many that we
must carry the load upon our heads."

But that comrade would not change his purpose, not for all the trying
of the other to turn him from it. And at last the other ceased to
speak of it.

Now as the cold grew stronger, that opening in the ice became smaller
and smaller, at the place where Qujavarssuk was used to go with his
kayak. One day, when he came down to it, there was but just room for
his kayak to go in, and if now a seal should rise, it could not fail
to strike the kayak. Yet he got into the kayak, and at the time when he
was fixing the head on his harpoon, he saw a black seal coming up from
below. But seeing that it must touch both the ice and the kayak, it
went down again without coming right to the surface. Then Qujavarssuk
went up again and went home, and that was the first time he went home
without having made a catch, in all the time he had been a hunter.

When he had come home, he sat himself down behind his mother's lamp,
sitting on the bedplace, so that only his feet hung down over the
floor. He was so troubled that he would not eat. And later in the
evening, he said to his mother:

"Take meat to Tugto and his wife, and ask one of them to magic away
the ice."

His mother went out and cut the meat of a black seal across at the
middle. Then she brought the tail half, and half the blubber of a seal,
up to Tugto and his wife. She came to the entrance, but it was covered
with snow, so that it looked like a fox hole. At first, she dropped
that which she was carrying in through the passage way. And it was this
which Tugto and his wife first saw; the half of a black seal's meat
and half of its blubber cut across. And when she came in, she said:

"It is my errand now to ask if one of you can magic away the ice."

When these words were heard, Tugto said to his wife:

"In this time of hunger we cannot send away meat that is given. You
must magic away the ice."

And she set about to do his bidding. To Qujavarssuk's mother she said:

"Tell all the people who can come here to come here and listen!"

And then she began eagerly going in to the dwellings, to say that
all who could come should come in and listen to the magic. When all
had come in, she put out the lamp, and began to call on her helping
spirits. Then suddenly she said:

"Two flames have appeared in the west!"

And now she was standing up in the passage way, and let them come to
her, and when they came forward, they were a bear