At the foot of the hill below the house, Mrs. Ford stood waiting.  Her eyes shone like stars as she took my hand and said, “You are very welcome, Mrs. Hubbard.  Yours is the first white woman’s face I have seen for two years.”  We went on up the hill to the house.  I do not remember what we talked about, I only remember Mrs. Ford’s eyes, which were very blue and very beautiful now in her excitement.  And when we reached the little piazza and I turned to look back, there were the men sitting quietly in the canoes.  The Eskimo had drawn canoes, men and outfit across the mud to where a little stream slipped down over a gravelly bed, which offered firmer footing, and were now coming in single file towards the post each with a bag over his shoulder.

Why were the men sitting there?  Why did they not come too?

Suddenly I realised that with our arrival at the post our positions were reversed.  They were my charges now.  They had completed their task and what a great thing they had done for me.  They had brought me safely, triumphantly on my long journey, and not a hair of my head had been harmed.  They had done it too with an innate courtesy and gentleness that was beautiful, and I had left them without a word.  With a dull feeling of helplessness and limitation I thought of how differently another would have done.  No matter how I tried, I could never be so generous and self-forgetful as he.  In the hour of disappointment and loneliness, even in the hour of death, he had taken thought so generously for his companions.  I, in the hour of my triumph, had forgotten mine.  We were like Light and Darkness and with the light gone how deep was the darkness.  Once I had thought I stood up beside him, but in what a school had I learned that I only reached to his feet.  And now all my effort, though it might achieve that which he would be glad and proud of, could never bring him back.

I must go back to the men at once; and leaving Mr. and Mrs. Ford I slipped down the hill again, and out along the little stream across the cove.  They came to meet me when they saw me coming and Heaven alone knows how inadequate were the words with which I tried to thank them.  We came up the hill together now, and soon the tents were pitched out among the willows.  As I watched them from the post window busy about their new camping ground, it was with a feeling of genuine loneliness that I realised that I should not again be one of the little party.

Later came the reckoning, which may be summed up as follows:—­

Length of Journey:—­576 miles from post to post (with 30 miles additional to Ungava Bay covered later in the post yacht Lily).

Time:—­June 27th to August 27th.  Forty-three days of actual travelling, eighteen days in camp.

Provisions:—­750 lbs. to begin with, 392 lbs. of which was flour.  Surplus, including gifts to Nascaupee Indians, 150 lbs., 105 lbs. of which was flour, making the average amount consumed by each member of the party, 57 1/2 lbs.