what tales the Moon can tell. Human life is like a story to him.To-night I shall not see thee again, old friend. Tonight I can draw nopicture of the memories of thy visit. And, as I looked dreamilytowards the clouds, the sky became bright. There was a glancing light,and a beam from the Moon fell upon me. It vanished again, and darkclouds flew past: but still it was a greeting, a friendly good-nightoffered to me by the Moon.
  NINTH EVENING
  The air was clear again. Several evenings had passed, and the Moonwas in the first quarter. Again he gave me an outline for a sketch.Listen to what he told me.
  "I have followed the polar bird and the swimming whale to theeastern coast of Greenland. Gaunt ice-covered rocks and dark cloudshung over a valley, where dwarf willows and barberry bushes stoodclothed in green. The blooming lychnis exhaled sweet odours. Mylight was faint, my face pale as the water lily that, torn from itsstem, has been drifting for weeks with the tide. The crown-shapedNorthern Light burned fiercely in the sky. Its ring was broad, andfrom its circumference the rays shot like whirling shafts of fireacross the whole sky, flashing in changing radiance from green to red.The inhabitants of that icy region were assembling for dance andfestivity; but, accustomed to this glorious spectacle, they scarcelydeigned to glance at it. 'Let us leave the soul of the dead to theirball-play with the heads of the walruses,' they thought in theirsuperstition, and they turned their whole attention to the song anddance. In the midst of the circle, and divested of his furry cloak,stood a Greenlander, with a small pipe, and he played and sang asong about catching the seal, and the chorus around chimed in with,'Eia, Eia, Ah.' And in their white furs they danced about in thecircle, till you might fancy it was a polar bear's ball.
  "And now a Court of Judgment was opened. Those Greenlanders whohad quarrelled stepped forward, and the offended person chantedforth the faults of his adversary in an extempore song, turning themsharply into ridicule, to the sound of the pipe and the measure of thedance. The defendant replied with satire as keen, while the audiencelaughed, and gave their verdict. The rocks heaved, the glaciersmelted, and great masses of ice and snow came crashing down, shiveringto fragments as they fall; it was a glorious Greenland summer night. Ahundred paces away, under the open tent of hides, lay a sick man. Lifestill flowed through his warm blood, but still he was to die- hehimself felt it, and all who stood round him knew it also; thereforehis wife was already sewing round him the shroud of furs, that shemight not afterwards be obliged to touch the dead body. And she asked,'Wilt thou be buried on the rock, in the firm snow? I will deck thespot with thy kayak, and thy arrows, and the angekokk shall dance overit. Or wouldst thou rather be buried in the sea?' 'In the sea,' hewhispered, and nodded with a mournful smile. 'Yes, it is a pleasantsummer tent, the sea,' observed the wife. 'Thousands of seals sportthere, the walrus shall lie at thy feet, and the hunt will be safe andmerry!' And the yelling children tore the outspread hide from thewindow-hole, that the dead man might be carried to the ocean, thebillowy ocean, that had given him food in life, and that now, indeath, was to afford him a place of rest. For his monument, he had thefloating, ever-changing icebergs, whereon the seal sleeps, while thestorm bird flies round their gleaming summits!"