t Inuit fashion, over the other boys, when they came out at
night to play ball in the moonlight, or to sing the Child's Song to the
Aurora Borealis.

But at fourteen an Inuit feels himself a man, and Kotuko was tired of
making snares for wild-fowl and kit-foxes, and most tired of all of
helping the women to chew seal-and deer-skins (that supples them as
nothing else can) the long day through, while the men were out hunting.
He wanted to go into the quaggi, the Singing-House, when the hunters
gathered there for their mysteries, and the angekok, the sorcerer,
frightened them into the most delightful fits after the lamps were put
out, and you could hear the Spirit of the Reindeer stamping on the roof;
and when a spear was thrust out into the open black night it came back
covered with hot blood. He wanted to throw his big boots into the net
with the tired air of the head of a family, and to gamble with the
hunters when they dropped in of an evening and played a sort of
home-made roulette with a tin pot and a nail. There were hundreds of
things that he wanted to do, but the grown men laughed at him and said,
"Wait till you have been in the buckle, Kotuko. Hunting is not ALL
catching."

Now that his father had named a puppy for him, things looked brighter.
An Inuit does not waste a good dog on his son till the boy knows
something of dog-driving; and Kotuko was more than sure that he knew
more than everything.

If the puppy had not had an iron constitution he would have died from
over-stuffing and over-handling. Kotuko made him a tiny harness with a
trace to it, and hauled him all over the house-floor, shouting: "Aua!
Ja aua!" (Go to the right). "Choiachoi! Ja choiachoi!" (Go to the left).
"Ohaha!" (Stop). The puppy did not like it at all, but being fished for
in this way was pure happiness beside being put to the sleigh for the
first time. He just sat down on the snow, and played with the seal-hide
trace that ran from his harness to the pitu, the big thong in the bows
of the sleigh. Then the team started, and the puppy found the heavy
ten-foot sleigh running up his back, and dragging him along the snow,
while Kotuko laughed till the tears ran down his face. There followed
days and days of the cruel whip that hisses like the wind over ice, and
his companions all bit him because he did not know his work, and the
harness chafed him, and he was dot allowed to sleep with Kotuko any
more, but had to take the coldest place in the