the poor girl, when she came to see clearly that she was, as it were,
cast away in the Arctic wilderness, with the whole care of a helpless
man and woman and two equally helpless children, besides a sledge and
team of dogs, devolving on her she proved herself to be a true heroine
by rising nobly to the occasion.
Her first act was to return, with characteristic humility, and ask
Ujarak what she must do.
"You must take the dogs and sledge and the children," he answered in a
low voice, "and save yourselves."
"What! and leave you here?"
"Yes; I am bad. It is well that I should die."
"But Kabelaw?" said the girl, with a glance at her friend. "She has got
the head-sickness and cannot help herself."
"Leave her to die also," said the wizard carelessly; "she is not worth
much."
"Never!" cried Nunaga, with emphasis. "I will save her, I will save you
all. Did you not tell me that the village of the Kablunets is only two
suns from here?"
"That is so, Nunaga."
"Can you creep to the sledge?" asked the girl quickly.
"I think I can."
"Try, then."
The wizard tried, and found that he could creep on his hands and one
knee, dragging the wounded limb on the ice. It gave him excruciating
pain, but he was too much of a man to mind that. In a few minutes he
was lying at full length on the sledge.
"Now, Tumbler and Pussi," said Nunaga, "cover him well up with skins,
while I go and fetch Kabelaw, but _don't touch his leg_."
She found that Kabelaw could walk slowly, with support, and after much
exertion succeeded in getting her also laid out upon the sledge
alongside of the wizard. Then Nunaga tied them both firmly down with
long walrus-lines. She also attached the children to the sledge with
lines round their waists, to prevent their being jolted off. Having
thus made things secure, and having cut off some choice portions of the
bear for food, she harnessed the dogs, grasped the whip, mounted to the
driver's place, brought the heavy lash down with wonderful effect on the
backs of the whole team, and set off at full gallop towards the land
where Kablunets were said to dwell.
Fortunately, the ice was smooth most of the way, for jolting was not
only injurious to poor Kabelaw, but gave the wizard great additional
pain. It also had the effect of bumping Tumbler and Pussi against each
other, and sometimes strained their lashings almost to the breaking
point.
At night Nunaga selected as comfortable a spot as she could find under
the shelter of the Greenland cliffs, and there--after detaching the
children, re-dressing Ujarak's leg, arranging the couch of the
semi-conscious Kabelaw, and feeding the hungry dogs--she set up her
lamp, and cooked savoury seal and bear cutlets for the whole party.
And, not withstanding the prejudices with which fastidious people may
receive the information, it is an unquestionable fact that the frying of
seal and bear cutlets sends a most delicious influence up the nose,
though perhaps it may require intense hunger and an Eskimo's digestion
to enable one to appreciate to the full the value of such food.
These labours ended, Nunaga put the little ones to bed, made the wizard
and Kabelaw as comfortable as possible for the night, fastened up the
dogs, and, spreading her own couch in the most convenient spot beside
them, commenced her well-earned night's repose. The first night her bed
was a flat rock; the second, a patch of sand; but on both occasions the
cheery little woman softened the place with a thick bear-skin, and,
curling up, covered herself with the soft skin of a reindeer.
And what were the thoughts of the wicked Ujarak as he lay there,
helpless and suffering, silently watching Nunaga? We can tell, for he
afterwards made a partial confession of them.
"She is very pretty," he thought, "and very kind. I always knew that,
but now I see that she is much more. She is forgiving. I took her from
her home by force, and would have made her my wife against her will--yet
she is good to me. I have been harsh, unkind, cruel, sulky to her ever
since we left home--yet she is good to me. I have torn her from all
those whom she loves, with the intention that she should never see them
again--yet she is good to me. She might have left me to die, and might
easily have gone home by herself, and it would have served me right,
but--but she is good to me. I am not a man. I am a beast--a bear--a
fox--a walrus--"
As the wizard thought thus, a couple of tears overflowed their
boundaries, and rolled down the hitherto untried channel of his cheeks.
Do you think, reader, that this line of thought and emotion, even in a
savage, was unnatural? Is not the same principle set forth in Scripture
in reference to far higher things? Need we remind you that it is "the
_goodness_ of God which leadeth thee, (or any one else), to repentance?"
