Then Etu began to work on his harpoon. His father had to help him now, for it needed skill and care to fit it exactly to the throwing-stick. The Eskimos long ago found that the bow and arrow were not useful in their narrow, dangerous boats. Only a one-handed weapon can be used in such a place, so they invented the harpoon and the bird dart.
The harpoon is a long piece of wood pointed with bone or iron. It is fastened into a handle of wood called a throwing-stick. A cord of seal hide is attached to it at the other end. You should see our stout little Etu riding the waves in his kayak, and balancing the throwing-stick on his shoulder to send the harpoon flying straight to the mark. But suppose the harpoon lodges fast in the seal's body; if the hunter still holds the other end of the cord attached to it, the creature in his fury may make such plunges as to drag the boat and all down under the water and destroy them. Something else must be invented. This was the buoy or float. So it was that Etu had to make a buoy to complete his hunting outfit.
He took the skin of a young seal, from which his mother had scraped off all the hairs, and tied up the holes made by the head and legs. Through a small tube fastened in the skin he could blow up his queerly shaped buoy to its fullest size.
Now the float was completed. Do you understand what help it would give? If the float is attached to the other end of the line when the harpoon is thrown, the hunter can let everything go. He does not need to have any part fastened to the boat. For the float cannot sink, and will show him where to follow the game, and where to throw next; yet he is himself in no danger of being pulled after the animal.
Even now Etu would not be safe to go hunting in rough waters. He must have a special coat prepared. This, again, was his mother's work. The skin of the seal was used after all the hair was removed. The jacket was made to fit closely over his other garments. It had a hood to be drawn tightly over his head, long sleeves, and drawing-strings around the neck and lower edge.
When Etu gets into his boat he must fit his jacket around the hoop of the sitting-hole, and draw the cord tightly. And now he seems a part of the boat itself. No water can enter, and although the waves may dash completely over him he will keep dry, and the boat will not sink.