When the dog found a hole the boy would build himself a little , low snow wall to keep off the worst of the bitter wind , and there he would wait ten , twelve , twenty hours for the seal to come up to breathe , his eyes glued to the tiny mark he had made above the hole to guide the downward thrust of his harpoon , a little seal-skin mat under his feet , and his legs tied together in the tutareang -LRB- the buckle that the old hunters had talked about -RRB- . This helps to keep a man 's legs from twitching as he waits and waits and waits for the quick-eared seal to rise . Though there is no excitement in it , you can easily believe that the sitting still in the buckle with the thermometer perhaps forty degrees below zero is the hardest work an Inuit knows . When a seal was caught , Kotuko the dog would bound forward , his trace trailing behind him , and help to pull the body to the sleigh , where the tired and hungry dogs lay sullenly under the lee of the broken ice . A seal did not go very far , for each mouth in the little village had a right to be filled , and neither bone , hide , nor sinew was wasted . The dogs ' meat was taken for human use , and Amoraq fed the team with pieces of old summer skin-tents raked out from under the sleeping-bench , and they howled and howled again , and waked to howl hungrily . One could tell by the soap-stone lamps in the huts that famine was near . In good seasons , when blubber was plentiful , the light in the boat-shaped lamps would be two feet high -- cheerful , oily , and yellow . Now it was a bare six inches : Amoraq carefully pricked down the moss wick , when an unwatched flame brightened for a moment , and the eyes of all the family followed her hand . The horror of famine up there in the great cold is not so much dying , as dying in the dark . All the Inuit dread the dark that presses on them without a break for six months in each year ; and when the lamps are low in the houses the minds of people begin to be shaken and confused . But worse was to come . The underfed dogs snapped and growled in the passages , glaring at the cold stars , and snuffing into the bitter wind , night after night . When they stopped howling the silence fell down again as solid and heavy as a snowdrift against a door , and men could hear the beating of their blood in the thin passages of the ear , and the thumping of their own hearts , that sounded as loud as the noise of sorcerers ' drums beaten across the snow . One night Kotuko the dog , who had been unusually sullen in harness , leaped up and pushed his head against Kotuko 's knee . Kotuko patted him , but the dog still pushed blindly forward , fawning . Then Kadlu waked , and gripped the heavy wolf-like head , and stared into the glassy eyes . The dog whimpered and shivered between Kadlu 's knees . The hair rose about his neck , and he growled as though a stranger were at the door ; then he barked joyously , and rolled on the ground , and bit at Kotuko 's boot like a puppy . `` What is it ? ''
said XXXXX ; for he was beginning to be afraid .
Inuit Kotuko harpoon hours night sinew sleeping-bench sorcerers tutareang year