The Scranton tribune. (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, October 26, 1895, Page 10, Image 10
10 THE SCBANTOJT TRIBTTNE SATURDAY MOBNING, OCTOBER 26, 1895. diuierini Copyright 1S9& by CHAPTER I. 'We has opened hla eyes. Look!" "Put him dn 'the skin again. He will be a strong dog; on the fourth month We will name him." "For whom?" said Amoraq. Kadlu's eyes rolled rouud the skin lined enow house till It came to 14-Tear-old Kotuko sitting on the sleep lug bench making a button of walrus Ivory. "Name him for me," said Ko tuko, with a grin. "I shall need him tome (Jay." Kadlu grinned back till hla eyes Were almost burled In the fat of hla flat Cheeks, and nodded to Amoraq while Ills puppy's fierce mother whined1 to see her 'baby -wriggling far out of reach In the little sealskin pouoh hung above the warmth of the blubber lamp. Kotuko went on with his carving and Kadlu threw ia rolled bundle of leather dog-harnesses into a tiny little room that opened from one flide of the house; lipped off his heavy deerskin hunting uit, put It into a whalebone net that bung above another lamp and dropped down on the sleeping bench to whittle art a piece of frozen seal meat, till Amonaq, his wife, should bring the reg ular dinner of boiled' meat and blood soup. He had been out since early dawn at the sead holes, eight miles way, on the lee at the edge of the lloe, nd had come home with . three big seals. Half way down the long, low now passage or tunnel, that led to the in hot door of the bouse, you could hear napplngs and yelpings, aa the dogs of tils sleigh team, released from theilr day's work, ecullled for warm places. When the yelpings grow too loud, Kotuko lazily rolled off the sleeping bench, and, picking up a dog whip with an 18-lnoh handle of springy whalebone, nd twenty-live feet of heavy plaited thong, he dived llnto the passage where tt sounded as though all the dogs were eating him alive; but that was no more than their regular grace before meals. When he crawled but of the far end of the passage half a dozen furry heads followed 'him with their eyes as he went to a short gallows of whale jaw bones, from which the dog's meat was hung, split off the frozen stuff In big lumps with a toroadheaded1 spear, and stood, 'his whip In one hand and the meat In the other. Baoh beawt was called by name the weakest llrst and woe be tide any dog that moved out of his turn, for the tapering lash would shoot out like thonged lightning and flick away an inch or so or 'hair and hide. Kach beast simply growled once, snapied once, choked once over his portion, and hurried back to the protection of the enow passage, while the boy stood on the snow1 under the blazing northern lights and dealt out justice. The last to be served was ithe big black leader of the team, who kept order when they were harnessed,; and - to him Kotuko gave a double allowance of meat, .as well as an extra crackof the whip. "Alh!" eald Kotuko, , coiling up the lash, "I have a little one over the lamp that will make a great many howlings. Barpok! 'Get In!" He crawled back over the huddled idogs, -dilated, the dry now from 'his, furs With the wlialebonelbeater-that Amo raq kept by the door; tapped the skin lined roof of the house to shake off any Icicles that might have fullen from the Dealt Out Justice, dome of snow above, and curled up on the bench. The dogs. In the passage snored and whined in their sleep, the boy baby dn Amoraq's deep fur hood kicked and choked und gurgled, and the mother of the newly named puipy lay at -Kotuko's side, iher eyes llxed on the bundle of sealskin warm and safe above 'the broad, yellow flame of the lamp,- . And all this 'happened far away to the north; beyond 'Labrador, beyond Hudston's etralt,, where the great tides throw the Ice mount, north of Melville peninsula north even ' of the narrow Fury and iHccla straits on 'the north hore of Batiln land, where Bylot's island etands above theilce of Lancaster sound like a pudding bowl wrong side tip. North of -Lancaster sound there Is nothing we know anything about ex cept North Devon and Kllesmere Land; but even there ilve a few scattered peo ple nexit door, as it were, to the very pole Kadlu was an Inu.lt what you call an Esquimau and 'his tribe, eome fifty persons all toldt belonged to the Tunuwirmiuft 'Uhe coulntry lying at the 'back of something." In the maps that desolate coast is called Navy Board Inlet; but the Inult name is best, because the country lies at the very back of everything In the world. For nine months of the year there Is only ice as hard as rock, snow, and gale after Kale, with a cold that no one can real ise Who has never seen the thermome ter go down even to aero. For six month of 'those nine It Is dark, end that Is what makes H so horrible. For the three months .of the summer it- only freezes every other day 'and every night, and then the snow , begins to weep away to the southerly slopes, and afew ground willows put out their wool ly buds, a tiny etone crop or eo makes believe to blossom, beaches of .fine gravel and rounded etones run down to the open sea, and polished bowlders and streaked rocks lift up above the granu lated enow. But all that "goes . aiviay In a few weeks, end the wild winter looks down again on the land; while at sea the torn end powdered ice tears up and down the offing. Jamming and ram ming, and splitting and hitting, andi pounding and grounding, till It ell freezes together ten feet thick from the land outward to deep waiter.