20 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE 



There was a grim honesty. Each man's tools and 

 weapons and canoe were sacred to his own use, but 

 there was lust, and greed, and hatred. There were 

 bitter feuds and no forgiveness. There was murder, 

 too. 



One man in that ancient village took a dislike to 

 his wife ; he threatened her, he followed her with 

 eyes in which she could read the will to kill her. She 

 lived in daily terror, but she served him in her 

 strange, devoted way. 



There came a day when the weather seemed 

 good. "Come," said the man, "we will hunt 

 together." The woman gathered a morsel of food, 

 and between them they dragged their little sledge 

 over the snow-covered land into the wilds of the 

 island, where the land was all strewn with boulders 

 and birds were to be found. "Wait," he said, 

 " and sit upon this stone, and I will hunt birds with 

 my bow and arrow." But he took his heavy har- 

 poon with him, the harpoon that is only used for 

 seals and walrus, and the woman knew that she was 

 doomed. 



She sat upon the boulder stone, and the man 

 went away to look for birds. As soon as he was out 

 of sight she took off her smock, with its great droop- 

 ing hood, and set it on the stone where she had sat. 

 She stuffed it with snow to make it keep its shape, 

 and then she hid behind a rock to watch. Presently 

 the husband came creeping up, sly and furtive, 

 dodging from one boulder to the next ; slowly, slowly 

 coming nearer, until he was within range of the fling 

 of a harpoon. He raised the weapon to his shoulder, 



