Ch. 11: Quiquern

The People of the Eastern Ice, they are melting like the snow--
They beg for coffee and sugar; they go where the white men go.
The People of the Western Ice, they learn to steal and fight;
"They sell their furs to the trading-post: they sell their souls
to the white.
The People of the Southern Ice, they trade with the whaler's
crew;
Their women have many ribbons, but their tents are torn and few.
But the People of the Elder Ice, beyond the white man's ken--
Their spears are made of the narwhal-horn, and they are the
last of the Men!
Translation.

"He has opened his eyes. Look!"

"Put him in the skin again. He will be a strong dog. On the
fourth month we will name him."

"For whom?" said Amoraq.

Kadlu's eye rolled round the skin-lined snow-house till it
fell on fourteen-year-old Kotuko sitting on the sleeping-bench,
making a button out of walrus ivory. "Name him for me,"
said Kotuko, with a grin. "I shall need him one day."

Kadlu grinned back till his eyes were almost buried in the fat
of his flat cheeks, and nodded to Amoraq, while the puppy's
fierce mother whined to see her baby wriggling far out of reach
in the little sealskin pouch hung above the warmth of the
blubber-lamp. Kotuko went on with his carving, and Kadlu threw
a rolled bundle of leather dog-harnesses into a tiny little
room that opened from one side of the house, slipped off his
heavy deerskin hunting-suit, put it into a whalebone-net that
hung above another lamp, and dropped down on the sleeping-bench
to whittle at a piece of frozen seal-meat till Amoraq, his wife,
should bring the regular dinner of boiled meat and blood-soup.
He had been out since early dawn at the seal-holes, eight miles
away, and had come home with three big seal. Half-way down the
long, low snow passage or tunnel that led to the inner door
of the house you could hear snappings and yelpings, as the
dogs of his sleigh-team, released from the day's work, scuffled
for warm places.

When the yelpings grew too loud Kotuko lazily rolled off the
sleeping-bench, and picked up a whip with an eighteen-inch
handle of springy whalebone, and twenty-five feet of heavy,
plaited thong. He dived into the passage, where it sounded as
though all the dogs were eating him alive; but that was no more
than their regular grace before meals. When he crawled out at
the far end, half a dozen furry heads followed him with their
eyes as he went to a sort of gallows of whale-jawbones, from
which the dog's meat was hung; split off the frozen stuff in big
lumps with a broad-headed spear; and stood, his whip in one hand
and the meat in the other. Each beast was called by name,
the