“Funny little bear-skin trousers”
“Achatinǵwah told me all about the sun and moon to-day. Ever so many years ago, longer than the oldest Eskimos can remember, a girl ran out of an igloo with a piece of lighted moss in her hand. Her brother ran after her with a larger piece of moss. They ran so long they ran right up into the sky, where the girl became the moon and her brother the sun. Isn’t it funny? We say there is a man in the moon; the Eskimos think it is a girl.”
XI
March went and April came, with “April Fool’s Day” and Easter, of which, of course, AH-NI-GHI´-TO’S Eskimo friends knew nothing.
During April there were many pleasant days, and AH-NI-GHI´-TO and her mother were out most of the time.
The Eskimos crossed Smith Sound to the open water off the Greenland shore, where the walrus were plentiful and where most of the tribe gather every spring for the hunt. Each family builds a snow igloo, and there they stay and hunt and feast until the breaking up of the ice warns them that if they wish to return to their settlement before the next autumn they must move on.
Only one family and an orphan boy remained with the ship. This boy was the son of Magipsu, the seamstress who sewed for AH-NI-GHI´-TO’S mother the first time she came to the Snowland, and whom she found dying two years later.
This poor little fellow had also lost his father since then and was all alone. No one in particular took care of him, but if he needed clothing the family who could best spare it gave it to him, and his food he got wherever he happened to be.
Koodluk´too, or “Good luck to you” as Charley called him, and AH-NI-GHI´-TO became great friends, and AH-NI-GHI´-TO’S mother said he could stay on the ship and she would take care of him as long as she remained in the Snowland.