Pomiuk’s world was filled with beautiful and wonderful things.  He loved the bright flowers that bloomed under the cliffs when the winter snows were gone, and the brilliant colors that lighted the sky and mountains and sea, when the sun set of evenings.  He loved the mists, and the mighty storms that sent the sea rolling in upon the cliffs in summer.  He never ceased to marvel at the aurora borealis, which by night flashed over the heavens in wondrous streams of fire and lighted the darkened world.  His father told him the aurora borealis was the spirits of their departed people dancing in the sky.  He learned the ways of the wild things in sea and on land and never tired of following the tracks of beasts in the snow, or of watching the seals sunning themselves on rocks or playing about in the water.

The big wolf dogs were his special delight.  His father kept nine of them, and many an exciting ride Pomiuk had behind them when his father took him on the komatik to hunt seals or to look at fox traps, or to visit the Trading Post.

When he was a wee lad his father made for him a small dog whip of braided walrus hide.  This was Pomiuk’s favorite possession.  He practiced wielding it, until he became so expert he could flip a pebble no larger than a marble with the tip end of the long lash; and he could snap and crack the lash with a report like a pistol shot.

As he grew older and stronger he practiced with his father’s whip, until he became quite as expert with that as with his own smaller one.  This big whip had a wooden handle ten inches in length, and a supple lash of braided walrus hide thirty-five feet long.  The lash was about an inch in diameter where it joined the handle, tapering to a thin tip at the end.

One summer day, when Pomiuk was ten years of age, a strange ship dropped anchor off the rocky shore where Pomiuk’s father and several other Eskimo families had pitched their tupeks, while they fished in the sea near by for cod or hunted seals.  A boat was launched from the ship, and as it came toward the shore all of the excited Eskimos from the tupeks, men, women and children, and among them Pomiuk, ran down to the landing place to greet the visitors, and as they ran every one shouted, “Kablunak!  Kablunak!” which meant, “Stranger!  Stranger!”

Some white men and an Eskimo stepped out of the boat, and in the hospitable, kindly manner of the Eskimo Pomiuk’s father and Pomiuk and their friends greeted the strangers with handshakes and cheerful laughter, and said “Oksunae” to each as he shook his hand, which is the Eskimo greeting, and means “Be strong.”

The Eskimo that came with the ship was from an Eskimo settlement called Karwalla, in Hamilton Inlet, on the east of Labrador, but a long way to the south of Nachvak Bay where Pomiuk’s people lived.  He could speak English as well as Eskimo, and acted as interpreter for the strangers.