Part 13 (1/2)

At last, when all the boats, big and little, were afloat, Kesshoo called out, ”We are going north. Follow me.”

The women obeyed the signal of Koko's father and the Angakok. The paddles dipped together into the water. The great boats moved! They were off!

The children all sat together in the bottom of the boat, but the twins and Koko were big enough to see over the sides. While the babies played with the dogs, they were busy watching the things that pa.s.sed on the sh.o.r.es. Soon they pa.s.sed the Big Rock with little auks and puffins flying about it. They could see the red feet of the puffins, and a blue fox sitting on the top of the rock, waiting for a chance to catch a bird.

Then the Big Rock hid the village from sight.

III.

Beyond the Big Rock the country was all new to the twins and Koko. They looked into narrow bays and inlets as the boat moved along, and saw green moss carpeting the sunny slopes in sheltered places.

They could even see bright flowers growing in the warm spots which faced the sun. The sky was blue overhead. The water was blue below.

Beyond the green slopes they could see the bare hillsides crowned with the white ice cap which never melts, and streams of water das.h.i.+ng down the hillsides and pouring themselves into the waters of the bay.

When they had gone a good many miles up the coast, Kesshoo waved his hand and pointed to a strange sight on the sh.o.r.e.

There was a great river of ice! They could see where it came out of a hollow place between two hills. It looked just like a river, only it was frozen solid, and the end of it, where it came into the sea, was broken off like a great wall of ice, and there were cakes of ice floating about in the water.

Suddenly there was a cracking sound. Menie had heard that sound before.

It was the same sound that he had heard when he went seal-hole hunting and got carried away on the ice raft. Menie didn't like the sound anymore. It scared him!

Right after the cracking noise Kesshoo's voice shouted, ”Row farther out! Follow me!”

He turned his kyak straight out to sea. All the other boats followed.

They had gone only about half a mile when suddenly there was a loud crick-crick-CRACK as if a piece of the world had broken off, and then there was a splash that could be heard for miles, if there had been any one to hear it.

The end of the glacier, or ice river, had broken off and fallen down into the water! It had made an iceberg!

The splash was so great that in a moment the waves it made reached the boats. The boats rocked up and down on the water and bounced about like corks.

The twins and Koko thought this was great fun, but the Angakok didn't like it a bit. One wave splashed over him, and some of the water went down his neck.

All the grown people knew that if they hadn't rowed quickly away from sh.o.r.e when Kesshoo called they might have been upset and drowned.

IV.

When the waves made by the iceberg had calmed down again, Kesshoo paddled round among the boats.

He said, ”I think we'd better land about a mile above here. There's a stream there, and perhaps we can get some salmon for our dinner.”

He led the way in his kyak, and all the other boats followed. They kept out of the path of the iceberg, which had already floated some distance from the sh.o.r.e, and it was not long before they came to a little inlet.

Kesshoo paddled into it and up to the very end of it, where a beautiful stream of clear water came das.h.i.+ng down over the rocks into the sea.

The hills sloped suddenly down to the sh.o.r.e. The sun shone brightly on the green slopes, and the high cliffs behind shut off the cold north winds. It was a little piece of summer set right down in the valley.

”Oh, how beautiful!” everybody cried.

The boats were soon drawn up on the beach, the women and children tumbled out, and then began preparations for dinner.