IVICK, the Caribou, rolled over in his sleeping-bag, then sat up and stretched his short, thick arms. A light that was hardly light filtered through the curved dome of the igloo roof, and revealed the shapeless mass where Allegoo, the Drinking Cup, slumbered with her new-born son. For the rest of it, there was the fishing hole in the floor, a stone lamp, a bundle of skins, and his hunting gear. Such, together with the kayack, hidden with its double-bladed paddle fifty miles away on shore were the possessions of the hunter.
He sat for a moment, thinking hard. Being caged in the snow walls of his dwelling, there reached him no drone of wind, no breath from the Arctic, but from the tunnelled door came a whimper, and the quick sniffing of black and pointed noses. The team was awake, too. He smiled gravely, as smiles a man whose mind is heavy, then fingered the sinew line that ran into the green depths below. But the line was loose.
He wondered what had become of all the salmon, for with the square flipper seal they seemed to have deserted this corner of the Arctic; but since in the North there is no room for wonder, but only for action, he wasted no time in vain regrets. The imperative need was for food. Without food those small and dusky lips would seek the comforting breast in vain. So Aivick slid noiselessly to the floor, and after a steady look at the pride of his heart, gathered spear, rope and knife, and crawled into the outer world.
The sky was grey, and he caught a threatening note in the wind, which came, with driving snow, straight out of the west. It was now time for the ice to commence its magnificent march toward Baffin Bay and the North Atlantic, where gradually it would disappear beneath the incessant assaults of the waves, but Aivick reckoned that his particular section of the tribe's floating home was too large to get into motion at once. Three miles away he knew of a lane where the green water was clear, and there, if anywhere, he should find, a square flipper. So he jammed the dogs' heads into their collars, jumped on the sledge, and, with a guttural command, tore off into the unknown. In thirty seconds he had seemingly vanished from the face of the earth.
It was an hour before Allegoo was quite awake, and she lay for a while without stirring, so sweet was the new warmth at her breast. She pictured the boy in later years, when he had become a great hunter, and, like Aivick, the head of his tribe. As to the present shortage of food, she was not anxious, for there comes many an hour of fasting to those who live by the strength of the arm and sureness of the eye. Aivick would return ere night and bring that which he sought.
In mid-forenoon she was startled by the faintest possible tremor that seemed to come from beneath her feet. Only a Husky could have felt it, and only to a Husky could its meaning be clear. She sat upright with a fluttering at her heart, then, the child still at her breast, crept out through the tunnel. The air was clear now. Far to the south lifted a range of jagged hills, their tops already bare of snow, while northward stretched the glimmering ice, its vast counterpane broken by irregular pressure ridges that straggled confusedly out of sight. It was utterly lonely, utterly familiar. The sky was a hard blue, and untenanted by birds, it being not yet time for the great migrating flight from South America and the Caribbean. Somewhere in this void Aivick sat, spear in hand, waiting for that single bubble which heralds the square flipper when he comes up for air. She was vaguely wishing that he were already back, when something that crossed the ice like a black line caught her eye half a mile away. And at that she began to run nervously forward. Presently she stood breathless at the edge of a new lane a hundred feet wide. The house of Aivick, the Caribou, had started on its journey to the sea.