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Updated: April 30, 2025
The girl was silent. "Methought thou wouldst be glad " "Thy dog is strong," the girl replied. "Dost thou love that dotard Attalaq?" "No," the maid replied. "He is clumsy as the musk ox." They turned, walking toward the igloo occupied by Ahningnetty and her aged father. "Wilt thou not be Papik's wife?" Papik pleaded. "My shelter is cold little meat have I. The white men robbed the tribe.
Ahningnetty!" he hailed a chubby maiden who, breaking from the arms of one of the white men, was seen running toward her shelter. "What wouldst thou, Papik?" she called. "Papik would speak with thee. They will bite thee with pangs of hunger, and the meat Papik brings will make joyful Papik's wife." Ahningnetty, summoning some of the other maidens, surveyed Papik's load of blubber.
She took her bearskin coverlet over her, and went and sat down on the shore, close to the water, and let the tide come up and cover her. For a long time after this, Papik did not go out hunting at all, so greatly did he fear the old woman's threat. But at last he ceased to think of the matter, and began to go out hunting as before. One day two men stood out on the ice by the breathing holes.
"Rotten lot," Olafaksoah said to Papik, surveying his single catch of a young walrus. Papik winced at this reproach. "Two boxes fire powder," said Olafaksoah. Papik refused. Olafaksoah browbeat him in a high voice. Finally he kicked him. "One case needles." He called Papik's mother and chucked her under the chin. She smiled at him, awed, flattered, half afraid.
"And well do I know thou art a brave lad, but seek thou another maiden; thou dost not touch my heart, Papik, and thy fingers are very, very long." With native spontaneity, Papik laughed and turned shoreward. As he passed the assembled maidens he paused momentarily and greeted them. He made a brief proposal of marriage to Ahningnetty, a fat maiden, and was met with laughter.
The girl shook her head. Much as she had protested, she was unquestionably pleased by the forcible abduction. One of the gossips, desiring to impart the unpleasant news to Papik, had gone to his house. "Papik sits alone," she called, on her return. "And when I told him Ahningnetty hath been carried away by Attalaq, he replied, ''Tis well!
The lines in turn were fastened by Attalaq and Papik to harpoons, which were to be driven into the walrus, the natives' chief prey of the arctic sea. A babel of conversation swayed to and fro among this northernmost fringe of the human race. Now and then it was drowned in the raucous, deafening shriek of auks which swarmed from nearby cliffs and soared in clouds over the shore. "Aveq soah! Walrus!
"But with my fingers I speed the arrow with skill," he replied. "True, but the fate of him who shoots with a skill such as thine is unfortunate indeed; for soon the day will come when thou wilt not speed the arrow, when thy hands will be robbed of their cunning. Then how wilt thou get food for thy wife? Ookiah will twist thy nose, and it will freeze. Poor Papik!"
How wilt thou warm the little baby when thou art like the bear after a famished winter, thou maid of skin and bones!" "Long-nose! Long-nose! may thy nose freeze!" she called. The other maidens laughed and gibed at her. In anger she fled into her tupik, or tent. Being very thin she, too, like Papik, suffered from the bar sinister of nature.
Inside the house, they began cutting him up, and when the man cast the mittens to his wife, Avôvang went with them, and crept into the body of the woman. And after a time he was born again, and became once more a man. There was once a man whose name was Papik, and it was his custom to go out hunting with his wife's brother, whose name was Ailaq.
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