- In the winter .Katflu would follow the seals to the edge of the land Ice and epear them as they aime Up to hrea'the at their blow, holes. The seals must have open water to live and catch fish 1n, and In the deep of winter the Ice would sometimes run eighty miles without a break from tine nearest land. In the spring he and hla people retreat ed from the thawing floes to the rocky mainland, where they put tip tents of kins and snared the eea birds or. speared the young seal bgsklng on the beaches. Later,' -they would o south Into Baffin land after the reindeer and to get their year's store of salmon from the hundreds of streams and Jakes of the interior, coming back north In Sep tember, or October for the musk ox hunting and the regular winter sealery. This traveling was done wltn dbg lelgha, twenty and thirty miles a day, os sometimes down the coast hi big skin "woman boats," when the dogs and the babies lay among the feet of the rowers, end the women earn sopgs as they glided from cape to cape over the Classy, cold water. All the luxuries Irving Bachcllar. the Tununirmiut knew came from the south driftwood - for sleigh runners, rod iron for harpoon tips, steel knives, tin kettles that cooked nsh much bet ter than-the-old soapstone affairs, flint and steel and even matches, colored rib bons for the women's hair, mtle cheap mirrors and red cloth for the edgmg.of deerskin dress jackets.. Kadlu traded the rich, creamy-twisted narwhal horn and musk tx teeth (these ere Just as valuable as. pearls) to . the southern Inuit, and they in turn traded with the whalers and the missionary posts of Kxeter and Cumberland sounds, and so the chain went on till a kettle picked up by a ship's cook in the Bhendy bazaar might end Its days over a blubber lamp somewhere on the cool side of the arctic circle. Kadlu, being a good hunter, was rich In iron harpoons, snow knives, bird darts and all other things that make life eaEy up there in the great cold, and he was the head of his tribe, or, as they say, "the man Who knows all about it by practice." This did not give him any authority, except now and then he could advise his friends to change their hunting grounds, but Ketuko used It to domineer a little, 1n the lazy, fat Inult fashion, over the other boys when they came out at night to play ball In the moonlight or to sing the child's' song to the .Aurora Borealist. But at fourteen an Inuit feels himself a man, and Kotuko was tired of making snares for wild fowls and kit foxes, and most tired of all of helping the women to chew seal and deer skins (that makes them supple as nothing else cam) the long day through while the men were out hunting . Ho wanted, to go Into the quaggi, the singing house when the hunters gathered there for their my.i'teries, and the angekok, the sorcerer, frightened them Into the most delightful fits after the lamps were put out and you could bear the spirit of the reindeer stamping upon .the roof, and when n spear was 'thrust out Into the open black night It came back cov ered with hot blood. 'He wanted to throw his Wg boots Into the net with the tired air of a h.-ad of a family, and he wanted to gamble with the hunters when they, dropped In of an evening to play a sort of homemade roulette with a tin pot and a nail. There were hun dreds of things that he wanted to lo but the grown men 'laughed at him and said: "Walt till you have been In the buckle, Kotuko. Hunting is not all fat!" Now that his fr.'ther had named a puppy for' him, things looked brighter. An Inult does not waste a good dog on his son till the boy knows something of dog driving; and Kotuko was more than sure that he knew more than ev erything. ' If the puppy had not had an Iron con stitution hp would have died from over stuffing and overhauling. Kotuko .made him a tiny 'harness-with a. trace to 'It and hauled him all over the house floor, shouting: 'Una! Ja aua! (do to the right!) 'C'holaehol! Ja . cholachol! (Go to the lcft!) Ohaha! (Stop." The did not like It at all; .but be ing fished for' in ..this way was pure happiness beside being put to the sleigh for the first time'.' He Just sat down on the snow and played with the seal hide trace that ran from his harness to the pltu, the big thong In the boks of the sleigh. Then the team started and the ipuppy found the heavy ten foot sleigh running up his back and dragging him airing the snow, while Kotuko laughed till the tears-ran down his face. Then there followed days and days of the cruel whip that hisses like the wind over ice, and .his companions all bit him because he did not know his' work, and the' 'harness chafed him, and he was not allowed to sleep with Katuko any more, ' but had to take the coldest place In the passage. It was a sad time for the 'puppy. The boy learned, too, as fast as the dog; and a dog sleigh Is a heart breaking thing to manage. Each beast Is harnessed the weakest- nearest to the driver by his separate trace, which runs under his left fore leg to the main thong, where it is fastened by a sort of button and loop which can be slipped by a turn of the wrist, thus ' freeing one dog. at a time This Is very necessary, because young dogs often get the trace between their hind legs, where It cuts to the bone. And they one and all will go vis iting their friends as they run. Jump ing In and out among the traces. Then they light and the result Is more mixed than a-wet fishing line next-morning: A great deal of trouble can be avoided by scientific use of the whip. Every Inult boy 'prides himself as being a master of the long lash; but It Is easy to flick at a mark on the ground, and difficult to lean forward and catch a Fdirklng doer Just behind the shoulders when the sleigh Is going at full speed. If you call one dog's name for "vis iting" and accidentally lash another the two will fight at once and stop all the iqthers.