As it is in the spiritual world, so is it in the natural. At the time
of which we write the same grand principle was powerfully at work in
Nature. "Thick-ribbed ice," which the united forces of humanity could
not have disrupted, was being silently yet rapidly dissolved by the
genial influence of the sun, insomuch that on the evening of the day
after Nunaga had been compelled by circumstances to assume command of
the expedition, several sheets of open water appeared where ice had been
expected, and the anxious charioteer was more than once obliged to risk
the lives of the whole party by driving out to sea on the floes--that
being better than the alternative of remaining where they were, to die
of starvation.
But by that time they were not far distant from the Kablunet
settlements.
CHAPTER NINETEEN.
SPRING RETURNS--KAYAK EVOLUTIONS--ANGUT IS PUZZLED.
Why some people should wink and blink as well as smirk when they are
comfortable is a question which might possibly be answered by cats if
they could speak, but which we do not profess to understand.
Nevertheless we are bound to record the fact that on the very day when
Nunaga and her invalids drew near to the first Moravian settlements in
Greenland, Ippegoo slowly mounted a hillside which overlooked the icy
sea, flung himself down on a moss-clad bank, and began to wink and blink
and smirk in a way that surpassed the most comfortable cat that ever
revelled on rug or slumbered in sunshine.
Ippegoo was supremely happy, and his felicity, like that of most simple
folk, reposed on a simple basis. It was merely this--that Spring had
returned to the Arctic regions.
Spring! Ha! who among the dwellers in our favoured land has the
faintest idea of--of--pooh!--words are wanting. The British poets,
alive and dead, have sung of Spring, and doubtless have fancied that
they understood it. They had no more idea of what they were singing
about than--than the man in the moon, if we may venture to use a rather
hackneyed comparison. Listen, reader, humbly, as becometh the ignorant.
Imagine yourself an Eskimo. Don't overdo it. You need not in
imagination adopt the hairy garments, or smear yourself with oil, or eat
raw blubber. For our purpose it will suffice to transport yourself into
the Arctic regions, and invest yourself with the average intelligence of
an ordinary human being who has not been debased by the artificial evils
that surround modern civilisation, or demoralised by strong drink. In
this condition of happy simplicity you draw near to the end of an Arctic
winter.
During eight months or so you have been more or less shrivelled-up,
petrified, mummified, by frost of the most intense and well-nigh
intolerable description. Your whole body has frequently been pierced by
winds, the constituents of which seemed to be needles and fire. Shelter
has been one of your chief subjects of meditation every day--ofttimes
all day; unwillingness to quit that shelter and eagerness to return to
it being your dominant characteristic. Darkness palpable has been
around you for many weeks, followed by a twilight of gloom so prolonged
that you _feel_ as if light were a long-past memory. Your eyes have
become so accustomed to ice and snow that white, or rather whitey-grey,
has long since usurped and exclusively held the place of colour in your
imagination, so that even black--a black cliff or a black rock cropping
up out of the snow--becomes a mitigated joy. Your ears have been so
attuned to the howling blast with interludes of dead calm and variations
of rending icebergs and bellowing walrus accompaniments, that melodious
harmonies have fled affrighted from your brain. As for your
nose--_esprit de marrow fat_, extract of singed hide, essence of
lamp-smoke, _eau de cuisine_, and de-oxygenised atmosphere of snow-hut,
have often inclined you to dash into the open air, regardless of frost
and snow, for purposes of revivification. Imagine all these things
intensified to the uttermost, and prolonged to nigh the limits of
endurance, so that genial ideas and softening influences seem to have
become things of the long-forgotten past, and _then_ try to imagine a
change, compared to which all the transformation scenes of all the
pantomimes that ever blazed are as a tomtit's chirp to a lion's roar, or
a--a--Words fail again! No matter.
But don't give in yet. Try, now, to imagine this sudden transformation
wrought, perhaps, in a few days to the slow music of southern zephyrs,
bearing on their wings light, and heat, and sunshine. Your ear is
surprised--absolutely startled--by the sound of trickling water. Old
memories that you thought were dead come back in the trumpet of the
wild-goose, the whistling wing of the duck, the plaintive cry of the
plover. Your nose--ah! your nose cocks up and snuffs a smell--pardon!--
a scent. It is the scent of the great orb on which you stand, saturated
_at last_ with life-giving water, and beginning to vivify all the green
things that have so long been hidden in her capacious bosom.
