CHAPTER VI
The Sealing Grounds
The day’s work in an Eskimo village (i.e., permanent winter quarters), is full and varied, and quite regular. It is a busy life they lead, both men and women, marked by all sorts of skilled activities; by intervals of neighbourly recreation and gossip; by the excitement and stir of the hunters’ return from sealing or bear hunting; and by wonderfully cheery, cosy, hospitable orgies of eating in the evening, when everyone is getting dry and warm and replete for the night.
The hunters start out early in the morning, after a hasty meal of raw flesh and a drink of water, accompanied by their sons and the dogs, four or five in number, harnessed to a light sled loaded with lines and harpoons, or whatever implements may be needed for the proposed chase. The team starts out in a fine tear, urged by shouting and the cracking of whips, and off they all race, men and dogs together, to the sealing grounds out on the frozen sea, or inland for deer. The stars serve as a compass, or in thick weather the wind will be sufficient guide.
No food is borne on the sled, for the hunter depends [[86]]upon himself for his dinner. The duty of the boys is to watch the sled, to mind the dogs, and see they do not fight or stampede, to study the conditions of the ice, the signs of the weather, the habits of animals, to note their calls and movements and how to imitate them, to take careful notice of the topography of the country and make mental drawings of it to serve as charts and maps, to read the stars, and, generally to endeavour to become skilled and successful hunters themselves.
They arrive at the sealing ground as the winter day breaks, and immediately start the search for a seal hole; for upon the finding of this depends the comfort and sustenance of the whole family for days to come, and the succour of the families of anybody else who may not be in luck, but who may return home, cheery as ever, but empty handed.
All around as far as the eye can see is a vast, white expanse, utterly featureless and monotonous save for an occasional iceberg or a ridge of hummocky ice. Behind is the white line of the broken coast; ahead is a dark mist, marking the floe edge and the open sea; and above all, the twilight sky, darker than the drear white world, of the Arctic winter. To a European, the effect of such a scene is crushing in its melancholic immensity, its frozen immobility and silence. Not so to the native. He remains irrepressibly cheerful, his whole soul preoccupied with the necessities of his larder, buoyed up with the hope and the tireless patience of the sealer. He goes searching [[87]]for his blow hole. The slight indication for which his practised eye is scanning every foot of the ice is a faintly rounded bump with a small opening in it no bigger than a shilling. As soon as he catches sight of one of these he is reassured, and prepares to wait—quite indefinitely, and perfectly still—for what must presently happen.
The seal is a warm-blooded creature, whose need of air to breathe is urgent and frequent. As soon as the sea begins to freeze, the animal takes precautions against being imprisoned and drowned under the ice. It makes a series of breathing holes over the whole area of its feeding ground below. If one or another of these freezes over again, there are the rest; or if an enemy is encountered at one hole, it can have recourse to another. The seal comes methodically after feeding to each blow hole in turn, and keeps it open by scratching away any newly formed ice threatening to close it up. It puts its nose to the opening and breathes long, deeply, and luxuriously, before diving once more.
The hunter knows every move in the game.