with vapor, like smoke, the condensing moisture in the monster's warm breath, like a fog, or cloud, on the water. I saw the small eye of the monster, that on the left side of its head, observing us.
'It is going to dive,' said Imnak. As he pointed ice broke from his parka.
Imnak and another man began to draw on the line, to pull us to the very side of the monster.
The other hunters in the boat, discarding their buckets, seized up their lances, slender hunting tools, with fixed heads, commonly used not in throwing but in thrusting.
I reached out with my hand and pushed against the side of the mammal. The Hunjer whale is a toothed whale.
Beside me now Imnak and the other hunters, ail with lances, began to drive them, like needles, into the side of the animal, again and again.
Its flesh shook, scattering water. I feared the side of the umiak would be stove in.
It grunted.
'Hold the line!' cried Imnak.
I held the line, keeping the umiak at the beast's side, so that the hunters could thrust into it at point-blank range.
Then the animal's eye disappeared under the water. I saw the flukes rearing up.
'Give it line!' cried Imnak.
I threw line over the side.
The flukes were now high above us, and the animal's body almost vertical. The line disappeared under the water.
It was gone.
'Now we will wait,' said Imnak. 'And then it will begin again.
I looked down at the placid waters. We would wait, until it began again.
The waters seemed very calm. It was hard to believe that we were attached, by a thin line, to that great form somewhere below us. There was some ice in the water about us. The wind scattered the breath of the monster, dispelling the cloud of vapor.
On the pebbled shore, some half pasang away, behind us, I could see smoke from the permanent camp.
I was very cold. I would like some tea when we returned to camp.
19
I Discipline Arlene
I looked at Arlene. She, naked, was chewing the ice from my boots. She held the boot with two hands and bit and chewed carefully.
She looked up at me, the fur of the boot in her mouth.
'Continue your work,' I told her.
She continued to free the fur of the tiny bits of ice, biting and chewing. How marvelous are the mouths of women, so delicate, with their small teeth, their sweet lips, their soft, warm tongues. When she had broken the ice from a place on the boot, she would place her mouth over that place, breathing upon it, softening and melting the residue of ice there. Then, with her tongue, she would lick the fur smooth.
When she had finished with both boots she placed them on the drying rack.
I sat in Imnak's hut, cross-legged. She returned to a place before me, and knelt.
It is pleasant to have a slave girl kneeling before you.
'May I have permission to speak, Master?' she asked.
'Yes,' I said.
'Why have you come north?' she asked.
'It pleases me,' I said.
'Must I be content with that?' she asked.
'Yes,' I said.
'Why?' she asked.
'Because it pleases me,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'Spread the furs,' I told her. 'Your insolence requires discipline.'
'Yes, Master,' she said.
20
The Feasting House; We Return To The Feasting House
'Aja! Aja!' sang the woman.
I bit into the steak. Beside me, cross-legged, sat Imnak, grease from the raw blubber he chewed at the side of his mouth He wiped his face with his sleeve.
The feasting house was full. There were some forty individuals, men and women, crowded into the structure.
Imnak and I, and the girls, had come north in the summer, early. For weeks we had waited at the empty permanent camp. Finally, in the early fall, several families had arrived to occupy their seasonally abandoned dwellings. As it had turned out we could have taken our way north with the People, the various groups scattering to their diverse permanent camps. No time had been saved by my haste. We had hunted and fished, and sported with our slaves, and had waited.
'I did not think Karjuk would come to an empty camp,' said Imnak, 'but I did not know. So I came north wAll you.'
'The camp is not now empty,' I had told Imnak.
Imnak had shrugged. 'That is true,' he said.
'Where is Karjuk?' I asked.
'Perhaps he will come,' had said Imnak.
'But what if he does not?' I asked.
'Then,' said Imnak, 'he does not.'
As the weeks had passed I had grown more fretful and anxious.
'Let us hunt for Karjuk,' I had urged Imnak.
'If the ice beasts cannot find Karjuk,' said Ininak, 'how can we find him?'
'What can we do?' I asked.
'We can wait,' he said.
We had waited.
The drum of the red hunters is large and heavy. It has a handle and is diskilke. It requires strength to manage it. It is held in one hand and beaten with a stick held in the other. Its frame is generally of wood and its cover, of hide, usually tabuk hide, is fixed on the frame by sinew. Interestingly the drum is not struck on the head, or hide cover, but on the frame. It has an odd resonance. That drum in the hand of the hunter standing now in the midst of the group was some two and one half feet in diameter. He was now striking on it and singing. I could not make out the song, but it had to do with the mild winds which blow in the summer. These songs, incidentally, are rather like tools or carvings. They tend to be regarded as the singer's property. It is unusual for one man or woman to sing another's songs. One is expected to make up one's own songs. It is expected that every man will be able to make up songs and sing them, just as every man is supposed to be able to carve and hunt. These songs are usually very simple, but some of them are quite beautiful, and some are quite touching. Both men and women
