“Now yakaro, now yakaro,
Too loo kotaro.”
“Gull, gull, bring me good luck.”
On warm days the snow melted with great rapidity under this continuous sunshine, and the brown tundra soon began to show between the drifts. Yet the ice held firm, except that narrow leads opened here and there, and there was no hope that the ship would be able to get off for more than a month, in fact nearly two, and it would be that time also before any ships could come in from below.
In this ice whaling the entire Eskimo community had participated, yet such is the familiarity of the Eskimo with the world of ice that no serious accident had happened to any one of them. It was not that conditions were not often dangerous as well as uncomfortable, but that the native instinct seemed always to find a way out of difficulty. Pickalye’s two daughters, fine, strong young girls, were out on the ice one day many miles from land, with a team of four dogs and a sled, bringing in blubber from a whale that had been killed out there. A sudden violent snowstorm came up, and they were in great danger of being driven out into the pack and frozen to death. They lost the direction and were obliged to abandon the sled, but each girl fastened two of the dogs by their traces to her own girdle and let them go as they pleased. The result was, that the homing instinct of the dogs brought them safe to land, after many hours in the blizzard. They made the traces fast to their girdles that the dogs might not break away and escape in case they fell on the rough ice and were obliged to let go their grip on the lashings.
The natives gave Harry the nickname of “the whale walker,” because one day he was on an ice cake near the open lead with a bomb gun, watching out for a whale that had been seen heading up the lead. The whale came up just beside him, and before he could fire, rolled against the cake and capsized it. Harry sprang for the only available dry spot, the whale’s back near his tail, and running hastily from that dangerous weapon up along the black length, sprang from his head to another cake of ice, reaching it before the lazy leviathan had made up his mind that anything out of the common was happening. Then he turned and discharged the gun into the whale’s neck, breaking it at one shot. This whale was a particularly large one, with a tremendous spread of flukes, and Pickalye was so impressed with this that he ran toward the other villagers shouting,—
“Come and see! Come and see! Our brother who walks on whales has killed the one with the biggest feet in the ocean.”
After the ice whaling was practically over the village held a feast, a sort of thanksgiving, at which each man who had struck a whale gave to everybody else as many dinner parties as he had killed whales. Each of these was followed by games, in which the chief was blanket tossing. A large walrus hide was suspended horizontally three feet high by ropes, which ran to springy but stout poles of driftwood, thirty feet away. These gave additional spring to the walrus-hide blanket, around which stood a dozen adults lifting on the edges. All the people came in their best clothes, and the prominent whale catchers had a smear of black on the left cheek as large as one’s finger. This was a special mark of distinction. The ancient wife of Kroo, the head man, was the first to be honored, and she climbed into the centre of the blanket with surprising agility. Beginning, she gave a leap in the air, then as she came down, the spring of the walrus-hide ropes on the driftwood poles, supplemented by two dozen lusty arms, sent her high in the air again. Up and down she went, kicking and waving her arms amid cries of exultation and pleasure, and ceased only with utter exhaustion. Half a dozen girls rushed for her place, but all gave way to the most agile, who first reached the centre of the hide. Thus the sport went on, each following in turn, until all who wished had been tossed.
Pickalye, fat and simple-minded, was one of the experts at this game. He would take a sealskin poke and use it like a skipping-rope in the air, and the great sport of the contest came in the sidewise yanks which the crowd gave the hide as he leaped, in an attempt to upset him. This was often successful, and when he came down on some one’s head, wrong side up, as he generally did before the game was over, there was great laughter.
They danced by the light of the midnight sun to the music of tom-toms, the musicians being sheltered from the cold wind by an umiak turned on its side. They had wrestling matches, in which the winner had to hold the ring until beaten or exhausted, all remaining as long as they had breath or strength. The feast finally ended in a grand football game on the sea ice, at the close of which the best-dressed player on each side was ducked in a water-hole.