little legs, flourishing a huge jack-knife, and grinning as if he
were going to have a big dish of whale-fat for dinner. He looked comical
enough. He was dressed in seal-skin, and was bobbing up and down in his
mother's seal-skin boots. The women's boots are of tanned seal-skin,
bleached white and then colored. The boots of Billy's mother were very
gay. They were bright red ones. When Billy from his tent-door saw Sammy
coming, he crawled into the huge big boots, and bare-headed rushed--no,
waddled out, to greet the discomfited fisherman.

"Billy, I'll give it to you?"

"Will you, Sammy? Try it, old boy."

Thereupon, he put his thumb to his nose and wriggled his finger as
exasperatingly as any Yankee boy here in this enlightened land. His flat
face, his black little eyes, his stubby little nose, his hair black as
coal and long behind, but fashionably "banged" in front, the seal-skin
suit, mother's big red boots, and the nasal gesture made a very
interesting picture, and a most provoking one also.

"Billy, you _will_ catch it!"

"I should rather think you had caught it already. Did you bring any
seal-fat, Sammy?"

Sammy felt mad enough and hot enough to set the water to boiling between
his kayah and the shore.

"You had better run, Billy."

"Plenty of time, Sammy."

Sammy's kayah was now ashore. Sammy unlaced his jacket and let himself
out of jail. Pulling his kayah high up the shore, he turned it over and
let the water escape. There were two ugly gashes in the seal-skin
bottom--just as he expected.

"Now where's that Billy?" asked Sammy at last. But mother's red boots
had prudently withdrawn.

"I _will_ give it to him," said Sammy; "but I will mend this first."

He took up his beloved kayah and walked to the little village. It was
not very large. There were half a dozen seal-skin tents, a few houses of
stone and turf, and one or two wooden buildings, besides the
government-house that proudly supported the flag of Denmark.

"What do you want, Sammy?" said his mother, as he appeared at the door
of one of the seal-skin tents. She was sitting on a bed of reindeer
skins.

"I want needle and thread, mother. That Billy Blubber cut some holes in
my kayah."

"Billy Blubber did?"

"Yes," said Sammy, "and I would like to sew him up in a seal-skin and
drop him from the top of an iceberg into the sea."

"Tut, tut, Sammy. It's a boy's trick. Let it go."

"There," thought Sammy, shouldering his kayah and moving