Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/796

776 reindeer-skins, her bed was made of Lard walrus-hides; and she had to live on miserable fish which the birds brought her. Too soon she discovered that she had thrown her fortune away when, in her foolish pride, she had rejected the Innuit youth. In her woe she sang:

"Aya! father, if you knew how wretched I am, you would come to me, and we would hurry away in your boat over the waters. These strange birds look unkindly upon me. The cold winds roar around my bed; they give me miserable food—oh, come and take me back home! Aya!"

When a year had passed, and the sea was again stirred with warmer winds, the father left his land to visit Sedna. His daughter greeted him joyfully, and besought him to take her back home. The father, pitying his daughter, took her in his boat while the birds were out hunting, and they quickly left the country which had brought so much sorrow to Sedna. When the fulmar came home in the evening, and found his wife not there, he was very angry. He called his fellows around him, and they all flew away in search of the fugitives. They soon discerned them, and stirred up a great storm. The sea rose in immense waves, that threatened the pair with destruction. In his mortal peril the father determined to offer Sedna up to the birds, and threw her overboard. She clung with a death-hold to the edge of the boat. The cruel father then took a knife and cut off the first joints of her fingers. Falling into the sea, they were changed into seals. Sedna, holding to the boat more tightly, the second finger-joints fell under the sharp knife, and swam around as ground-seals; when the father cut off the stumps of the fingers, they became whales.

In the mean time the storm subsided, for the storm-birds thought Sedna was drowned. The father then allowed her to come into the boat again. But she from that time cherished a deadly hatred against him, and swore bitter revenge. After they got ashore, she called up two dogs, and let them eat the feet and hands of her father while he was asleep. Upon this he cursed himself, his daughter, and the dogs which had maimed him, when the earth opened and swallowed hut, father, daughter, and dogs. They have since lived in the land of Adliwun, of which Sedna is the mistress.

The seals, ground-seals, and whales, which grew from Sedna's fingers, increased rapidly, and soon filled all the waters, affording choice food to the Innuit. But Sedna has always hated those people, whom she despised when on the earth, because they hunt and kill the creatures which have arisen from her flesh and blood. Her father, who has to get along by creeping, appears to the dying; and the wizards often see his crippled hand seizing and taking away the dead. The dead have to stay a year in Sedna's dismal abode. The two great dogs lie on the threshold, and only move aside to let the dead come in. It is dark and cold inside. No bed of reindeer-skins invites to rest; but the new-comer has to lie on hard walrus-hides.