Translation.

"He has opened his eyes. Look!"

"Put him in the skin again. He will be a strong dog. On the fourth month
we will name him."

"For whom?" said Amoraq.

Kadlu's eye rolled round the skin-lined snow-house till it fell on
fourteen-year-old Kotuko sitting on the sleeping-bench, making a button
out of walrus ivory. "Name him for me," said Kotuko, with a grin. "I
shall need him one day."

Kadlu grinned back till his eyes were almost buried in the fat of his
flat cheeks, and nodded to Amoraq, while the puppy's fierce mother
whined to see her baby wriggling far out of reach in the little sealskin
pouch hung above the warmth of the blubber-lamp. Kotuko went on with his
carving, and Kadlu threw a rolled bundle of leather dog-harnesses into a
tiny little room that opened from one side of the house, slipped off his
heavy deerskin hunting-suit, put it into a whalebone-net that hung above
another lamp, and dropped down on the sleeping-bench to whittle at
a piece of frozen seal-meat till Amoraq, his wife, should bring the
regular dinner of boiled meat and blood-soup. He had been out since
early dawn at the seal-holes, eight miles away, and had come home with
three big seal. Half-way down the long, low snow passage or tunnel
that led to the inner door of the house you could hear snappings and
yelpings, as the dogs of his sleigh-team, released from the day's work,
scuffled for warm places.

When the yelpings grew too loud Kotuko lazily rolled off the
sleeping-bench, and picked up a whip with an eighteen-inch handle of
springy whalebone, and twenty-five feet of heavy, plaited thong. He
dived into the passage, where it sounded as though all the dogs were
eating him alive; but that was no more than their regular grace before
meals. When he crawled out at the far end, half a dozen furry heads
followed him with their eyes as he went to a sort of gallows of
whale-jawbones, from which the dog's meat was hung; split off the frozen
stuff in big lumps with a broad-headed spear; and stood, his whip in
one hand and the meat in the other. Each beast was called by name, the
weakest first, and woe betide any dog that moved out of his turn; for
the tapering lash would shoot out like thonged lightning, and flick away
an inch or so of hair and hide. Each beast growled, snapped, choked once
over his portion, and hurried back to the protection of the passage,
while the boy stood upon the snow under the blazing Northern Lights and
deal