“There it is! Over there,” said Arnatuinnaq. “Just off the small point, looks like a qajaq coming… And the water over there doesn’t have any of that icy slush.”
He was still taking a long time to land. His folks, Sanaaq, Jiimialuk, and Arnatuinnaq, walked down to the stretch of shoreline where he would land and waited. When he came near them, Sanaaq shouted to her husband, “Do you think it might be impossible to land?”
“It’s this awful thin ice!” answered Qalingu. “All the same, as hard as it may be, I should be able to get ashore.”
And so he landed, with the rising tide, on a small point jutting out from the foot of the hill. They now all walked up to the camp, dragging the qajaq behind them.
“We should drag the qajaq with the paddle underneath,” said Qalingu. “Let’s go! Pull on each side by the taqrait. I’ll pull the usuujaq!”
They began jerking the qajaq forward.
“It’s really heavy!” groaned Arnatuinnaq. “Is it heavy because it’s soaked up a lot of water? Uuppaa! Uuppaa! Just a moment! Let’s rest a little. I’m very tired!”
“Off in the distance, that patch of still water looks like it’s icing over,” said Sanaaq. “Or is it already a sheet of thin ice? Let’s go! We need to get pulling again. We’re almost there.”
They were now on dry land.
“I barely managed to get ashore!” confessed Qalingu. “I really thought I’d not make it, being so tired from paddling and so cold. The cold made the outside of my upper lip all swollen and my hands completely numb… I certainly won’t be going kayaking any more! Tomorrow I’ll build a snow house.”
They went to their tents.
“Let’s go! Let’s get moving!” said Sanaaq. “Tonight I’ll look for the brushwood I stashed away for fuel. It’s starting to get really cold at our place… Let’s go!”
They were now on their way. They walked along the qainnguq because it was becoming quite hard. After a while they arrived. Qalingu was carrying the equipment from his qajaq: the float, the harpoon line with the ipiraq, the guns, and the ammunition. Once inside, he placed them in the tent’s uati. He sat down. His clothes were soaked through and through with seawater. He took them off, his boots too. Qumaq was playing once more on the sleeping platform. She frolicked back and forth, snuggling under the bedspread several times. That evening, she asked her mother, “Mother, make me a doll!”
“Get undressed for bed,” answered her mother. “It’s late and we’re probably going to move to a new place.”
“I will!” agreed Qumaq.
When they were in bed, Sanaaq turned the wick of the oil lamp down and said, “It’s probably going to smoke during the night. I haven’t turned the wick down far enough.”
They tried to go to sleep. As feared, the oil lamp began to smoke as they slept. The remainder of the wick and the blubber started to burn for lack of oil… Qalingu awoke with a start and shouted, “The one over there is smoking!”
“Autualu! Ii!” shouted back Sanaaq. “We’re completely engulfed in smoke!”
She added some oil, which started to crackle loudly. Qiiii… That was the sound of it crackling. Once she had finished adding oil, she went back to sleep because morning was still far off.
12 SANAAQ MEETS A POLAR BEAR
Dawn roused the people at the camp from their slumber. Arnatuinnaq stood up, shivering with cold as frost crystals fell from the tent ceiling. A coating of hoarfrost had formed overnight on the tent’s inner surface. The girl was so cold that her teeth were chattering.
“I can barely get my boots on!” she said. “They’re frozen rock-hard.”
She hurried to light some brushwood in the small stove cut out from a barrel. The water pail had frozen to the bottom and offered only a trickle of water. No one felt like sleeping anymore and they all got dressed. Qalingu went out for some good snow. In his hand was a snow knife and on his arms airqavaak. As for Sanaaq, she had been too busy yesterday to do all she had wanted to do.
“I’ll go fetch the brushwood I stored away,” she announced. “We’ll need it because we probably won’t be able to move today.”
She left, taking with her the skin of a young utjuk to use as a sled, a leather strap to tow her load, and a stick to knock the snow off the wood.
Arnatuinnaq told her, “I’m going to stop up the cracks on the outside of the igloo. Qumaq will stay at someone else’s place while I plug the holes because I’m afraid she’ll get cold.”
Qalingu dug a hole in the snow, but it was not good snow. He said, “It isn’t any good, so I’ll make the igloo out of packed snow… We’ll trample it today to pack it together. It will harden overnight.”
He cut out a large number of blocks that he broke up with his snow knife. Arnatuinnaq then used her feet to pack the snow. Qalingu told her, “We’re going to be very cold tonight. I probably won’t be able to start building our igloo before tomorrow.”
“The snow is very powdery. It will take long to harden,” replied Arnatuinnaq. “There’s some wet snow a bit further away…”
“It should harden with this cold,” said Qalingu. “It’s going to get really cold.”
Sanaaq was walking up the hill, a snow stick in her hand. Once she arrived at her woodpile, she removed the covering of vegetation she had placed over the brush. A few dwarf willows had been left exposed, however, and were covered with icicles. She beat them with the snow stick and piled them onto the utjuk skin. She stacked her load, tied it up, slipped the snow stick under the utjuk skin, and began pulling the make-do sled home, laden with firewood.
An idea crossed her mind. She hitched her dog to the sled and called out, “Uit! Uit!” to make it go forward. The dog jumped to its feet and started off. And so she pressed on, alone with her dog. Suddenly, however, she spotted a polar bear. She was not far from home and, though terrified, fought back the urge to scream. The polar bear being still unaware of her presence, she tried to make her way home by the other side of the hill, while abandoning the dog and the load of wood… She ran ahead, stifling the slightest cry of panic.
Her dog came to the bear tracks and, without showing any sign of fear, bounded off in hot pursuit. The dog, Kajualuk, was barking loudly and sniffing the ground with its snout. “Muu muu!” was its muffled grunting.
Meanwhile its master was running silently, as fast as she could, holding back her fear. A short distance from home, she yelled, “Nanualuk! A big polar bear! My kinfolk!”
Qalingu heard.
“Listen!” He went outside to look. “Listen! She says there’s a polar bear!”
“Yes!” said Arnatuinnaq. “She says there’s a big polar bear. Up there, look at her run… Ii!”
Qalingu grabbed his rifle and rushed to meet her. The “old woman” and her “old man” finally caught up to each other. Sanaaq explained what had happened. “I saw a big polar bear… The only reason it didn’t kill me is because I went by the other side of the hill… But Kajualuk ran after the bear and has probably caught up to it.”
With his rifle in hand, Qalingu hurried to the bear and the dog. He soon saw them and drew closer. The bear was cornered, the dog nipping the back of its knees whenever it tried to move away. The bear was growling loudly but could not bite the dog, which nimbly ducked every swipe of the bear’s claws and teeth. The dog had not been hurt in the slightest.