The Eskimos too began to prepare for whaling after their own fashion, and the second week in April began their ceremony of propitiation. They blackened their faces with soot and streaked them with red. They dressed in their best clothes, with hoods fringed with wolverine fur, giving their faces thus a halo of bristling hair that made them look quite savage and warlike. Then they took bits of blubber carefully saved from the preceding year and cut into little dice-like cubes. These they bore in pompous procession to the grave of Konwa, and placed them thereon with much ceremony, that his spirit might be propitiated. They marched about his grave as they had at the time of the burial, then passed down to the ice and across it to the first open water. Here they strewed the remaining bits of blubber, that the spirits of the ice might be favorable. Nor would they consent that the boys, or modern weapons, should participate in the taking of the first whale. The others might be captured as they pleased, but the first must be taken with all the ceremonies and in the accustomed manner of their forefathers, else would not prosperity come to their whale hunting.
They mounted walrus-tusk spears, tipped with slate, on long driftwood poles. They sledded their umiaks out to the nearest open water, a half mile or so from shore. Here they placed them ready for launching, and built on the windward side a windbreak of ice and snow behind which they found shelter, for it was still very cold. Painted and plumed, here they waited for a week. One day the welcome cry of “Akovuk! akovuk!” (Whale! whale!) rang from the watchers, and the spout of a whale was seen in the open lead. The black body rolled along carelessly, heedless of danger, till it was nearly opposite them. Then the harpooner took his place in the bow of the umiak with two paddlers behind him. The others launched the boat with a rush, and it slid of its own momentum across the space of water till its bow gently rubbed the whale’s side. Kroo, the harpooner, stood erect. With all his strength he drove the slate-tipped and barbed harpoon into the whale’s side, pushing desperately on the long driftwood pole. Then the paddlers backed rapidly away, while he threw overboard about fifteen fathoms of walrus line fastened to the ivory harpoon, and having along its length three sealskin pokes as floats. The wounded whale sounded, and tried to roll the weapon out on the bottom, but failing in this he rose again and began trying to lash the thing from him by blows of his flukes at the pokes. By this time the other umiak was launched, and another and another string of floats was made fast to him in a similar manner, till, buoyed up so that he could no longer dive, and exhausted with his battle with the light pokes, he lay sullen and was lanced to death by Kroo, with an ivory lance on a driftwood pole. Then there was great rejoicing among the villagers. The whale was hardly dead before they began to cut bits of the outer epidermis, the blackskin, from him and to bolt it raw, it being considered a great delicacy among “the people;” indeed, many white men find its nutty, oily flavor pleasant.
Then they towed the carcass alongside the ice, cut “jug handles” in the heavy floes, and reeved their walrus-hide lines through these. With this primitive purchase they hauled the head up so that one side of the bone could be cut out. Then they rolled the whale and cut out the other side. Each native present received five slabs of bone. The crew of the boat making the strike received ten slabs more each, then the harpooner received the rest. Blubber and meat there was enough, and more than enough, for everybody, dogs and all, and the event closed with great feasting. Thus for the first whale; but the ancient customs having been complied with, and the spirits of the dead and the ice having been duly propitiated, they turned quickly to modern weapons, and the boys had no difficulty in getting them to use the whaler’s harpoon and the bomb gun. Some of them had used these before, and all had seen the whalemen use them and knew their efficiency. As the fishing progressed, the whole village, children and all, turned out, and the boys learned to brave the cold and be as hardy and patient as they. With the good supply of bomb guns and lances and harpoons of all kinds aboard the ship, the little army was well fitted out, and sometimes they were able to kill a whale from the ice with a single shot from a bomb. One whale came up and died under the ice, but they blew the floe up and shattered it with tonite bombs, and got at the carcass in this fashion. When the weather became too severe, they retreated to the ship, and the boys entertained the village there, while the villagers in turn entertained the boys.
The Eskimo women were greatly interested in the cooking methods and implements of the boys and learned their use with surprising readiness, though there were many laughable incidents. They gave names of their own to many things, which were appropriate and interesting. Beans they called “komorra,” from their word “komuk,” meaning little grub, the larva of the gadfly. “Sava kora,” chopped larvæ, was rice, and they named baking powder “pubublown,” their word for bubbling. Soap the children were inclined to eat, but the older folks soon learned to use it, as well as towels.
Whalemen are apt to be fond of “chile con carne,” as the Mexicans call it,—a red-pepper condiment for meat that is wondrous strong. Atchoo got hold of this one day and wondered long what it was. Finally she gave some to a boy who was waiting about, boy-like, for a chance to taste things. The boy helped himself liberally, and the contortions through which he went on getting the full strength of the pepper were near to causing a stampede among the women and children, who thought him possessed of an evil spirit. When matters had quieted down, Atchoo took the balance of the can of “chile con carne” and dug a hole in the ice, burying it deeply there, and saying over it the words of an Eskimo incantation, which is supposed to keep the buried spirit of evil from ever rising again.
The wife of Kroo was quite an old woman, and she did not take kindly to the innovations in cooking. Finally, however, she was given some rice, and persuaded to boil it for Kroo’s dinner. She retired to the forecastle, and started a fire in the little stove there, that she might not be observed in her work. Not long afterward cries of alarm were heard, and Kroo’s wife rushed frantically from the forecastle, crying that she had the devil in the pot.
She had filled the kettle far too full of rice; and as it swelled and continued to pour out over the rim, she concluded that an evil spirit was in the white man’s food, pushing it out continually.
But the matter of the explosive doughnuts was the most exciting, and indeed came near being serious, not only in its immediate effects, but in the setback which it gave the white man’s food in the opinion of the Eskimos. Joe, who was the cook for the boys, had frequently made doughnuts and fried them in oil for the delectation of the community, the natives having a great fondness for them. Then he taught Atchoo how to mix them up, and she seemed to learn very rapidly. One day, however, she undertook to make them without supervision, and used water from melted ice which had chunks of ice still in it. These chunks she incorporated in the doughnuts, no doubt thinking, Eskimo fashion, that it was just as good that way. The doughnuts fried, but the chunks of ice turned to steam within, and about the time Atchoo was forking the doughnuts out into a pan they began to blow up, scattering oil and the wildest consternation among those waiting for the feast.
The first one popped on the fork as Atchoo was handing it to Harluk, that he first might see how good a cook she was. The largest chunk of it landed square in Harluk’s eye, causing him to dance with astonishment and alarm.
“Hold on!” he cried. “No want to see him; want to eat him.”