CHAPTER XXIII.
THE COMFORT OF AN ESKIMO LAMP.
In that dreary waste of snow, unrelieved so far as the eye could reach by so much as a single bush, the making of a camp that should contain even the rudiments of comfort seemed as hopeless to White, who had always been accustomed to a timbered country, as it did to Cabot, who knew nothing of real camp life, and had only played at camping in the Adirondacks.

Left to their own devices, they would have passed a most uncomfortable if not a perilous night, for the mercury stood at many degrees below zero.

But they had Yim with them, and he, being perfectly at home amid all that desolation, was determined to enjoy all the home comforts it could be made to yield.
First he marked out a circular space some twelve feet in diameter, from which he bade his companions excavate the snow with their snowshoes, and throw it out on the windward side.

While they were doing this he went a short distance away, and, from a mass of closely compacted snow, carved out with his knife a number of blocks, as large as could be handled without breaking, to each of which he gave a slight curve.
With time enough Yim could have constructed from such slabs a perfect igloo or snow hut, but the fading daylight was very precious, and he did not consider that the cold was yet sufficiently severe to demand a complete enclosure.

So he merely built a low, hood-like structure on the windward side of the space the others had cleared.