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Updated: June 22, 2025
He knew that the seal-oil lamp had not been lighted that day and there was no other person within many miles. The number four seems to be regarded among the villagers with some degree of superstition, though why it is hard to say.
Nicholas got up, dazed but obedient, and lit the seal-oil lamp. The voice of the white man, the call for light, reached the Shamán. He seemed to shiver and shrink under the folds of the Kamlayka.
But a day passed, and a second, and on the third a wild gale blew, and there was no Keesh. Ikeega tore her hair and put soot of the seal-oil on her face in token of her grief; and the women assailed the men with bitter words in that they had mistreated the boy and sent him to his death; and the men made no answer, preparing to go in search of the body when the storm abated.
It was Blake's business to wait and watch like a hawk for such opportunities as there, and tonight his watch pointed to the hour of twelve, midnight he was sitting in the light of a sputtering seal-oil lamp adding up figures which told him that his winter, only half gone, had already been an enormously profitable one. "If the Mounted Police over at Herschel only knew," he chuckled.
Above it was a small window, glazed, so to speak, with strips of semi-transparent dried intestines sewed together. Toolooha's cooking-lamp was made of soapstone, formed like a clam-shell, and about eight inches in diameter; the fuel was seal-oil, and the wick was of moss. It smoked considerably, but Eskimos are smoke-proof. The pot above it, suspended from the roof, was also made of soapstone.
Fortunately, the Boy had remembered to "ketch" that essential, and his little offering was laid before the council-men. More grunts, and room made for the visitor on the sleeping-bench next the post that supported one of the lamps, a clay saucer half-full of seal-oil, in which a burning wick of twisted moss gave forth a powerful odour, a fair amount of smoke, and a faint light.
And over it the wind shrieked again, swallowing up the yapping of the foxes and the rumble of the ice. That night, in the yellow sputter of the seal-oil lamp, the fight began. Grim-faced one realizing the nearness of death and struggling to hold it back, the other praying for time two men went through the amazing process of trading their identities. From the beginning it was Conniston's fight.
The inhabitants of the busy world have no end of amusements, besides their newspapers and magazines with which to pass their leisure hours. It is not so with the less fortunate inhabitants of the far north. Their winter evenings are long and their homes but dimly lighted by the seal-oil lamps.
Conniston, instead, rose slowly to his feet and went to a table on which a seal-oil lamp was burning. He swayed a little as he walked. He sat down, and Keith seated himself opposite him. Between them lay a worn deck of cards. As Conniston fumbled them in his fingers, he looked straight across at Keith and grinned. "It's queer, devilish queer," he said. "Don't you think so, Keith?"
Following the housewarming, which was accomplished by means of seal-oil and a wick made from cotton calking, came the hunting for our winter's meat and the building of the second hut. It was a simple affair, now, to go forth in the morning and return by noon with a boatload of seals.
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