But it is to your eye, perhaps, that the strongest appeal is made, for
while you throw off one by one the garments which have protected you for
so many months, and open up body and soul to the loved, long-absent,
influences of warmth, and sound, and odour, your eye drinks up the
mighty draughts of light--light not only blazing in the blue above, but
reflected from the blue below--for the solid ice-fields are now split
into fragments; the swell of old Ocean sends a musical ripple to the
shore; great icebergs are being shed from their parent glaciers, and are
seen floating away in solemn procession to the south, lifting their
pinnacles towards their grandparent clouds, until finally reduced to the
melting mood, and merged in their great-grandparent the sea. Imagine
such visions and sensations coming suddenly, almost as a surprise, at
the end of the stern Arctic winter, and then, perchance, you will have
some idea of the bounding joy that fills the soul on the advent of
Spring, inducing it to feel, if not to say, "Let every thing that hath
breath praise the Lord."
_This_ is Spring! The Eskimos understand it, and so do the dwellers in
Rupert's Land; perchance, also, the poor exiles of Siberia--but the
poets--pooh!
Far down below the perch occupied by Ippegoo lay a little sandy bay,
around which were scattered a number of Eskimo huts--rude and temporary
buildings, meant to afford shelter for a time and then be forsaken.
This was the bay which Angut, Okiok, Simek, Red Rooney, and the others
had reached in their pursuit of the wizard when the ice broke up and
effectually stopped them.
As it was utterly impossible to advance farther with dog and sledge,
they were compelled to restrain their impatience as best they could, and
await open water, when they might resume their journey in kayaks.
Meanwhile, as there was a lead of open water to the northward as far as
they could see, the youth Arbalik had been despatched with a small
sledge and four of the strongest dogs along the strip of land-ice, or
"ice-foot," which clung to the shore. His mission was to reach the
village, and fetch Nuna, Pussimek, Kunelik, Sigokow, and his own mother,
in one of the oomiaks or women's boats when open water should permit.
It was while our Eskimos were thus idly waiting for their wives, that
the before-mentioned southern Eskimos arrived, and met them with every
demonstration of friendliness and good-will.
These men, who had been forced to make a long, difficult detour inland
after the ice gave way, were not a little pleased to find that the
ice-foot to the northward was still practicable, and that the Eskimo
village was so near. Of course they told of their meeting with Ujarak's
sledge, which rendered inaction on the part of the pursuers still more
unbearable. But they were all men who could accept the inevitable with
a good grace, and as they knew it was impossible to advance without
kayaks and oomiaks, they awaited the return of Arbalik as patiently as
possible. Meanwhile they made themselves agreeable to the new arrivals,
whose hearts they gladdened by telling them that their friends in the
north had plenty of narwhal horns and bones and walrus tusks and sinews
to exchange for their wood and iron.
But to return to Ippegoo on his distant and elevated outlook.
While he gazed at the busy groups below, our weak-minded youth observed
two of the party step into kayaks which lay on the beach, push off into
the bay, and commence what may be styled "kayak exercise." As Ippegoo
greatly enjoyed witnessing such exercises, he threw off his lethargy,
and, leaping up, quickly descended to the shore. The kayaks were old
ones which had been found by the party on arriving at the deserted
village. They had probably been left as useless by previous visitors,
but Okiok's boys, Norrak and Ermigit, being energetic and ingenious
fellows, had set to work with fish-bone-needles and sinew-threads, and
repaired them with sealskin patches. They were now about to test their
workmanship and practise their drill.
"Do they leak?" shouted Okiok, as the lads pushed off.
"Not more than I can soak up," replied Norrak, looking back with a
laugh.
"Only a little," cried Ermigit, "and hoh! the water is still very cold."
"Paddle hard, and you'll soon warm it," cried Rooney.
When they had got fairly off, a spirit of emulation seized the brothers,
and, without a direct challenge, they paddled side by side, gradually
increasing their efforts, until they were putting forth their utmost
exertions, and going through the water at racing speed.
