152 A YEAR WITH, A WHALER: 



took it. We kept a careful watch upon them, 

 however, to see that they took nothing else. 

 Several of the Eskimo men had a sufficient smat- 

 tering of English to make themselves under- 

 stood. They had picked up their small vocabu- 

 lary among the whalers which every spring put 

 in at the little ports along the Siberian and 

 Alaskan coasts. One of them had been whaling 

 to the Arctic Ocean aboard a whale ship which 

 some accident had left short handed. He spoke 

 better English than any of the others and was 

 evidently regarded by his fellow townsmen as a 

 wonderfully intellectual person. He became 

 quite friendly with me, showing his friendship 

 by begging me to give him almost everything I 

 had, from tobacco to clothes. He constantly 

 used an Eskimo word the meaning of which all 

 whalers have learned and it assisted him materi- 

 ally in telling his stories — ^he was a great story 

 teller. This word was pan/' — ^it means " noth- 

 ing." I never knew before how important noth- 

 ing could be in human language. Here is a 

 sample of his use of "nothing:" 



" Winter," he said, " sun pau ; daylight pau. 