-'Agaln, If you travel with a companion and begin to talk, or by yourself and sing, the dogs will hnlt, turn around and sit down to hear what you have to say. Kotuko was run away from once or twice by forgetting to Hock the sleigh 'when he stopped, and he broke many lashings and ruined a few thongs before he could be. trusted with a full team of eight and a light sleigh. Then he felt himself a person of consequence, and on smooth, black Ice, with' a bold heart and a quick elbow, he smoked along over the levels as fast as a pack In full cry. He would go twenty miles to the seal holes, and when he was on his hunting ground he would twitch a trace loose, from the pltu and free the big Mack leader, who was the cleverest dog In the team. As soon as the dog had scented a breathing hole Kotuko would reverse the sleigh, driving a couple of sawed-off antlers that stuck up like perambulator handles from the back rest deep Into the snow, so that the team could not get away. Then he would crawl forward Inch by Inch and wait till the seal came up to breathe. Then be stabbed down swiftly with his spear i and running line, and presently would-'haul his seal up to the lip of the lee while the black leader came up and helped to pull the car cass across the Ice to the sleigh.- That was the time when. the. harnessed dogs yelled and foamed with excitement, and Kotuko laid the', long lash like a red hot bar across all their faces till the carcass froze stiff. Oolng hme was the heavy work. The loaded sleigh had to be humored among the rough' Ice, and the dogs sat down and looked hungrily at the seal Instead of pulling... At last they would strike the well-worn sleigh road to the village and toodle klyl along tlhe ringing ice, heads down and tails up while Kotuko struck up the ."Angu tlvun tal-na tau-na ne?talna," the song of the returning . hunter,' and voices hailed him from house to house under all that dim. star-lltten cold. ' . When Kotuko, the dog, came ' to bis full growth ho -enjoyed himself, too, He fought his way up the team steadi ly, fight after fight, till one fine eve ning over their food he tackled ifte big black " leader. (Kotuko." the boy, saw fair play with the fe-hlp) and made sec ond, dog.of him, a -Khey say. Bo he was promoted to the lona thong of the lead ing dog, running flveVeet Itf advance of all the - other.. It -ttaw hl- toounden duty to stop all fighting In harness or out of It. and he worea collar of copper wire, very thick ani heavy.. On. spei rial occasions he wafc fed with cooked, food 'Inside the hnivp 'and sometimes was allowed vto slew on the bench with Kotuko. He was A good seal dog and could keep a muskf.ox at bay by running round him and snapping at his heels. He would even, and this for a sleigh dog Is the last proof off bravery, fie wtml even stand up to the gaunt Arctic wolf, whom H dogs at the north as a rule fear beyond anything that walks the snow. He and his master they did not count the team of ordinary dogs as company hunted 'together day after day and night after nJghtteir-wrapped boy and savage, long-haired, narrow eyed, White-fanged yellow brute. All an Inult has to do is tto get food and skins for -himself and hie family. The women folk make the skins Into cloth ing and occasionally help In trapping small game; but the bulk of the food, and they eat enormously, must be found by t'iie men. If the supply falls there Is no one up there to buy or beg or borrow from. The people must die. CHAPTER n. - An Inuit .does not think of these chances till he Is forced to. Kadlu, Kotuko, Amoraq and the boy baby, who kk-ked about in Amoraq's fur hood and chewed "pieces of blubber all day, were as happy together as any family in the world. They came of a very gentle race an Inult seldom loses his temper and almost never strikes a child who did not know exactly what telling a lie meant, stil less how to steal. They were content to drag their living out of the heart of the bitter, hopeless cold; to smile oily smiles and tell queer ghost and fairy tales of evenings; and eat till they could eat no more, and sing the endless woman's song; "Amna aya, aya amnah ah! ah!" through the long, lamp-lighted days as they mended their clothes and their hunting gear. .But one terrible winter everything betrayed them. The Tununirmiut re-. The Old Woman Told ilst Stories. turned from the yearly alntin fishing and made their houses .m.th" early ice to the north of Ilellofs IMaiid ready to go after .the seal as soon u.-t the sea froze. Hut it was an early and sav age autumn. All through S.-pteinber there were continuous galea that broke up the smooth seal ice where it was only four or five feet thick and forced it Inland and plied a ureat barrier some thirty miles brood of lumped and ragged and needly Ice owl which It was Impossible to draw the sleighs. The edge of the floe off which the seal were used to fish In winter lay perhaps twenty miles beyond this barrier and out of reach of the Tununirmiut. Even so, they might have imanag'ed 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 of their hunters came across a tuplk, ft ekln tent, or three women and a girl nearly dead whose men had come down from the far north and been crushed In their ka Jaks (their little tskln hunting boaits) while ithey were out after the long horned narwhal. Kadlu, of course, could only distribute the women among the 'huts of the winter village, for no lnuis would dare refuse a meal to a Btranger. He never knows when hte own itlme may come to beg. Amoraq took the girl, who was about 14, Into her own house as a sort of servant. From the cut of her' sharp-pointed hiod and t'he 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 sleighs before; but Ko tuko, the boy, and Kotuko, the dog, were rather fond of her. Then all the foxes went eouth; and even the wolverine, the . growling, blunt-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 x, and that threw more work on the others. Kotuko went out, day after day, with a light hunt ing eleigh and six or seven of the