[Illustration]
Just before it was time for the guests to arrive, Charley took out a
steaming pot full of chocolate; three plates piled high with cake,
cookies, and sandwiches. AH-NI-GHI´-TO came after some taffy she had
made the night before, and last of all Charley took out an oil-stove,
which he placed in one corner of the tent. “For,” said he, “it is all
very well for Miss AH-NI-GHI´-TO and her young Eskimo friends to be out
here with the temperature 70 degrees below freezing, for they are
dressed in furs from head to feet, but the invited people would have the
good things freeze in their mouths with no fire at all.”
Billy, one of the ship’s men, acted as butler, and the party was a great
success.
The guests stayed as long as the eatables lasted, and then the Eskimos
licked the cups and the crumbs, and amid shouts of laughter the dishes
were brought aboard. But when Charley asked who would help wash up,
every one was much too tired and sleepy.
[Illustration:
“_A Snow Wall all around the Ship._”
]
The “Windward” would not have been taken for a ship now except for her
masts and spars. For weeks the men had been cutting blocks of snow from
the hard drifts and building a snow wall all around the ship, close to
her hull and a few feet higher than her rail. At night water was thrown
on this wall until it became solid ice, through which no wind could
come.
From the top of this wall, across the ship to the other side, canvas was
stretched as a roof, and this gave a covered place on deck, where
AH-NI-GHI´-TO and her friends played when the wind howled and whirled
the snow so fast that it was not possible to stand up against it.
The natives, too, as soon as they knew that they must spend the winter
here, said they wanted to go ashore and build their own houses, for then
they could keep much warmer with less fuel than on the ship. They were
not used to so much room and did not feel at home in it.
Each family built their own igloo; the women working with the men.
Achatinǵwah’s mother helped carry the heavy bowlders from far off for
their igloo, while Achatinǵwah scraped them free of snow and helped to
loosen those that were frozen down, by pounding them with smaller
stones.
After enough had been collected a place was scraped free from snow and
made level; and for this they were glad to borrow the ship’s tools, for
it would take much longer to clear the spot with only a rude knife made
from walrus tusk than it did with a large shovel.
At one end of the circular space Achatinǵwah’s father built a platform
about a foot high.
[Illustration:
“_Building an Igloo._”
]
The walls he put up, just as a stone mason would put them up, only he
used turf which Achatinǵwah brought, instead of mortar, to stop the
cracks. After the walls were three or four feet high the whole was
roofed over. Usually this is done with large flat stones, but as
Achatinǵwah’s father was in a hurry to get his family moved into the
house he threw a walrus-hide over the top and held it down with heavy
rocks to keep the wind from blowing it off.
The igloo was then thickly covered with snow, and the inside of it lined
with seal skins.
The doorway, or entrance, was scarcely two feet high, and opened into a
long, low passage-way which ended in a vestibule as high as the igloo
itself. This passage-way and vestibule Achatinǵwah’s father built of
snow-blocks.
The natives leave their fox-skin kapetahs (coats) in this vestibule if
they are covered with snow, for if they took them into the warm igloo
the snow would melt, and it would take a long while to dry the heavy fur
garments.
After the skins had been put on the platform Achatinǵwah brought in two
Eskimo lamps with which to heat and light the igloo.
These were cut out of soapstone by her father with his knife, and were
shaped like our dustpans. She filled them with small pieces of blubber
from the seal, and then placed dried moss across the straight side. This
she lighted, and the heat from it melted the blubber and soaked it up,
burning it like a wick. These lamps must be tended all the time, or the
smoke from them would soon cover everything with a greasy soot.
[Illustration:
“_ESKIMO TOYS CARVED FROM THE TEETH OF THE WALRUS_”
]
Near the top of the igloo above the lamps, Achatinǵwah’s mother fastened
a sort of lattice-work rack, made by lashing sticks together with sinew.
On this the members of the family put their wet stockings, mittens, and
shirts to dry.
Close down over each lamp she hung an oblong-shaped pot, also made of
soapstone, in which the snow is melted for drinking-water. The Eskimos
never use water for any other purpose. They had never heard of a bath
until AH-NI-GHI´-TO’S father and mother came among them, and the most
they ever did was to wipe their faces with a greasy bird-skin.
Achatinǵwah now helped her mother bring their stock of bear, deer, and
seal skins into the igloo and spread them on the platform, and the
family was settled for the winter.
Over the stone lamps Achatinǵwah’s mother cooked their food, and on the
platform the entire family slept.
Days when it was too cold and stormy to go to the ship this platform was
the playground of Achatinǵwah and her little brother, where they amused
themselves with little figures of men and women, toy sledges and dogs,
and canoes; bears, seals, foxes, walrus, and the other strange animals
of the Snowland, carved by their father from the teeth of the walrus; or
played “cat’s cradle,” making Toó-loo-ah the raven, Ter-i-a-níah the
fox, Oo-kud´-ah the hare, and Ka-lil´-o-wah the great narwhal, with
sinew strings. Sometimes they played “cup and ball” with a slender ivory
pin and the bone of a seal with two holes drilled in it.
Then at night they snuggled warmly under the thick, heavy furs, hugging
each other tightly as they heard their father and mother talking of
“Tor-naŕ-suk” the “evil one,” or how “Nan-nook´-soah,” the great white
bear, had carried off and eaten one of their relatives.
Very glad they were that the Oo-miak´-soah (ship) was so near, to
frighten Nan-nook´-soah away; otherwise at every growl of the wind about
their hut they would have thought he was pushing his great head with the
little eyes, red tongue, and long teeth, into the entrance after them.