The twins sat perfectly still for a long time. Nip sat beside Menie, and Tup sat beside Monnie. It grew colder and colder. The sun began to drop down toward the sea again. At last it rested like a great round red wheel right on the Edge of the World!
Slowly, slowly it sank until only a little bit of the red rim showed; then that too was gone. Great splashes of red color came up in the sky over the place where it had been.
Still the twins sat patiently by their holes. It grew darker and darker. The colors faded. The stars began to twinkle, but the twins did not move. Nip and Tup ran races on the ice, and rolled over each other and barked.
At last--all of a sudden--there was a fearful jerk on Monnie"s line! It took her by surprise. The little rod flew right out of her hands!
Monnie flung herself on her stomach on the ice and caught the rod just as it was going down the hole! She held on hard and pulled like everything.
"I believe I"ve caught a whale," she panted.
But she never let go! She got herself right side up on the ice, somehow, and pulled and pulled on her line.
"Let me pull him in!" cried Menie. He tried to take her rod.
"Get away," screamed Monnie. "I"ll pull in my own fish."
Menie danced up and down with excitement, still holding his own rod.
The pups danced and barked too. Monnie never looked at any of them. She kept her eyes fixed on the hole and pulled.
At last she shrieked, "I"ve got him, I"ve got him!" And up through the hole came a great big codfish!
My! how he did flop around on the ice! Nip and Tup were scared. They ran for home at the first flop.
"Let"s go home now," said Monnie. "I want to show my fine big fish to Mother."
But Menie said, "Wait a little longer till I catch one! I"ll give you one eye out of my fish if you will."
Monnie waited. She put another piece of meat on her hook and dropped it again into the hole. After a while she said, "You can keep your old eye if you get it. It"s so dark the fish can"t see to get themselves caught anyway. I"m cold. I"m going home."
Menie got up very slowly and pulled up his line.
As they turned toward the sh.o.r.e, Monnie cried out, "Look, look! The sky is on fire!" It looked like it, truly!
Great white streamers were flashing from the Edge of the World, clear up into the sky! They danced like flames. Sometimes they shot long banners of blue or green fire up to the very stars. Overhead the sky shone red as blood. The stars seemed blotted out.
The twins had seen many wonderful things in the sky, but never such color as this. Their eyes grew as round and big and popping as those of Monnie"s codfish, while they watched the long banners join themselves into a great waving curtain of color that hung clear across the heavens.
"What is it? Oh, what is it?" they gasped. They were too astonished to move, and they were a good deal frightened, too. They never knew the sky could act like that.
Monnie felt her black hair rise under her little fur hood. She seized Menie"s coat. "Do you suppose the world is going to be burned up?" she said.
Just then they heard a voice calling, "Menie, Monnie, where are you?"
"Here we are," they answered. Their teeth were chattering with cold and fright, and they ran up the slope and flung themselves into their mother"s arms.
"Oh, Mother, what is the matter with the sky?" they gasped.
Then Koolee looked up too. The long streamers were still flinging themselves up toward the red dome overhead.
We call this the "aurora," or "northern lights," and know that electricity causes it, but the twins" mother couldn"t know that. She told them just what had been told her when she was a little girl.
She said, "That is the dance of the Spirits of the Dead! Haven"t you ever seen it before?"
"Not like this," said the twins. "This is so big, and so red!"
"The sky is not often so bright," said Koolee. "Some say it is the spirits of little children dancing and playing together in the sky!
They will not hurt you. You need not be afraid. See how they dance in a ring all around the Edge of the World! They look as if they were having fun."
"It goes around the Edge of the World just like the flames around our lamp," said Menie. "Maybe it"s the Giants" lamp!"
Menie and Monnie believed in Giants. So did their mother. They thought the Giants lived in the middle of the Great White World, where the snow never melts.
The thought of the Giants scared them all. The twins gave the fish to their mother, and then they all three scuttled up the snowy slope toward the bright window of their igloo just as fast as they could go.
When they got inside they found some hot bear"s meat waiting for them, and Monnie had both the eyes from her fish to eat. But she gave one to Menie.
When they were warmed and fed, they pulled off their little fur suits, crawled into the piles of warm skins on the sleeping bench, and in two minutes were sound asleep.
IV. THE SNOW HOUSE
THE SNOW HOUSE
I.
It is very hard to tell what day it is, or what hour in the day, in a place where the days and nights are all mixed up, and where there are no clocks.
Menie and Monnie had never seen a clock in their whole lives. If they had they would have thought it was alive, and perhaps would have been afraid of it.
But people everywhere in the world get sleepy, so the Eskimos sometimes count their time by "sleeps." Instead of saying five days ago, they say "five sleeps" ago.
The night after the bear was killed it began to snow. The wind howled around the igloo and piled the snow over it in huge drifts.
The dogs were buried under it and had to be dug out, all but Nip and Tup. They stayed inside with the twins and slept in their bed.
The twins and their father and mother were glad to stay in the warm hut.
At last the snow stopped, the air cleared, and the twins and Kesshoo went out. Koolee stayed in the igloo.
She sat on her sleeping bench upon a pile of soft furs. A bear"s skin was stretched up on the wall behind her. She had a cozy nest to work in.
The lamp stood on the bench beside her. She was making a beautiful new suit for Menie. It was made of fawn-skin as soft as velvet, and the hood and sleeves were trimmed with white rabbit"s fur.
Her thimble was made of ivory, and her needle too. Her thread was a fine strip of hide. There was a bunch of such thread beside her.
Soon Kesshoo came in, bringing with him a dried fish and a piece of bear"s meat, from the storehouse.