HAULING THE NETS 



speak their language, they are the kind-hearted, open- 

 handed, raw-meat-eating Eskimos. An Eskimo is no 

 less a Christian because he sucks blood from a freshly 

 killed seal: he can thank God for his food just as 

 well as we can for ours. 



I never thought that I should sleep in a green- 

 house on the freezing coast of Labrador, but that is 

 how I spent that night. The missionaries at Okak 

 had given up their greenhouse after futile efforts to 

 grow early vegetables, and had sold it for a mere 

 song to one of the seal hunters. He took it away in 

 sections, and put it together at the sealing place, and 

 was very (proud of it altogether. By daylight it 

 reminded me rather of a photographic studio, and 

 the properties rough bedsteads, a battered stove, a 

 couple of decrepit chairs, and a whole host of nets 

 and dogs' harness and spears and hatchets and rusty 

 guns would have given me some unique pictures if 

 I had had the chance to stay awhile. But time was 

 precious : I only wanted to see the hauling of the net, 

 and then I must go home again. 



We were out soon after daybreak, and it was 

 cold. 



The winter that came afterwards was far less 

 biting; for the autumn wind, blowing over the 

 freezing sea, nipped and chilled me as nothing that I 

 have ever known. It was interesting enough to see 

 the Eskimos trotting down to the rocks where the 

 shore-rope lay, and where the float that marked the 

 far end of the net danced on the black water. I was 

 half frozen, stamping about to get warm ; and they 

 they cheerfully pulled the wet ropes up, chewing at 

 their pipes and chatting merrily, and every now and 

 again stopping to wring the water out of their sodden 



