eft to bide their time, and that
no amount of coaxing would hurry them, so he tried to await their
moods in patience. He understood the reluctance of the men to go away
during one of the best hunting seasons of the year and could not find
fault with them for it.

The seals were the mainstay of their living and to lose the hunt might
mean privation. They were in need of the skins for clothing, kayaks
and summer tents, and the flesh and blubber for food for themselves
and their dogs, and the oil for their stone lamps.

Later in the season they would harpoon the animals from their kayaks,
but this was the great harvest time when they killed them by spearing
through holes in the ice where the seals came at intervals to breathe,
for a seal will die unless it can get fresh air occasionally. Early in
the morning each Eskimo would take up his position near one of these
breathing holes, and there, with spear poised, not moving so much as a
foot, sometimes for hours at a time, await patiently the appearance of
a seal, which, having many similar holes, might not chance to come to
this particular one the whole day.

The spear used had a long, wooden handle, with a barbed point made of
metal or ivory, and so arranged that the barbed point came off the
handle after it had been driven into the animal. To the point was
fastened one end of a long sealskin line, the other end of which the
hunter tied about his waist.

The moment a seal's nose made its appearance at the breathing hole the
watchful Eskimo drove the spear into its body. Then began a tug of war
between man and seal, and sometimes the Eskimos had narrow escapes
from being pulled into the holes.

The seals of Labrador, it should be explained, are the hair, and not
the fur seals such as are found in the Alaskan waters and the South
Sea. There are five varieties of them, the largest of which is the
hood seal and the smallest the doter or harbour seal. The square
flipper also grows to a very large size. The other two kinds are the
jar and the harp.

These all have different names applied to them according to their age.
Thus a new-born harp is a "puppy," then a "white coat"; when it is old
enough to take to the water, which is within a fortnight after birth,
it becomes a "paddler," a little later a "bedlamer," then a "young
harp" and finally a harp. The handsomest of them all is the "ranger,"
as the young doter is called.

Finally, one evening when all the men were assemb