r eyes, as she
raised herself out of the lamp-smoke, and laid down the stick with which
she had been stirring the contents of a stone pot.

Instead of answering the question, Okiok turned to two chubby and
staring youths, of about fifteen and sixteen respectively, who were
mending spears, and said sharply, "Norrak, Ermigit, go, harness the
dogs."

Norrak rose with a bound, and dived into the tunnel. Ermigit, although
willing enough, was not quite so sharp. As he crawled into the tunnel
and was disappearing, his father sent his foot in the same direction,
and, having thus intimated the necessity for urgent haste, he turned
again to his wife with a somewhat softened expression.

"Give me food, Nuna. Little food has passed into me since yesterday at
sunrise. I starve. When I have eaten, you shall hear words that will
make you dream for a moon. I have seen,"--he became solemn at this
point, and lowered his voice to a whisper as he advanced his head and
glared again--"I have seen a--a--Kablunet!"

He drew back and gazed at his wife as connoisseurs are wont to do when
examining a picture. And truly Nuna's countenance _was_ a
picture-round, fat, comely, oily, also open-mouthed and eyed, with
unbounded astonishment depicted thereon; for she thoroughly believed her
husband, knowing that he was upright and never told lies.

Her mental condition did not, however, interfere with her duties. A
wooden slab or plate, laden with a mess of broiled meat, soon smoked
before her lord. He quickly seated himself on a raised platform, and
had done some justice to it before Nuna recovered the use of her tongue.

"A Kablunet!" she exclaimed, almost solemnly. "Is he dead?"

Okiok paused, with a lump of blubber in his fingers close to his mouth.

"No; he is alive. At least he was alive when I left him. If he has not
died since, he is alive still."

Having uttered this truism, he thrust the blubber well home, and
continued his meal.

Nuna's curiosity, having been aroused, was not easily allayed. She sat
down beside her spouse, and plied him with numerous questions, to which
Okiok gave her brief and very tantalising replies until he was gorged,
when, throwing down the platter, he turned abruptly to his wife, and
said impressively--

"Open your ears, Nuna. Okiok is no longer what he was. He has been
born only to-day. He has at last seen with his two eyes--a Kablunet!"

He paused to restrain his excitement. His wife cla