Lucy Fitch Perkins

“ Haven't you ever seen it before?"
"Not like this," said the twins. "This is so big, and so red!"
"The sky is not often so bright," said Koolee. "Some say it is the spirits of little children dancing and playing together in the sky! They will not hurt you. You need not be afraid. See how they dance in a ring all around the Edge of the World! They look as if they were having fun."
"It goes around the Edge of the World just like the flames around our lamp," said Menie. "Maybe it's the Giants' lamp!"
Menie and Monnie believed in Giants. ”

“ The sea swarmed with fish, and with walrus and seal. Every one along the whole coast was happy. Ask yourselves—is it not so?"
The Angakok seemed very much pleased with himself, and he looked about, as if he expected every one else to be pleased with him too. All the people were filled with wonder at his great power. They began to talk among themselves.
"Yes, I remember the famine well," said Koko's father. "I was away up the coast that season. Several died in our village for lack of food."
Other men remembered things about other times when food had been scarce. ”

“ Menie and Monnie soon reached Koko's igloo. Menie and Nip got there first. Monnie came puffing along with Tup just a moment after.
Then the twins dropped on their hands and knees in front of Koko's hut, and stuck their heads into the tunnel. Nip and Tup stuck their heads in, too.
They all four listened. There was not a sound to be heard except loud snores! The snores came rattling through the tunnel with such a frightful noise that the twins were almost scared.
"They sleep out loud, don't they?" whispered Monnie.
"Let's wake them up," Menie whispered back. ”

“ Menie said to his mother.
"You must never eat your boots; you have but one pair!" his mother answered. She pinched Menie's cheek and laughed at him.
Then she cut two chunks of fat from a piece of bear's meat which lay on the bench. She gave one to each of the twins. "Eat this, and soon you can have some cooked meat," she said. "It isn't quite done yet."
"We don't want to wait for the cooked meat," cried Monnie. "We want to go fishing before the sun is gone. Give us more fat and we'll eat it outside." ”

“ The twins and their father and mother were glad to stay in the warm hut.
At last the snow stopped, the air cleared, and the twins and Kesshoo went out. Koolee stayed in the igloo.
She sat on her sleeping bench upon a pile of soft furs. A bear's skin was stretched up on the wall behind her. She had a cozy nest to work in.
The lamp stood on the bench beside her. She was making a beautiful new suit for Menie. It was made of fawn-skin as soft as velvet, and the hood and sleeves were trimmed with white rabbit's fur. ”

“ If we keep on in this direction, the reindeer will smell us. We must go round in such a way that the wind will carry the scent from them to us, not from us to them."
They turned to the right and went round to the north. They had gone only a short distance in this direction, when they found fresh reindeer tracks in the snow. The dogs began to sniff and strain at their harnesses.
"They smell the game," whispered Kesshoo. "Hold on tight! Don't let them run."
Menie and Koko held the dogs back as hard as they could. Kesshoo and Koko's father crept forward with their bows in their hands. ”

“ The Angakok looked at them as if he thought they had made him stick in the tunnel, and had done it on purpose, too. The wives scuttled up on to the sleeping bench, and got into the farthest corner of it as fast as they could.
The women and children always sat back on the bench at a feast.
When Koko's mother came in, the baby was still crying. She climbed up on to the bed with him, and Menie and Monnie showed him the pups and that made the baby laugh again. ”

“ The Angakok placed his hand on his stomach and rolled up his eyes. "But times are not what they once were," he went on. "People care now only for their own stomachs! They would rather have the liver themselves than give it to the Angakok! They will be sorry when it is too late."
He shook his head and heaved a great sigh. Koolee looked at Kesshoo. She was very anxious. Kesshoo went out at once to the storehouse. He climbed to the top and got the liver.
By this time all the people had crawled out of the igloo again, and were ready to carry home their meat. ”

