Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/235

214 latter Ugarng's third wife, she having come to our igloo to keep company with us until the husbands returned. It was very cold—the thermometer down to 57° below freezing point. Now my usual sleeping-place was between Ebierbing and Koodloo; but they being absent, I had to lay on the general bed, wrapped in my furs and blankets. During the early part of the night my feet were almost frozen. I tried all I could to keep them warm, but in vain. At last a smooth low voice reached my ear: "Are you cold, Mr. Hall?" I answered, "My feet are almost frozen. I cannot get them comfortable."

Quick as thought, Tookoolito, who was distant from me just the space occupied by little Punnie (that is, Punnie slept in the middle), got down to the foot of her bed; thence she made passage for her hands directly across my feet, seizing them and drawing them aslant to her side. My modesty, however, was quieted when she exclaimed, "Your feet are like ice, and must be warmed Innuit fashion!" Tookoolito then resumed her place beneath her tuktoo furs, intermingling her hot feet with the ice-cold ones of mine. Soon the same musical voice said,

"Do your feet feel better?" I responded, "They do, and many thanks to you." She then said, "Well, keep them where they are. Goodnight again, sir." My feet now were not only glowing warm, but hot through the remainder of the night. When I awoke in the morning, as near as I could guess, there were no less than three pairs of warm feet all woven and interwoven, so that some difficulty was experienced to tell which were my own. Ebierbing and Koodloo did not return until the next evening, bringing with them some black skin and krang—all the success attending them—which was obtained from a caché made the previous fall by the natives when our ship was in the bay. The black skin was compelled to be our food, as