The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1895-10-26


| and made their houses ON the early ace
to the north of Bellots ISLAND ready TO
go after the seal as soon as the sea
froZe. But 1t was an early ana saw
age autumn. All through September
there were continuous gales that broke
up the smooth seal ice where II was
only four or five feet thick and forced
! it inland and piled great barrier some
thirty miles broad OF Jumped ana
ragged and needy ice over when
it was impossible ito draw the sleighs..
The edge of the foe off which the seal
were used to fish in winter lay perhaps
twenty miles beyond this barrier and
out of reach of the Tununirmlut. Even
so, they might have managed TO scrape
through the winter on their stock of
frozen salmon and stored blubber and
what the traps gave them, but in De-
cember one oe their hunters came
across a tupik, a skin tent, or three
women and q girl nearly dead whose
men had come down from the far
north and been crushed In their ka-
jaks (their little skin hunting boalts)
while they were out after the long
horned narwhal. Kadlu, of course,
could only distribute the women among
the huts of the winter village, for no
Inuis would dare refuse a meal to a
own time may come to beg. Amoraq
took the girl, who was about IA, into
her own house as a sort of servant.
From the cut of her sharp-pointed
hood and the long diamond pattern Of
her white deerskin leggings, they sup
posed she came from ElleSmere land.
She had never seen tin cooking pots or
wooden-shod sleghs before; but Ko-
tuko, the boy, and Kotuko, the dog,
We're rather fond of her.
Then all the foxes went south; and
even the wolverine, the growing,
lunt-headed little thief of the snow,
did not take the trouble to follow the
line of empty traps that Kotuko set.
The tribe lost a couple of their best
hunters, who were badly crippled in a
fight with a musk OK, and that threw
more work on the others. Kotuko went
out, day after day, with light hunt
ing sleigh and six or seven of the
strongest dogs, looking till his eyes
ached for some patch of clear Ice where
a seal might perhaps have scratched a
breathing hole. Kotuko, the dog.
ranged far and wide. and in the dead
stiffness of the ice fields Kotuko, the
boy. could hear his half-choked whine
of excitement above a seal hole three
miles away as plainly as though he
were at his elbow. When the dog
found a hole the boy would build him
self little low snow wall to keep off
the worst of the bitter wind, and there
he would walt ten. twelve, twenty
hours for the seal to come up TO
breathe, his eyes glued to the tiny mark
he had made above the hole to guide the
downward thrust of his harpoon. a lit
tie sealskin mat under his feet and
his legs tied together in the tutareang
--.the buckle that the old hunters had
talked about This helps to keep q
mans legs from twDtching as he waits
and waits and waits for the quick-
cared seal to rise. Though there is
no excitement In 1t. you can easily be-
lieve that the sitting still in the buckle,
with the thermometer perhaps 40 de-
grees below zero, is the. hardest work an
Inuit knows. When a seal was caught
Kotuko, the dog, would bound forward,
his trace trailing behind him, and help
to pull the body to the sleigh, where the
tired and hungry dogs lay sullenly
under the lee of the broken ice
A seal did not go very far, for each
mouth in the little village had a right to
be filled and never bone, hide nor sinew
was wasted. The dogs meat was
taken for human use and Amoraq fed
the team with piees of old summer
skin-tents raked out from under the
sleeping bench, and they howled and
howled again, and walked to howl
hungrily. One could tell by the soap
stone lamps In the huts that famine
was near. In good seasons when
blubber Is plentiful the light in the
boat-shaped lamps would be two feet
high. cheerful, oily and yellow. Now
1t was bare six inches: AmoraQ
carefully pricked down the moss wick
when an unmatched flame Frightened
for a moment and the eyes of all the
family followed her hand. The hor-
ror of famine up there in the great
cold is not so much dying as dying in
the dark. All the Inuit dread the dark
that presses on them without a break
for six months in each year, and when
the lamps are low In the houses the
minds of people begin to be shaken
and confused. g
But worse was TO come. y
The underfed dogs snapped and
growled in the passages, glaring at the
Geld stars and snuffing into the bitter
wind, night. after night. When they
stopped bowling the silence fell down.
again as solid and as heavy as snow
drift against a door. and men could
hear the beating of their blood In the
thin passages Of the ear ard The thump-
ing Of their hearts that sounded as loud
as the noise Of sorcerers drums beaten
across the snow. One hight Kotuko,
the. dog. who had been unusually silent
In harness. leaped III and pushed his
head against Kotuko's knee. Kotuko
pafted him. but the dog still pushed
bllndly forward. fawning. Then Kad-
Ia walked and stared into The CLASSY
eyes. The dog whinpered as though
he were afraid and shivered between
Kadiu's knees. Then the hair rose
about his neck and ne growled as
though stranger wert a; the door:
then he barked joycusly an rolled on
the ground and ct Kotuko'u boot like
puppy. 49,; !.