Perhaps while they are so merry there all together, a very great snowstorm will come and cover the little house, so that they cannot get out for several days. When the storm ends, they dig out the low doorway, and creep again into the starlight, and Agoonack slips into her warm clothes and runs out for Jack Frost to kiss her cheeks, and leave roses wherever his lips touch. If it is very cold indeed, she must stay in, or Jack Frost will give her no roses, but a cold, frosty bite.
This is the way Agoonack lives through the long darkness. But I have to tell you more of her in another chapter, and you will find it is not always dark in the cold northern countries.
HOW AGOONACK LIVES THROUGH THE LONG SUMMER.
It is almost noon one day when Agoonack's mother wraps the little girl in her shaggy clothes and climbs with her a high hill, promising a pleasant sight when they shall have reached the top.
It is the sun, the beautiful, bright, round sun, which shines and smiles at them for a minute, and then slips away again below the far, frozen water.
They haven't seen him for many months, and now they rejoice, for the next day he comes again and stays longer, and the next, and the next, and every day longer and longer, until at last he moves above them in one great, bright circle, and does not even go away at all at night. His warm rays melt the snow and awaken the few little hardy flowers that can grow in this short summer. The icy coat breaks away from the clear running water, and great flocks of birds with soft white plumage come, like a snowstorm of great feathery flakes, and settle among the black rocks along the seashore. Here they lay their eggs in the many safe little corners and shelves of the rock; and here they circle about in the sunshine, while the Esquimau boys make ready their long-handled nets and creep and climb out upon the ledges of rock, and, holding up the net as the birds fly by, catch a netful to carry home for supper.
The sun shines all day long, and all night long, too; and yet he can't melt all the highest snowdrifts, where the boys are playing bat-and-ball,—long bones for sticks, and an odd little round one for a ball.
It is a merry life they all live while the sunshine stays, for they know the long, dark winter is coming, when they can no longer climb among the birds, nor play ball among the drifts.
The seals swim by in the clear water, and the walrus and her young one are at play; and, best of all, the good reindeer has come, for the sun has uncovered the crisp moss upon which he feeds, and he is roaming through the valleys where it grows among the rocks.
The old men sit on the rocks in the sunshine, and laugh and sing, and tell long stories of the whale and the seal, and the great white whale that, many years ago, when Agoonack's father was a child, came swimming down from the far north, where they look for the northern lights, swimming and diving through the broken ice; and they watched her in wonder, and no one would throw a harpoon at this white lady of the Greenland seas, for her visit was a good omen, promising a mild winter.