"Where going, Sammy Sealskin?".
"Down to my kayah, Tommy Fishscales."
"Is there any fish to-day?"
"A few, they say, but there is lots of seals--plenty of 'em on the rocks
in the bay."
"All right; bring home something to your friend, Tommy."
Sammy pushed off his kayah from shore. It was a funny sort of boat,
according to our notions. It was only nine inches deep, and about a foot
and a half wide in the middle, tapering to a point at either end and
curving upward. It was about sixteen feet long. Its frame was of very
light wood, and this was covered with tanned seal-skin. Sammy's mother
was a Greenlander, and she could sew on seal-skin very handily, using
sinews for thread; and she had covered her little boy's boat with
seal-skin, leaving a hole in the centre just large enough to receive
Sammy.
When he had dropped into his place, he then laced the lower border of
his jacket to the rim of the hole, and there he was all snug--not a drop
of water could get in. Grasping his single oar, about six feet long,
with a paddle at either end, and flourishing it in the water right and
left, away swept the young fisherman.
"I should think his craft would be top-heavy, and over he would go,"
says some reader.
One naturally would think his craft would be top-heavy and over he would
go, as the kayah has no keel and carries no ballast, and if we should
try a kayah, it would certainly be on land. But those Greenlanders learn
to handle themselves so well that their kayahs will go dancing over the
big billows and then fly through a ragged, dangerous surf. From their
kayahs, too, they will fight the fierce white bear.
Ah! Sammy, what is the matter?
"Ugh-h-h-h!"
Sammy gives a melancholy groan. He begins to suspect that his boat is
leaking.
_Could_ any one have slit the seal-skin bottom?
The kayah is really settling.
Sammy feels troubled. "I _must_ go home," he says.
He turns his back upon the bright, beautiful sea, tufted with cakes of
ice that seem in the distance like the white, pure lilies on a glassy
pond, and paddles off home with good-by to the fishing, good-by to the
black-headed seals, good-by to the low islands with their gulls and
mollimucks and burgomeisters and tern and kittiwakes and
eider-ducks--good-by to the long day's fun!
"It makes me feel like a mad whale," said Sammy, "to be cheated out of
my fishing. I wonder who cut my kayah!"
Just then he looked off to the shore, and there stood Billy Blubber, an
ancient enemy.
"There's the fellow," said Sammy. "He slit my kayah, I know. If I had
him, I'd eat him quicker than a tern's egg. Just see how he looks!"
Billy did look exasperating. He saw everything and he enjoyed
everything. Plainly he was the miscreant. He was waddling round on his
stout little legs, flourishing a huge jack-knife, and grinning as if he
were going to have a big dish of whale-fat for dinner. He looked comical
enough. He was dressed in seal-skin, and was bobbing up and down in his
mother's seal-skin boots. The women's boots are of tanned seal-skin,
bleached white and then colored. The boots of Billy's mother were very
gay. They were bright red ones. When Billy from his tent-door saw Sammy
coming, he crawled into the huge big boots, and bare-headed rushed--no,
waddled out, to greet the discomfited fisherman.
"Billy, I'll give it to you?"
"Will you, Sammy? Try it, old boy."
Thereupon, he put his thumb to his nose and wriggled his finger as
exasperatingly as any Yankee boy here in this enlightened land. His flat
face, his black little eyes, his stubby little nose, his hair black as
coal and long behind, but fashionably "banged" in front, the seal-skin
suit, mother's big red boots, and the nasal gesture made a very
interesting picture, and a most provoking one also.
"Billy, you _will_ catch it!"
"I should rather think you had caught it already. Did you bring any
seal-fat, Sammy?"
Sammy felt mad enough and hot enough to set the water to boiling between
his kayah and the shore.
"You had better run, Billy."
"Plenty of time, Sammy."
Sammy's kayah was now ashore. Sammy unlaced his jacket and let himself
out of jail. Pulling his kayah high up the shore, he turned it over and
let the water escape. There were two ugly gashes in the seal-skin
bottom--just as he expected.
"Now where's that Billy?" asked Sammy at last. But mother's red boots
had prudently withdrawn.
"I _will_ give it to him," said Sammy; "but I will mend this first."
He took up his beloved kayah and walked to the little village. It was
not very large. There were half a dozen seal-skin tents, a few houses of
stone and turf, and one or two wooden buildings, besides the
government-house that proudly supported the flag of Denmark.
"What do you want, Sammy?" said his mother, as he appeared at the door
of one of the seal-skin tents. She was sitting on a bed of reindeer
skins.
"I want needle and thread, mother. That Billy Blubber cut some holes in
my kayah."
"Billy Blubber did?"
"Yes," said Sammy, "and I would like to sew him up in a seal-skin and
drop him from the top of an iceberg into the sea."
"Tut, tut, Sammy. It's a boy's trick. Let it go."
"There," thought Sammy, shouldering his kayah and moving off, "that is
what mother always says when Billy harms me."
"Where are you going, Sammy?"
"Off to mend my kayah, mother."