“ It freezes so fast in that cold country that they have to be busy almost every minute all through the winter breaking away the ice there. They get their sleep in snatches of a minute or so at a time, and between their naps they clear the ice from their breathing holes.
There is usually a deep layer of snow over the ice. Each mother seal hollows out a little igloo under the snow, around her breathing hole, and leaves a tiny hole in the top of it, so her baby can have plenty of fresh air and be hidden from sight at the same time. ”

“ The Giants are always waiting before the igloo and we must work very hard to keep them outside!"
She did not mean real giants. She meant that Hunger and Want are always waiting to seize the Eskimo who does not work all the time to supply food for himself and his family. She meant that Menie must learn to be a brave strong hunter, afraid of nothing on sea or land, and that Monnie must learn to do a woman's work well, or else the time would come when they would be without food or shelter or clothing, and the fierce cold would soon make an end of them. ”

“ Kesshoo's house was so small that it seemed as if all the people could not possibly get into it.
But the Eskimos are used to crowding into very small spaces, indeed. Sometimes a man and his wife and all his children will live in a space about the size of a big double bed.
First the Angakok came out of his igloo, looking fatter than ever. The Angakok always found plenty to eat somehow. Both his wives were thin. Their faces looked like baked apples all brown and wrinkled.
When they reached Kesshoo's house, the Angakok went into the tunnel first. ”

“ Monnie was with Koolee in the hut.
By and by Koko said to Menie, "Let's go out on the ice and hunt for seal-holes."
"All right," said Menie. "You take your bow and arrows and I'll take my spear. Maybe we shall see some little auks."
Koko had a little bow made of deer's horns, and some bone arrows, and Menie had a small spear which his father had made for him out of driftwood.
"I'll tell you!" said Menie. "Let's go hunting just the way father does! You do the shooting and I'll do the spearing! Won't everybody be surprised to see us bring home a great load of game? ”

“ Menie and Monnie had never seen a clock in their whole lives. If they had they would have thought it was alive, and perhaps would have been afraid of it.
But people everywhere in the world get sleepy, so the Eskimos sometimes count their time by "sleeps." Instead of saying five days ago, they say "five sleeps" ago.
The night after the bear was killed it began to snow. The wind howled around the igloo and piled the snow over it in huge drifts.
The dogs were buried under it and had to be dug out, all but Nip and Tup. They stayed inside with the twins and slept in their bed. ”

“ An Eskimo never keeps the game he kills for himself alone. Every one in the village has a share.
The bear was very large. He was so large that though all the women pulled together they could not drag the body back to the village. The men laughed at them, but they did not help them.
So Koolee ran back for their sledge and harnesses for the dogs. Koko and Menie helped her catch the dogs and hitch them to the sledge.
It took some time to catch them for the dogs did not want to work. They all ran away, and Tooky, the leader of the team, pretended to be sick! ”

“ This is the true story of Menie and Monnie and their two little dogs, Nip and Tup.
Menie and Monnie are twins, and they live far away in the North, near the very edge.
They are five years old.
Menie is the boy, and Monnie is the girl. But you cannot tell which is Menie and which is Monnie,—not even if you look ever so hard at their pictures!
That is because they dress alike.
When they are a little way off even their own mother can't always tell. And if she can't, who can? ”

“ The people ate when they were hungry and slept when they were sleepy. The men caught hundreds of salmon, and the women split them open and dried them on the rocks for winter use. The children played all day long.
The men hunted deer and musk-ox and bears up in the hills and brought them back to camp. They hunted game both by land and by sea. There was so much to eat that everybody grew fatter, and as for the Angakok, he got so very fat that Koko said to Menie, "I don't believe we can ever get the Angakok home in the woman-boat! He's so heavy he'll sink it! ”

“ Menie and Monnie just go to sleep whenever they feel sleepy.
Although many Eskimos think twins bring bad luck, Kesshoo and Koolee were very glad to have two babies.
They would have liked it better still if Monnie had been a boy, too, because boys grow up to hunt and fish and help get food for the family.
But Kesshoo was the best hunter and the best kyak man in the whole village. So he said to Koolee, "I suppose there must be girls in the world. It is no worse for us than for others." ”

