They sat down outside and waited for Mother Bear to come by with her babies.
The grandmother told the boy to hold the arrow pointed straight in front of him, and that she would tell him when to let it fly.
They waited a long time for the bears to come, and just as he was getting so tired he feared he would drop the heavy bow, who should come sauntering slowly along but Mother Bear and her two frisky babies. Just as they passed the very spot at which the blind boy was aiming, his grandmother whispered, “Shoot!” and he let fly the arrow. One by one he killed the three bears in this way.
Of course the poor little fellow could not see the bears at all and was not sure that he had killed them, but when he asked her the old witch would tell him nothing. She only scolded him and shoved him into the house.
Saying that she was going to gather sticks for the fire, she took her big knife, with a green jade blade and walrus ivory handle, and went out to skin the bears. Having carefully removed the skins, she hung the meat to dry in the cache, a sort of high drying-frame, where no wild animal could get at it.
When dinner time came the old grandmother feasted greedily on bear steak, but she gave only lean muskrats to the hungry little boy.
In the morning the little fellow crawled out on his hands and knees to search for willow weeds, which the Eskimos like to make tea from. They chew it too sometimes. He had to feel his way very carefully so as not to hurt himself, for of course he could see nothing.
While he was crawling along, reaching out with his hands for the willows, he heard something hopping lightly before him.
A little twittering voice said, “Good-morning, boy.”
“Who are you?” said the boy, and he stopped to listen.