any more.

"But the early Norsemen came along, about a thousand years after the
time of Christ, and called them 'skrellings.' That means 'weaklings.'
It was the Indians who called them Eskimo. The word means 'eaters of
raw meat.'"

"They've sure got some funny ideas about Hell 'n' the Devil, Doctor!"
put in an old, wise sailor who was sitting deep in the shadows.

"Yes they have!" agreed the Doctor. "Their God, Tongarsuk, is a good
spirit. He rules a lot of lesser spirits, called tongaks, and they run
and tell the priests, who are called angekoks, what to do. The
angekoks are the medicine-men and the weather-prophets. The Devil
isn't he, but she. And she is so dreadful that she hasn't any name,
because you're not supposed to talk about her at all.

"The angekoks are awfully busy fellows. They have to keep making
journeys to the centre of the earth, the Eskimos believe. Because
that's where Tongarsuk the good spirit is, and they have to go and ask
him what to do when the little spirits get lazy and won't tell them.

"Anybody who thinks the angekok has an easy time of it on his voyage
is mistaken. The journey has to be in winter. It must be at midnight.
The angekok's body is standing alone in the hut--his head tied between
his legs, his arms bound behind his back. In the meantime his soul has
left the body, and is on the way to heaven or hell.

"That's what an ordinary, every-day angekok has to do. But if you want
to become an angekok poglit, which is a fat priest (meaning a chief
priest), it hurts a lot more, and takes much more time and trouble.
Then you have to let a white bear take your wandering soul and drag it
down to the sea by one toe. They don't tell you how a soul comes to
have a toe to drag it by.

"When the soul reaches the seaboard, it must be swallowed by a
sea-lion--and of course the soul may have to sit there in the cold for
quite a while waiting for a sea-lion to come along. After the
sea-lion has swallowed it, the same white bear must reappear and
swallow it too. Then the white bear must give up the spirit, and let
it return to the dark house where the body is waiting for it. All this
time the neighbors keep up an infernal racket with a drum and any
other musical instruments they may happen to have.

"The Eskimo know very well that once there was a flood--but they
cannot say exactly when. The trouble was that the world upset into the
sea, and all were drowned except one man who climbed out on a