strongest dogs, looking till ' his eyes ached forwome patch of clear Ice where a seal might perhaps heve scratched a breathing hole. Katuko, the dog, ranged far and wide, and In the dead stillness of the Ice fields Kotuko, the boy, could hear his half-choked whine of excitnment 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 a little low snow wall to keep off the worst of ithe bitter wind, and there he would wait ten, twelve, twenty hours for the eal to come up to breathe, his ey3 glued to the tiny mark he had made above the hole to guide the downward thrmlt of his harpoon, a lit tle sealskin mat under his feet and his logs tied together In the tutareang the buckle that the old hunters had talked about. This helps to keep a man's legs from twKchlng as he waits and waits and waits for the quick eared cseal to rise. Though there is no excitement In It, you can easily be lieve that the sitting still In the buckle, with the thermometer perhaps 40 de grees below zero. Hf" the, hardest work an Inuit knows. "When a iseal was caught Kotuko,, the dog, would boun'i forwardv his trace trailing behind him, and help to pull the body to the sleigh, where the tired and bungry dogs lay sullenly undorthe lee of the broken Ice. A. sea I 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 dog's meat was taken for human use and Amoraq fed the team with plees of old summer skin-tents raked out from under the sleeping bench, and they howled and hnwled again, and waked 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 lamips would be' two feet high, cheerful, oily and yellow. Now It was a bare six inches: Amoraq carefully iprlcked down the moss wick when an unwatched flame brightened 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 thqjdark. All the Inult 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. . : " . Rut worse was to come. The underfed dogs snapped and growled In the passages, glaring at the cr.ld stars and snuffing Into the bitter wind, night, after night. When they stopped howling the silence fell down again as solid and as heavy as a snow drift against a door, and men could hear the beating of their blood In the thin passages of the ear ar,1 the thump ing of their hearts that sounded as loud as the noise of sorcerers' drums beaten across the snow. One ri'.tibt Kotuko, the. dog. who had been tihusimlly silent In harness, leaped n t r.1 pushed his head against Kotukn's knee.' Kotuko patted him. but the'dng still pushed blindly forward, fawning. Then Kad hi waked and stared Into I he glassy eyes. The dog-whimpered (is though he were afraid arid shivered between Kadlu's knees. ' . Thm the' hair rose stbout his neck and he , growled as though, a stranger were a. the door; then he bs-rked joyously an 1 rolled on tie rround and at Kotuko'u boot like a- puppy. - . ' . frT 1 What Is itr eald Kotudo, for he was beginning to be Afraid. 'The sickness,". Kadlu answered. "It la .the dog-sickness." Kotuko the dog lifted his nose and howled and howled again. - i-v, 1 "I- have not seen this before. WHiat will he dor said Kotuko. Kadlu shrugged one shoulder a little and crossed the hut f orhls short stab bing harpoon. The big dog looked at him, howled, again and slunk away down the passage while the other dogs drew aside right and left to give him aunple room. When he was out on the snow he barked furiously as though on the trail of a musk ox. 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 head;, and when the terrible dog-sickness once ehows itself In a team It spreads like wild-tlre. Mext hunting day another dog sickened and was killed then and there iby Kotuko as he bit and struggled among the traces. Then the black second dog who had been the leader In the old days sudden ly gave tongue on an imaginary rein deer track, and when they slipped him from the pltu 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 and the dogs knew It and though they were tied down and fed by hand their eyes were full of desnpalr 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 irophesled all sorts of horrible things. Kotuko grieved more for the loss of his dog than anything elso, for Chough an Inult eats enormously ho also knows when to starve. Cut the hunger, the darkness, . the cold and the exposure told on his strength,, and he began to hear voices Inside his head and to see people, who were not there, out of the taBI of his eye. One .night he had un buckled himself after ten hours wait ing above a "blind" seal-hole and was staggering back to the village faint ani dizzy he halted to lean his back against a bowlder which happened to be supported like a rocking-stone on a single jutting point of ice. Ills weight diisturbtd the balance of the thing, it rolled over ponderously and as Kotuko sprang aside to avoid It slid alter him squeaking and hissing on the ice slope. ' That was enough for Kotuko. He had been brought up to believe that every rock and bowlder had Its owner (Its inua) who was generally a one eyed kind of a woman think called a tornnq, and that when a tornnq meant to help a man she rolled after him In side her tone houe and asked him wheUher he would take her for a guard ian F-plrlt. (In summer thaws the Ice held rocks and bowlders 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 his ears as he bad heard It alii day. and he thought it was .the tornaq of the stone speaking to him. Hofore 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 contra dicted him. "She said to me: 'I jump down, I Jump down from my 'place on the sncw,' cried Kotudo, with hollow eyes, leaning forward In the half lighted mut. "'She saM: 'I will be a guide." She says: 'I wHl guide you to the good seal boles. Tomorrow I nvlfll go and the tornaq will qulde me." , Then Angekok,' the village sorcerer, came in and Kotuko told