"Well done, Norrak!" shouted the father, in rising excitement.
"Not so fast, Ermigit; not so fast," roared Simek.
Heedless of the advice, the brothers pushed on until they were brought
up by the pack-ice at the mouth of the bay. Here they turned as quickly
as possible, and raced back with such equal speed that they came in
close together--so close that it was impossible for those on shore to
judge which was winning as they approached.
As in all similar cases--whether on the Thames or on the Greenland
seas--excitement became intense as the competitors neared the goal.
They were still a hundred yards or so from land, when Ermigit missed a
stroke of his paddle. The consequence was that the kayak overturned,
and Ermigit disappeared.
A kayak, as is generally known, is a very long and narrow canoe, made of
a light wooden frame, and covered all over with sealskin with the
exception of a single hole, in what may be called the deck, which is
just big enough to admit one man. This hole is surrounded by a strip of
wood, which prevents water washing into the canoe, and serves as a ledge
over which the Eskimo fastens his sealskin coat. As canoe and coat are
waterproof, the paddler is kept dry, even in rough weather, and these
cockle-shell craft will ride on a sea that would swamp an open boat.
But the kayak is easily overturned, and if the paddler is not expert in
the use of his paddle, he runs a chance of being drowned, for it is not
easy to disengage himself from his craft. Constant practice, however,
makes most natives as expert and fearless as tight-rope dancers, and
quite as safe.
No sooner, therefore, did Ermigit find himself in the water, head
downwards, than, with a rapid and peculiar action of the paddle, he sent
himself quite round and up on the other side into the right position--
dripping, however, like a seal emerging from the sea. He lost the race,
as a matter of course. Norrak, after touching the beach, returned to
Ermigit, laughing at his mishap.
"You laugh," said his brother somewhat sharply, "but you cannot do that
as quickly as I did it."
Without a word of reply, Norrak threw himself on one side, vanished in
the water, and came up on the other side in a decidedly shorter time.
"Well done!" cried Ermigit, who was, in truth, a good-natured fellow;
"come, let us practise."
"Agreed," responded Norrak; and both brothers pushed a little nearer to
land, so that their father and the others might observe and criticise
their evolutions. As the exercises which they went through are
practised by Eskimos in order to fit them to cope with the accidents and
emergencies of actual life, we will briefly describe them.
First Norrak leaned over on one side, of course carrying the kayak with
him, until his body lay on the water, in which position he maintained
himself and prevented a total overset by manipulating his paddle, and
then, with a downward dash of the blade and a vigorous jerk of his body,
he regained his position, amid expressions of approval from the shore.
Having performed the same feat on the other side, he nodded to Ermigit,
and said--
"Now you go to work."
Ermigit went to work so well, that even a critical judge could not have
pronounced him better or worse than his brother. After that they both
repeated the complete overturn and recovery already described. In this
effort, however, the lads had the free use of their paddles; but as in
actual service the paddle may easily get entangled with straps and
fishing cordage, a special exercise is arranged to prepare the hunter
against such misfortunes.
Accordingly Norrak pushed one blade of his paddle among the straps and
cordage, overset the kayak, and worked himself up again with a quick
motion of the other blade. Of course this was not done either easily or
quickly. Nevertheless, it was accomplished by both lads to the entire
satisfaction of their critics.
Next, they performed the same feat of upsetting and recovering position
with the paddle held fast behind their backs, and then with it held
across the nape of the neck--and in several other positions, all of
which represented cases of possible entanglement.
Sometimes, however, the paddle may be lost in an upset. This is the
most serious misfortune that can befall a hunter. To prepare for it,
therefore, the Eskimo boys and youths have a special drill, which Norrak
now proceeded to go through. Overturning his kayak as before, he
purposely let go the oar in the act, so that it floated on the water,
and then, while thus inverted, he made an upward grasp, caught the
paddle, pulled it down, and with it recovered his position. There would
have been great danger in this if he had been alone, for in the event of
his failing to catch the paddle he would probably have been drowned, but
with Ermigit at hand to help, there was no danger.
Other exercises there are which the sons of Okiok were not able to
practise at that time because of the weather being unsuitable. One of
these consists in threading their way among sunken rocks and dashing
surges; another, in breasting the billows of a tempest. It must not be
supposed that all Eskimos become efficient in rough work of this kind.
