“I have brought you some food and some water in a bag, a little oil and a good warm sleeping-bag. Put the sleeping-bag under the floor, and get into it and keep warm.”
When the kind man had gone away, the boy put the sleeping-bag through the hole which is in the middle of the floor of every kasga, then, after eating some of the food and drinking some of the water, he fell fast asleep inside the nice, warm bag.
Early in the morning the boy crept out of the hole on to the floor, like a little rat without any fur, and began to run around and around again, to keep warm. It was still dark because the sun is lazy, way up there in Alaska, and gets up very late. It was cold, too, icy cold.
With the first rays of daylight came the uncle’s footsteps on top of the kasga; then the surprised and angry face peering down at the boy through the window hole.
Now the chief had come up there expecting to find his nephew frozen stiff, and was not at all pleased to see him skipping about all bare and so lively. It made him more angry than ever, and he called down in a big, fierce voice, “You are alive yet?” as though he could not believe his own eyes.
The boy looked up without a word, and kept on running; then the uncle called him all kinds of names, and said, “You try to keep alive as hard as you can. This is the last day for you. I’ll fix you.” Then he went away.
The boy crept back into his warm bag. When it was getting dark again, he heard some one at the window hole calling, “Hello.”
The boy answered, “Hello.” Then the kind man said, “Listen, your uncle is determined to kill you. He sent for the shaman and told him that he must kill you tonight. I cannot save you this time, for the shaman is more powerful than I. You must try your best to save yourself.” So saying, the kind man went away.
It was night; dark, quiet and cold. The little boy stood shivering and wondering what was going to happen to him. Suddenly he heard a sound, a strange rustling sound. He was terrified, and thought of what the kind man had told him about the shaman, who was very powerful, and knew all kinds of magic.
The strange sound came nearer, and he could see by a light at the door that a big snake was coming near to him. Now, while there is a kind of water serpent in one part of the North, there are no real snakes in Alaska, so the boy had never seen one, and did not know what it was.