CHAPTER I
The House That Kak Built
KAK was an Eskimo boy who lived in Victoria Island in Canada. He belonged to the Copper Eskimos. This name does not refer in any way to their complexions as “red Indians,” but is given because the people make all their knives and implements out of copper. As far as looks went Kak was quite ordinary—a short, muscular fellow, with brown hair and gray eyes, and a skin about the color of white boys’ skins at the end of the summer holidays when they are tanned. But his clothing was very different from ours, being made entirely of fur.
Kak was not counted a poor boy though he possessed very little. Eskimos do not go in for possessions. They are a migratory people, always moving from place to place, and so learn to get on with a small amount of gear, as we do in camp life. Kak was contented and had no cares. He never had to make up his mind whether to play with his meccano, or his electric train, or his radio. He was entirely ignorant of such things and yet not a bit dull. He found plenty of sport up there in the Arctic to keep him merry and bright. First of all his parents owned so little they were never worried about taking care of things; with nothing to do but kill a few animals for food and fuel and clothes they were as gay as children, always laughing and joking from morning to night. The boy could scarcely remember a day that was not full of fun and laughter.
In the winter they lived in a snow house. You would think it must be cold inside a snow house but it was not, because their large lamp burned in the house all the time and kept it cozy and warm; so warm that Kak usually skinned off his coat and shirt as soon as he came indoors. He did not come in often during the daylight, for he enjoyed the cold outside, and he was a singularly independent lad, doing just what he pleased. That is the Eskimo boys’ compensation for not having toys: they are allowed to do as they like. In the morning Kak did not get up till he wanted to. He did not have to wash his neck, nor mind his table manners, nor go to school; and he was never, never sent to bed. You see as there was only one room in the whole house the family had to be jolly all together all the time. In the evenings when the grown-up folks sat around telling stories and singing songs, Kak stayed with them, and so did his little sister, Noashak. They sat up as long as they possibly could, and when the sandman came and shut their eyes in spite of them, they toppled over asleep wherever they were, and somebody tucked them in between fur blankets.
Kak, whose name means the top of anything or summit, as of a mountain, was twelve years old when he built his first house by himself. It was a horrible experience which he will remember all his life.
The way to build a snow house is to cut big blocks the shape of dominoes out of a hard snowdrift and set them up on edge in a circle, leaning them inward a little toward the center. You must carve the first block diagonally in half so that its back makes a hill for the second row to run up on; and when you have started properly you can keep on building one row above the next, going up and around like the red and white on a barber pole, and always leaning them inward till they just naturally meet at the top, where you sometimes poke a very small hole for ventilation. The finished dwelling is a beehive of snow—awfully cold snow which has frozen together safe and solid in a surprisingly short time. Next you dig a long tunnel through the drift and a hole in the floor of the house, and that is the way you go in and out, like rabbits and foxes burrowing to their dens.
A family will occupy this sort of house only about three weeks; for the heat inside melts the snow walls, and as they cool off somewhat every night they turn gradually to ice, and the house grows colder and colder (for ice is much colder than snow) till the owners decide to have a new one. A few houses are magnificent with windows, ice windows, which being troublesome to make are carefully removed and placed in the next house when it is built. Even if the Eskimos continue to live in the same place they will build a new house every few weeks. When they are too careless to bother about windows, plenty of light filters through the white walls; and while the house is occupied the lamp is always burning brightly inside.
Kak did not live very long in his first house. He spent only one night under its low dome, and felt very glad indeed that he did not have to stay there a second night. The way of it was this:
Taptuna, Kak’s father, was going seal hunting with a neighbor. These neighbors, who were the only other people living within ten miles, had used up all their supply of blubber. Now blubber is the fat part of seals out of which drips the oil for the lamps, and as the lamp is the Copper Eskimo’s only means of warming his house and cooking his food, this was a serious situation. In his need the neighbor came to borrow from Taptuna, and begged him to help hunt seals. Taptuna readily agreed, for he was a kind-hearted man; so they started out early. But seal hunting through the ice is slow and difficult, and the first day they failed to get any. The next morning, however, while crossing a sandspit, they discovered the remains of a dead whale, half buried in drifted snow and earth. It must have been two years old at least, and the bears and other animals had eaten most of the fat; but Taptuna and Hitkoak hoped by cutting off parts of the outside flesh, which would make good enough dog feed, to strike an ample supply of blubber underneath. So they abandoned the hunt and fell on this free gift, eager to get all they could and that at once, for sled tracks in the snow showed other Eskimos knew about the prize.
