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THE STORY OF COMOCK THE ESKIMO 123
gan to work back. And it took all day to get on to the smooth ice, and all the time the ice field we were on was drifting. By nightfall it looked small, the land which leans over the sea.
For a long time, two moons, we drifted. And then one morning again we saw land, the big land on one side, but nearer to us still an island which rose high, almost straight up from the sea.
Our ice closed on this island like a big hand on a throat, and after the ice had done with its piling and breaking and rafting we climbed and we crawled through it, and got on to the shore, and climbed its big cliffs and on the top made our camp. Here we lived for the rest of the winter and through the spring and through the summer. And there were the eggs of eiders to eat and the skin of eiders for clothes, and there were sea-pigeons which we caught in the cliffs and there were seals sometimes as well.
In these days we were much troubled for we did not know how we could get off this island, for between us and the big land, though it was not far, there was always the tide that runs swift like a river. And always, if there is ice in it, it is not ice we could cross, for it is the ice that is loose and the ice that is wild, always turning and tumbling and going up and down.
'If there is no ice and we had an omiak,' I said, 'then we might cross.' 'Yes,' said someone, and there was much laughing. ' If our legs were long enough we could walk through the sea.'
'Yes, but just the same if we had an omiak, we could cross,' said my wife.
'We have no wood,' said someone. 'We have no skins,' said someone else, ' and there are steep shores on this island, and the tide washes so high. Where shall we find driftwood? ' 'But we have some skins of seal', I said, 'and maybe we can get more. And the handles of our harpoons will be some wood, and maybe we can get more.'