Just before it was time for the guests to arrive, Charley took out a steaming pot full of chocolate; three plates piled high with cake, cookies, and sandwiches. AH-NI-GHI´-TO came after some taffy she had made the night before, and last of all Charley took out an oil-stove, which he placed in one corner of the tent. “For,” said he, “it is all very well for Miss AH-NI-GHI´-TO and her young Eskimo friends to be out here with the temperature 70 degrees below freezing, for they are dressed in furs from head to feet, but the invited people would have the good things freeze in their mouths with no fire at all.”

Billy, one of the ship’s men, acted as butler, and the party was a great success.

The guests stayed as long as the eatables lasted, and then the Eskimos licked the cups and the crumbs, and amid shouts of laughter the dishes were brought aboard. But when Charley asked who would help wash up, every one was much too tired and sleepy.

The “Windward” would not have been taken for a ship now except for her masts and spars. For weeks the men had been cutting blocks of snow from the hard drifts and building a snow wall all around the ship, close to her hull and a few feet higher than her rail. At night water was thrown on this wall until it became solid ice, through which no wind could come.

From the top of this wall, across the ship to the other side, canvas was stretched as a roof, and this gave a covered place on deck, where AH-NI-GHI´-TO and her friends played when the wind howled and whirled the snow so fast that it was not possible to stand up against it.

The natives, too, as soon as they knew that they must spend the winter here, said they wanted to go ashore and build their own houses, for then they could keep much warmer with less fuel than on the ship. They were not used to so much room and did not feel at home in it.

Each family built their own igloo; the women working with the men. Achatin?wah’s mother helped carry the heavy bowlders from far off for their igloo, while Achatin?wah scraped them free of snow and helped to loosen those that were frozen down, by pounding them with smaller stones.

After enough had been collected a place was scraped free from snow and made level; and for this they were glad to borrow the ship’s tools, for it would take much longer to clear the spot with only a rude knife made from walrus tusk than it did with a large shovel.

At one end of the circular space Achatin?wah’s father built a platform about a foot high.

The walls he put up, just as a stone mason would put them up, only he used turf which Achatin?wah brought, instead of mortar, to stop the cracks. After the walls were three or four feet high the whole was roofed over. Usually this is done with large flat stones, but as Achatin?wah’s father was in a hurry to get his family moved into the house he threw a walrus-hide over the top and held it down with heavy rocks to keep the wind from blowing it off.

The igloo was then thickly covered with snow, and the inside of it lined with seal skins.

The doorway, or entrance, was scarcely two feet high, and opened into a long, low passage-way which ended in a vestibule as high as the igloo itself. This passage-way and vestibule Achatin?wah’s father built of snow-blocks.

The natives leave their fox-skin kapetahs (coats) in this vestibule if they are covered with snow, for if they took them into the warm igloo the snow would melt, and it would take a long while to dry the heavy fur garments.

After the skins had been put on the platform Achatin?wah brought in two Eskimo lamps with which to heat and light the igloo.

These were cut out of soapstone by her father with his knife, and were shaped like our dustpans. She filled them with small pieces of blubber from the seal, and then placed dried moss across the straight side. This she lighted, and the heat from it melted the blubber and soaked it up, burning it like a wick. These lamps must be tended all the time, or the smoke from them would soon cover everything with a greasy soot.

Near the top of the igloo above the lamps, Achatin?wah’s mother fastened a sort of lattice-work rack, made by lashing sticks together with sinew. On this the members of the family put their wet stockings, mittens, and shirts to dry.

Close down over each lamp she hung an oblong-shaped pot, also made of soapstone, in which the snow is melted for drinking-water. The Eskimos never use water for any other purpose. They had never heard of a bath until AH-NI-GHI´-TO’S father and mother came among them, and the most they ever did was to wipe their faces with a greasy bird-skin.

Achatin?wah now helped her mother bring their stock of bear, deer, and seal skins into the igloo and spread them on the platform, and the family was settled for the winter.

Over the stone lamps Achatin?wah’s mother cooked their food, and on the platform the entire family slept.

Days when it was too cold and stormy to go to the ship this platform was the playground of Achatin?wah and her little brother, where they amused themselves with little figures of men and women, toy sledges and dogs, and canoes; bears, seals, foxes, walrus, and the other strange animals of the Snowland, carved by their father from the teeth of the walrus; or played “cat’s cradle,” making ToÓ-loo-ah the raven, Ter-i-a-nÍah the fox, Oo-kud´-ah the hare, and Ka-lil´-o-wah the great narwhal, with sinew strings. Sometimes they played “cup and ball” with a slender ivory pin and the bone of a seal with two holes drilled in it.

Then at night they snuggled warmly under the thick, heavy furs, hugging each other tightly as they heard their father and mother talking of “Tor-nar-suk” the “evil one,” or how “Nan-nook´-soah,” the great white bear, had carried off and eaten one of their relatives.

Very glad they were that the Oo-miak´-soah (ship) was so near, to frighten Nan-nook´-soah away; otherwise at every growl of the wind about their hut they would have thought he was pushing his great head with the little eyes, red tongue, and long teeth, into the entrance after them.