Читать книгу Animal Stories from Eskimo Land. Adapted from the Original Eskimo Stories Collected by Dr. Daniel S. Neuman онлайн

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The little dark man stopped his work, but did not move or look up. No one seemed to have heard the chief speak. Some of the little children still slept on with their heads against their mothers’ knees.

Again Ommalik looked about him and said, “Ungukuk will tell us a story.”

Again there was silence, and the boy in the far corner went on mending his fish net. At last, after five or six minutes had passed, Ungukuk raised his head and peered into the dark faces about him. In a monotonous, sing-song voice, he began the following story:

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Long ago, in a village in the Far North, there lived a young man named Ivango. He was the oldest of the family and had four brothers and a little sister, eleven or twelve years old.

One clear spring evening, the little girl was playing out on the sand pit with some other children. They were playing “house,” and on the beach near them was the huge skull of a whale.

When they had finished making a toy house out of pieces of driftwood, Ivango’s sister climbed to the top of the whale skull to rest.