day.

When only a little time had gone, the strong man came rowing out to
him and said:

"Now perhaps you have again failed to go to my wife?"

When these words were spoken, the old one turned his head away,
and said:

"To-day I have not failed to be with her."

When the strong one heard this, he took one of the seals he had caught,
and gave it to the old man, and said:

"Take this; it is yours."

And in this way he acted towards him from that time. The old one came
home that day dragging a seal behind him. And this he could often
do thereafter.

When the strong one came home, he said to his wife:

"When I go out to-morrow in my kayak, it is not to hunt seal; therefore
watch carefully for my return when the sun is in the west."

Next day he went out in his kayak, and when the sun was in the west,
his wife went often and often to look out. And once when she went
thus, she saw that he had come, and from that moment she was no
longer sleepy.

As the strong one came nearer and nearer to land, he paddled more
and more strongly.

Now his wife went down to that place where he was about to land,
and turned and sat down with her back to the sea. The man unfastened
his hunting fur from the ring of his kayak, and put his hand into the
back of the kayak, and took out a sea serpent, and struck his wife
on the back. At this she felt very cold, and her skin smarted. Then
she stood up and went home. But her husband said no word to her. Then
they slept, and awakened, and then the old one came to them and said:

"Now you must search for the carrion of a cormorant, with only the
skeleton remaining, for your wife is with child."

And the strong one went out eagerly to search for this.

One day, paddling southward in his kayak, as was his custom, he started
to search all the little bird cliffs. And coming to the foot of one of
them, he saw that which he so greatly wished to see; the carrion of
a big cormorant, which had now become a skeleton. It lay there quite
easy to see. But there was no way of coming to the place where it
was, not from above nor from below, nor from the side. Yet he would
try. He tied his hunting line fast to the cross thongs on his kayak,
and thrust his hand into a small crack a little way up the cliff. And
now he tried to climb up there with his hands alone. And at last he
got that skeleton, and came down in the same way back to his kayak,
and got into it, and rowed away northward to his home. And