“I’m afraid we’re in a bad scrape,” he said. “We can’t be sure of the direction, and even if we could, we might pass within a short distance of the ship and not see her. Seems to me there is nothing to do but to wait for the weather to clear up. Then we can tell what we are doing.” The Eskimo nodded his head in approval of this. “Too much cold,” he said. “Too much no see. Wait in igloo long time, maybe five, six sleeps. Then sun come.” “If I only had a compass, so that we could get the general direction, I’d chance it,” said Joe; “but there is no telling how the wind may have changed, and we might be traveling right out to sea. It’s better to wait where we are safe till we can be sure. They’ll be anxious on the ship, but what can we do? No, the Eskimo is right. We’ve got to stay here till we can see the sun, at least.” The bite of the wind warned them to get within their shelter again, and they did so. The Eskimo, however, continued to work on the snow entrance to their cave beneath the drift, and soon had it made into a veritable tunnel, through which they could crawl, but which was long enough to keep out the worst of the cold. Then he enlarged their igloo by pushing out the sail, compacting the snow behind it, till they had quite a little room in which to turn round, though they could barely sit upright there. He almost blocked the far end of his entrance tunnel with snow, and closed the nearer end with the boat’s thwarts. Thus the wind and cold were shut out, and they were surprisingly comfortable, considering that they had no fire. Their eyes became accustomed to the semi-darkness, and they felt themselves quite at home. It was a long day, though they whiled away the time talking with the Eskimo, who was quite recovered from his nine days of starvation. At nightfall there was no change in the weather, and they resigned themselves to a long siege. Neither was there any change the next day, nor the next. Occasionally they went out and plunged through the snow about their igloo for exercise, but the Eskimo warned them not to go but a few steps away from it, for to be lost in the cold and black frost-fog was to meet certain death from exposure. Now and then it snowed again, but they did not care for this, as it drifted higher about their shelter and made it warmer. On the third day a serious matter was forced upon their attention. At breakfast, that morning, Joe divided the last of the meat and hard-tack. Only a little tea stood between them and starvation. The night of the fourth day they were much disturbed by crushing and grinding noises, and got little sleep. Sometimes the ice beneath them seemed to jar as if hit by a tremendous blow. The Eskimo hailed this with delight. “Nagouruk,” he said. “Ice talk. Bimeby get seal.”