him the tale a second time. It lost nothing in the telling. "Follow the tornalt (the spirit of the stone's) 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 lis Tells of His Tornaq. and saying less for days pasrt, but when Amoraq and Kadlu next -morning packed and lashed a little hand sleigh for Kotuko and loaded It with his hunt ing gear and as much blubber and frozen seal meat as they could spare, she took the pulling rope, and stepped out boldly at the boy's side. "Your house Is my house," she said, as the little bone-tihod slelgh squeaked and bumped behind them in the awful, silent Arctic night. "My bouse is your house," 'said Ko tuko, "but I think that we shall both go to Sedna together." i Now Sedna Is the mistress of the Un derworld and the Inult believes that everyone who dies must spend a year in her horrible country before going on to Quadliparmliut, the Happy F'lace, where It never freezes and the fat reindeer trot up when you calk Through the village people were shouting: "The tornait have spoken to Kotuko. They will show him open Ice. lie will bring us the seal again." Their voices were soon swallowed up by the cold empty dark, and Kotuko and the girl shouldered close together as they strained on 'the pulling- rope or hu mored' the sleigh through the broken lo-e. In, the direction of the Polar sea. Kotuko Insisted that the tornaq: of the stone had. told Mm to go north and north they went under TuktugdJung, the reindeer what we call the Great Bear. No European could have made five miles a 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 a hummock, the jerk that neartly lifts it out of an loo crack, and the exact strength that goes to the few qu!et strokes of the spear head that make n. path possible when everything looks hopelees. -. The girl paid nothing but bowed her head, and the Ions 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 a greenish wave of the nothern lights would roll across the hollow of the high heavens, flick like a flag and disappear; or a metar would crackle from darkness to darkness trailing a shower of sparks behind. Then they could see the ridged and furrowed surface of the floe tipped and laced with strange colors, red. cop per. and bluish; but in the ordinary starlight everything turned to one frost bitten gray. " ' CHAPTER nL. ,, The' floe, as you will' remember, had been battered and tormented by the autumn gales till It was one frozen eatvhquake. There were Rullles and ravines; and holes like gravel pits cut out of Ice; lumps and scattered pieces frozen down to the original floor of the floe; blotches of old black Ice that had been thrust under the floe In some gale, and heaved up-again, roundish bowlders of ice; saw-Uke edges of Ice carved by the snow that flies before the wind, and sunk pita where thlrty or forty acres lay five or six feet below the Iavi4 of Hie rest oif the field. 'From little distance you might have taken the lumps for seat, or . wairus, over turned sleighs or men on a hunting: ex pedition or even the great ten-legged; whHe Spiritbear himself, but In spite of all these fantastic shapes, all on the very edge of starting Into life, there was neither sound nor the least faint echo of sound. And through this silence and through this waste where the sud den lights flapped and Went out again the sleigh and the two that pulled it crawled like things in a nightmare a nightmare of (he end of the world at tne end or tine world. When they were tired Kotuko would make what the hunters call a "half house" a very small enow hut into which they would huddle with the trav eling lamp and try to thaw out the frozen seal meat. When they had slept, the march began again thirty miles a day to g!t ten miles northward. The girl was always. very silent, but Kotuko muttered to himself and broke out into songs he had learned In the singing house summer songs and reindeer and salmon songs all horribly out of place at that season. He would declare that he heard -the tornnq growling to him and would run wildly up a hummock tossing his arms and speaking to some one In loud threatening tones. To tell the truth Kotukoiwas very nearly crazy for the time being; hut the girl was sure that be was being guided by his guardian spirit and -that everything would come right. She was not sur prised therefore-when, at tlhe end of the fourth march, Kotuko, whose eyes were burning like fire balls In his head, told her that his tornaq was following theim across the enow In the shape of a two-headed dog. The girl looked wnere Kotuko pointed and something seemed to slip Into a ravine. It was ceriainly net human, but everybody knew that the tornalt preferred to appear In the snape or Dear and seal and such like. It mlgbt have been tthe ten-legged white Spiritbear himself, or It might have been anything, for Kotuko and the g",rl were bo starved that their eyes be trayed them. They had trapped noth ing and seen no traceof game since they had left the village; their food would not hold out for another week and there was a gale coming. Aipolar storm will sometimes blow for ten days without a break, and all that time It Is certain death to be abroad. Kotuko laid up a snownouse large enough to take In the hand sleigh it is never wise to be sepa rated from your meat and while he was shaping the last irregular block of ice that makes the keystone of the roof he saw a thing looking at him from a little cliff of ice half a mile away. The air was hazy and the thing seemed to be forty feet long and ten feet high with twenty feet of tail and a shape that quivered all along the outlines. The girl saw tt .too but Instead of crying aloud with terror said quietly: "That is Qulquern. What comes after?" "IHe will speak to me," said Kotuko, but the snow-knife trembled In bis hand as he