AND KAYAK 135 



canoe, and so I was an Eskimo for a time. 

 " Not much plenty seals out here," I shouted 

 back to them in the queer broken English that 

 they use when they talk to the men on the 

 fishing schooners. " I am coming home again " ; 

 and round I managed to turn the thing and 

 paddled back to Johannes, feeling every minute 

 more at home in the canoe, and feeling, too, 

 how wonderfully safe the frail-looking thing 

 was. That was a beginning, and I know more 

 about canoes since then ; but that first trial 

 in a skin canoe made me wonder all the more 

 at the skill of the men who go off to the seal 

 hunt, and sit for hours in rough and freezing 

 seas, balancing themselves with their long 

 paddle, and ready in an instant to fling their 

 great harpoon or point their gun at the head 

 of some seal that happens to come within reach. 

 The harpoon is a wonderful weapon : it 

 has a jointed head made of a walrus tusk, 

 with a barbed end that fits over it and is 

 held on by a line looped to a knob in the 

 handle. The spare length of the line lies coiled 

 on the top of the canoe, and its end is fastened 

 to a blown-up sealskin that serves as a float. 

 Over his harpoon the hunter spends long hours 

 of patient scraping and rubbing and boring 

 and fitting; the socketed joint is as neat and 

 firm as clever hands can make it; and the 

 result is that the Eskimo can trust his harpoon 



