He awoke to a hush so intense that his soul ached with it. It was as if
the world had died, leaving him the only living thing upon it. After
a moment’s bewilderment he realized that the wind was still, and there
was no sound of grinding ice! His nerves, for ten weeks made taut by
the continuous shriek of the blizzard, relaxed with a suddenness that
was like a fall from a great height. Like a man swimming in a sea of
silence, he raised his hands, groping for the luminous-faced watch
by his bunk. He saw, with a gasp of incredulity, that he had slept
eighteen hours!
Still dazed with sleep and hunger, he crawled from his robes and
hurried out into the glimmering twilight of the arctic day. Great as
was his faith in the power of prayer, he was astonished at the sight
that met his eyes.
Under dark, moving clouds strangely shot with silver the ice-pack lay
quiet and gray. A quarter of a mile away an inky, jagged line marked
a lead of open water among the bergs. Every hunter in the village was
squatted along the lead, and, as he looked, a sudden fusillade of
rifle-shots registered the death of seals coming up to breathe.
Along the shores women and children and old men swarmed laughing,
shouting, as some one threw a seal-hook into a dead animal and drew it
to the ice. They crowded about it, their excited yells increasing. Five
minutes later they were devouring the steaming flesh, stopping often to
toss bits to the dogs, which gulped it ravenously.
The missionary bowed his head, a great gratitude, a great wonder in his
heart. God had listened. God had heard. The famine was over.
Like the blizzard, that day’s hunting was unprecedented in
In-ga-lee-nay. Thirty seals and a sixty-foot whale fell to the lot
of the hunters. There was food in abundance, and oil for the lamps
and for the torches that fluttered yellow lights over the ice-bound
shores where the people worked joyously over the kill. All day the
missionary moved among them. He was happy, elated. They were his
flock, his children. In the flush of his joy he had to exercise
considerable self-control to keep from calling attention to the glory
of God’s mercy. The following day, Saturday, was also filled with
unusual activities, but he permitted himself to speak of the meeting
of thanksgiving which he would hold for them on Sunday. The Eskimos
nodded, and laughed in answer to his enthusiasm. Light-hearted,
variable, they had already forgotten the misery of the famine in the
plentitude of feasting.
But the children with whom he had divided his last hardtack came shyly
to his side and took hold of his hands. They had not forgotten. The
little missionary had not realized his utter loneliness, his craving
for friendship, for love, until he felt the clinging of their small,
warm fingers. His vision was blurred as, one by one, he gathered them
up in his arms and talked to them. Here indeed was his work among these
benighted little ones and their parents. Here would he stay as long
as he lived, teaching them the ways of truth and civilization. His
last thought that night was of the meeting-house on the morrow filled
with grateful Eskimos sending up their praises to God. Perhaps even
Ah-king-ah, the defeated, might come to listen to the Holy Word and
become converted.
Sunday morning found him up early preparing his sermon. He melted ice,
and for the first time in many weeks was able to shave. As he lighted
the blubber-lamps to heat the meeting-house, he noted a small pair
of fur mittens left by some child who had accompanied its mother to
the first gathering. He picked them up and placed them on the pulpit,
intending to return them later. The thought of the youngster sent him
to the bottom of his trunk for the flag he always carried with him.
He could not begin too soon to familiarize the little ones with their
country’s flag, he thought, as he pinned the Stars and Stripes above
the blackboard in anticipation of the near day when the people should
send their children to school.
He rang the first bell, and then busied himself with a rearrangement
of the benches. Engrossed in happy thoughts, he did not realize how
swiftly time was passing until he glanced at his watch. Half an hour
had gone by since his call to meeting! Apprehension stirred in him
as he reached for the cord to ring the second bell, but before his
outstretched fingers touched it, he stiffened in the attitude of
arrested action.
_O-o-m, oom-oom. O-o-m, oom-oom. O-o-m, oom-oom._ The air suddenly
began vibrating to the deep boom of the devil-drum. His hand fell to
his side. Incredulity, comprehension, anger, succeeded each other in
his face. Without pausing to tighten his parka hood he rushed out into
the calm arctic noon, and ran toward the _kashim_ tunnel. One leap
carried him over the medicine-man’s crossed sticks at the entrance, the
next plunged him into the darkness of the passage.
Beat of drum and pagan chanting grew louder as he thrust his head up
through the opening in the floor which was once more the stage for
Ah-king-ah. Behind the shaman stood Milli-ru-ak, with the three whale
hunters who had helped him kill the whale. Bird-beaks and crab-claws on
their scanty garments were clattering to every motion of their dancing
bodies. Their feathered heads swayed above whale-charms of jade that
dangled on cords about their necks. Four Eskimo maidens in primitive
finery stood together, holding by its ivory chains the Ceremonial
Cup of the Whale filled with blubber cubes. At intervals, when the
medicine-man signaled, they held the cup aloft and uttered long, weird
cries like gulls.
The people who had so recently prostrated themselves in supplication
before the white man’s God were now as fervently assisting Ah-king-ah
in the ancient rites of thanksgiving to the Spirit of the Whale. Their
faces glowed with happiness and well-being; their voices rose in joyous
unison with the voice of the shaman.
At sight of the missionary the dancing and chanting ceased abruptly.
Ah-king-ah took a confident step forward.
“Why does the white man bring his long face here to anger the spirits
of the hunt?” he asked.
The missionary’s sunken eyes passed slowly over the faces of the
hunters squatted on the shelf, over the faces of the mothers and of the
old men and the children below. His anger ebbed to a great hopelessness
that showed in the weary sag of his shoulders. He was defeated, yet he
climbed to the floor of the _kashim_ and stood beside the half-nude
figure of the giant shaman.
