3°° 



MafivocA of 



ffie Icebergs 



the tickle, as if there were no other place in 

 a thousand leagues of sea and rock-bound 

 coast. There were two hundred fathoms of 

 water at the harbor mouth, and the great 

 berg touched bottom softly, yet with a ter- 

 rific impact which sent huge masses of ice 

 crashing down on the black rocks on either 

 side. It might stay a month, or it might 

 drift away on the next tide. Meanwhile the 

 fishermen were helpless as flies in a bottle ; 

 for the iceberg corked the harbor mouth 

 and not even a punt could get out or in. 



Old Tomah came that same day from 

 his hunting camp far away in the interior. 

 Grown tired of eating beaver meat and 

 smoking willow bark, he had brought some 

 otter skins to trade for a little pork and 

 tobacco, with a few warm stockings thrown 

 in for good measure. But the trading 

 schooner, for which the islanders watch in 

 spring as a lost man watches for morning, 

 had not yet come, and the fishermen were 

 themselves at the point of starvation. For a 

 month they had tasted nothing but a little 

 dried fish and 



doughballs. 



Hunting was 



