They buried Konwa the next morning. Harry thought they should read the service for the burial of the dead over him, but Joe vetoed it. He said that the Eskimos had funeral ceremonies of their own, and they ought not to be interfered with. They placed Konwa on a small walrus hide, dressed in his best furs, with his walrus-gut rain-coat over all. At one hand was his sheevee, or big knife, in the other the walrus spear with which he had made his last charge, and beside him were his plate and cup. On the very top of the ridge they laid him, carried thither by the men of the village, while his widow wailed loudly in the igloo. They brought stones from a ledge, blown bare by the wind, and piled these in a little cairn above him. Then they walked three times around him, chanting a weird chant, while the widow still wailed in the igloo. Reaching the igloo on their return, they walked three times around this, and chanted again, while the widow wailed more loudly. Then the chanting ceased, the wailing was cut off with equal abruptness, and the little village resumed its round of daily life. Harry carved the name “Konwa” deep on a board, and added the sentence, “He died bravely, fighting for his friends,” and placed this over the body, supported by the stones. CHAPTER VIII WHALING IN EARNEST The bowhead whale spends his summers among the ice-fields that surround the pole. What he does in winter is still a mooted question, but there are many old whalemen who declare that the bowhead hibernates. Many of them, they say, spend the winter about Bering Straits, and as far south in Bering Sea as the Seal Islands. Here it is claimed that they lie on the bottom and sleep till the warmer currents of the spring rouse them, as they do the marmots, badgers, and brown bears on land, and at about the same time. At any rate, the bowhead goes north with the ice in the spring, comes down with it in the fall,—and then vanishes. He is not found in the southern part of Bering Sea, nor in the north Pacific. Hence, say the whalemen, who make a business of following him, if he does not hibernate, what does become of him? Ordinarily, in the summer time, the bowhead comes to the surface and breathes every forty minutes or so. But now and then, for some cause or other, one will sulk, and the natives have watched them lying close in shore in shallow water for five days without seeing a movement or attempt to come to the surface to breathe. Such whales are denominated “sleepy heads,” and when killed are found to have a blubber that is watery instead of full of oil. The blubber of more than one whale is thrown overboard after being cut in, because it is deficient in oil. Whether there is any connection between the sleepy heads and the hibernating may never be known, but if a whale can stay on bottom without air for five days simply because he is sick or sulky, say the whalers, ought he not to be able to sleep all winter in good health?