On our last evening in camp, well after the sun had set, a small group of young Inuit roared in on snowmobiles. The rangers greeted them, cigarettes began to glow. It was cold but not that cold. The men had been hunting caribou somewhere in the west, without luck.

在我们住帐篷的最后一夜，太阳落山后，一小群年轻的因纽特人骑着雪地车赶来。士兵们跟他们打了招呼，他们点燃香烟，天气很冷但还没到受不了的程度。这些人本来在西部的某个地方打猎，但运气不太好。

Suddenly one of the newcomers stumbled into the crowd. He was upset and told of a young man who had been riding in the sled he was towing. The passenger had disappeared. He must have fallen off somewhere out on the tundra. Marvin and other rangers asked for more details, but the young man could only shrug and point. Here was the sort of search-and-rescue mission the rangers had trained for. But before Atqittuq could organize it, a pair of rangers suited up and throttled off.

突然他们中某个人冲进人群。他很着急的说之前有个坐在他雪橇上的人不见了。他肯定是在冰原的某个地方摔下来了。马尔文和其他人想问更多的细节，但这个年轻人只说不知道。于是士兵们经常执行的搜索救援任务就派上用场了。但就在阿提库组织之前，几个士兵已经收拾好出发了。

We watched their headlights streak into the darkness, grow fainter, vanish. Then most of us wandered back to our tents to wait and listen for the whine of returning machines. We made tea. Marvin seemed concerned but not overly so; the missing Inuit had been raised in the Arctic and knew what to do if he found himself alone on the ice. I thought of the bears spotted a couple of days before and tried to imagine what the young man was doing out there. Maybe he was singing hymns.

我们看着他们的头灯走进黑暗里，变得微弱，消失。然后大部分人都走回帐篷里等待，等着回来的引擎的嗡嗡声。我们煮了茶。马尔文看起来很担心他们的状况，但并不十分焦急；那个失踪的因纽特人是在北极长大的，他知道自己落单后应该怎样做。我想起了几天前看见的熊，试着想象他此刻在干什么。也许他在唱颂歌。