est and return to the regions of
thick-ribbed ice. We have to apologise humbly for asking you also to
fly back a little in time, and plunge once more into the dreary winter,
from which, no doubt, you thought you had fairly escaped.

One morning toward the beginning of spring, referred to in last chapter,
while yet the northern seas were covered with their solid garment,
Cheenbuk announced to all whom it might concern that he intended to go
off on a long journey to the eastward--he called it the place where the
Great Light rises--for purposes which he did not see fit publicly to
reveal.

At that time the Great Light to which he referred had begun to show
symptoms of intention to return to the dark regions which it had
forsaken for several months. The glimmer on the eastern sky had been
increasing perceptibly each day, and at last had reached the point of
producing a somewhat rosy twilight for two or three hours before and
after noon. King Frost, however, still reigned supreme, and the
dog-sledge as yet was the only mode of travelling among the islands or
on the sea.

"Why go you towards the rising sun?" asked Nazinred when Cheenbuk
invited him to be one of the party.

"Because it is from my countrymen who dwell there that we get the hard
stuff that is so good for our spear-heads, and lances, and arrows. We
know not where they find the stuff, and they won't tell. I shall go and
find out for myself, and take back plenty of it to our people."

The "hard stuff" referred to was hoop-iron, which, as well as nails and
a few hatchets, the Eskimos of the eastern parts of the Arctic shores
obtained from whale-ships and passed on to their friends in the more
remote regions of the farther north.

"I can tell you how they get it," said the Indian. "White traders to
whom our people go with their furs have spoken of such things, and my
ears have been open. They say that there are white men who come over
the great salt lake from far-off lands in big _big_ canoes. They come
to catch the great whales, and it is from them that the hard stuff
comes."

For some minutes the Eskimo was silent. A new idea had entered his head
and he was turning it over.

"Have you ever seen these white men or their _big_ canoes?" asked
Cheenbuk with great interest.

"Never. The salt lake where they kill the whale is too far from my
people's hunting-grounds. But the white traders I have visited have
seen them. Some traders have come from