part. When it was filled with oil squeezed from a piece of seal
blubber, the blubber was suspended over it at the back that the heat,
when the wick of moss was lighted, would cause the blubber oil to
continue to drip and keep the lamp supplied with oil. The lamp gave
forth a smoky, yellow flame. This was the only fireside that little
Pomiuk knew. You and I would not think it a very cheerful one,
perhaps, but Pomiuk was accustomed to cold and he looked upon it as
quite comfortable and cheerful enough.

Ka-i-a-chou-ouk, Pomiuk's father, was a hunter and fisherman, as are
all the Eskimos. He moved his tupek in summer, or built his igloo of
blocks of snow in winter, wherever hunting and fishing were the best,
but always close to the sea.

Here, under the shadow of mighty cliffs and towering, rugged
mountains, by the side of the great water, Pomiuk was born and grew
into young boyhood, and played and climbed among the mountain crags or
along the ocean shore with other boys. He loved the rugged, naked
mountains, they stood so firm and solid! No storm or gale could ever
make them afraid, or weaken them. Always they were the same, towering
high into the heavens, untrod and unchanged by man, just as they had
stood facing the arctic storms through untold ages.

From the high places he could look out over the sea, where icebergs
glistened in the sunshine, and sometimes he could see the sail of a
fishing schooner that had come out of the mysterious places beyond the
horizon. He loved the sea. Day and night in summer the sound of surf
pounding ceaselessly upon the cliffs was in his ears. It was music to
him, and his lullaby by night.

But he loved the sea no less in winter when it lay frozen and silent
and white. As far as his vision reached toward the rising sun, the
endless plain of ice stretched away to the misty place where the ice
and sky met. Pomiuk thought it would be a fine adventure, some night,
when he was grown to be a man and a great hunter, to take the dogs and
komatik and drive out over the ice to the place from which the sun
rose, and be there in the morning to meet him. He had no doubt the sun
rose out of a hole in the ice, and it did not seem so far away.

Pomiuk's world was filled with beautiful and wonderful things. He
loved the bright flowers that bloomed under the cliffs when the winter
snows were gone, and the brilliant colors that lighted the sky and
mountains and sea, when the sun set of evenings. He lov