But all this while two women had been standing watching him.
His wife was looking out for him as usual, shading her eyes with her hands, and when at last she caught sight of his kayak, and it came nearer, she could see that it was Qasiagssaq, rowing very slowly. And when then he reached the land, she said:
“What has happened to you now?”
“An iceberg calved.”
And seeing her husband come home in such a case, his wife said to the others:
“An iceberg has calved right on top of Qasiagssaq, so that he barely escaped alive.”
But when the women who had watched him came home, they said:
“We saw him to-day; he rowed in to land, and took off his breeches and hammered at his knee-caps with a stone; then he went down to his kayak and battered it to bits, and when that was done, he filled his kayak with ice, and even put ice inside his clothing.”
But when his wife heard this, she said to him:
“When Qasiagssaq does such things, one cannot but feel shame for him.”