permit its coming directly across to where we were. We watched its
course anxiously. Finally it seemed to be heading toward us, but we
were not certain. Then it disappeared altogether and there was
nothing but blackness and silence where it had been.

"Some one that's been waiting for the tide to turn and he's just going
down the river, where he likely lives," remarked Easton as we sat down
again and relit our pipes. "I began to taste bread and molasses when
I saw that light," he continued, after a few minutes' pause. "It's
just our luck. We're in for a night of it, all right."

We sat smoking silently, resigned to our fate, when all at once there
stepped out of the surrounding darkness into the radius of light cast
by our now dying fire, an old Eskimo with an unlighted lantern in his
hands, and a young fellow of fifteen or sixteen years of age.

"Oksutingyae," * said the Eskimo, and then proceeded to light his
lantern, paying no further attention to us. "How do you do?" said the
boy.

* [Dual form meaning "You two be strong," used by the Eskimos as a
greeting. The singular of the same is Oksunae, and the plural (more
than two) Oksusi]

The Eskimo could understand no English, but the boy, a grandson of
Johm Ford, the Post agent, told us that the Eskimo had seen us strike
the matches to light our pipes and reported the matter at once at the
house. There was not a match at the Post nor within a hundred miles
of it, so far as they knew, so Mr. Ford concluded that some strangers
were stranded on the hill--possibly Eskimos in distress--and he gave