The spring gales had blown themselves weary; it was far into the month of May; the sudden thaw had reduced the hillsides to tears, and the melted snow poured off them, while a few of the larger streams of water had even made an attempt to rend the covering ice. The sun sailed hot across the heavens and was so delighted at the approach of summer that he forgot to hide behind the horizon at all.
But the Eskimos, who knew that June, "the breeding month," always sees the final convulsions of the winter, regarded this rapid change to heat and sunshine merely as a curiosity. The snowstorms were only gathering strength, they thought, and time was to prove them in the right.
Still, there was no doubt that summer was really on the way. The ice round the village was torn by the current, and on the floes lazy seals lay sunning themselves. From out at sea came a long, monotonous roar and whistling,—the old he-walruses, who recognised the signs of the times, and were beginning to make their way in towards the land; they knew that the ice was doomed. Down below the houses, in some of the larger openings in the ice, long-tailed ducks and black guillemots swam to and fro and wrangled, till their cries re-echoed from the steep cliff side. The eider-ducks had begun to ramble about the promontory; you could hear the musical swish of their wings in the distance long before their arrival, in bevies, in the breeding islands, each endeavouring to be first. Groups of women and children had taken up their position below the great bird-rock; they lounged about on the loose stones in intent listening clusters; the whole side of the cliff was alive, and a voluminous murmur
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