ome with three seals. And his
fellow-hunters were then but just preparing to set out.

Thus the days passed for that wifeless man. Early in the morning he
would go out, and when the sun had only just begun to climb the sky,
he would come home with his catch.

Then the unmarried girls began talking together.

"What has come to our wifeless man," they said, and began to vie with
one another in seeking his favour.

"Let me, let me," they cried all together.

And the wifeless man turned towards them, and laughingly chose out
the best in the flock.

And now they lived together, the wifeless man and the girl, and every
day there was freshly caught seal meat to be cut up. At last she grew
weary, and cried:

"Why ever do you catch such a terrible lot?"

"H'm," said he. "The seals come of themselves, and I catch them--that
is all."

But she kept on asking him, and so he said at last:

"It was in this way. Once...." But having said thus much, he ceased,
and went to rest. But it was long before he could sleep. And the sun
was just over the houses of the village before he awoke and set out
next day.

That day he caught but one seal.

In the evening, his wife began again asking and asking, and seeing
that she would not desist, at last he said:

"It was in this way. Once ... well, I woke up in the evening, and rowed
out, and heard a man crying for help, because his kayak had upset. And
I rowed up to him and righted him again, and when I looked at him,
it was one of the Noseless Ones."

"'It was a good thing you were not idling about by the houses,'
said the Noseless One to me.

"'I had but just got into my kayak,'" said I.

And thus he told all that had happened to him that day, and from that
time forward he lost his power of hunting, for now his old sleepiness
came over him once more, and he lost all.

At last he had not even skins enough to give his wife for her
clothes, and so she ran away and left him. He set off in chase, but
she escaped through a crevice in the rocks, a narrow place whereby
he could just pass.

Now he lay in wait there, and soon he heard a whispering inside:

"You go out to him."

And out crawled a blowfly, and said:

"Take me."

"I will not take you," said the wifeless man, "for you pick your food
from the muck-heaps."

The blowfly laughed and crawled back again, and he could hear it say:

"He will not take me, because I pick my food from the muck-heaps."

Then there was more