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One young Eskimo, howsiver, would have another slap at it and went so close that the brute charged, upset the kayak, and ripped the man up with his tusks. Seein' this, the other Eskimos made a dash at it, and wounded it badly; but the upshot wos that the walrus put them all to flight and made off, clear away, with six harpoons fast in its hide."
By that time Norrak was in the water, but he made a vigorous grasp at his brother's kayak with one hand, while with the other he clutched the line of the harpoon for well did he know that dead seals sink, and that if it went down it would perhaps carry the bladder along with it, and so be lost. "Give me the line, brother," said Ermigit, extending a hand. "No. I can hold it.
And now one day they had sent their bird arrows showering down among the birds, and were busy placing the killed ones together in the kayaks. And then suddenly a kayak came in sight on the sunny side. And when that stranger came nearer, they looked eagerly to see who it might be.
He could never sleep well at night, and being sleepless, he always woke his fellow-villagers when they were to go out hunting in the morning. But he never brought home anything himself. One day when he had been out as usual in his kayak, without even sight of a seal, he said: "It is no use my trying to be a hunter, for I never catch anything. I may as well make up some lie or other."
And as he was rowing on, he heard the bone of a seal calling to him: "Take away the moss which has stopped up the hole that goes through me." And he did so, and went on again. Another time he heard a mussel at the bottom of the sea crying: "Here is a mussel that wishes to see you; come down to the bottom; row your kayak straight down through the water this way!" That mussel wanted to eat him.
His frail skin kayak was lifted high on the oily crests of waves, and as it descended with swift rushes, Ootah felt exultant thrills in his heart. Far away he heard the resounding explosion of ice bergs colliding. A low bellow arose from a floe immediately ahead. Ootah's blood leaped, the spirit of the hunter throbbed in his veins, his nostrils sensitively quivered.
And when he came down to his kayak, he hammered and battered at that, until all the woodwork was broken to pieces. And then, getting into it, he piled up a lot of fragments of iceberg upon it, and even placed some inside his clothes, which were of ravens' skin. And so he rowed home. But all this while two women had been standing watching him.
But when he put on his hunting coat ready to row out, the Tupilak thought: "Now we shall see if he disappears again." And just as he was getting into his kayak, he disappeared from sight. And at the end of that day also, Qujâvârssuk came home again, as was his custom, with a catch of two seal. Now by this time the Tupilak was fearfully hungry.
Then, as she tried to move over to the other side of it, she again moved too far, and then he said: "Place yourself properly in the middle of the kayak." And when she had done so, he tried to row, for it was his purpose to take her with him in his kayak, although the sea was very rough. Then he rowed out with her.
However, by the 28th July I knew from the look of the sky, and the absence of fresh-water ice, that the sea could not be far; so I set to work, and spent two days in putting to rights the now battered kayak.
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