The cinema : 1952 (1952)

I06 THE CINEMA honk, and there were many lakes and ponds, the Chief of the big whaler said, and around them the big birds brought up their young. There were many foxes, there were many deer and there were many bear and schools of walrus on the little islands along the coast, and seals many, many seals. And they'd be so easy to hunt, the Chief of the whaler said, because no Eskimo lived on all that land. Never had he seen such game as was on this island. He told me if I could get out to it I would never be hungry. I could not keep from thinking of that land ; I talked about it over and over with my wives. There was only one way to go, we all agreed ; by sledge over the ice fields in winter, in the moon of the most cold when there is the least chance of the ice field parting and drifting off. 'Two days sledging,5 I told my family. 'Two long days it will take us if our dogs are strong and we are strong, and there is not too much rough ice." Yes,' my wife said, 'the rough ice will be the worst.' You see, we could be caught and travel no farther in one sun than a seal might swim from one breathing hole to another. Winter came on; we had little food. More than most winters it was poor; no deer upon the land, no walrus at the ice edge and the seals not many. 'We will go,' said my wife. 'Yes, we will go,' said my sons. And there was another, Annunglung, who sailed with me. He was not a good hunter; he had only one wife, but he was not afraid. 'Yes,' he said. 'I will go too,' and so said his wife. The sun got lower every day. We watched the ice from the high cliffs that lean out over the sea. Day by day we watched that ice. On the days when we had to go hunting one of the women watched it for us. The ice grew fast, for it was cold, until at last nowhere was there water and the big smokes of the freezing were gone the ice was everywhere. 'Now is the time, now we will go.' 'Twavee