He fought his way up the team steadily , fight after fight , till one fine evening , over their food , he tackled the big , black leader -LRB- Kotuko the boy saw fair play -RRB- , and made second dog of him , as they say . So he was promoted to the long thong of the leading dog , running five feet in advance of all the others : it was his bounden duty to stop all fighting , in harness or out of it , and he wore a collar of copper wire , very thick and heavy . On special occasions he was fed with cooked food inside the house , and sometimes was allowed to sleep on the bench with Kotuko . He was a good seal-dog , and would keep a musk-ox at bay by running round him and snapping at his heels . He would even -- and this for a sleigh-dog is the last proof of bravery -- he would even stand up to the gaunt Arctic wolf , whom all dogs of the North , as a rule , fear beyond anything that walks the snow . He and his master -- they did not count the team of ordinary dogs as company -- hunted together , day after day and night after night , fur-wrapped boy and savage , long-haired , narrow-eyed , white-fanged , yellow brute . All an Inuit has to do is to get food and skins for himself and his family . The women-folk make the skins into clothing , and occasionally help in trapping small game ; but the bulk of the food -- and they eat enormously -- must be found by the men . If the supply fails there is no one up there to buy or beg or borrow from . The people must die . An Inuit does not think of these chances till he is forced to . Kadlu , Kotuko , Amoraq , and the boy-baby who kicked about in Amoraq 's fur hood and chewed pieces of blubber all day , were as happy together as any family in the world . They came of a very gentle race -- an Inuit seldom loses his temper , and almost never strikes a child -- who did not know exactly what telling a real lie meant , still less how to steal . They were content to spear their living out of the heart of the bitter , hopeless cold ; to smile oily smiles , and tell queer ghost and fairy tales of evenings , and eat till they could eat no more , and sing the endless woman 's song : `` Amna aya , aya amna , ah ! ah ! '' through the long lamp-lighted days as they mended their clothes and their hunting-gear . But one terrible winter everything betrayed them . The Tununirmiut returned from the yearly salmon-fishing , and made their houses on the early ice to the north of Bylot 's Island , ready to go after the seal as soon as the sea froze . But it was an early and savage autumn . All through September there were continuous gales that broke up the smooth seal-ice when it was only four or five feet thick , and forced it inland , and piled a great barrier , some twenty miles broad , of lumped and ragged and needly ice , over which it was impossible to draw the dog-sleighs .
The edge of the floe off which the seal were used to fish in winter lay perhaps twenty miles beyond this barrier , and out of reach of the XXXXX .
Amoraq Island Tununirmiut days gales salmon-fishing seal-dog seal-ice second sleigh-dog