We spoke to him in English, which he
seemed to understand, but replied in Eskimo, which we were helpless
to make anything of, and after a vain struggle for the much desired
news as to the ship, we left him and proceeded on our way.
I sat thinking desperately of the Eskimo, of the way he had
received us and its portent. There could be only one explanation.
I had no heart now for the competition as to who should first sight
the post. Yet how we hope even when there is nothing left to us
but the absence of certainty! I could not quite give up yet.
Suddenly George exclaimed, "There it is." Somehow he seemed nearly
always to see things first.
There it was deep in a cove, on the right bank of the river, a
little group of tiny buildings nestling in at the foot of a
mountain of solid rock. It seemed almost microscopic in the midst
of such surroundings. The tide was low and a great, boulder-
strewn, mud flat stretched from side to side of the cove. Down
from the hills to the east flowed a little stream winding its way
through a tortuous channel as it passed out to the river. We
turned into it and followed it up, passing between high mud-banks
which obscured the post till we reached a bend where the channel
bore away to the farther side of the cove.
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