"Nonsense! Only women can mend kayahs. I will fix it. You go off and
take a walk, and then come to dinner. We are going to have a young
seal."
A seal! Wasn't that nice? Who wouldn't be a young Greenlander, own a
kayah, and have seal for dinner? The prospect before Sammy made him feel
better. The world, too, looked different.
"What a nice place we live in!" thought Sammy. "I wouldn't live in
Denmark for anything, old Denmark, where our rulers come from."
The scenery about the Greenland village was indeed interesting. There
was the blue sea before it, dotted with "pond-lilies." Off the mouth of
the harbor, the icebergs went sailing by, so white, so stately, so slow,
like a fleet almost becalmed. Back of the village swelled the rocky
cliffs bare of snow now, and many rivulets went flashing down their
sides from ponds and pools nestling in granite recesses. Away off,
towered the mountains, their still snowy tops suggesting the powdered
heads of grand old Titans sitting there in state.
"Who wouldn't live in Greenland?" thought Sammy, entirely forgetting the
long, cold, dark winter.
However, it was summer then. He went back of his mother's seal-skin
tent. There he could see a beautiful valley in the shadow of the
cliffs. Moss and grasses thickly carpeted it. Little brooks went
sparkling through it. There were flowers in bloom, poppies of gold,
dandelions and buttercups, saxifrages of purple, white and yellow. "And
trees were there?" asks a reader. Do you see that shrub just before
Sammy? That is the nearest thing to a tree. It is pine. If the fat for
cooking the dinner should give out, young Miss Seal may be warmed up by
the help of this giant pine. As a rule, we are inclined to think that
Sammy takes his seal same as folks who like "oysters on the shell"--raw.
"Ky-ey! Ky-ey!"
"My!" exclaimed Sammy. "What is that noise? It must be a dog
somewhere--hurt!"
Sammy started to the rescue.
"Ky-ey! Ky-ey!"
"It must be a dog," declared Sammy, and he expected to see one of those
large Greenland dogs, wolf-like, with sharp, pointed nose, and ears held
up stiff as if to catch every sound of danger in their dangerous
travels.
Sammy rushed up a little hill before him, and rushed in such a hurry
that he did not think how steep the other side was. He lost his balance,
and over he went, head down, seal-skin boots up, turning over like a
cart-wheel.
"Ky-ey! Ky-ey! Ah, Sammy! Ky-ey! Ky-ey! Catch him!"
It was that old enemy, Billy Blubber, ky-eying in part, and laughing
also as if he would split. He only expected to get Sammy to the top of
the hill and there tell him he was fooled.
"This though is better than a sea-lion hunt," thought Billy, and he
roared again and shook till he threatened to come in pieces like a
barrel when the hoops are off.
"I will catch you and pay you," said Sammy.
"Try it," defiantly shouted Billy, wearing now his own boots, having
dropped his mother's red casings.
Off went Billy. Right ahead, was a great gray ledge. There was a crack
in the ledge big enough for a boy's foot. Billy was the boy to have his
foot caught in it! He tried to pull it out, but the sudden wrench was
not good for his foot, and there he stood yelling--he was ky-eying now
in good earnest.
"I have a great mind," thought Sammy, "to let you stay there. I wonder
how you would like to stay and have a duck come along and nip off your
nose."
It would have been a nice little nip, for Billy's nose was quite plump.
It looked like a fat plum stuck on to the side of a pumpkin.
Well, how long should Sammy have kept him there?
"Till the sun went down," says some one.
The idea! Why, the sun in summer goes round and round and round, never
setting through June and July. Then the sun begins to dip below the
horizon, going lower and lower, till at last it disappears. For one
hundred and twenty-six days Sammy and Billy did not see the sun. Through
that long, dark night, the stars would shine, so white and solemn, down
upon the ice and snow everywhere stretching. Until the last of July
would have been a long time for plum-nosed Billy to stand with his foot
in that crack. Suddenly, Sammy heard a noise. "What is that?" he asked.
It was a walrus bellowing in the bay. Sammy turned toward the blue
water. As he turned, he saw the minister standing near his chapel. Sammy
thought of the text he preached from, the Sunday before, and he began to
repeat it to himself:
"_Love your enemies_--"
"I guess I will let Billy stay here about an hour," said Sammy,
meditating.
"_Bless them that curse you_--"
"I guess I will let Billy stay here half an hour."
"_Do good to them that hate you_--"
"I guess I will let Billy stay here ten minutes."
"_And pray for them which despitefully use you_--"
"I guess I will take Billy out now!" And Sammy ran towards the prisoner.
"Billy, are you hurt?"
Billy turned his head away, ashamed to speak.
"Let me take your foot out."
Billy's foot was about as fat as a bear's in July, and it came hard. He
shook his head. His tongue stuck to his mouth like a clam to his shell,
and moved not. Neither could he step.
"I will take you on my back, Billy!" said Sammy.
And that's the way they went home. Billy in his dress generally looked
like a seal standing on his hind flippers, and Sammy resembled one
also--nevertheless it was a pleasant sight.