510 THE ESKIMO ABOUT BERING STRAIT [ETH. ANN. 18 
THE FIRE BALL 
(From Sledge island) 
In the village of Kin-i/-gin (Cape Prince of Wales), very long ago, 
there lived a poor orphan boy who had no one to care for him and was 
treated badly by everyone, being made to run here and there at the 
bidding of the villagers. One evening he was told to go out of the 
kashim and see how the weather was. He had no skin boots, and being 
winter, he did not wish to go, but he was driven out. Very soon he 
came back and said there was no change in the weather. After this 
the men kept sending him out on the same errand until at last he came 
back and told them that he had seen a great ball of fire Jike the moon 
coming over the hill not far away. The people laughed at him and 
made him go out again, when he saw that the fire had come nearer 
until it was quite close. Then the orphan ran inside telling what he 
had seen and hid himself because he was frightened. 
Soon after this the people in the kashim saw a fiery figure dancing on 
the gut-skin covering over the roof hole, and directly after a human 
skeleton came crawling into the room through the passageway, creep- 
ing on its knees and elbows. When it came into the room the skeleton 
made a motion toward the people, causing all of them to fall upon their 
knees and elbows in the same position taken by the skeleton. Then 
turning about it crawled out as it had come, followed by the people, 
who were forced to go after it. Outside the skeleton crept away from 
the village, followed by all the men, and in a short time everyone of 
them was dead and the skeleton had vanished. Some of the villagers 
had been absent when the skeleton, or tunghdk, came, and when they 
returned they found dead people lying on the ground all about. Enter- 
ing the kashim they found the orphan boy, who told them how the 
people had been killed. After this they followed the tracks of the tun- 
ghik through the snow and were led up the side of the mountain until 
they came to a very ancient grave, where the tracks ended. 
In a few days the brother of one of the men who had been killed 
went fishing upon the sea ice far from the village. He stayed late, and 
it became dark while he was still a long way from home. As he was 
walking along the tunghak suddenly appeared before him and began 
to cross back and forth in his path. The young man tried to pass it 
and escape, but could not, as the tunghak kept in front of him, do what 
he might. As he could think of nothing else, he suddenly caught a 
fish out of his basket and threw it at the tunghadk. When he threw 
the fish it was frozen hard, but as it was thrown and came near the 
tunghak, it turned back suddenly, passing over the young man’s shoul- 
ders, and fell into his basket again, where it began to flap about, having 
beeome alive. 
Then the fisherman pulled orf one of his dogskin mittens and threw it. 
As it fell near the tunghdk the mitten changed into a dog, which ran 
