On the farther side of the fire attending to the grilling of strips of flesh set upon pointed sticks stood Aaka Wi's wife clothed in a kirtle of sealskins fastened beneath her breast for here the place being warm she wore no cloak. She was a finely built woman of about thirty years of age with masses of black hair that hung to her middle clean and well-kept hair arranged in four tresses each of which was tied at the end with fibres of grass or sinew. Her skin was whiter than that of most of her race; indeed quite white except where it was tanned by exposure to the weather; her face though rather broad was handsome and fine-featured if somewhat querulous and like the rest of her people she had large and melancholy dark eyes."