, furnishing light, warmth, and the heat for melting ice into drinking water, boiling tea, drying wet mittens, and doing the family cooking.

Cabot and White were immensely interested in watching the construction of these primitive Labrador homes. They were also amazed at the readiness with which the natives made themselves snugly safe and comfortable, in a place where they had despaired of keeping alive.

Besides watching the Eskimo prepare for the winter and picking up many words of their language, Cabot took daily lessons in snowshoeing and the management of dog teams, in both of which arts White was already an adept.

According to contract, both lads had been provided with complete outfits for Arctic travel, including fur clothing, boots, and sleeping bags. A sledge with a fine team of dogs had also been placed at their disposal, and an intelligent young Eskimo, who could speak some English, was ready to guide them on their southward journey. He was introduced to his future travelling companions as Ildlat-Netschillik, whereupon Cabot remarked:

"That is an elegant name for special occasions, such as might occur once or twice in a lifetime, but seems to me something less ornamental, like 'Jim,' for instance, would be better for everyday use. I wonder if he would mind being called Jim?"

On being asked this question the young Eskimo, grinning broadly, said:

"A' yite. Yim plenty goot," and afterwards he always answered promptly and cheerfully to the name of "Yim."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Yim."]

At length snow fell for several days almost without intermission. Then a fierce wind took it in hand, kneading it, packing it, and stuffing it into every crack and cranny of the landscape until hollows were filled, ridges were nicely rounded, and rocks had disappeared. In the meantime, strong white bridges had been thrown across lake and stream, and the great Labrador highway for winter travel was formally opened to the public.

November was well advanced, and our lads had been prisoners in Locked Harbour for more than two months when this way of escape was opened to them. It had been decided that they should take a single large sledge, having broad runners, and a double team of dogs--ten in all. On this, therefore, was finally lashed a great load of provisions, frozen walrus meat for dog food, sleeping bags, the three all-important cooking utensils of the wilderness--kettle, fry-pan, and teapot--an axe, and Cabot's bag of specimens. With this outfit Yim was to conduct them over the first half of their 400-mile journey, or to Indian Harbour, where, through a letter from the missionary, they expected to procure a fresh team, renew their supply of provisions, and obtain another guide, who should go with them to Battle Harbour.

When the time for starting arrived, the entire population of the new settlement turned out to see them off and help get their heavily laden sledge up the steep ascent from the beach. At the crest of the bluffs the men fired a parting salute from their smooth-bore guns, the women and children uttered shrill cries of farewell, and the missionary gave them his final blessing, Yim cracked his eighteen-foot whiplash like a pistol shot, shouted to his dogs, and the yelping team sprang forward.

Our lads gave a fond backward glance at their loved schooner, so far below them that she looked like a toy boat, and then, with hearts too full for words, they faced the vast white wilderness outspread like a frozen sea before them.

All that day they pushed steadily forward almost without a pause, holding a westerly course to pa.s.s around a deep fiord that penetrated far inland, and might not yet be crossed with safety. Yim ran beside his straining dogs, encouraging the laggards with whip and voice; White led the way and broke the trail, while Cabot brought up the rear and helped the sledge over difficult places.

For several hours they followed the signal line with its fluttering flags, and felt that they were still on familiar ground. At length even these were left behind, and for three hours longer they plodded st.u.r.dily forward, guided only by Yim's unerring instinct. Then the short day came to an end and night descended with a chill breath of bitter winds. Cabot was nearly exhausted, and even White was painfully weary, but both had been buoyed up by a hope that they might reach timber and have abundant firewood for their first camp. Now, when Yim, throwing down his whip and giving his dogs the command to halt, calmly announced that they would make camp where they were, both lads looked at him in dismay.

"We surely can't camp here in the snow without a fire or any kind of shelter!" exclaimed Cabot. "Why, man, we'll be frozen stiff long before morning."

"A' yite. Me fix um. You see," responded Yim, cheerfully.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE COMFORT OF AN ESKIMO LAMP.

In that dreary waste of snow, unrelieved so far as the eye could reach by so much as a single bush, the making of a camp that should contain even the rudiments of comfort seemed as hopeless to White, who had always been accustomed to a timbered country, as it did to Cabot, who knew nothing of real camp life, and had only played at camping in the Adirondacks. Left to their own devices, they would have pa.s.sed a most uncomfortable if not a perilous night, for the mercury stood at many degrees below zero. But they had Yim with them, and he, being perfectly at home amid all that desolation, was determined to enjoy all the home comforts it could be made to yield.

First he marked out a circular s.p.a.ce some twelve feet in diameter, from which he bade his companions excavate the snow with their snowshoes, and throw it out on the windward side. While they were doing this he went a short distance away, and, from a ma.s.s of closely compacted snow, carved out with his knife a number of blocks, as large as could be handled without breaking, to each of which he gave a slight curve.

With time enough Yim could have constructed from such slabs a perfect igloo or snow hut, but the fading daylight was very precious, and he did not consider that the cold was yet sufficiently severe to demand a complete enclosure. So he merely built a low, hood-like structure on the windward side of the s.p.a.ce the others had cleared. One side of this was still further extended by the sledge, relieved of its load and set on edge.

The precious provisions were placed inside the rude shelter, the sleeping bags covered its floor, and, when all was completed, Yim surveyed his work with great satisfaction.

"It is pretty good so far as it goes," admitted. White, dubiously, "but I don't see how we are to get along without at least enough fire to boil a pot of tea, and of course we can't have a fire without wood."

"That's so," agreed Cabot, shivering.

Yim only smiled knowingly as he groped among the miscellaneous articles piled at the back of the hut. From them he finally drew forth a shallow soapstone bowl having one straight side about six inches long.

