The cinema : 1952 (1952)

120 THE CINEMA and then he looked all over the igloo and then he looked under his mat and there was no knife, and then he looked around again, and at last with no noise he began to crawl out through the tunnel of the igloo. This tunnel was narrow he could not quickly turn. I followed him. I came upon him as he reached the end of the tunnel and stood up to get a knife and spear. Then he heard me, but I struck. Then he struck. Then I was glad, and if it had not been so I would not be alive. It was his blood the dogs smelled first. When I came into the igloo again, no one had heard the fight or the fighting of the dogs. They were still asleep. There was no more want that winter, or the next winter or the next winter. Our children were growing. One daughter was almost a woman. ' It is well,' my wife said, for it was more than she could do to take care of my kills and our son's kills and sew the skins for our boots and clothing. Then the day came when my son all alone speared his first bear. My wife said: 'Our son now is a man, Comock.' 'Aye,' I said, 'he is now a man.' But my wife still kept on with her talking as a woman will. 'Does it mean nothing to you, Comock, now that he is a man?' 'What do you mean?' I asked her. But she said: 'How can we go on living on this big island, and no wife for our son who is now a man? Besides,' she said, 'our other sons, too. They will all soon kill their first bear. We are only one family on all this big island, Comock,' she said. 'We will have to go sometime if we don't we will die out on this big island, for all of its deer and all of its bear and all of its walrus and the bones of the white man's ship from which we get the good wood and the good iron for our knives and our harpoons. Besides, there's the ghost of Annunglung, Comock. We must leave this big island.' 'The ghost of Annunglung,' I said, 'will come to us wherever we are. We must stay, we are fools to trust the sea if we do, maybe we will die,' I said.