spoke, because, however much a man may believe that he Is a friend of strange and ugly spirits he seldom likes 'to be taken alt his word. The Qulqneurn too, is the phantom of a gigantic toothless dog without any haiir who is supposed to live In the far north and to wander about the country Just before things are going to happen. They may be pleasant or unpleasant things, but not even the angekok care to speak about Qulquern. He makes the -dogs go mad. Like Splrltbear he has several extra pairs of legs six or eight and this thing jumping up and down in the haze 'had more legs than any real dog needs. Kotuko and the gtrl huddled Into their hist quickly. Of course, If Qul quern had wanted them he could have tern It to pieces above their heads, tout Ithe sense of a foot-thick snow-wall be tween themselves and the wicked dark was a great comfcwit. Tlhe Kale broke with a i.lhi'I'ek of wind caught In the jagged Ice, like 'the shriek of a train, oir.'d for three days and three nights It het'd, never varying one point and never lulling even for a minute. They fed the stone tamp between their knees and nibbled at the seals' meat, and watched the black soot gather on the roof for seventyJtwo long hours. The birl courted' up the food in the eleigh; there was not more than three days' supply, and Kotuko looked over the Iron heads and the deer-sinew fast enings of his harpoon and his seal-hook and hla bird-dart. There was nothing else to do. "We sihall fro to Sedna soon very soon,' the lrl whispered. "In four days we sha1 He down and go. Will your tornaq do nothing? Blng her an angekok's song to make her come here." He began to sing In the hlgh-pltehcd howl of the manc songs, and the gale went down slowly. In the middle of his song the girl started, laid her mlt tened hand and then her head to the Ice floor of the hut.. Katuko followed her example and the -two kneeled star ing Into each other's eyes and Mstenlng with every nerve. He ripped a thin silver of whalebone from the rim of s, bird snare tihat lay on the sleigh and after straightening set It up upright in a little bole In the Ice, firming it down with his mitten. It was almost as deli cately adjusted as a compass needle, and now, Instead of ' listening, they waitdhed. The thin rod quivering a lit tlethe least little Jar In the world then It vllwated steadily for a few sec onds. Tame to resrt and vibrated again, this time nodding to another point of th" compass. "Too soon!" said Kcituko. ."Some big floe has broken far away outside ", The girl pointed at the rod and shook her fhead. "It to a breaking." she said. "Listen to the grcund-loe? It knocks " Wlhen they kneeled this time they heard th nvst curious muffled grunts, and knocking under their feet. Some Times It eounded as though a .blind puppy were squeaking above the lamp; ti'iejn as If a stone were being ground on hard ice; and again dike muffled blows on a drum, but all dragged out and Trade rrnaH as though they traveled through a Hlltle horn a weary distance away. "We shall not go to Sedna lying down " said Kotuko. "It Is a breaking. The tornaq bas cheated us. We shall die. All this may sound absurd enough.' bu't the two were face to face with a w iwi uangff. Tne three days' gale had driven the deep water to Baf fin's bay southerly and piled it on the ' . . : LlkThlns In n Klghtniars. edge of the far-reaching .land Ice that stretches frcm . Bylot's Island to the west. Also tthe strong current which sots cut of Lancaster sound carried .r!tb It mites .nd miles of what they call puck-ice, rough, ice that has not frozen Into fields; am) this pack was bombarding the floe at tlhe tame time that tfho swell and heave of the storm worked sea was weakening and under mining It. What Kotuko and the girl had been listening to were the faint edhocs of that fight thirty or foty miles away, while the Uttle rod quivered- to the shock of it. Now, as rhe Imilt say, when ithe Ice once wakes after its long winter sleep there Is no knowing what may happen, for solid floe-Ice changes shape us swiftly as a cloud. The gale was, evi dently a spring gale sent out of time and anything was possible. Yet the two were happier In their minds than before. If the floe-broke up there would be ho more wafting and suffering. Spirits, goblins and witch people were moving about on the rack ing Ice and they might find themselves "That Is Qulquern." steeping Into Scdna's country side by side with all sorts of wild things, the flush of excitement still on them. When they left the hut after the gale the noise on the horizon was steadily growing and the tough Ice moaned end buzzed all around them. "It is still waiting," said Kotuko. CHAPTER IV. On the top of a hummock sat or crouched the eight-legged thing that they had seen three days before; and it howled horribly. . "iLet us follow," eald the girl. "It may know some way that does not lead to Sedna," but she reeled from weak ness as she took the pulling rope. The thing moved oft' slowly and clumsily across the ridges, heading always toward the westward and the land, and they followed while the growling thun der at the edge of the floe rolled nearer and nearer. The floe's Up was spilt and cracked Ini every direction for three or four miles Inland and great pans of ten-foot thick ice, from a few yards to twenty acres square, were jolting and ducking and Bulging Into one another and into the yet unbroken lloe as the heavy swell took and shook and spouted between them. The battering-ram ice was, so to speak, the first army t'nat the sea -was flinging against the lloe. The incessant crash and Jar of these cakes almost drowned the ripping oiivd of sheets of pack ice being Ofiven bodily under the floe as cards are hastily pushed under a tablecloth. Where the water was shallow these sheets would be piled one