or blankets was in stock and the new stores were not unpacked when we
left, so we were not able to re-outfit there.

Wednesday night we succeeded in finding shelter, but all day Thursday
were held prisoners by a northerly gale. On Friday we made a new
start, but early in the afternoon were driven to shelter on an island,
where with some difficulty we effected a landing at low tide, and
carried our goods a half mile inland over the slippery rocks above the
reach of rising water. The Eskimos remained with the boat and worked
it in foot by foot with the tide while Easton and I pitched the tent
and hunted up and down on the rocks for bits of driftwood until we had
collected sufficient to last us with economy for a day or two.

That night the real winter came. The light ice that we had
encountered heretofore and the snow which attained a considerable
depth in the recent storms were only the harbingers of the true winter
that comes in this northland with a single blast of the bitter wind
from the ice fields of the Arctic. It comes in a night--almost in an
hour--as it did to us now. Every pool of water on the island was
congealed into a solid mass. A gale of terrific fury nearly carried
our tent away, and only the big bowlders to which it was anchored
saved it. Once we had to shift it farther back upon the rock fields,
out of reach of an exceptionally high tide. For three days the wind
raged, and in those three days the great blocks of northern pack ice
were swept down upon us, and we knew that the _Explorer_ could serve
us no longer. There was no alternative now but to cross the barrens
to Whale River on foot. With deep snow and no snowshoes it was not a
pleasant prospect.

Our hard-tack was gone, and I baked into cakes all of our little stock