“Were your words then a lie within your mouths, ye people of
In-ga-lee-nay?” he asked quietly. “Ye did promise this day to send up
thanks to Almighty God for his mercies. If these promises were lies,
why did ye come to pray with me?”
Milli-ru-ak started forward, his eyes narrowed with anger, but the
medicine-man gestured for silence.
“Listen to the words of Ah-king-ah!” He spoke with primitive dignity,
his authoritative voice instantly quelling the murmur of the hunters.
“It was I, Ah-king-ah, who sent my people to the _kashim_ of the white
man.”
The missionary turned incredulously.
“Long had I chanted the runes that please the almighty devil tossing in
his hands the ivory ball of the world,” went on the medicine-man. “And
I knew the time was ripe for fulfilment. Yet the wisdom of my fathers
tells me that all things change form, even as the ice-pack changes its
face in the arms of the wind. New spirits come. Old spirits die. There
is sorcery in all things. Perhaps there is sorcery in the black Book
the white man keeps. Perhaps there is not. But I, Ah-king-ah, maker of
medicine, am not a man of wisdom if I protect not my people against
it. Therefore I sent them to thee, white man, who knoweth the ways of
thy God in the black Book, but before I sent them I promised that I,
Ah-king-ah, who knoweth the ways of the almighty devil, would stay
alone, working for them my strongest magic while they pray. They know
my medicine is great, for, behold! the storm dies like the last grunt
of the stricken walrus and”--he drew himself up proudly, resting his
drum on his thigh--“it is I, Ah-king-ah, mightiest shaman of the North,
who changed the wind!”
In the approving chorus that filled the room the missionary tried to
make himself heard, but Ah-king-ah’s voice continued, vanquishing every
other sound:
“And why should thy God be thanked?” he asked in the earnest manner of
one seeking to understand another’s point of view. “Thou hast told my
people He is a good God wanting to do only good to man. Why pray to Him
when he can do us no harm? But the almighty devil--he is evil, evil.
All his pleasure comes from doing evil to man. Therefore we must sing
the magic runes that please him, so he leaves us alone. Therefore we
must dance before the Spirit of the Whale to show our joy at the good
fortune the devil has permitted. White man”--Ah-king-ah’s shrewd dark
eyes were not unkind as he looked down on the little missionary “our
ways are still the ways of our fathers. Thy ways are the ways of thy
fathers. Leave us, then, and give thy thanks to whom it please thee.”
He raised the drum from his thigh and made a quick motion with it. As
the booming sounded, the three apprentices sprang forward. Not ungently
they laid hold of the missionary and led him to the opening in the
floor. Then rung by rung he was forced down the ladder until his feet
touched the icy cobblestones at the bottom. The trap-door dropped above
him, leaving him in darkness.
As he stumbled over wolf-dogs gorged with food and indifferent with
sleep, his ears rang to the thump of the devil-drum and the pagan
chanting of well fed, joyous people. The sounds followed him from the
passage into the awful pervading silence of the polar day. He dragged
his forlorn figure back along the snowy trail to the meeting-house.
His knees trembled. A sudden awareness of his isolation from his kind
struck through his heart like a sickness.
Past the mocking bareness of the benches, past the blackboard where
the flag, loosed from three of its tacks, hung limp and dispirited,
he made his way to the shaky little pulpit. He rubbed a fumbling hand
across his eyes then, as a hurt child seeks the comfort of its mother’s
breast, his gray head sank on his folded arms, and he pressed his face
against the open Bible.
Numbed by his disappointment, crushed by his failure, he lay, a small,
defeated white man in the primitive fur garments of an alien race.
Gradually into his memory began to crowd the long months of loneliness,
sacrifice, and privation he had borne to bring the comforts of religion
and the uplift of civilization to an ungrateful heathen people. For
them he had given up everything a white man holds dear. For them he had
been willing to give even his life. His work had been futile. Futility!
The word stood out in letters of ice against the blackness of his
misery. But he was at the end. He was through. In the spring, when the
first boat came from the mainland, he would leave In-ga-lee-nay. He
_would_ take his God back to his own land, where there was at least the
companionship of his kind.
Sagging wearily against the pulpit, he was oblivious to the passage of
time, deaf to the increasing happy shouts from the _kashim_. The oil in
the lamps burned away, the sputtering wicks grew black. Unconsciously,
one hand, opening and shutting in anguish, had taken hold of something
soft and warm. When at last he raised his face from his cramped arms,
his eyes, dull with brooding, fell on the tiny pair of mittens he had
placed on the pulpit that morning.
For the space of a dozen breaths he stared at them, then slowly,
meditatively he began stroking them. Into his tired mind crept thoughts
of yesterday. Children had come to him then--children with upraised,
trusting eyes and warm, clinging fingers. They had come because they
believed in him. They liked him. They were potential hunters and
mothers of hunters. With their small clinging hands they were already
molding the future of their race.
Little by little the look of hopelessness faded from his eyes, and a
new determination crept into his thin face. When he stepped from the
pulpit he turned and pinned the flag back into place, then hung the
mittens on a nail beside it.
It was very late for the second bell, but the missionary crossed over
to the bell-rope. His step was firm again, his dogged chin upraised. He
laid hold of the rope and began pulling it vigorously, hopefully.
Out over the still, white bergs of Bering Strait two sounds strove once
more for dominance in the arctic air:
_O-o-m, oom-oom. O-o-m, oom-oom. O-o-m, oom-oom._
_D-i-n-g-d-o-n-g, d-i-n-g-d-o-n-g. D-i-n-g-d-o-n-g._