Hans led us up the hill-side, over rough rocks and through deep snow-drifts, to his tent. It was pitched about two hundred feet above the level of the sea, in a most inconvenient position for a hunter; but it was his "lookout." Wearily he had watched, year after year, for the hoped-for vessel; but summer after summer passed and the vessel came not, and he still sighed for his southern home and the friends of his youth. His tent was a sorry habitation. It was made after the Esquimau fashion, of seal-skins, and was barely large enough to hold the little family who were grouped about us. I asked Hans if he would go with us. "Yes!" Would he take his wife and baby. "Yes!" Would he go without them. "Yes!" [Sidenote: RESCUE OF HANS.] Having no leisure to examine critically into the state of his mind, and having an impression that the permanent separation of husband and wife is regarded as a painful event, I gave the Esquimau mother the benefit of this conventional suspicion, and brought them both aboard, with their baby and their tent and all their household goods. The old woman and bright-eyed boy cried to be taken along; but I had no further room, and we had to leave them to the care of the remainder of the tribe, who, about twenty in number, had discovered the vessel, and came shouting gleefully over the hill. After distributing to them some useful presents, we pushed off for the schooner. Hans was the only unconcerned person in the party. I subsequently thought that he would have been quite as well pleased had I left his wife and child to the protection of their savage kin; and had I known him as well then as, with good reason, I knew him afterward, I would not have gone out of my way to disturb his barbarous existence. [Illustration] CHAPTER VII. HANS AND HIS FAMILY.--PETOWAK GLACIER.--A SNOW-STORM.--THE ICE-PACK.--ENTERING SMITH'S SOUND.--A SEVERE GALE.--COLLISION WITH ICEBERGS.--ENCOUNTER WITH THE ICE-FIELDS.--RETREAT FROM THE PACK.--AT ANCHOR IN HARTSTENE BAY.--ENTERING WINTER QUARTERS. It was five o'clock in the evening when I reached the schooner. The wind had freshened during our absence; and, unwilling to lose so favorable an opportunity for pushing on, I had hastened on board. Otherwise I should gladly have given some time to an examination of the native village which lies a few miles to the eastward of the cape, on the northern side of a conspicuous bay, near a place called Kíkertait,--"The Place of Islands."