They worked all day, not stopping to drag the meat home but piling it up chunk on chunk, only to find by evening that some crafty bear had clawed under and scooped away the very store of blubber on which they were counting. It meant they must hunt next morning and must catch a seal without fail.
Both men hated to waste the heaps of frozen whale flesh which had given them all the work they wanted to hack off with soft copper knives. Copper will not make nearly so sharp a knife as steel. Taptuna and Hitkoak, sweating after their labor, wished they had stopped about noon, harnessed the dogs, and sledded home some of this good food. It was too late now, and to-morrow they must hunt. Oil for the lamps was more necessary than dog feed. Until they killed a seal the neighbor would go on borrowing blubber from Taptuna, and it was already past mid-winter so he had not much left for his own family.
It looked as if their effort over the whale was going to be a dead loss; but the older, wiser man promised to sleep on the question, and next morning, when Guninana was boiling their breakfast, he said:
“Kak, my boy, while I am watching the seal hole to-day, you may harness both dogs to the sled and go to the carcass over yonder and bring home some loads of whale flesh. The young bear I killed will not last forever, eh? And it is well to lay in food while the laying’s good.”
Had Kak been an English or American school-boy he would doubtless have mumbled, “All right, dad,” and gone on eating his breakfast without giving any visible sign of his thrill. But an Eskimo never learns to disguise his feelings, so Kak grinned all over his round face and cried:
“Bully! Bully! Me for it! Do you hear, Noashak? I’m to drive the team.”
And he began to dance and jump about and was so delighted and excited he quickly pulled on his fur shirt and his topcoat of reindeer skin, and dashed out to pat young Sapsuk, his favorite dog, and tell him what a fine day they were going to have together.
His mother gazed fondly on her son’s brown head as it disappeared through the hole in the floor.
“Is it not too much for him?” she asked doubtfully. “Will the boy be able to find his way?”
“Yes, he will be able to do it just as well as I. Kak is a smart lad and has plenty of sense; besides, they have only to follow the trail we broke last night.”
So Guninana, who thought her tall, active husband the best judge of everything in the world, beamed on him and said no more.
Kak was keeping up a fine game with the dogs. He was so overjoyed he could hardly stand still a minute. This seemed the greatest event in his whole life; not only had his father trusted him with a man-sized job for the first time, but it was the very job he loved best. Kak would rather harness both dogs to the light sled and drive like the wind than do anything else in the whole Arctic. He was so proud of his task and so anxious to do it all by himself, that he waited and put off and dilly-dallied about starting till his father had gone. Of course Taptuna observed this, but he understood. He thought: “The boy will be tired anyway when he has fetched two loads, so there is plenty of time.”
“Get busy, my lad. Kill meat while the light lasts,” he called for farewell, and waving his harpoon toward the already crimsoned horizon, trudged off leading the neighbor’s dog.
Kak loitered yet a little gloating over the prospect of his ride. He wanted golden shafts of light bathing yesterday’s trail which showed now plain as an open lead. He wanted to be able to tear along. One fast dash to the carcass would more than make up for delay, so he fiddled with the dogs.
“Have you not gone yet?” asked Guninana, surprised, when she came out to examine her bearskin stretched on a frame to dry.
“Just as soon as the sun rises, mother, I’ll be away like an arrow. See, I am harnessing now,” Kak answered.
He was, truly. He had begun to hitch each dog to its trace at the first sound of her voice, and kept himself very busy about it.
Like all real boys, Kak did not mind a lot of extra trouble in making play out of his work. It was fun to pretend he must go on a long journey alone; so he went to the tunnel, which also serves as storehouse, and taking his father’s big snow knife, used to carve out the blocks when building, he bound it securely on to one side of the sled.
“Whatever is that for?” asked Noashak, who was playing with the neighbor girls, running up on top of the house and sliding down its smooth curve. “What is the snow knife for?”
“In case I decide to stop overnight,” said Kak, swelling with importance.
“Oh, pooh! Stay all night! Why you are only going to the whale carcass. It is no distance at all! Daddy said you could easily make two trips in daylight.”
Kak flushed. “I shall make double that—I shall make four!” he answered, hotly. “Watch me!”
As he spoke the sun’s rim peeped above the long flat beach, streaking the blue-gray world with vivid gold. As if at a signal Kak let go of his team and sprang for the sled with a “Yi—yi—yip!” Instantly both dogs bounded forward. They were off!
