After eating several pieces I thought I would bite
off the outside rind, which, on closer examination, I noticed to be the
short stiff hair of the animal which I had been eating. Presently I
began to feel warm all over my body, despite my frozen clothing--a
condition attributable partly to the peculiar qualities of frozen food,
and partly perhaps to the rasping in my interior, produced by the stiff
walrus hair that I had eaten. It was now nearly dark, but we could see
that the ice-floes were coming together, and crunching up a pudge of
soft ice between them. At last the men started out over this pudge,
stepping quickly from one piece of moving ice to another, until at last
we reached firm footing again, though only by the exercise of
considerable agility and looking sharply to where you went. It was a
great relief to be again upon the shore; but we were still a
considerable distance from the ships, and the Inuits proposed to lie
down on the snow until daylight, as they could not see and did not know
the route. I was afraid to stop moving, and proposed to keep walking in
the direction of the harbor. All who came ashore, therefore, started
with us; but the road at last became so difficult that I felt it
necessary to rest quite often, wearied as I already was by previous
hardships.
The route chosen by our guide was to follow the shore ice around until
the harbor was reached.
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