The boy crept back into his warm bag. When it was getting dark again, he heard some one at the window hole calling, “Hello.”
The boy answered, “Hello.” Then the kind man said, “Listen, your uncle is determined to kill you. He sent for the shaman and told him that he must kill you tonight. I cannot save you this time, for the shaman is more powerful than I. You must try your best to save yourself.” So saying, the kind man went away.
It was night; dark, quiet and cold. The little boy stood shivering and wondering what was going to happen to him. Suddenly he heard a sound, a strange rustling sound. He was terrified, and thought of what the kind man had told him about the shaman, who was very powerful, and knew all kinds of magic.
The strange sound came nearer, and he could see by a light at the door that a big snake was coming near to him. Now, while there is a kind of water serpent in one part of the North, there are no real snakes in Alaska, so the boy had never seen one, and did not know what it was.
The big snake hissed at him and said, “I will eat you up.”
The boy was terribly frightened, but he was a brave little fellow, so he answered, “All right, I am ready.”
All the time he was looking desperately about for a weapon of some sort; but the only thing he saw was the skin of the flipper of a seal. This he pulled quickly onto his own right hand, which it fitted like a glove.
“Come on, Snake, and eat me up,” said he.
The big snake opened his mouth very wide, and quickly the boy thrust his hand with the seal claws on it down the snake’s long throat, and pulled out the snake’s stomach. Such an angry hissing as there was! Then the snake glided away very fast.
Early in the morning, knowing that his uncle would come to see if the shaman had killed him, the boy got out of his bag, and started to run around on the floor to keep warm.
Soon the uncle climbed to the top of the kasga and peered down through the window hole to see if the boy was there. When he saw his nephew running about, he was more angry than ever, and called down in a loud voice, “Try as hard as you can to live, I will kill you.” Then the boy heard the footsteps going away over the snow, and crept back into the sleeping-bag.