STORY OF AN OIL-STAINED BIBLE 63 



least one or two fish into his boat his tireless 

 perseverance almost insures him some reward but 

 it is a test of his quality of patience that he will toil 

 on hour after hour though his catch be small, 

 moving his little boat from place to place in search 

 of a shoal of fish. There come stormy times when 

 he is forced to make a dash for shelter, and then 

 he plies his oars with real Eskimo skill. Storms are 

 part of his life ; he knows Nature at her sternest and 

 when her mood seems most pitiless, and he faces 

 whatever the day may bring with unfailing good 

 humour. 



When the autumn days come, and the codfish 

 are moving away to the deeper water, he spends his 

 days on the watch for seals. He takes his skin canoe 

 down from its scaffolding of poles or from its place 

 on the roof of the porch, and carries it to the water. 

 Seated on a piece of dog-skin in the well of the 

 canoe, with the weight of his body below the water- 

 line, he paddles away to the hunting place, and 

 there he stops. Hour after hour he sits like a man 

 of stone, braving the chill of the air, and careless 

 of the water all around him on the point of freezing, 

 warm with the inner warmth of the true Eskimo con- 

 stitution, waiting with gun in hand or harpoon half 

 poised, waiting for the wary seals. He likes a skin 

 canoe, if he can get one, because it is so much more 

 manageable than a boat in a rough sea. It is 

 buoyant and light, easy to turn this way and that, 

 riding the waves like a cork, but stable because the 

 hunter sits low. But nowadays these " kajaks " are 

 not easy to get for the one reason that it takes 



