Page:The Netsilik Eskimos (1931).djvu/294

to stand at his breathing hole on the very spot where he had been waiting for seal when the moon came and carried him away.

Kûkiaq is the last of our shamans who has been up with the sun and the moon.

There was once a man who was standing at a breathing hole waiting for seal. Suddenly he had a feeling as if he were being lifted up from the ice, and, on looking round, caught sight of the moon spirit who was standing close by, waving. The man went to the moon spirit who simply pointed to his sledge. The man sat on it, and the moon spirit said: "Close your eyes."

The sledge rushed off immediately at such a speed that the air swished about them like a wind blowing. Then they heard the sledge touch ground, and the moon spirit told the man to open his eyes. In front of him he saw a large number of houses, and the moon spirit pointed towards one in which the windows shone more brightly than in the other houses. To that one they went up. Across the entrance lay a live bearded seal; he had to step on it in order to get in, and as he did so it shit and no mistake. He came into the house, but in turning slightly towards something bright his neck band was singed. just as if it had been burned by fire. A woman sat with a child in her amaut. It was the sun. She held out some pluck and gut-fat to him, luscious food of the caribou, but he became afraid that he would lose his ability to get home again if he tasted the food that was offered him; so he threw it to the rearmost part of the platform and sprang out of the entrance passage at such a speed that he resembled a seal shooting up out the water. Once more he had to pass over the bearded seal lying across the passage, and, as he stepped on it, it shit as it did the first time.

Outside the house of the sun stood Agjûk, the eater of entrails. She rushed after him but did not catch him. He ran on as hard as he could and descended from the sky, coming down just at the breathing hole where he had been hunting. It was not difficult to find. his way back to the same place, because his hunting companion shouted now and then: "qo-qo!" just as people do when they cannot find each other.

Just after the man had come down on to the ice his companion caught a seal. But as he went over and ate with him without first having told that he had been up at the moon spirit's, his jaws clashed together and he could never open them again.

This is told of the breathing-hole hunter whom the moon spirit had taken up to his house.