At an early age Mertuk came to know the living creatures which were the sources of food and the means of life. She could tell the seasonal time in which came and went the wild fowl, of their breeding and of their young. The haunts and habits of the swift-footed animals of the glacier-enclosed land were all known to her, as well as the favorite resorts of the monsters of the bordering icy ocean, which furnished the hides and bones, the sinew and ivory, without which there would be neither needles and thread for the igloo, nor lances and sledges for the hunter.
It was a land of meat and flesh in which she lived, with no bread or vegetables, and the taste of sugar and of tea, the flavor of salt and of pepper, were absent from her food. She knew not books, matches, fire-arms, boats, stoves, crockery, nor cloth whether of cotton or fibre, of silk or wool. It was a land without wood, iron, medicines, or stimulants, and equally without government, schools, churches, hospitals, or even houses—unless one could so name the stone huts, the skin tents, or the transient snow igloos.
Her mother early taught her all the kinds of women's work which could make her useful to her tribe or to her family, and without doubt instilled in her a sense of some of the feminine graces which have softened the harshness of the world in all climes and in every country throughout the ages. Here they were a part of the life of the stone age, which the Etahs had inherited untainted by the outside world.
The daughter's supple fingers soon braided evenly and closely the sinews of the narwhal into the tense and needful bow-strings, for Shung-hu hunted reindeer with bow and arrows. Her strong hands tightly stretched the drying seal-skin, through which later her bone-needles and sinew-thread were so skilfully plied that the skin broke before the seams gave way. With deft action and with an unwonted taste she so shaped her bird-skin clothing and blue-fox hoods as to win praise for her garments from men and women alike. Her skill with the lamp soon became equal to that of the oldest expert of the tribe. Choosing and drying the long moss best suited for wicks, she applied a bit of walrus fat to the moss threads, and twisted them into a dense, even roll. While other lamps gave forth volumes of smoke, Mertuk so skilfully trimmed the lighted moss-wick that it gave an equal steady flame along the edge of the koodlik (pot-stone lamp). An adept in all woman's work, always in health, gay, witty and even-tempered, Mertuk came also to be a comely maiden—well-formed in figure, fair of face, though very tiny in stature.
But even in this land of Eskimo plenty there come seasons of dire distress, when famine stalks abroad and slow starvation strikes down the weaklings of the tribe. In such a time of want and hunger Hans Hendrik came to the Etah tribe, to aid the half-famished folk in the hunt of the walrus, then needed to save from lingering death the sick men of Kane's ship as well as the strong people with Kalutunah and Shung-hu. Mertuk had watched from a distance this wonderful youth, who spoke Inuit queerly, to the sly amusement of the listening Etahs. But he carried a long, strange weapon—fire-flashing, ear-splitting, and death-dealing—that killed a bear or a walrus at great and unheard-of distances. In the brief intervals of the urgent hunt he came to Shung-hu's igloo to sleep, to eat their scant fare, and to feed his wolfish dogs, which were ever fighting with those of Shung-hu. The hunt was fast and furious, and with such success that steaks and liver, walrus-skin and rich blubber, were again in plenty.
Of the joyous feast after this particular hunt, in which Mertuk partook with other famishing Etahs, Kane quotes Hans Hendrik, "an exact and truthful man," as saying: "Even the children ate all night. You (Kane) know the little two-year-old that Awiu (possibly the mother of Mertuk) carried in her hood—the one that bit you when you tickled her. That baby cut for herself, with a knife made out of an iron hoop and so heavy that she could hardly lift it, cut and ate, ate and cut, as long as I looked at her. She ate a sipak—the Eskimo name for the lump which is cut off close to the lips [of the eater]—as large as her own head. Three hours afterward, when I went to bed, the baby was cutting off another lump and eating still."
The work of the hunt proved too strenuous for the Danish Greenlander, and finally Hans was worn out by exposure and fatigue, while he fell sick from cold and wet. In this condition he sought the breek[31] of Shung-hu's igloo for rest until he gained strength to enable him to return to Kane, to whom he had sent walrus meat.
The care of the strange Inuit fell on Mertuk. Prompt and gentle in her ministrations and attentions, jovial in her speech, and witty in conversation, she soon ensnared the heart of Hans. Indeed, from all accounts, she had that peculiar winning bashfulness that is so attractive among certain of the children of nature. Besides her tasteful dress she had a sense of order and of cleanliness, not always found among the Etahs. She not only kept her long, raven-black hair unmatted, but had also gathered her tresses into a tuft on the top of her head, where it was fastened by a finely embroidered seal-skin strap. This gave her a semblance of size and height quite needed, for she was only a trifle over four feet tall.
Hans soon took careful notice of his nurse, who talked with overflowing mirth, while her busy fingers, in the intervals of personal service, unceasingly plaited the tough sinew-thread with which arrow-heads are secured or other hunting implements perfected. Deft and quick, busy with work, careful of her little brothers, she seemed to be the maiden suited to his taste, although the claims of other women were presented to him during his stay. Before he was strong, he had asked that she should become his wife. Most of her maiden comrades had sobbed and lamented when the time came for them to change the care-free, petted, and joyous child life for the onerous duties of an Etah matron. But Mertuk's heart glowed with happy feelings, and she sang with joy when the great Eskimo hunter, who had killed three of the five great walruses, asked that she would be his wife.