Seorapik was an octogenarian. Her hair was grey and her back was bent. She had managed, somehow, the previous year to carry her belongings on the long, long trail, and to stumble along after the tribe. But at last the bitter fact forced itself upon her that she [[148]]could follow the hunters no more. She must stay behind—alone. She could no longer carry her load nor keep pace with the folk on the way, and none might carry her. She had no alternative but to remain in the deserted village and await the tribe’s return.
Now Seorapik, like every other Eskimo, was an intensely sociable being. She loved nothing so much as to hear laughter and jokes about her, and to be in the thick of all the village talk and doings. As she faced the prospect of the long lonely weeks ahead, in the lifeless silence of the empty camp, with the days growing ever shorter and colder, without a soul—except perhaps a child—to bear her company, her heart quailed and grew very heavy. There was the danger, too, of attack by wolf or bear, and of sickness coming on—and death. Death, all alone! True, they would leave her a plentiful store of food—the good village folk—and lots of skins; but what comfort could these afford her in their absence?
But the law of the North is stern and immutable.
They knew it—those sons and daughters of hers, and all their sons and daughters. They grieved for Seorapik, and remembered her many acts of kindness to each and every one of them, and her life of cheery toil spent wholly in their service. They had a custom to be sure—but it was hard to endure it when it came face to face. A familiar custom, designed to meet such as case as this; but a heartbreaking one, all the same. Seorapik remembered it, too, and was the first to summon the courage to announce it. [[149]]
She proposed to bid the tribe goodbye rather than let it take leave of her. Her time to go on the long, lone journey from which none ever returned could not be far off in any case. She decided to anticipate it. She could not face seeing her folk load up the packs, start out on the trail, without her, and disappear over the hills. She could not contemplate the intense loneliness that it would all mean, and miss the laughter of the children, and even the rough and tumble among the dogs. So the dread subject was broached to her son.
He gave his assent. Itteapik announced the decision to the villagers, and they came to help with the preparations for Seorapik’s death.
A rough, round igloo was built, and the old woman withdrew into it, taking her few belongings, escorted by all her kindred and friends. They encouraged her to the last with every kindly and sympathetic thing they could think of to say. She braved it out, and, with her cheery but quavering goodbye still in their ears, her loved ones blocked up the entrance to the little death chamber in such a way that no dog or wolf might break in.
And there she sat down slowly and willingly to starve to death, quite happy so long as her children continued to come from time to time and call to her from outside, and tell her all that was going on, every single little thing that happened.… She never asked for food or drink; they never gave it.… She never wanted to come out; they never moved a [[150]]stone.… She simply had to go. Their part was to make her last days, her last hours, as happy as they could, simply by being there—quite close—outside.
Then the time came when the feeble voice just ceased to make one more response. She had gone on her own long journey first, to the land where parting would be no more, nor the fear and sadness of it. Her last hours had been happy ones, cheered by the sounds of the village life, the cries and gurgles of the babies, the shouts and cat-calls of the boys and girls, the murmur of men and women talking over their accustomed tasks. She had no loneliness to bear, after all, no desolation, no silence. The old Eskimo died with a smile of love and contentment on her face, with a long record behind her of woman’s good and motherly work, of a humble, “primitive” life indeed, but lived according to what light she had—and so into the better life beyond.
There was Nandla (the spear), too, the blind hunter, who also went to death under the lash of arctic circumstance.