72 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE 



easily tire, for the rowing of a boat is one of his 

 ordinary duties from his earliest years ; he knows, 

 too, how to make a boat travel fast through the 

 water, whether there be choppy sea or rising wind, 

 by dint of the short, sharp strokes of the oars which 

 he favours. And in his day Kornelius had been one 

 of the strongest men in Okak village. And now in 

 his old age, though his arm was feeble, his heart 

 was stout ; he had all the grit and simple persever- 

 ance of the Eskimo hunter. So Kornelius toiled on, 

 steadily and calmly, while Maria plied her wooden 

 dipper in a vain struggle to keep pace with the water 

 that was all the time splashing into the boat. 



It was a hard fight ; the sea seemed too strong 

 for the old people, but they toiled on. Many times 

 they must have been overwhelmed as the waves 

 broke over them, but still they toiled, and at last, 

 with a boat half full of water, in which the fish and 

 the fishing lines slid to and fro in a tangle, the old 

 couple won. The keel grated on the shelving rock, 

 then banged and pounded as the waves lifted it and 

 let it fall ; and the two old people clambered out 

 and stood in the swirling water clinging to their boat. 

 With every incoming wave they tried afresh to drag 

 it up the slope, but the suck of the retreating water 

 bore them down again. The sea was stronger than 

 they, but still they clung and tussled. They clung 

 until their hands were numb, but at last they could 

 cling no longer ; the bounding, twisting water 

 wrenched the boat from their feeble grasp, and all 

 that they could do was to save themselves and vainly 

 watch their precious boat, the thing they needed 



