They overhauled their stores, and found they possessed two guns, some cartridges, a small hatchet, and two knives. With the hatchet, after considerable labour, they cut through the piece of drift-wood, and rejoiced in the possession of a suitable ridge-pole for the centre of the roof. Stones were collected and built into a low wall, within which all their property, except the guns, kayaks, and knives, was placed. Then, with the unstored articles, they set out along the coast and the floating ice to seek the wherewithal to complete the house. Walrus was the first essential, for the hide would afford a covering for the roof, the blubber would furnish fuel for the stove, and the meat would be useful as food. They spied two lying at the edge of a piece of ice, and approaching with the utmost caution, succeeded in shooting both. Their weight, however, as they fell over, caused them to slide from the ice, and they were in the water before the men could reach them. They secured the carcases, so as to prevent them from either sinking or drifting away, and essayed to haul them up on to the ice again so as to remove the hides and blubber. But the combined strength of the two men was insufficient to pull one of the huge carcases up on to the ice again, and they were compelled to strip the skin and blubber off as the walrus lay in the water. This necessitated their lying upon the floating carcases, and by the time the operation was completed, their already travel-stained clothing was rendered still more uncomfortable by being saturated with blood and fat. Returning to the camp with their walrus hides and blubber, they explored the ridge lying behind the spot, and were fortunate in finding some moss, which they carefully gathered and carried away to assist in the building of the hut. The walls they had made of the stones allowed for an internal space of about ten feet long by not quite six feet wide. The crevices between the stones they filled in with moss and gravel, and then stretching the walrus hides over the ridge-pole, they weighted them down with more stones. Over all of it they heaped snow and ice, and in order to avoid suffocation by the smoke of their blubber cooking stove, they constructed an ice-chimney, which, however, did not always carry off the smoke, while it frequently thawed at the base, and made the interior very draughty. Their guns, _ski_, and other articles and stores, they placed inside the hut, leaving the kayaks outside; and when everything was stored conveniently, they built a wall as a screen to keep the wind from out of the door, and hung a curtain of skins across the doorway. The floor of the hut was composed of stones which no ingenuity of theirs could render smooth or even, and upon it their sleeping-bag, the fur of which was almost worn entirely away, was stretched.