When the third day came they decided to walk back, following the shore, to the tribe. Going round the bays, climbing up and down huge slides of rocks, walking inland each time they found rivers they could not swim until they discovered a place to ford them, those two boys—aged five and seven, respectively—never lost heart.
Picking up on the beach what they could find to eat, they eventually got back to the tribe after two days and nights of constant traveling. They were footsore, wet to the bone, and famished.
They gave the alarm and a small party of men paddled immediately to the islands. There they found the two men marooned amidst hundreds of nests on which they had been feeding.
It appears that on their arrival, four days before, they had at first gone to sleep on the beach in the sun, leaving their kayaks partly out of the water. The tide rose and the two kayaks drifted out of sight.
They had suffered no hardships—having plenty of food and being confident that eventually some one would come to look for them.
Furthermore, they did not feel anxious about the children. In their minds, a thirty mile walk alone on the rugged seashore, the fording of three swift rivers, and the lack of food and the exposure during four consecutive days and nights, could not possibly harm two little Eskimo boys of five and seven.