stefansson-wrangel-09-27-030

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- 9 -

alternating short naps with walks to get my blood in circulation I whiled passed away
an hour or two or three hours. The caribou now commenced moving again and finally passed beyond
another ridge. By that time the wind had freshened enough so that it deadened I no longer
worried about the sound of my walking. All I [now] had to guard against was being
seen.

When next I came in sight of the caribou they were still too far
from cover for successful shooting. At five hundred yards I could easily have
killed two or three of then, but we needed the whole band. I was preparing for
another long wait when all of a sudden the clear outlines of the animals became
hazy and I realized that a light fog was coming up. Only the future could tell
whether this would be for good or evil. The fog gradually thickened until the
caribou were swallowed up in it. Knowing that my eyesight was a little better than
theirs, I now crawled ahead until I saw the outline of the nearest first one through the
mist. Evidently this was a straggler well behind the others and a wait was again
necessary. The caribou were slowly grazing away from me, as I could tell by the
gradual disappearance into the fog of their single accidental rear guard. As
this animal faded I crawled ahead, and when it became more distinct I stopped.
After about half an hour of this intermittent slow pursuit the fog rolled away
and the entire band were clear before me, some of them at the foot of the slope
down which I was crawling and others on the level beyond. The nearest were
perhaps a hundred yards away and the most remote about three hundred and fifty.
I was in their clear sight now, but that only meant I must keep still, or else
move only with such stealth as makes imperceptible the progress hides the movement of the hands of a clock. No
wild animal is intelligent enough to be frightened by a thing which does not seem to move.

During all this time I had been worrying about the success of the
hunt with relation to what my companions might do. I was afraid that from the
seacoast where they were traveling they might have seen the caribou outlined against