Then it was that the giants were troubled, for they had no place to put the little people for the night. For there was no part of the wigwam where a giant might not step on them or roll over them in the dark. Finally the giantess had a happy idea. She took down the Indians’ own canoe and put some little skins in the bottom. Then very gently she laid Pulowech in one end and his wife in the other, tucked them snugly in, and swung the canoe up again at the top of the wigwam.
Days went by, and the giants delighted in nothing so much as in their little people. For hours at a time Oscoon would sit quite still while his small guests ran about his hand or explored the long gullies between his fingers. As for the giantess, she never left the wigwam without bringing them great handfuls of apples, which were to her, to be sure, no bigger than so many currants. But when the giants went hunting, then it was that Pulowech and his wife feasted. For always they brought back two or three moose swinging in their hands like rabbits, and two or three dozen caribou hanging in their belts, as an Indian would carry a string of squirrels.
So it happened that Pulowech and his wife lived among the giants as happy and as care-free as two children. From the first morning when they awoke, high in their canoe-cradle, they seemed to have forgotten everything; not only the fog and terror of the day before, but all their past life as well. They had no memory of their home nor even of their hungry children waiting for them in the wigwam beside the sea. It seemed to them that they had always lived in this warm, happy Giantland where deer swarmed in the forests, and fish in the sea.
Every day they ate a little out of their whale, and every night they went peacefully to sleep in their high canoe. When they were neither eating nor sleeping, they romped about like children. They slid down the back of Oscoon’s hand as down a hillock; they played hide-and-seek in one of his moccasins; and they ran about in the wigwam till the good giantess would have to put them in one of her big baskets for fear they might be stepped on.
But good times do not last forever, even in Giantland. One day, Oscoon picked up his Indians with a grave face. “My little people,” said he, “to-day the great Chenoo, the dreadful ice-giant of the North, is coming to fight us. It will be a hard battle, but, most of all, I fear for you. For no one less than a giant could hear the Chenoo’s war-scream and live. We will wrap you up the best we can, and no matter what happens, you must not uncover your ears until I come for you.”
Oscoon picked up his Indians with a grave face
The Indians promised that they would do as he said, and entered into all the plans for the battle as gleefully as though it had been a new game. They tore little pieces of fur from a rabbit-skin and stuffed them so tightly into their ears that they could scarcely hear Oscoon when he whispered to them. Then the giantess bound up their heads with many strips of deerskin, and, laying them in their canoe, fairly smothered them with fold after fold of wrappings.
When she had finished, Oscoon took them, canoe and all, and put them in the bottom of a great stone pot. Beside them he laid a ton or so of deer meat and nine or ten bushels of apples, so that they should have enough to eat in case the battle lasted over night. Then, over the pot he spread a robe made of thousands of bearskins, which covered all the top.