untains, hunting walrus. This year the hunt was doubly important to
them, and they delayed longer than was their wont. Here the great cape
with which the spur ends marks the division of the whole trend of the
land north from that which runs more directly south toward Katatallik.
There the whole force of the south-going polar streams, focused on the
ice, keeps open water long after all the rest of the coast is locked
in the grim grip of winter. The walrus herds seem, in the evolution of
ages, to have got an appreciation of this fact through their
adamantine skulls. Therefore, from time immemorial, it has been
chosen as a rendezvous of the Innuits in spring and fall. The chaos of
ancient walrus bones which strews the stony beach reminds one of
nothing so forcibly as the stacks of bleaching buffalo bones which
disgrace the prairies.

On several occasions during the year previous, Kalleligak (the
Capelin) had been guilty of the worst crime in the Eskimo calendar--on
several occasions he had failed to extend that hospitality to
strangers without which life on the coast is scarcely possible. It had
been brought to Kaiachououk's notice, and he had lost no time in
seeking out the man and taxing him with his remissness. A mixture of
traits like the colours in a variegated skein of worsted formed the
spectrum of Kalleligak's character; and selfishness, which fortunately
is rarer among the Eskimos than among those in keener competition with
civilization, was too often the prevailing colour. After the
interview, at which he had promised to mend his ways, he apparently
always lived in fear that sooner or later Kaiachououk would have him
punished, and even deprive him of some of his possessions. The
obsession haunted him as the thought of the crime does the murderer,
and at last impelled him to the act which, though it went unpunished
by men, blasted the remainder of his days.

Among the others who camped around Kaiachououk's igloo this year was
as usual the sub-chief Kalleligak. He had been more than usually
successful in his hunt, and was able to face the prospect of the
oncoming winter with optimism. On the other hand, his supposed enemy,
Kaiachououk, had been singularly unfortunate, largely owing to the
fact that his kayak had been left farther to the north. He showed no
signs of either impatience or jealousy, however, and never by word or
act gave evidence that he so much as remembered the rebuke he had been
forced to administ