The boy shouted, waved his arms, knocked his heels on the sleigh and beat his gloved hands together with resounding thwacks for the sheer pleasure of making a noise, as the two fresh pups raced their shadows over the crusted snow.
It was a wonderful ride to the whale. But once there Kak had to do some hard work handling the big, rough pieces of frozen flesh and piling them on the sled. Perhaps it was not a very large load when he called time and headed the dogs home; still he felt satisfied with himself, and was quite ready to put on airs; and the girls, who had been mightily impressed by his glorious start, rushed to meet his return all clamoring:
“A ride! A ride!”
“No, it is too heavy! We have much meat,” Kak swaggered.
“But I want a ride! I will ride!” whined Noashak, who was a very selfish, naughty little girl, and deserved to be spanked. Now she made her brother angry.
“Hold off there! Get off, I say! The dogs are too tired. They’re panting. Look at Pikalu, how he puffs and blows.”
“That’s your fault! You have run him too fast. I will tell father on you.”
Noashak was not a bit nice in a temper. She climbed up the back of the load, and Kak cried to the other girls to pull her down, but they only scampered away laughing; then he had to stop and go around and pull her off himself. She kicked and slapped him and climbed up immediately they started. Kak came and pulled her down again and again; but in the end he had to let her ride because she screamed and yelled so. This sort of welcome, repeated, delayed him a whole lot, yet he had brought his two loads when the far edge of the ice floe dented the sun’s gleaming disk; and after that he brought one more. It was good work for a boy. He felt proud of himself and showed it, crowing over the girls.
“You guessed two, eh? And I have got in three!”
“Three! Bah! Three’s nothing! You said you could bring four,” Noashak jeered.
Now Kak did not like this at all. His male nature wanted to be admired and praised, even if he had accomplished less than he had boasted. Her unkindness made him feel like backing up his good opinion of himself.
“Well, anyway, three’s a lot. It’s more than dad expected me to bring.”
“Four!” bawled his tormentor.
And “Four! Four!” sang the neighbor girls in chorus, going over holus-bolus to his natural enemy.
“You promised to bring four and you can’t do it. You’re afraid! You’re afraid to go back again now!” adding an Eskimo taunt equivalent to “Cowardy, cowardy custard!”
They flouted him meanly, sticking out their tongues, stretching their mouths with fingers in their cheeks, making faces at him over the housetop.
“Bears!” suddenly yelled Noashak.
That was too much. It hit home.
“I am not afraid!” Kak cried, outraged. “Who says I can’t do it?”
He shot a half fearful glance at the sky. Daylight was slowly fading but it would last for a short while, and his dogs looked jolly enough; they had enjoyed more rest than running during their day’s work. If he made one grand dash back to the carcass, and only stayed to load ever so little meat, it would count the same.
“I will do it,” the boy answered boldly. “Who dares to say I cannot bring four loads? Hi there, Sapsuk! Hok, hok, Pikalu!”
He swung his team around in a wide circle and dashed away without waiting for comment from the astonished girls.
“Kak!” cried his mother from the tunnel entrance. “Kak! It is too late!”
But a breeze had sprung up blowing out of the west and whisked her voice in the opposite direction. Anxiously she watched boy, dogs, and sled dwindle to a small, black speck.
“You will come inside now, child,” Guninana commanded, ill pleased; and Noashak, humbled by her brother’s rash magnificence, and fearful of her own part in it, obeyed. The neighbor girls ran home quickly. All at once the flat snow landscape around the two snow houses lay empty and deserted.
By the time Kak reached the whale a rack of clouds had blown up hastening the night. The earth and sky turned all one dark, cold gray. Those other Eskimos, whom he had found cutting flesh earlier, were gone; and wolves howled distantly gathering for a feed. At their dismal cries Kak suddenly felt afraid. His hands shook so that he could hardly lift the meat. He stopped and peered over his shoulder, trying to see with his bright eyes through the thickening night. He did not care a jot for wolves, they are cowards and will fly from a shout; but Noashak’s last mean taunt burned in his mind. If a great white bear were to prowl out of the gloom he knew it would go hard with him and the dogs. His hands stiffened from fright and his skin grew clammy. Another long, lone howl arose inland; it seemed to run right up his spine. Kak fancied he saw a huge yellow blur moving beyond the carcass and at that his hair felt as if it were rising under his fur hood. The night turned blacker, the wind sighed icily, and fear overflowed him like water. He dropped a ten-pound chunk of meat from his petrified fingers and sprang for the sleigh calling his dogs:
“Hok! Hok!”