It was shaped something like a clam sh.e.l.l, and was a specimen of the world-famed Eskimo cooking lamp. He also produced a bladder full of seal oil.

"Good enough!" cried Cabot. "Yim has remembered to bring along his travelling cook stove."

Setting the lamp in the most sheltered corner of the hut, Yim filled it with oil, and then, drawing forth a pouch that hung from his neck, he produced a wick made of sphagnum moss previously dried, rolled, and oiled. This he laid carefully along the straight side of the lamp.

Then, turning to Cabot, he uttered the single word: "Metches."

"Great Scott!" exclaimed the young engineer, "I forgot to bring any.

But of course you must have some, White."

"No, I haven't. Matches were among the things you were to look after, and so I never gave them a thought."

The spirits of the lads, raised to a high pitch of expectation by the sight of Yim's lamp, suddenly sank to zero with the discovery that they had no means for lighting it. Yim, however, only smiled at their dismay. Of course he had long since learned the use of matches, and to appreciate them at their full value; but he also knew how to produce fire without their aid in the simplest manner ever devised by primitive man. It is the friction method of rubbing wood against wood, and, in one form or another, is used all over the world. It was known to the most ancient Egyptians, and is practised to-day by natives of the Amazon valley, dwellers on South Pacific islands, inhabitants of Polar regions, Indians of North America, and the negroes of Central Africa.

These widely scattered peoples use various models of wooden drills, ploughs, or saws. But Yim's method is the simplest of all. When he saw that no matches were forthcoming, he said:

"A' yite. Me fix um." At the same time he produced two pieces of soft wood from some hiding place in his garments. One of these, known as the "spindle," was a stick about two feet long by three-quarters of an inch in diameter and having a rounded point. The other, called the "hearth," was flat, about eighteen inches in length, half an inch thick, and three inches wide. On its upper surface, close to one edge, were several slight cavities, each just large enough to hold the rounded end of the spindle, and from each was cut a narrow slot down the side of the hearth. This slot is an indispensable feature, and without it all efforts to produce fire by wood-friction must fail.

Laying the hearth on the flat side of a sledge runner and kneeling on it to hold it firmly in position, Yim set the rounded end of his spindle in one of its depressions, and holding the upper end between the palms of his hands, began to twirl it rapidly, at the same time exerting all possible downward pressure. As his hands moved towards the lower end of the spindle he dexterously shifted them back to the top, without lifting it or allowing air to get under its lower end.

With the continuation of the twirling process a tiny stream of wood meal, ground off by friction, poured through the slot at the side of the hearth, and acc.u.mulated in a little pile, that all at once began to smoke. In two seconds more it was a glowing coal of fire. Then Yim dropped his spindle, covered the coal with a bit of tinder previously made ready, and blew it into a flame, which he deftly transferred to the wick of his lamp.

At sight of the first spiral of smoke our lads had been filled with amazement. As the coal began to glow they uttered exclamations of delight, and when the actual flame appeared they broke into such enthusiastic cheering as set all the dogs to barking in sympathy.

"It is one of the most wonderful things I ever saw," cried Cabot.

"I've often read of fire being produced by wood friction, and I have tried it lots of times myself, but as I never could raise even a smoke, and never before met any one who could, I decided that it was all a fake got up by story writers."

"I was rather doubtful about it myself," admitted White. "But, I say!

Isn't that a great lamp, and doesn't it make things look cheery?"

White's approval of "Yim's cook stove," as Cabot called it, was well merited, for its five inches of blazing wick yielded as much light and twice the heat of a first-cla.s.s kerosene lamp. Over it Yim had already suspended a kettle full of snow, and now he laid a slab of frozen pork close beside it to be thawed out.

While waiting for these he fed the dogs, who had been watching him with wistful eyes and impatient yelpings. To each he threw a two-pound chunk of frozen walrus meat, and each devoured his portion with such ravenous rapidity that Cabot declared they swallowed them whole.

Half an hour after the lamp was lighted it had converted enough snow into boiling water to provide three steaming cups of tea, and while our lads sipped at these Yim cut slices of thawed pork, laid them in the fry-pan, and holding this over his lamp soon had them sizzling and browning in the most appetising manner. This, with tea and ship biscuit, const.i.tuted their supper.

When Yim no longer needed his lamp for cooking he removed two-thirds of its wick and allowed the flame thus reduced to burn all night. Over it hung a kettle of melting snow, and above this, on a snowshoe, supported by two others, wet mittens and moccasins were slowly but thoroughly dried.

In spite of the hot tea, their fur-lined sleeping bags, and the effective wind-break behind which they were huddled, our lads suffered with cold long before the night was over, and were quite willing to make a start when Yim, after a glance at the stars, announced that daylight was only three hours away. For breakfast they had more scalding tea and a quant.i.ty of hard bread, broken into small bits, soaked in warm water, fried in seal oil, and eaten with sugar. White p.r.o.nounced this fine, but Cabot only ate it under protest, because, as he said, he must fill up with something.

The travel of that day, with its accompaniments of blisters and strained muscles, was much harder than that of the day before, and our weary lads were thankful when, towards its close, they entered a belt of timber that had been in sight for hours.

That night they slept warmly and soundly on luxurious beds of spruce boughs beside a great fire frequently replenished by Yim.

"I tell you what," said Cabot, as, early in the evening, he basked in the heat of this blaze, "there's nothing in all this world so good as that. For my part I consider fire to be the greatest blessing ever conferred upon mankind."

"How about light, air, water, food, and sleep?" asked White.

"Those are necessaries, but fire is a luxury. Not only that, but it is the first of all luxuries and the one upon which nearly all others depend."

When, a little later, Cabot lay so close to the blaze that his sleeping bag caught on fire, and he burned his hands in putting it out, White laughingly asked: