At that time the Great Light to which he referred had begun to show symptoms of intention to return to the dark regions which it had forsaken for several months. The glimmer on the eastern sky had been increasing perceptibly each day, and at last had reached the point of producing a somewhat rosy twilight for two or three hours before and after noon. King Frost, however, still reigned supreme, and the dog-sledge as yet was the only mode of travelling among the islands or on the sea.
“Why go you towards the rising sun?” asked Nazinred when Cheenbuk invited him to be one of the party.
“Because it is from my countrymen who dwell there that we get the hard stuff that is so good for our spear-heads, and lances, and arrows. We know not where they find the stuff, and they won’t tell. I shall go and find out for myself, and take back plenty of it to our people.”
The “hard stuff” referred to was hoop-iron, which, as well as nails and a few hatchets, the Eskimos of the eastern parts of the Arctic shores obtained from whale-ships and passed on to their friends in the more remote regions of the farther north.
“I can tell you how they get it,” said the Indian. “White traders to whom our people go with their furs have spoken of such things, and my ears have been open. They say that there are white men who come over the great salt lake from far-off lands in big big canoes. They come to catch the great whales, and it is from them that the hard stuff comes.”
For some minutes the Eskimo was silent. A new idea had entered his head and he was turning it over.
“Have you ever seen these white men or their big canoes?” asked Cheenbuk with great interest.
“Never. The salt lake where they kill the whale is too far from my people’s hunting-grounds. But the white traders I have visited have seen them. Some traders have come from the same far-off lands in big canoes of the same sort.”
“Is it very far from here to the seas to which these whale-killers come?”
“Very far from the hunting-grounds of the Dogribs, but it may not be far from here.”