The cinema : 1952 (1952)

108 THE CINEMA children, Annunglung and I went off with our snow knives and harpoons, and by good luck we found along a crack in the ice a deep drift of snow. We cut out a block of it. The edges cut sharp and did not crumble and then we cut out block after block and built our igloo. The dogs between sleep kept watching us and when we had built our igloo and from the inside cut out the door and crawled out, they were all around us howling for their seal. I had to use my long whip to keep them away, and then our wives crept inside and they were all smiling for they were away from the burn of the cold, and they lit our seal-lamps and put our willow mats and deerskins down while the children chewed their pieces of raw seal. Outside we gave our dogs their meat, and then they bedded themselves in the snow in the shelter of the sledges and the igloo, and let the snow cover them again. Annunglung and I went inside and our wives cut seal meat and filled our mouths, and we said the night was full of good signs, though there were growls now and then running through the ice, growing louder and louder as they came towards us, and sounding in our ears like Nanook the bear rushing toward the spear, but I said, 'Never mind, there is always growling from the sea.' So we fell asleep, cold though our igloo was, as a new igloo always is when there is no wind. When I awakened I was happy, for our ice window was blue, and by that I knew that there was no snow-smoke in the air My head wife made fire in her willow down, and she blew it into a flame and lit the lamp. 'Look at our children, Comock,' she said, 'they are warm.' There were little smokes rising from the deerskin robes under which they slept. We were out early. There was still fire in the stars. It was so cold that the spit from our mouths froze before it struck the ground. We were out on the ice so far now that looking backward I could not see land and besides there was rough