Under The Northern Lights by Alan Sullivan

If you journey by way of the Fox Channel and Boothia Gulf, turning north along the edge of the Beaufort Sea, you will come to the place where Kalauk, known to his friends as the Skilful Hunter, sat in the lee of a wind-whipped rock and stared thoughtfully at the Arctic Ocean. At a little distance, Kinniuk, the Orphan, played industriously with the bleached skulls of five square flipper seals. For the rest of it there was an apology for a tent, made of walrus hide, Kalauk's skin-covered kayack, lifted delicately beyond the reach of the waves, a spear or two, three lean and scabious dogs, a battered, up-ended sledge--and that was about all--except the Arctic Ocean.

But Kalauk was not conscious of anything being missing--for nothing was missing. All his stock-in-trade was here, everything by which he and the Orphan survived and wrested subsistence from land and sea and ice. He wondered sometimes how Kinniuk would fare if he were cast on his own resources, because the boy seemed interested in all but hunting and fishing, which was a serious handicap for an Eskimo youth. Also at the moment Kalauk was racking his wits to contrive how he would get along that coming winter with three dogs instead of four. Now the way the fourth had gone was by virtue of a disagreement with a polar bear whose hide was by this time in Dundee, being carried thither by the whaling captain who happened along just as the row was over. Presently the father of Kinniuk made a little noise in his throat whereat the dogs glanced at him suspiciously out of the tail of their narrow eyes, for this was summer time in which all the dogs of the North are doubly treacherous.