aton of another till the bottom-most touched mud fifty feet down and the dlsoclored sea banked behind the muddy Ice till the Increasing pres sure drove all forward again. The many ehallows and sand banks on the north cast coast of Bylot's island made it Impossible to foretell the course of the rushing Ice. For instance. In addition tn the floe and the pack Ice, the gale and the currents were bringing down true bergs, sailing mountains cf Ic-?, snapped off by the frost from the Green land side of the water or the north shore of 'Melville bay. They pounded In solemnly from the offing, the waves breaking white round them, and ad vanced on the floe like an old-time fleet uncior full sail. But a berg that seemed ready to carry the world before It would ground helplessly In deep water, reel over and wallow In a lather of foam and mud and flying frozen spray, while a much smaller and lower berg would rip and ride Into the flat Ice, flinging tons of Ice on either side and cutting a track a mile long before It was stopped. The bergs were -perhaps the most ter rible things to watch, because their towers and pinnacles would 'fall after the shock of collision. Some fell like swords, shearing a rnw-edfted canal through the floe; and others, falling on hard Ice, could not break through It, but splintered Into a shower of blocks weighing score of tons apiece that whirled and circled among the hum mocks. Others again rose shoaled, twisted as though In pain and fell solidly on their sides, while the sen thrashed over their shoulders. This trampling and crowding of the Ice Into every possible shape was going on as far as the eye could reach ail along tho north line of the floe. From where Kotuko and the girl were the confusion looked no more than an uneasy, rip pling, crawllnff movement under the horizon, but Ifccame towards them each moment and they could hear far away to the landward a heavy booming, as It might have been the boom of artil lery through a fog. T'hat'showed that tho floe was being jammed against the Iron cliffs of Bylot's Island, the land to the southward, behind them. "This has never been before," said Kotuko, staring stupidly. - "This Is not the time. How can tho 'floe break now?" "Follow .that!" the girl cried, point Ins to the thing, half limping, half run ning, distractedly 'before them. They followed, tugging at the hand sleigh, while nearer and nearer came the roar ing march of the ice. At last tlhe fltflds round them cracked and slanted In every direction and the crackes opened and snapped like the teeth of wolves. But where the thing rested, on.-a mound of old and scattered Ice blocks some fifty feet high, there was no motion. Koiuko leaped forward wildly, dragged the girl after liim and crawled to the bottom of the mound. The talking of tho Ice grew louder and louder round them, but the mound stayed fast, and as the girl looked at him he threw his right elbow upwards and outwards, making the Inuit sign for land In the shape of an Island. Any land It was that the eight-legged limping thing had led them to some granite-tipped sand beached Islet off the coast, shod and sheathed and masked with Ice so that no man could have told It from the floe, but at the bottom solid earth and not shifting, drifting ice. The smashing and rebound of the .floes, as they grounded and splintered, marked the borders of it, and a friendly shoal ran out to the northward and turned aside the rush of the heaviest ice exectly as a plowshare turns the loani. There was a danger, of course, that some heavily squeezed Ice 'Held might s-hnc'i up the beach and plane eff the -top of f.ie Isk-t bodily but that did not trouble Kotuko and tho girl when they made their snowhouie and began to cat and Cieurd the Ice crack and hammer and Skid along the beach. The thing had disap peared and Kotuko was talking excited ly about his Knowledge of and power over spirits as he crouched over the lamp. In the middle of his wild say ing the girl began to lau&h- and rock herself backwards and forwards. " Behind her shoulder, crawling Into tho hut crawl by crawl, there wer two heads one yellow and one black tha t belonged to twoif the mopt sorrowful and ashamed dogs that you ever saw. Kotuko, the dog, was one. and the black leader was tho other. Both were now fat, well-looking and quite restored to their proper minds, bult coupled to eanh other In an . extraordinary fashion. Wheri the black leader ran off, you re member, bis harness was stlil on him. He must have met Kotuka and played or fought with him, Tor his shoulder loop baa caught In the plaited copper .t . i . , wire of Kotukos collar and had drawn tight so that neither dog could get at the trace to gnaw It apart, but was fas tened pldeloiig to his neighbor's neck. The girl pushed the. two shamefaced creatures toward Kotuko, and, sub bing w'ith laughter, cried: "That is' Quiquern which led us to eafe ground. Look at his eight legs and double head." Kotuko cut them free, and they fell into his. aims, yellow and black to gether, trying to explain how they had got their senses buvk again. Kotuko ran a hand down their ribs, which were round und well ctatlied. "They have found food," he said wHt'h a grin. "I do not Hhink we t:.iall go to edna so soon. lly tornaq sent these. The sickness has left them." As E3oa as they had greeted Kotuko these two who had been forced to sleep and eat and hunt together for the past few mor.'ths flew at each other's throat and there was a beautiful battle In Kie snow house. "Empty dogs do not figivt," Kotuko said. "They have found the seal. Let us sleen. We shall find foud." When they waked there was open wa ter on the north beach of the Island and all the loosened lee had been driven landward. The first sound of the surf Is one of the most delightful that the I'nuit