“ All the people followed her. Then Koolee did a queer thing. She placed the head on a bench, with the nose pointing toward the Big Rock, because the bear had come from that direction. Then she stopped up the nostrils with moss and grease. She greased the bear's mouth, too.
"Bears like grease," she said. "And if I stop up his nose like that bears will never be able to smell anything. Then the hunters can get near and kill them before they know it." You see Koolee was a great believer in signs and in magic. All the other people were too.
She called to the twins, "Come here, Menie and Monnie." ”

“ That is where they all come from. Sometimes the Old Woman of the Sea keeps all the creatures in the saucer. Then there are no seal or fish or walrus along our coasts, and there is hunger among the innuit (human beings) .
"At the time of my journey she had kept all the creatures for so long a time in her saucer that you and many others were nearly dead for lack of food."
"It was then that I prepared myself for the perils of this journey to the underworld. I called my Tornak, or guiding spirit, to lead my steps. Without his Tornak an Angakok can do nothing. ”

“ It is dangerous to snatch meat away from hungry dogs. If Kesshoo hadn't been slashing at them with his whip, and if Menie and Koko hadn't been screaming at them with all their might, so the dogs were nearly distracted, Koolee might have been badly bitten. ”

“ The Eskimos have no wood but driftwood, and it is so precious that it is hardly ever used for anything but big dog sledges or spears, or other things which the men must have.
Most of the boys had sleds cut from blocks of ice. Menie's sled was behind the igloo. He ran to get it, and then the twins and the pups—all four—started for Koko's house. ”

“ But at last Kesshoo said, "I think it is time to go back to winter quarters. The nights are fast growing longer. The snow may be upon us any day now. I don't know of a better place to settle than the village where we spent last winter. The igloos are all built there ready to use again. What do you say? Shall we go back there?"
"Yes, let us go back," they all said.
II.
The very next day they started. The boats were heavily loaded with dried fish, there were great piles of new skins heaped in the woman-boats, and every kyak towed a seal. ”

“ You must drive it way down into the ice. Then by the harpoon line I will tow your ice pan back toward shore. When we get to the big ice I will find a place for you to land.
"You must be ready, and when I give the word jump from your ice raft on to the solid ice."
Then Kesshoo threw his harpoon, and Menie drove it into the ice with all his might. Slowly Kesshoo drew the line taut, turned his kyak round, and started for the shore. The journey out had been dangerous, but the journey back was much more so, for Kesshoo could not dodge the floating ice nearly so well. ”

“ Nip and Tup slept outside with Tooky now, in a snow house which Kesshoo had built for them. Menie and Monnie missed them, but Koolee said, "You are getting so big now you must begin to do something besides play with puppies. Monnie must learn to sew, and Menie must help Father with feeding the dogs and looking after their harnesses, and driving the sledge."
"Maybe Father will teach you both to carve fine things out of ivory this winter! Monnie will soon need her own thimble and needles. They must be made. ”

“ Menie cut a new block while Koko placed the last one on the snow wall.
Kesshoo had to put on the top blocks to make the roof. Neither Koko nor Menie could do it right, though they tried and tried. It is a very hard thing to do. When the blocks were all laid up and the dome finished, Kesshoo said, "Now, Monnie can help pack it with snow."
Monnie got the snow shovel. The snow shovel was made of three flat pieces of wood sewed together with leather thongs. It had an edge of horn sewed on with thongs, too. ”

“ Monnie had on her fur suit, with fur hood and mittens, and it was hard to tell which was Monnie and which was Tup as they tumbled in the snow together.
Pretty soon Monnie picked herself up and shook off the snow. Then Tup shook himself, too. Menie was rolling over and over down the slope in front of the little stone house. His head was between his knees and his hands held his ankles, so he rolled just like a ball. ”