principally ammunition and clothing, while Weatherbee and the Tlinket
pushed ahead on one of those interminable stages over the glacier. And on
the way back, I was caught in fog. It rolled in, layer on layer, while I
felt for the landing; but I managed to find the place and picked up the
trail we had worn packing over the ice. And I lost it; probably in a new
thaw that had opened and glazed over since I left. Anyhow, in a little
while I didn't know where I was. I had given my compass to Weatherbee, and
there was no sun to take bearings from, not a landmark in sight. Nothing
but fog and ice, and it all looked alike. The surface was too hard to take
my impressions, so I wasn't able to follow my own tracks back to the
landing. But I had to keep moving, it was so miserably cold; I hardly let
myself rest at night; and that fog hung on five days. The third evening I
found myself on the water-front, and pretty soon I stumbled on my canoe. I
was down to a mighty small allowance of crackers and cheese then, but I
parcelled it out in rations for three days and started once more along the
shore for Yakutat. The next night I was traveling by a sort of sedge when
I heard ptarmigan. It sounded good to me, and I brought my canoe up and
stepped out. I couldn't see, but I could hear those birds stirring and
cheeping all around. I lay down and lifted my gun ready to take the first
that came between me and the sky." His voice had fallen to an undernote,
and his glance rested an absent moment on the circle of light on the
rafter above an electric lamp. "When it did, and I blazed, the whole flock
rose. I winged two. I had to grope for them in the reeds, but I found
them, and I made a little fire and cooked one of them in a tin pail I
carried in the canoe. But when I had finished that supper and pushed off--
do you know?"--his look returned, moving humorously from face to face--"I
was hungrier than I had been before. And I just paddled back and cooked
the other one."

There was a stir along the table; a sighing breath. Then some one laughed,