Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1895-10-26


pooh. The big dog looked at him, howled
again and SUNK away down the passage,
while the other dogs drew aside right and
left to give him ample room. When he
was out on the snow he barked furiously
as though on the trail Of a musk OK, and
barking and leaping and frisking passed
out Of sight. This was not hydrophobia,
but simple plain madness: The cold and
the hunger and above all the dark had
turned his heads and when the terrible
dog sickness once shows itself in team it
spreads like wndiire. Next hunting day
another dog sickened and was killed then
and there by kotuko as he bit and strug-
gled among then traces. Then the black
second dog who had been the leader in the
old days suddenly gave tongue on an inn
aginary reindeer ttrack, and when they
slipped him from the pitu he flew at the
throat of an ice cliff, and ran away as his
leader had done, his harness on his back.
After that no one would take the dogs out
again. They needed them for something
else ami the dogs knew it, and though they
were tied down and fed by hand their
eyes were full of despair and fear To
make things worse the old women began to
tell ghost tales and to say that they had
met the spirits of the dead hunters lost
that autumn, who prophesied all sorts of
horrible things.
Kotuko grieved more for the loss of his
dog than anything else, for though an Inuit
eats enormously, he also knows when to
starve. But the hunger the darkness, the
cold and the exposure told on his strength.
and to see people, who were not there out
of the tail of his eye. One night he had
unbuckled himself after ten hours waiting
above blind seal hole, and was stagger-
halted to lean his back against a boWlder
which happened to be supported like a
rocking stone on single jutting point of
Ice. His weight disturbed the balance of
the thing, 1t rolled over ponderously, and
as Kotuko sprang aside to avoid 1t, slid af-
ter him. squeaking and kissing on the ice
slope.
That was enough for Kotuko. He had
been brought up to believe that every rock
and bowlder had its owner Gts inua), who
was generally one-eyed kind of a woman
thing called tornaq, and that when tor
NAG meant to help a man. she rolled after
him inside her stone house, and asked him
whether he would take her for a guardian
spirit. On summer thaws the ice-held rocks
and powders roll and slip all over the face
of the land, SO you can easily see how the
idea of live stones arose) Kotuko heard
the blood beating in mis- ears as he had
heard it all day, and he thought 1t was the
tornaq of the stone speaking to him. Be
fore he reached home he was quite certain
that he had held a long conversation with
her and. as all his people believed that this
was quite possible, no one contradicted him.
She said to me: I jump down. 1 jump
down from my place on the snow,'" cried
hotuko, with hollow eyes, leaning forward
in the half-lightcd hut. "She said: L will
be guide. She says: I will guide you to
and the tornaq will guide me-"
Then the angekok. the village sorcerer,
came in. and kotuko told him the tale a
second time 1t lost nothing in the telling
FOLLOW the tornait Uhe spirit of the
stones) and they will bring us food again"
said the angekok
Now the girl from the north had been
lying near the lamp, eating very little and
saying less for days past, but when Amoraq
and Kadlu next morning packed and dashed
little hand sleigh for Kotuko and loaded
1t with his hunting gear and much blub-
Der and frozen seal meat as they could
spare, she took the pulling rope and stepped
out boldly at the boys side.
Your house Is my house." she said, as the
little bone-shodIslelsh squeaked and bumped
behind them in the awful, silent arctic night
My house Isl your house." said Kotuko,
but think that we shall both go to Sedna
together" e.H
Now Sedna is the mistress of the under
world. and the mutt believes that every
one who dies mast spend a year in her hor-
rible country before going on to Quadlpar-
miut, the happy place where it never freezes
and the fat reindeer trot up when YOU call.
through the village people were shouting:
The tornait have spoken to kotuko. They
will show him open ice. He will bring us
the seal again." Their voices were soon
swallowed up by the cold empty dark and
Kotuko and the girl shouldered close to-
gether as they strained on the pulling rope
or humored the sleigh through the broken
Ice, In the direction of the Polar sea. Kotuko
told him to go north. and north they went
under Tuktugdjung. the reindeer-what We
call the Great Bear.
No European could have made five miles
day over the ice rubbish and the sharp
edged drifts; but those two knew exactly
the turn Of the wrist that coaxes a sleigh
round hummock. the jerk that neatly lifts
1t out of an ice crack, and the exact
strength that goes to the few quie. strokes
of the spearhead that make path possible
when everything looks hopeless.
The girl said nothing but bowed her head.
and the long wolverine fur fringe to her
ermine hood blew across her broad dark
face. The sky above them was an intense
VelVety black, changing to bands of Indian
red on the horizon where the great stars
burned like street lamps. From time to
time greenish wave of the northern lights
would roll across the hollow of the high
heavens, flick like flag and disappear; or a
meteor would crackie from darkness to dark
ness, trailing a shower of sparks behind
TEen they could see the ridged and furrowed
surface of the foe tipped and laced with
strange colors-red, copper and BLUSH but
IN the ordinary starlight everything turned
to one frost bitten gray
CHAPTER III.
The noe, as you will remember. had been
battered and tormented by the autumn gales
till 1t was one frozen earthquake. There
were gullleS and rayineS and holes like