“No use tryin’ to go back,” the traveler said, “because those whirlwinds had cut gullies across the snow in every direction so that our old trail was no use to us.  We went ahead a bit, as far as we could, but soon realized that there was nothin’ to do but camp right where we were an’ wait for the blizzard to blow over.  Usually two days is enough for the average storm to let up a little, but it was not until the third day that there was any chance of startin’, an’ even then it was almost as bad as could be for travel.  But I had to make a start then.”

“Why?” asked Hamilton, who always wanted to know the details of everything.

“Because we were runnin’ short of dog-feed, an’ you can’t let your dogs die of hunger, for then you can’t get anywhere.  But the blizzard had drifted everything an’ was still driftin’, so that the snow was hard in some places and soft in others; the travelin’ was almost impossible, an’ you couldn’t see twenty yards ahead.  Then while the blizzard had filled the gullies made by the whirlwinds, the snow in them was not packed down as hard as the rest of the surface, an’ dogs an’ sled an’ Indian an’ myself would all go flounderin’ into the drift, an’ it would be a tough pull to get the sled out again.—­That was a hard trip.

“The worst of it came when, without a bit of warnin’, without our even knowin’ where we were, the hard crust of the snow gave way beneath us, an’ the sled, the dogs, and myself fell headlong down a slope an’ into a stream of runnin’ water, the sled upside down, of course.”

“How about the Indian?” asked the boy.

“He saved himself from goin’ into the water, an’ it was a good thing that he did, for he was able to help in pullin’ us out.  But, from one point of view, the accident was a help, for it told the Indian just where we were.  There was only one stream of that size in that neighborhood, an’ until we found it, we were hopelessly lost.  But from that time we knew that the settlement we were headin’ for was straight up the stream, an’ all we had to do was to follow it.  But it was a race for life, in order to get to camp before frozen clothin’ and various frostbites crippled me entirely.”

“But how about the dogs?” queried Hamilton.  “I should think it would be worse for them than for you.”

The Alaskan shook his head.

“A ‘husky’ can stand just about anythin’ in the way of cold,” he said, “an’ my leaders ‘Tussle’ and ‘Bully’ were a couple of wonders.  Only one of the dogs gave out.  Well, we made the camp finally, pretty well done up all round.  The worst of it was, that when we come to unpack the sled—­we did it with an ax because everythin’ was frozen solid—­the census pouch was missin’.  Luckily there was no past work in it,—­only blank schedules, information papers, an’ things of that sort.  So I made up the schedules on odd bits of paper and skins, as I told you, an’ the supervisor copied them on the schedule to send in, an’ that schedule you have in your hand is the copy of those very pieces of skin.”