Kalopaling

"

At once the door opened and Kalopaling came hobbling in on his clumsy feet, which were made for swimming and not for walking. The woman put the boy into the large hood, in which he was completely hidden. Then the Kalopaling disappeared as suddenly as he had come.

By and by the Inuit caught more seals than usual and gave her plenty of meat. Then she was sorry that she had given her grandson away, and was more than ever sorry that it was to Kalopaling she had given him. She thought how much of the time he must have to stay in the water with that strange man-like animal. She wept about it, and begged the Inuit to help her get him back.

Some of them said they had seen the boy sitting by a crack in the ice, playing with a whip of seaweed, but none of them knew how to get him. Finally one of the hunters and his wife said, "We may never succeed, but we will see what we can do."

The water had frozen into thick ice, and the rise and fall of the tide had broken long cracks not far from the shore. Every day the boy used to rise out of the water and sit alongside the cracks, playing, and watching the fish swim down below.

Kalopaling was afraid someone might carry the boy away, so he fastened him to a string of seaweed, the other end of which he kept in his hand. The hunter and his wife watched for the boy to come out, and when they saw him they went toward him. But the boy did not want to go back to live with his grandmother, and as they came near he called out:

"Two men are coming; one with a double jacket, the other with a foxskin jacket."

Then Kalopaling pulled on the string and the boy disappeared into the water.

Some time after this the hunter and his wife saw the boy again. But before they could lay hold of him the lad sang out:

"Two men are coming."

And again Kalopaling pulled the string and the boy slipped into the water.

However, the hunter and his wife did not give up trying. They went near the crack and hid behind the big blocks of ice which the tide had piled up.