157 



So, one day, instead of going to hunt, he hid himself a little 

 way from the entrance, where he could observe if anyone went in. 

 Finally he saw a fox enter. He thought that the fox was after 

 his meat, so followed it into the house. What was his surprise 

 to find, on entering, a beautiful woman dressed in skins. On 

 the rack above the lamp hung the skin of a fox. He asked her 

 to marry him, and she became his wife. 



They lived together for a long time happily, until one day 

 the husband detected a strong odour in the house. He asked 

 her where the smell came from. She replied that it was the 

 odour of the fox, and if he was going to scold her, she would 

 run away. She slipped on the fox-skin and was gone in a moment. 

 The man never saw her again. 



THE SON WHO KILLED HIS MOTHER (STORY OF THE NARWHAL). 



There was once a young man who lived with his mother 

 and sister. He was snow-blind, and for some reason his mother 

 wished to get rid of him. She tried to starve him. But his 

 sister on the sly, used to bring him bits of meat. He could not 

 hunt because he was snow-blind. 



But one day a bear came to the snow-house, and his mother 

 guided his bow so that he could shoot the bear through the win- 

 dow. He shot the bear, and killed him. But his mother 

 did not want him to know that he had killed the bear, so she 

 told him that he had missed it, and that his arrow had stuck 

 into the hard ice on the side of the snow-house. So she was 

 living on the meat of the bear, she and her daughter, while her 

 son was starving. 



But his sister managed to feed him something on the sly. 

 At first she would not tell him where the meat came from, but 

 he kept questioning her, and at last she told him that he had 

 killed the bear. Then he knew that his mother was trying to 

 starve him, and he planned to be revenged on her. So in the 

 spring, after the ice had broken up, when he had got his sight 

 back, he used to hunt for white whales along the shore. 



One day he and his mother and sister were all standing on 

 the beach, and he was waiting with his harpoon to strike a whale. 



