THE ESKIMO BOY
The little white bear wondered why his mother wriggled her nose, with
the fur rising so angrily on the back of her neck.
It was only a boy,--Unga, an Eskimo lad, who, unlike Sitka, walked on
his hind legs all the time. But Mother White Bear had been hunted so
many times by these small brown people that her first instinct was to
dive beneath the icy water and swim to safety. But with the wee, fat
cub it would be hard to dive without drowning him. Of course, had she
been alone, she could have handled the little Eskimo with one blow
of her huge fore arm. But she knew he could throw a spear that might
hurt Sitka. Then he would take the cub’s soft fur to make a fur coat.
That had happened, once, to a polar cub. The thought made her growl
ferociously, deep down in her throat.
A moment more and the fur-clad little fellow came in sight. Fortunately
for Sitka, he was alone. He had not brought one of the great, wolfish
“husky” dogs that bears are so afraid of. His father was driving the
dog-team to his sled that day.
Sitka’s mother turned. The odor of the birds’ nests was very near now.
Following that wonderful nose of hers straight across the ice, she swam
another bit of open water, hoping to leave the boy behind her. Again
she crossed an ice-floe, Sitka close behind, and again she swam an open
lane of water. That way, they came to a rocky islet that was covered
thick with eider ducks. The great, handsome birds had plucked the soft
feathers,--the eider down--from their own breasts to line their rocky
nests, and in these nests were hundreds and thousands of pale eggs. The
whole rocky islet was covered with these nests.
“Um!” sniffed Mother White Bear hungrily. “I think we have left that
boy behind, and I am going to have eggs for supper.” With Sitka close
at her heels, she shuffled along between the nests, taking here an egg
and there an egg and crunching it in her great jaws. The meal put new
strength into her; it would enable her to nurse her furry baby when she
put him to sleep.
The ducks quacked and scolded, but there were so many eggs that there
would be plenty left to hatch into ducklings.
So busy had Mother White Bear been at her feast that she had almost
forgotten about the Eskimo boy. Of a sudden she saw him paddling around
the islet in his seal-skin boat. At the same instant he saw wee, fuzzy
Sitka galloping along behind his mother, trying his best to keep up
with her. The boy raised his spear to hurl it at the Snow Baby.
At that moment Sitka’s life was certainly in danger. But great, nine
foot Mother White Bear, catching a whiff of the wind that blew
straight to her wonderful nose from the dirty, greasy Eskimo lad,
turned back just in time. Furiously she batted the spear with her
powerful forearm as it came whistling through the air. In another
instant it would have struck her baby. Growling awful threats, she
rushed at Unga to drive him back.
The little white bear, terrified by the battle that seemed about to be
fought over his small person, turned tail and ran for all he was worth.
From a point that jutted from the rocky islet he scrambled aboard a
blue-white chunk of ice. The next thing he knew, the ice cracked with
a sound like the roar of a cannon, and the floe he was on split off
and began floating away. Sitka whimpered in fright as he watched the
blue-green water rush in between him and the isle.
But his mother saw him and came racing across the rocks, stepping,
smash! all over the birds’ nests in her hurry. Swimming the strip of
open water, she scrambled up beside him, and began nuzzling him all
over to see if he was hurt. The Eskimo boy would trouble them no more.
They could see him paddling away in his skin canoe.
Sitka was to have an even more exciting time later that spring. Awaking
in his mother’s warm, furry arms to a morning of golden sunshine and
blue sky, with gulls flying overhead crying “que-ok, que-ok, que-ok!”
and the ice-bergs that rose like blue-white mountain peaks to seaward,
he was startled by a rumbling like thunder. All about them it began
sounding, for the ice cakes were breaking apart, floating this way and
that and grinding against one another. But their own berg, so snug
and safe with its cave in which they always slept, towered among the
up-ending ice cakes as secure as a miniature mountain peak.
Away off in the open water they could see little spouts of water.
Sitka’s mother said it was whales “blowing.”
“What are whales?” the cub demanded, round eyed with wonder.
“Whales,” said his mother, “are great fish-like creatures, ever and
ever and ever so much bigger than the biggest polar bear that ever
lived. But the queer thing is that they are not fish, really, though
they spend their lives in the ocean, because they have fur instead of
scales, and the mother whale nurses her baby just as a cat does her
kitten.”
“Oo! Aren’t you afraid of whales?” Sitka marvelled.
“No. They have the tiniest mouths. But whale meat is delicious. These
little brown men hunt them for their blubber, as they call the fat that
lines their sides, and I’d love nothing better than to find a strip
of blubber. Let’s go a little nearer.--Um! I smell blubber now. I do
believe those Eskimos have been whale-hunting. If we could just find
where they’ve been cutting blubber, what a feast it would be!”
The Snow Baby was happy to go exploring. Climbing a steep, icy slope
to the ridge of the next ice pan, they could see, away across the ice,
which had frozen in ridges like the waves of the sea, a huge dark body
that Mother White Bear’s nose said was a whale. But further out, a
horde of the fur-clad little brown men were racing toward another
whale in their seal-skin boats, with spears raised. Mother White Bear
hesitated. She hated to take Sitka too near these Eskimos. But the
odor of whale meat came tantalizingly to her nostrils, and she was
dreadfully hungry. Cautiously she padded forward, and Sitka after her,
ready at a moment’s notice to run for their lives. But they reached the
meat in safety.
She had just begun to eat ravenously when a sudden shout went up. One
of the little brown men had seen her, and turned in pursuit.