They were wild to be off home. At a single bound the team broke and ran, with Kak racing after them, yelling at the top of his voice to keep his courage up: “Yip—yip—yi!”—and mumbling charms his mother had taught him to scare off evil.
The dogs raced faster and faster; the howling of the wolves excited them; the nearly empty sleigh flashed over the hard snow; and a freshening wind behind drove the whole party on. Kak, thrilled by this rush of freedom, soon forgot all his fears. He urged the team with whistle and shout, yipping and yiing like a maniac or a real boy, till suddenly the sled gave a lurch, turned upside down, and sent him flying heels over head across its runners. The dogs, jerked back on their traces, stopped abruptly, and Kak, who was buried neck and arms in a drift before you could say Jack Robinson, picked himself up, dug the snow out of his eyes and mouth, and dusted off his furry clothes.
“Ouch! Bhoo! I say, old Sapsuk, where are we?”
As if he perfectly understood the question Sapsuk sat down on his bushy tail with his long, red tongue hanging out and his breath coming in heavy pants, while Kak looked about him. They ought to have been very nearly home; but the crazy driver could see no sign of the two little white domes that were his father’s house and Hitkoak’s. At first he failed to understand. The houses dropping out of sight seemed very odd indeed. Of course dogs and people move about and get lost if you take your eyes off them for five minutes; but a boy hardly expects his home to behave in that ridiculous way. And yet, peering in every direction as far as he could, which was not far on account of the darkness, Kak did not see a sign of a house. Then gradually he began to know it was not home that was lost, but himself and the dogs. His heart sank down, down, down like a stone cast into the sea. He remembered how in his panic to get away, followed by the reckless splendor of the run, he had forgotten all about direction, had left it to the frantic team to keep the trail. Examining the cause of their accident he felt sure there could not be any ice as rough as this lying between the whale carcass on the wind-swept sandspit and Taptuna’s home on the bay. They must have gone far past the houses; or maybe dashed off on a wrong line altogether.
Goodness, how the wind blew, now he tried to stand against it! The thought of returning into its teeth, slowly, painfully, following their own track was enough to make a hero weep. Perhaps they would have to go all the way back to the old whale before they picked up the true course. But Kak did not cry. He laughed. You see he had run right away from his fear: he really did not feel so upset as he should have done over being lost in the middle of an Arctic night. Retracing their steps seemed a perfectly simple and safe way of getting himself out of this scrape—but he counted without the wind. Racing before it none of the living things had guessed its strength. Now it beat upon them like a blizzard. Overhead, the sky hung dark with clouds, and close to the ground, where our boy had to bend to see their trail, the demon air was whirling snow in eddies, gathering up particles as sharp as sand to fling into his eyes. The dogs suffered also; but worse than these discomforts was the storm’s effect. Tearing over the open ground, grabbing a handful of snow here and scattering it there, that mighty blast soon hid their track. The farther back they went the less and less distinct it grew, till on the top of a small ice hill they lost it altogether. Poor Kak hunted and hunted, coaxing his team, straining his eyes for a glimpse of the house or the path.
When he had done every possible thing and quite made up his mind to abandon home, the boy felt relieved. Right down in the bottom of his heart he was not a bit keen about returning to that haunted neighborhood of dead meat. Wolves would have gathered there in numbers by now. Kak shivered. Spending a night in the open at a temperature of thirty-six below zero was not exactly inviting; still, he felt the whale carcass for five minutes would have been far worse. He sat down to think, hunched against the wind. A sealskin had been spread over the rungs forming the top of the sleigh, and when he righted his gear after the upset one piece of meat was found lying under it; the rest had gone spinning across the ice into darkness and he did not bother to hunt them up. Now this ridiculously small load reproached him, for the dogs would be hungry. He remembered dropping that dandy, ten-pound chunk in his crazy fear, and his face burned with shame over such cowardice. What a blessing the girls would never know! Crouching there he recollected wistfully his wrangling with Noashak that day, clear back to its little beginning. Ah! The snow knife!
With a rousing shout Kak leaped to his feet, and cut a caper before turning to unlash the thong holding his bully, big knife.
“In case I stay all night,” he had bravely boasted; so now he must act up to the boast.
