But, impatient as they were, time no longer hung heavily on their hands, nor did they now regard their place of abode as a prison.
Its solitude and dreariness had fled before the advent of half a hundred Eskimo--short, squarely built men, moon-faced women, and roly-poly children, looking like animated balls of fur, all of whom had been brought from the mission to form a settlement on the beach.

It was easier to bring them to the Heaven-sent provisions that were to keep them until spring than it would have been to transport the heavy barrels of flour and pork to the mission.

At the same time, they could protect the schooner from depredations by other wandering natives.
So they came, bag and baggage, babies, dogs, and all, and at once set to work constructing snug habitations, in which, with plenty of food and plenty of seal oil, they could live happily and comfortably during the long winter months.

These structures were neither large nor elegant.

In fact they were only hovels sunk half underground, with low stone walls, supporting roofs of whale ribs, covered thick with earth.
A little later they would be buried beneath warm, shapeless mounds of snow.