can bear, for ft means that spring Is on the road. Kotuko and the girl took hands and smiled, for the clear ful rear of taie surge among the ice re minded them of salmon and reindeer time and the smell of blossoming ground willows. Even ii they looked the fv-'i began to sldm over between the lloating cakes of ice, bo Intense was the cold, but on the horizon there was a. vast red glare that was the light of the sunken sun. It was more like hearing him yawn In his sleep than seeing him rhee. and the glare only lasted for an bour or two, but It marked the turn of the year. Nothing, they felt, could alter that Kotuko found' the dogs fighting over a fresh-killed stal who was following 1tie fish tihat a gale always distuitbs. He was the first of some twenty of thir ty seal that Osr.dod on the Island in. the course of a day nnd. till the sea, froro hard, there were bundreds of keen black heads rejoicing In the shallow free water and flouting about with the floating i'je. It was good to eat seal-liver again; to 1111 the lamps rreikleae'Iy with blubber and watch (tie flame 'Maze 'three feet In tho a'ir, but as sxfon as the new sea ice tore Kotuko and the tgliT loaded the hand-Flelgh and made 'the two dogs pull as they had never pulled before in t'nelr lives, for they feared what mlaht have happened In their village. "Hie weather, of course. Was as pitiless as usual, but H Is tasler to draw a sleigh load, d w ith good food than to hunt starving. They left five and twenty sonl caic.if-nes burled .in the Ice nf the beach already foru? nnd hurried back to their peopb. The do?s showed fnem lihe way as soon as Kotuko told tin m what was expected, and though there was no sipn of a Inndmatk, for two days they wre giving tongue out side Kad'lu's ih-oi.-se. Only three dogs answered them; the others had hwn eaten; nnd the houses .were all dirk. 'Hut .when Kotuko shouted: "Oo!" '"boiled meat) weak voices answered, and when he called the cnll of the vil lage name by name, very distinctly, there were.no gnps In it. An hour later the lamps blazed In Kadlu's house, snow water was mol't In;r. the pots were beginning to simmer and t'.ie snow was drifting irom the roof at -Amoraq made ready a meal for all tho village, and the boy babv in the hood e'hewed at a strip of rich nutty blubber nnd the hunters slowlv nnd methndlolly .filled themselves t'. th very 'brim with senl-meat. Kotuko and the girl told their tale. The two dogs sat bvOwcen them, nnd whenever their names came In they cocked nn enr apiece nnd looked mcit 1'honnghly ashamed of themselves. A do? who has once gone mad the Inuit fay is tafe against all attacks. "vo tho te.rnan d,!d not forget uV Mid Kotuko. "The Ftorm hbw; the ice broke and the seal swam in, behind the fibii that were f rlgivrened -by the storm. NTow the new seal iholcs are not two days' distant. ,'I.et the good hunt ers go tomorrow and bring back the Yellow and Dlnck Together. seal I have spared twenty-five seal burled In the Ice. When we have ealten (those we will all follow the seal on the iloe." "What do you do?" said the angekok. the sorcerer, In the same sort ot voice as he used to Kadlu, the richest of .Uho Tunumirmlut. Kadlu looked at the girl from the north and said qiLlotly: "We build a house." He pointed to the northwest side of Kadlu's house for that Is ths side on wbiu'tt the married son or daugh ter always dives. The girl turned .her bands palm up wards with a little despairing shake of her head. Phe was a foreigner, picked up carving and she could biHng noth ing to the housekeeping. Amoraq jumped from the bench where she sat and began to sweep things into the girl's lup stone-lamps. Iron skin scrapers, tin kettles, deerskins em broidered with musk-ox teetlh and real canvas needles such as sailors use the 11 nest dowry tlmt has ever been given on the far edge nf the Arctic circle, and the girl from the north bowed her head to the very floor. "Also these," raid Kotuko, laughing and Kinging to the dogs, who thrust their cold muzzles Into the girl s face. . . . . - .1.,.!, .,..., an itYtm An, saiu me MRfi portant cough, as though he had been thinking It all over. "As soon as Ko tuko left the village. I went to the sing ing house and sang magic: I sang all the long nights and called upon the spirits of the reindeer. My singing made the gale blow that broke the Ice and drew the two dogs towards Kotuko when the ice would have crushed his bones. My song drew the seal in be hind the broken Ice. My body lay still in the quassi. but my spirit ran about on the ice and guided Kotuko and the dogs In all the things they did. 'I did "Everybody was very full and sleepy ro no one contradicted; and the ange kok helped himst'lf to yet another lump of 'boiled meat and lay down to' sh-ep with the others. In the wara we'l-'ilgWied, oil-pmelllng house. .. , No'-.v Kotuko. who drew very well in the Inult way, scratched pictures of all there adventures on a long flat pb'?e cf I'.VJiy with a- le at ene end. When he ar.d the glru went north to Ellef mere land In the year of the won dcii'ul open winter 'he left the ptojure Ftoiy with KaeTu, who lost It In the r'.v'i'Klc when his dog-slcigh broke down one summon on the beach of takn .Vetolllnir at NIkeslrlnir o.nd there a lake Inult found It next . pprlfS an f'd It to a man at Imlgen. who was Interpreter on a Cumberland sound whaler, and he sold U to Hans Olsen, who was sailor on board a bht tftramor that took tourists to the North cape tn Norway. When the tourists' season was over the steamer ran between London and Australia, jipplng at Ceylon, and there Olsen loH'.the Ivory to an Angalese Jeweler who sold Imitation cat's eye sapphires. I found It under some rubbish In his houpe at Colombo, and with Hwns' help I translated tt front one end to ttM other- v ' i ,'..-