He turns his back upon the bright, beautiful sea, tufted with cakes of ice that seem in the distance like the white, pure lilies on a glassy pond, and paddles off home with good-by to the fishing, good-by to the black-headed seals, good-by to the low islands with their gulls and mollimucks and burgomeisters and tern and kittiwakes and eider-ducks--good-by to the long day's fun! "It makes me feel like a mad whale," said Sammy, "to be cheated out of my fishing. I wonder who cut my kayah!" Just then he looked off to the shore, and there stood Billy Blubber, an ancient enemy. "There's the fellow," said Sammy. "He slit my kayah, I know. If I had him, I'd eat him quicker than a tern's egg. Just see how he looks!" Billy did look exasperating. He saw everything and he enjoyed everything. Plainly he was the miscreant. He was waddling round on his stout little legs, flourishing a huge jack-knife, and grinning as if he were going to have a big dish of whale-fat for dinner. He looked comical enough. He was dressed in seal-skin, and was bobbing up and down in his mother's seal-skin boots. The women's boots are of tanned seal-skin, bleached white and then colored. The boots of Billy's mother were very gay. They were bright red ones. When Billy from his tent-door saw Sammy coming, he crawled into the huge big boots, and bare-headed rushed--no, waddled out, to greet the discomfited fisherman. "Billy, I'll give it to you?" "Will you, Sammy? Try it, old boy." Thereupon, he put his thumb to his nose and wriggled his finger as exasperatingly as any Yankee boy here in this enlightened land. His flat face, his black little eyes, his stubby little nose, his hair black as coal and long behind, but fashionably "banged" in front, the seal-skin suit, mother's big red boots, and the nasal gesture made a very interesting picture, and a most provoking one also. "Billy, you _will_ catch it!" "I should rather think you had caught it already. Did you bring any seal-fat, Sammy?" Sammy felt mad enough and hot enough to set the water to boiling between his kayah and the shore. "You had better run, Billy." "Plenty of time, Sammy." Sammy's kayah was now ashore. Sammy unlaced his jacket and let himself out of jail. Pulling his kayah high up the shore, he turned it over and let the water escape. There were two ugly gashes in the seal-skin bottom--just as he expected. "Now where's that Billy?" asked Sammy at last. But mother's red boots had prudently withdrawn. "I _will_ give it to him," said Sammy; "but I will mend this first." He took up his beloved kayah and walked to the little village. It was not very large. There were half a dozen seal-skin tents, a few houses of stone and turf, and one or two wooden buildings, besides the government-house that proudly supported the flag of Denmark. "What do you want, Sammy?" said his mother, as he appeared at the door of one of the seal-skin tents. She was sitting on a bed of reindeer skins.