“No, my son. I held my head down in such a way that one of my branches sheltered my left eye most of the time. My right eye was protected by the broad shovel prong over my nose. I could close my left eye to rest it while running. Even when we have no horns, we can close one eye and turn our head so as to protect the other. Until you have learned this trick, you must always crowd in on the lee side of a big reindeer for protection when in a blizzard.”
“I’ll remember that, mother. But I’m very sleepy now. May I rest awhile?”
“Yes. We’ll go to the top of that little knoll over yonder. You may sleep while I am chewing my cud.”
When they, had reached the place, Mother Reindeer selected a nice bed of moss covered with a clean sheet of freshly fallen snow. They needed no blankets other than their thick, warm coats. In about two minutes White Sox was fast asleep.
“And under the bright arctic moon, there on the very top of the continent, she told him the story.”
VI
Under the Arctic Moon
If you wish to know where White Sox was sleeping, you must get your geography and turn to the map of Alaska. Now find the seventy-first parallel. North of that you will notice a little point of land jutting out into the Arctic Ocean, called Point Barrow. Just southwest of that point is Barrow, the village to which the big herd belonged.
The little knoll where White Sox was sleeping was on the seventy-first parallel, away up at the top of the North American continent. The freshly fallen snow stretched eastward and westward, northward and southward, from this little knoll; in fact, it covered all the land from the seventieth parallel to the Arctic Ocean. But White Sox knew nothing about parallels and such things. To him that arctic land was the whole world.