Page:Eskimo Folk-Tales (1921).djvu/89

 UKALEQ

KALEQ, men say, was a strong man. Whenever he heard news of game, even if it were a great bear, he had only to go out after it, and he never failed to kill it.

Once the winter came, and the ice grew firm, and then men began to go out hunting bears on the ice. One day there was a big bear. Ukaleq set off in chase, but he soon found that it was not to be easily brought down.

The bear sighted Ukaleq, and turned to pursue him. Ukaleq fled, but grew tired at length. Now and again he managed to wound the beast, but was killed himself at last, and at the same time the bear fell down dead.

Now when his comrades came to look at the bear, its teeth began to whisper, and then they knew that Ukaleq had been killed by a Magic Bear. And as there was no help for it, they took the dead man home with them. And then his mother said:

"Lay him in the middle of the floor with a skin beneath him."

She had kept the dress he had worn as a little child, and now that he was dead, she put it in her carrying bag, and went out with it to the cooking place in the passage. And when she got there, she said:

"For five days I will neither eat nor drink."

Then she began hushing the dress in the bag as if it were a child, and kept on hushing it until at last it began to move in the bag, and just as it had commenced to move, there came some out from the house and said:

"Ukaleq is beginning to quiver."

But she kept on hushing and hushing, and at last that which she had in the bag began trying to crawl out. But then there came one from the house and said:

"Ukaleq has begun to breathe; he is sitting up."