grub all gone. Come back."

Pete did not sing that day, and he did not smoke. He was very sad and
quiet.

We spent the day in assorting and dividing the outfit, the men making
a cache of everything that they would not need until their return,
that we might not be impeded in our progress to Michikamau. They
would get their things on their way back. Eight days, Pete said,
would see them from this point to the cache we had made on the
Nascaupee, and only eight days' rations would they accept for the
journey. They were more than liberal. Richards insisted that I take
a new Pontiac shirt that he had reserved for the cold weather, and
Pete gave me a new pair of larigans. They deprived themselves that we
might be comfortable. Easton and I were to have the tent, the others
would use the tarpaulin for a wigwam shelter; each party would have
two axes, and the other things were divided as best we could.
Richards presented us with a package that we were not to open until
the sixteenth of September--his birthday. It was a special treat of
some kind.

Some whitefish, suckers and one big pike were taken out of the net,
which was also left for them to pick up upon their return. A school
of large pike had torn great holes in it, but it was still useful.

We were a sorrowful group that gathered around the fire that night.
The evening was raw. A cold north wind soughed wearily through the
fir tops. Black patches of clouds cast a gloom over everything, and
there was a vast indefiniteness to the dark spruce forest around us.
I took a flashlight picture of the men around the fire. Then we sat