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Ill This page intentionally left blank (jodthaab [ In T IS but an hour or two before midnight and I am sitting on a hill above the little settlement of Godthaab. The sun has nearly set and the red beauty of its light is on the land. I look over the rolling grassy hills of the foreground, at the stark mountains towering at my back; I look over the calm fiord toward far off peaks clear cut against the glowing sky. It is a breathless evening, breathless! And so profoundly beautiful that it is hard to bear alone. And from the settlement comes laughter and the dance music of the accordion. So I descend to the village and go to the carpenter-shop where the dance is being held. Crowds of young Greenlandersare there; the place is packed. The girls dressed in their finest stand all in a row. They wear bright colored worsted caps, broad bead-work 189 i Jjzte July collars over their shoulders, bright colored waists, silk sashes, sealskin shorts, and vermilion boots topped above the knee with a black dogskin band and an embroidered linen cuff. I choose a girl and cross the floor to her. She laughs and yields herself. We put our arms around each other, both arms; and we dance. Here is the music that we dance to: Four steps forward, four steps back; turn, turn, turn, turn. And oh, how sweetly she dances! We hold each other tight; and she is strong and lithe and young and very beautiful—as Greenland girls can be. And suddenly how dear to me sheis! I want to sayso to her—and I can't. I want to walk out with her, alone, into the hills and lie with her in the grass of a sheltered spot. We'd lie there and look up at the sky. «Think of it," I'd say, «in the whole world there are only you and me!» And she'd draw closer to me; we'd feel each other's hearts beat. How we would come to love each other! «Never,» I might say, «have I ever loved so much before!» But at last the dance came to an end and I had said nothing; for how could I? And presently I went disconsolately home. I went home and I went to bed. But it was still twilight and through the open window asI lay not sleeping I heard the laughing voices of lovers. 190 «What rubbish!» I thought. «Along will come some sailor and pinch her thighs; and off to the hills they'll go.» And, pulling the feather bed about my eyes and ears, as though enveloped in a spurious midnight of my unbelief, at last I slept. So to maintain some shred of pride against the humiliation of our inaptitudein love have we contrived the lie that romance is a special perquisite of cultured man! 191 Knud 'Kjzsmussen 'Njarth (^reenland was always calm before her dwelling. When her husband returned from seal hunting and saw the merest little ripple on the sea then he knew that his wife was in the tent. When, however, hiswife was out of doors—then, no matter how the wind blew elsewhere, there where she was, the sea was like a mirror.«One day her husband was away as usual. He paddled to a great distance and didn't return to his home until evening. He saw great waves beating on the shore and he knew at once that his wife was not there. He landed and entered the tent; it was empty but for some of her clothes. He didn't know where she had gone. So he c: n 3 192 t HERE was once a sealer whose wife was so beautiful that where she was the wind forgot to blow ; therefore the sea r took down the tent, put his kayak into the water and paddled along the coast. When he had traveled some distance he came to a tent out of which presently there came a man, anextraordinarily large man, whose long hair was bound into a knot at the nape of his neck.«He called to this man,enquiring if a boat had passed that way.«And the big man answered:«'Yesterday a boat passed coming from the south.«Then the husband asked:«'Can I get someone here to help me paddle?'«The big man answered...