seal went down. But he watched it carefully, and when it came up again, he rowed over to it once more. Now he lifted his harpoon and was just about to throw, when again he caught sight of the point, and said to himself: “Would it not be a pity if that skin, which is to make breeches for my wife, should be pierced with holes by the point of a harpoon?” And again he cried out to try and frighten the seal, and down it went again, and did not come up any more.
Once he heard that there lived an old couple in another village, who had lost their child. So Qasiagssaq went off there on a visit. He came to their place, and went into the house, and there sat the old couple mourning. Then he asked the others of the house in a low voice:
“What is the trouble here?”
“They are mourning,” he was told.
“What for?” he asked.
“They have lost a child; their little daughter died the other day.”
“What was her name?”
“Nipisartángivaq,” they said.
Then Qasiagssaq cleared his throat and said in a loud voice:
“To-day my little daughter Nipisartángivaq is doubtless crying at her mother’s side as usual.”
Hardly had he said this when the mourners looked up eagerly, and cried:
“Ah, how grateful we are to you![1] Now your little daughter can have all her things.”
And they gave him beads, and the little girl’s mother said:
“I have nothing to give you by way of thanks, but you shall have my cooking pot.”
And when he was setting out again for home, they gave him great quantities of food to take home to his little girl. But when he came back to his own place, his fellow-villagers asked:
“Wherever did you get all this?”
“An umiak started out on a journey, and the people in it were hurried and forgetful. Here are some things which they left behind them.”
- ↑ The souls of the dead are supposed to be born again in the body of one named after them.
