SIBERIA 



155 



of hide. The boat was tied alongside and the 

 Eskimos came aboard. If any of them became 

 hungry, they climbed down into the canoe and 

 ate the raw walrus meat, smacking their lips 

 over it. When the sailors would lean over the 

 rail to watch this strange feat of gastronomy, 

 the Eskimos would smile up at them with 

 mouths smeared with blood and hold out a red 

 chunk in invitation. It was their joke. 



We loafed in St. Lawrence Bay for more than 

 a week. We could not have sailed away if we 

 had wanted to, for all the time there was a wind- 

 less calm and the sea heaved and fell, unruffled 

 by a ripple, like a vast sheet of moving mercury. 



It was weather characteristic of the Arctic 

 summer — a beautiful dream season of halcyon, 

 silver seas, opalescent haze, and tempered golden 

 sunlight. To the men in skin clothes, it was 

 warm weather, but one had only to step from 

 sunshine to shadow to pass from summer to win- 

 ter. One perspired in the sunlight; in the 

 shadow there was frost, and if the spot were 

 damp, a coating of ice. 



I went duck hunting with a boat's crew one 