“Right here I will build me a house!” the boy chuckled; and walked over the ground, leading the dogs, till he found a drift. To his soft, padding shoes this bank felt solid enough, but he did not dare to build till he had fallen on his knees and tested it by plunging his knife in here and there to make sure the snow was evenly packed.
“Seems all firm,” Kak decided, battling to brush the icy particles out of his eyes. With his face to the wind he cut his first blocks and built them up in a circle around where they were cut; each chunk as it came out lowered the floor a little and this helped considerably. But it was tough work for a lad; his short arms could only lift and place small pieces, which meant using ever so many more of them; still, he stuck to it like a man and as he worked the job grew easier for the rising walls of the house soon offered shelter from the cutting wind.
IT WAS TOUGH WORK FOR A LAD.
By and by he felt ravenous and called “time” for supper. The dogs, curled up on the snow with their faces buried under their paws, jumped from their sleep and answered, “Here,” with tail-wagging expectation. Kak tossed them morsels between bites. He enjoyed his meal of two-year-old whale meat, its gamy flavor was as delicious to his taste as pheasants seem to ours. The boy grew cheerier at every mouthful, and laughed aloud when his favorite snapped fierce jaws on a good bit thrown for Pikalu. Finally he sawed the chunk in halves and let the animals finish it while he finished his work.
Kak’s was a very small house. It had no tunnel at all and no proper door—but why have a door when one does not want to go in and out? Kak only wanted to get in. During the building he had been compelled to cut a hole in the lower part of his wall so he could crawl out and get more blocks; for there had not been quite enough material in the floor to finish the roof. When all was ready he scrambled through this small hole, pulled the dogs after him, and then closed it with a block he had cut for that purpose. From the outside the architect had not been able to see all the chinks in his house, but it was so dark inside every least little one showed clearly against the night; so he filled his mitts with soft snow and plastered them up. Then he spread the sealskin from the sleigh over his floor. Now all was shipshape. But without door or window they had no air. The boy made a little round hole in the middle of his door-block, and another in the top of the roof, as he had seen his father do, and at last, feeling utterly safe and tremendously proud of himself, cuddled down with a large woolly beast on either side of him, and was soon fast asleep.
A long drawn thunder, followed by a tumbling, rending, grinding vibration roused Kak from his dreams. He felt cold. It was apt to be chilly at night if the lamp went out, so the boy sought his father’s hefty form to snuggle into. Eskimo families all sleep in a row in one big bed, and Kak’s place was beside his daddy. Drowsily he threw a hand across to feel for him and rapped Pikalu on the nose. The dog growled. Then his master woke up enough to find himself in his clothes and remembered.
Another rumble, more prolonged, more terrifying than the last, shook the whole house. Kak rose on his elbow and listened. He could hear the wind whistling around their shelter, while the smashing and bumping never ceased. You would have come out all over in goose flesh and popped your head under the blanket; but Kak only turned on his other side and lay up closer to Sapsuk. The row outside was no more alarming to him than taxicabs beneath your window, or a trolley car clanging across rails, for well he knew its meaning; a gale had driven the sea ice in on the landfast ice, and the two floes were grinding and groaning and churning against each other, with bolts of thunder when sometimes a great mass as big as a house toppled over another great mass, and vibration like an earthquake as it slid off again. This sort of show was fun to watch in the daytime, and nothing to be afraid of at night when you were safely camped in your own house which you had constructed all by yourself on the solid, landfast ice.
But while the lost boy slept so peacefully his father and mother and sister were very unhappy and anxious.
The seal hunters had returned at dark, each dragging a fine, fat seal and congratulating the other on a good day’s work. They parted with jests and laughter outside Hitkoak’s place; and Taptuna strode on cheerily to his own home. But before he had got within calling distance he knew something was wrong; even in twilight he missed his sled’s black bulk; and where were his dogs? They should have come bounding to welcome him, wagging their tails, asking for friendly pats, jumping up, frisking, romping. Instead of being the center of this lively scene the little white roof of his house humped itself out of the white ground like a solitary tomb.
Taptuna wasted no time on the seal. Letting it lie he strode inside, calling for Kak. Guninana raised an anxious face from over her cooking pot and told the worst:
“He has gone! That wild boy dashed off for one last load of whale meat after the sky had turned gray. I called, ‘It is too late!’ but the dogs were already galloping, the wind blowing—Kak did not hear.”
“How long?” demanded Taptuna.
