Chapter II: The Eskimo Boy

The little white bear wondered why his mother wriggled her nose, with the fur rising so angrily on the back of her neck.

It was only a boy,--Unga, an Eskimo lad, who, unlike Sitka, walked on his hind legs all the time. But Mother White Bear had been hunted so many times by these small brown people that her first instinct was to dive beneath the icy water and swim to safety. But with the wee, fat cub it would be hard to dive without drowning him. Of course, had she been alone, she could have handled the little Eskimo with one blow of her huge fore arm. But she knew he could throw a spear that might hurt Sitka. Then he would take the cub’s soft fur to make a fur coat. That had happened, once, to a polar cub. The thought made her growl ferociously, deep down in her throat.

A moment more and the fur-clad little fellow came in sight. Fortunately for Sitka, he was alone. He had not brought one of the great, wolfish “husky” dogs that bears are so afraid of. His father was driving the dog-team to his sled that day.

Sitka’s mother turned. The odor of the birds’ nests was very near now. Following that wonderful nose of hers straight across the ice, she swam another bit of open water, hoping to leave the boy behind her. Again she crossed an ice-floe, Sitka close behind, and again she swam an open lane of water. That way, they came to a rocky islet that was covered thick with eider ducks. The great, handsome birds had plucked the soft feathers,--the eider down--from their own breasts to line their rocky nests, and in these nests were hundreds and thousands of pale eggs. The whole rocky islet was covered with these nests.

“Um!” sniffed Mother White Bear hungrily. “I think we have left that boy behind, and I am going to have eggs for supper.” With Sitka close at her heels, she shuffled along between the nests, taking here an egg and there an egg and crunching it in her great jaws. The meal put new strength into her; it would enable her to nurse her furry baby when she put him to sleep.

The ducks quacked and scolded, but there were so many eggs that there would be plenty left to hatch into ducklings.

So busy had Mother White Bear been at her feast that she had almost forgotten about the Eskimo boy. Of a sudden she saw him paddling around the islet in his seal-skin boat. At the same instant he saw wee, fuzzy Sitka galloping along behind his mother, trying his best to keep up with her. The boy raised his spear to hurl it at the Snow Baby.

At that moment Sitka’s life was certainly in danger. But great, nine foot Mother White Bear, catching a whiff of the wind that blew straight to her wonderful nose from the dirty, greasy Eskimo lad, turned back just in time. Furiously she batted the spear with her powerful forearm as it came whistling through the air. In another instant it would have struck her baby. Growling awful threats, she rushed at Unga to drive him back.

The little white bear, terrified by the battle that seemed about to be fought over his small person, turned tail and ran for all he was worth. From a point that jutted from the rocky islet he scrambled aboard a blue-white chunk of ice. The next thing he knew, the ice cracked with a sound like the roar of a cannon, and the floe he was on split off and began floating away. Sitka whimpered in fright as he watched the blue-green water rush in between him and the isle.

But his mother saw him and came racing across the rocks, stepping, smash! all over the birds’ nests in her hurry. Swimming the strip of open water, she scrambled up beside him, and began nuzzling him all over to see if he was hurt. The Eskimo boy would trouble them no more. They could see him paddling away in his skin canoe.

Sitka was to have an even more exciting time later that spring. Awaking in his mother’s warm, furry arms to a morning of golden sunshine and blue sky, with gulls flying overhead crying “que-ok, que-ok, que-ok!” and the ice-bergs that rose like blue-white mountain peaks to seaward, he was startled by a rumbling like thunder. All about them it began sounding, for the ice cakes were breaking apart, floating this way and that and grinding against one another. But their own berg, so snug and safe with its cave in which they always slept, towered among the up-ending ice cakes as secure as a miniature mountain peak.

Away off in the open water they could see little spouts of water. Sitka’s mother said it was whales “blowing.”

“What are whales?” the cub demanded, round eyed with wonder.

“Whales,” said his mother, “are great fish-like creatures, ever and ever and ever so much bigger than the biggest polar bear that ever lived. But the queer thing is that they are not fish, really, though they spend their lives in the ocean, because they have fur instead of scales, and the mother whale nurses her baby just as a cat does her kitten.”

“Oo! Aren’t you afraid of whales?” Sitka marvelled.

“No. They have the tiniest mouths. But whale meat is delicious. These little brown men hunt them for their blubber, as they call the fat that lines their sides, and I’d love nothing better than to find a strip of blubber. Let’s go a little nearer.--Um! I smell blubber now. I do believe those Eskimos have been whale-hunting. If we could just find where they’ve been cutting blubber, what a feast it would be!”

The Snow Baby was happy to go exploring. Climbing a steep, icy slope to the ridge of the next ice pan, they could see, away across the ice, which had frozen in ridges like the waves of the sea, a huge dark body that Mother White Bear’s nose said was a whale. But further out, a horde of the fur-clad little brown men were racing toward another whale in their seal-skin boats, with spears raised. Mother White Bear hesitated. She hated to take Sitka too near these Eskimos. But the odor of whale meat came tantalizingly to her nostrils, and she was dreadfully hungry. Cautiously she padded forward, and Sitka after her, ready at a moment’s notice to run for their lives. But they reached the meat in safety.

She had just begun to eat ravenously when a sudden shout went up. One of the little brown men had seen her, and turned in pursuit.