For six months of those nine it is dark ; and that is what makes it so horrible . In the three months of the summer it only freezes every other day and every night , and then the snow begins to weep off on the southerly slopes , and a few ground-willows put out their woolly buds , a tiny stonecrop or so makes believe to blossom , beaches of fine gravel and rounded stones run down to the open sea , and polished boulders and streaked rocks lift up above the granulated snow . But all that is gone in a few weeks , and the wild winter locks down again on the land ; while at sea the ice tears up and down the offing , jamming and ramming , and splitting and hitting , and pounding and grounding , till it all freezes together , ten feet thick , from the land outward to deep water . In the winter Kadlu would follow the seal to the edge of this land-ice , and spear them as they came up to breathe at their blow-holes . The seal must have open water to live and catch fish in , and in the deep of winter the ice would sometimes run eighty miles without a break from the nearest shore . In the spring he and his people retreated from the floes to the rocky mainland , where they put up tents of skins , and snared the sea-birds , or speared the young seal basking on the beaches . Later , they would go south into Baffin Land after the reindeer , and to get their year 's store of salmon from the hundreds of streams and lakes of the interior ; coming back north in September or October for the musk-ox hunting and the regular winter sealery . This travelling was done with dog-sleighs , twenty and thirty miles a day , or sometimes down the coast in big skin `` woman-boats , '' when the dogs and the babies lay among the feet of the rowers , and the women sang songs as they glided from cape to cape over the glassy , cold waters . All the luxuries that the Tununirmiut knew came from the south -- driftwood for sleigh-runners , rod-iron for harpoon-tips , steel knives , tin kettles that cooked food much better than the old soap-stone affairs , flint and steel , and even matches , as well as coloured ribbons for the women 's hair , little cheap mirrors , and red cloth for the edging of deerskin dress-jackets . Kadlu traded the rich , creamy , twisted narwhal horn and musk-ox teeth -LRB- these are just as valuable as pearls -RRB- to the Southern Inuit , and they , in turn , traded with the whalers and the missionary-posts of Exeter and Cumberland Sounds ; and so the chain went on , till a kettle picked up by a ship 's cook in the Bhendy Bazaar might end its days over a blubber-lamp somewhere on the cool side of the Arctic Circle . Kadlu , being a good hunter , was rich in iron harpoons , snow-knives , bird-darts , and all the other things that make life easy up there in the great cold ; and he was the head of his tribe , or , as they say , `` the man who knows all about it by practice . '' This did not give him any authority , except now and then he could advise his friends to change their hunting-grounds ; but Kotuko used it to domineer a little , in the lazy , fat Inuit fashion , over the other boys , when they came out at night to play ball in the moonlight , or to sing the Child 's Song to the Aurora Borealis . But at fourteen an Inuit feels himself a man , and Kotuko was tired of making snares for wild-fowl and kit-foxes , and most tired of all of helping the women to chew seal-and deer-skins -LRB- that supples them as nothing else can -RRB- the long day through , while the men were out hunting . He wanted to go into the quaggi , the Singing-House , when the hunters gathered there for their mysteries , and the angekok , the sorcerer , frightened them into the most delightful fits after the lamps were put out , and you could hear the Spirit of the Reindeer stamping on the roof ; and when a spear was thrust out into the open black night it came back covered with hot blood . He wanted to throw his big boots into the net with the tired air of the head of a family , and to gamble with the hunters when they dropped in of an evening and played a sort of home-made roulette with a tin pot and a nail . There were hundreds of things that he wanted to do , but the grown men laughed at him and said , `` Wait till you have been in the buckle , Kotuko . Hunting is not ALL catching . '' Now that his father had named a puppy for him , things looked brighter . An Inuit does not waste a good dog on his son till the boy knows something of dog-driving ; and Kotuko was more than sure that he knew more than everything . If the puppy had not had an iron constitution he would have died from over-stuffing and over-handling .
XXXXX made him a tiny harness with a trace to it , and hauled him all over the house-floor , shouting : `` Aua !
Bazaar Kadlu Kotuko Singing-House day ground-willows over-handling over-stuffing stonecrop weeks