“Long enough to be back now,” answered the mother shaking her head. Then she spoke her haunting fear: “There are bears all around and he carried neither spear nor bow.”
Guninana was horribly afraid of bears, more afraid of a polar bear than of anything else in the whole world.
Without a word Taptuna turned to go.
“You will eat first?” his wife pleaded, for she knew he had taken only a piece of dried meat since morning.
“I will have a drink of broth.”
She hurried to give this to him in a horn cup, saying: “It would be better to eat.”
“The wind rises,” Taptuna replied, and there was no need for him to say more. Pulling up his hood he disappeared through the low door.
Guninana silently stirred the stew, and Noashak, completely subdued by creeping fear, stole close to her mother’s side.
Taptuna crossed to Hitkoak’s. He who had so freely given help with the hunting, could now as freely ask for help. Very soon the neighbor’s dogs were harnessed, and both men set out for the whale carcass. The wind was rising. It howled louder and louder, and drove straight into their faces, making the journey as harsh for them as for Kak and his team, who were plodding back in the same direction, a mile or so out on the ice, but hidden by darkness and whirling snow.
At last Taptuna saw the whale bulking black on the sandspit. They hurried on, watching thin shadows slink from its side at the noise of their approach. It was evident wolves had been there in numbers, all the ground around was trampled with their footsteps freshly sunk in the freshly driven snow, but there were no sled tracks at all; therefore the search party knew Kak must have started away before the wind began to blow so fiercely. He must have lost the trail; he might be anywhere. It would be madness to try to follow him through the stormy night.
“We will need luck to get safely home ourselves,” Hitkoak said, peering at their own drifted tracks; and Taptuna reluctantly agreed. Nothing could be done till to-morrow; so they turned their backs to the gale and were blown along watching every inch of the way; and shouting—shouting—for the boy might be wandering close at hand.
Sadly Kak’s father helped tether the dogs, and struggled to his own house. He knew Guninana would have the lamp burning and her meat pot on to boil; but he little expected the cheery manner with which she greeted him. Her face was so many degrees less worried it seemed almost smiling, and her eager words bubbled up like the fragrant bear stew.
“He has the snow knife.”
“What do you say?”
“It is all right! Everything’s all right! Kak took with him your big knife.”
As Taptuna pulled off his great fur coats and hung his mittens near the lamp to dry, Guninana excitedly told of their boy’s boast about staying all night. Her telling made the story sound more purposeful than Kak’s careless morning play, for Noashak had told it so. The child was weeping for her brother lost in the driving snow, and as she wept and feared, fear led her to remorse. She felt oh, so sorry about their quarrel, and remembering its cause, suddenly the idle threat turned to a promise. Now that Kak did not come back she knew he had really intended staying away. She was awed by his independence; her mother provoked and delighted.
“He is a rash one, is our lad!” chuckled the little woman, slapping her plump hands on her plump knees.
“Kak has sense,” his father grunted between mouthfuls. “Since he carries the snow knife we needn’t worry about their being cold to-night. Let us go to bed quickly—I am as tired as any man on this earth; and with the first streak of light we must be after him again.”
So the remains of the family went to bed, all three in a row; and Kak’s father was soon snoring; but his mother lay awake a long time, wondering if her little boy really could manage to build a house all by himself. Taptuna said he could—and Taptuna was generally right. Presently she sighed and fell asleep, and the shrieking ice pack troubled her no more than it did Kak, for Guninana was only afraid of bears.
Kak slept late. Excitement and wild driving tire a boy more than he reckons, and he had done a full day’s work with the meat before building his house. So he was not a bit ashamed when he opened one eye to find strong yellow sunshine striking through the dome. He snuggled down again only half conscious of having been disturbed by unexpected noise. It sounded once more—knock, knock, knock. But the boy was dreadfully sleepy.
Knock—knock—knock.
This could not be the grinding of ice nor the sob of wind, nor yet a dog’s deep breathing. He opened both eyes and lay staring up. A band of darkness danced across the roof. Something was outside—something large and active! The boy gazed dumbly. What kind of an awful critter could it be? His fancy leaped to bears. He lay petrified with fright.