Many do become exceedingly expert, others moderately so; but some there
are who, although very fair seal-hunters, never become experts in the
management of the kayak, and who, in cases of great difficulty, are apt
to be lost during the seasons of seal-fishing.
Now, it chanced while the youths were thus training themselves for
future work, that a solitary seal put up its head, as if to have a look
at the state of things in general above water. It also chanced that the
Eskimos were to leeward of him, and a blaze of sunshine was at their
backs, so that the seal when looking towards its human foes had its eyes
dazzled. Ermigit had no weapons at the time, but by good-fortune a
harpoon, line, and bladder were attached to Norrak's vessel.
As the cat pounces on the unwary mouse, so Norrak, crouching low, dipped
his paddle twice with noiseless vigour, and shot his craft like an arrow
towards the seal. It happened to be a stupid attarsoak, and it raised
its bullet head with a look that said plainly, "What, in all the ocean,
is that queer thing in the sunshine?"
Half a minute brought that queer thing in the sunshine within ten yards
of him. Norrak grasped the light harpoon, and sent it whistling to its
mark. Truer than the needle to the pole the weapon went, carrying its
line with it, and sank deep into the shoulder of the seal.
Ermigit, meanwhile, had made for the shore, got a lance thrown to him by
the excited Okiok, received an encouraging nod from Rooney with an
English recommendation to "go it," and was off again to render aid. And
not a moment too soon did that aid come, for, contrary to usual
experience, that seal--instead of diving, and giving them an hour's hot
pursuit--made a furious assault on Norrak. Probably the spear had
touched it in a tender spot. At all events the creature's ire was
roused to such an extent that when it reached him it seized the kayak
and tore a large hole in it. Down went the bow, as a matter of course,
and up went the stern. Norrak hastily disengaged himself, so as to be
ready to spring clear of the sinking wreck, and was on the point of
jumping out when his brother's kayak shot past him, and Ermigit sent a
spear deep into the vitals of the seal--so deep, indeed, that it turned
over and died without a groan.
By that time Norrak was in the water, but he made a vigorous grasp at
his brother's kayak with one hand, while with the other he clutched the
line of the harpoon--for well did he know that dead seals sink, and that
if it went down it would perhaps carry the bladder along with it, and so
be lost.
"Give me the line, brother," said Ermigit, extending a hand.
"No. I can hold it. You make for shore--quick." Ermigit plied his
paddle with a will, and in a few minutes reached the shore with Norrak,
bladder, line, and seal like a huge tail behind him.
Need we say that they were received by their friends, as well as by the
strange Eskimos, with enthusiasm? We think not. Neither is it
necessary to comment on the enjoyment they found that night in a supper
of fresh meat, and in fighting the battle, as well as a good many other
battles, over again. But in the midst of it all there was a cloud on
the brows of Angut, Simek, and Okiok, for their anxiety about the fate
of Nunaga, Pussi, and Tumbler was intense.
Angut was particularly restless during the night, and got up several
times to take a look at the weather, as Rooney expressed it.
On one of these occasions he found the Kablunet standing by the shore of
the calm sea.
"I don't like the look o' things," said Rooney, giving a sailor-like
glance at the horizon and the sky. "It seems to me as if we were goin'
to have dirty weather."
Instead of replying to this remark, the Eskimo looked earnestly at his
friend, and asked--
"Can Ridroonee tell me why the Great Spirit allows men to do evil?"
"No, Angut, no. That is beyond my knowledge. Indeed I remember puttin'
the same question, or somethin' like it, to a learned man in my country,
and he said it is beyond the knowledge of the wisest men that have ever
lived--so it's no wonder that it's beyond you and me."
"But the Great Spirit is good," said Angut, rather as if he were
soliloquising than addressing his friend.
"Yes; He is good--_must_ be good," returned the sailor; "it cannot be
otherwise."
"Then why does evil exist?" asked Angut quickly. "Why did He make evil?
You have told me He made everything."
"So He did, but evil is not a _thing_. It is a state of being, so to
speak."
"It is a great mystery," said Angut.
"It would be a greater mystery," returned the seaman, "if the Great
Spirit was _not_ mysterious."