A soft thud followed. The shadow vanished, sunk to a spot. Kak nerved himself to reach for the snow knife, his only weapon. Then a prolonged squeak on a high note riveted his glance on the dark blot. He saw one sharp claw thrust through. It moved rapidly. Having been shocked awake, the boy was still too dazed to comprehend. He thought some ravenous, strange animal must be breaking in on them. He was too scared to scream, to move, even to rouse the dogs, till a lump of snow falling from the roof saved him the trouble. Like a flash Sapsuk sprang to fight Pikalu for the honor of meeting this attack. Panic ensued—a regular good mix-up. The pups barked and scrambled and trod on each other, and nipped and yelped and walked over poor Kak who, crowded under the edge of his house anxiously eyeing the shadow, wished his defenders had been ten times more savage.
It is a wonder they did not knock the place down; for until a snow house has had a fire in it to melt the inner surface, which quickly freezes from the cold outside, and so forms a hard ice dome, it is a very fragile sort of shelter.
All at once the boy woke up and understood. He laughed at himself, trying to curb the dogs between chuckles. A second later the door-block fell in with a shower of soft snow, and his father’s head appeared.
Taptuna joined in the laugh. “Stole a march on you, Kak! Ha-ha! This is a fine house you have built, with no door. Lucky I happened along to dig you out—eh? Down, Sapsuk!”
“Dad!”
Kak leaped up, cracked his head against Pikalu’s, and fell on his knees with a howl, rubbing the place. Tears sprang to his eyes. Now that they were safely found, all last night’s terrors, which he had so bravely put aside, rushed over him. He was glad of an excuse to cry. Taptuna, still in the doorway, jollied his son and pretended not to notice the tears.
“You sleep so late here you must sleep well—no worries at all? But it was a grand scare you gave us yonder; going off to set up an establishment for yourself without a word of warning. A fine place like this, too!”
“I didn’t go off to set up anything,” mumbled Kak. “We got lost.”
“Lost! What? On that plain trail you had traveled all day?”
“I—I thought there was a bear—and we whirled along.”
“Ah, you take after your mother.”
Kak blushed to the edge of his hood, and who can say how much farther? For Guninana’s abject fear of polar bears was a standing joke in the family.
“Help me out! Help me out!” he cried, so as to change the subject.
The dogs began to make a worse row than ever, for the inrushing cold air carried a tantalizing smell of fresh seal meat which Taptuna had brought along. They all looked so funny dashing about inside the funny little house, Kak struggling among his team and trying to talk, while legs, arms, feet, and heads shot in every direction, that his father laughed and laughed and laughed! It would be a pity, he said, to spoil the show by letting them out too soon.
“No, no! Let us out. I want to go home,” begged the boy.
“But what about this elegant house? You will not desert it at once?” Taptuna teased.
“Help! Help!” wailed Kak, with a break in his voice.
So his father, seeing he was in earnest, backed away from the door; and immediately the dogs tumbled out with Kak on top of them, all snowy and furry and glad to be free.
There was frozen fish for a picnic breakfast on the sled, with raw seal for the dogs; and while they all four ate, Taptuna continued jollying Kak about his new home. The boy did not mind now because he was in the open air and having a good meal. Of course, being Eskimos, they thought frozen fish a dandy breakfast even for a cold morning. Kak ate his up to the last crumb, and it put him in such good humor that he was willing to laugh at his house, and to own the tiny shelter did not look much viewed from outside by critical eyes on a bright, sunny day. To begin with, it was very low—more like a mushroom than a beehive, for the top of the dome had sunk in a little from its own weight and not being properly built; and it was far from round; and far from smooth; and the crooked small blocks sat every which way.
“But it did stand up!” its owner cried defensively. “And it was cozy inside with the dogs, and saved us from the wind and the snow and wolves and bears and being frozen. I had to try to make it!”
“You did well, my son,” said Taptuna, suddenly growing serious. “And the house is very good for a first effort, and in the dark, too. I’m proud of you. Not only because you were able to build a house for yourself, but because you had the right idea in an emergency; the common sense to know what you needed and the pluck to go after it.”
When his father praised him Kak felt the tears rush again to his eyes; so all at once he began to be very busy harnessing the dogs.
Now although Taptuna teased about the night’s adventure he was really and truly bursting with pride over his clever son. He brought Guninana and Hitkoak, at different times, to see the mushroom. Kak’s house became famous. The story of how the boy had weathered that night alone and sheltered his team from the gale was told and retold, till he swaggered like a man on the strength of this great achievement. His mother began to consult him about things instead of issuing orders; while the neighbor girls and Noashak were filled with awe and admiration. They never again dared to make faces or pull mouths at Kak; and never doubted his most gorgeous boast.