Alas for the hopes and efforts of good men! At the very time that
Cheenbuk and the Indian were expressing their detestation of war,
elsewhere a young Eskimo was doing his best to bring about that unhappy
and ruinous condition of things.
He was an unusually strong young Arctic swashbuckler, with considerably
more muscle than brains, a restless spirit, and what may be styled a
homicidal tendency. He was also tyrannical, like many men of that
stamp, and belonged to the same tribe as Cheenbuk.
Walrus Creek was the summer residence of the tribe of Eskimos to which
Cheenbuk belonged. It was a narrow inlet which ran up into a small
island lying some distance off the northern shores of America, to
discover and coast along which has been for so many years the aim and
ambition of Arctic explorers. How it came by its name is not difficult
to guess. Probably in ages past some adventurous voyagers, whose names
and deeds have not been recorded in history, observing the numbers of
walruses which scrambled out of the sea to sun themselves on the cliffs
of the said creek, had named it after that animal, and the natives had
adopted the name. Like other aborigines they had garbled it, however,
and handed it down to posterity as Waruskeek, while the walruses,
perhaps in order to justify the name, had kept up the custom of their
forefathers, and continued to sun themselves there as in days of yore.
Seals also abounded in the inlet, and multitudes of aquatic birds
swarmed around its cliffs.
The Eskimo village which had been built there, unlike the snow-hut
villages of winter, was composed chiefly of huts made of slabs of stone,
intermingled with moss and clay. It was exceeding dirty, owing to
remnants of blubber, shreds of skins, and bones innumerable, which were
left lying about. There might have been about forty of these huts, at
the doors of which--or the openings which served for doors--only women
and children were congregated at the time we introduce them to the
reader. All the men, with the exception of a few ancients, were away
hunting.
In the centre of the village there stood a hut which was larger and a
little cleaner than the others around it. An oldish man with a grey
beard was seated on a stone bench beside the door. If tobacco had been
known to the tribe, he would probably have been smoking. In default of
that he was thrown back upon meditation. Apparently his meditations
were not satisfactory, for he frowned portentously once or twice, and
shook his head.
"You are not pleased to-day, Mangivik," said a middle-aged woman who
issued from the hut at the moment and sat down beside the man.
"No, woman, I am not," he answered shortly.
Mangivik meant no disrespect by addressing his wife thus. "Woman" was
the endearing term used by him on all occasions when in communication
with her.
"What troubles you? Are you hungry?"
"No. I have just picked a walrus rib clean. It is not that."
He pointed, as he spoke, to a huge bone of the animal referred to.
"No, it is not that," he repeated.
"What then? Is it something you may not tell me?" asked the woman in a
wheedling tone, as she crossed her legs and toyed with the flap of her
tail.
Lest the civilised reader should be puzzled, we may here remark that the
costume of the husband and wife whom we have introduced--as, indeed, of
most if not all Eskimo men and women--is very similar in detail as well
as material. Mangivik wore a coat or shirt of seal-skin with a hood to
it, and his legs were encased in boots of the same material, which were
long enough to cover nearly the whole of each leg and meet the skirt of
the coat. The feet of the boots were of tough walrus-hide, and there
was a short peak to the coat behind. The only difference in the costume
of the woman was that the hood of her coat was larger, to admit of
infants and other things being carried in it, and the peak behind was
prolonged into a tail with a broad flap at the end. This tail varied a
little in length according to the taste of the wearer--like our ladies'
skirts; but in all cases it was long enough to trail on the ground--
perhaps we should say the ice--and, from the varied manner in which
different individuals caused it to sweep behind them, it was evident
that the tail, not less than the civilised skirt, served the purpose of
enabling the wearers to display more or less of graceful motion.
"There is nothing that I have to hide from my woman," said the amiable
Eskimo, in reply to her question. "Only I am troubled about that
jump-about man Gartok."
"Has he been here again?" asked the wife, with something of a frown on
her fat face. "He is just as you say, a jump-about like the little
birds that come to us in the hot times, which don't seem to know what
they want."
"He is too big to look like them," returned the husband. "He's more
like a mad walrus. I met him on one of the old floes when I was after a
seal, and he frightened it away. But it is not that that troubles me.
There are two things he is after: he wants to stir up our young men to
go and fight with the Fire-spouters, and he wants our Nootka for a
wife."
"The dirty walrus!" exclaimed Mrs Mangivik, with as much vigour as if
she had been civilised, "he shall _never_ have Nootka. As for fighting
with the Fire-spouters, I only hope that if he does go to do so, he will
get killed and never come back."
"H'm!" grunted Mangivik, "if he does get killed he's not likely to come
back."
"Who is not likely to come back?" asked a young girl, with an
affectionate expression in her pretty brown eyes, issuing from the hut
at that moment and seating herself close to the old man. The girl's
face, on the whole, was unusually pretty for that of an Eskimo, and
would have been still more so but for the grease with which it was
besmeared--for the damsel had just been having a little refreshment of
white-whale blubber. Her figure was comparatively slim and graceful,
and would have been obviously so but for the ill-fitting coat and clumsy
boots with which it was covered.
"Your mother and I were talking of a bad man, Nootka," said Mangivik.
"Ay, a very very bad man," exclaimed Mrs Mangivik, with a decided nod
of her head.
"If he is so very bad," returned Nootka, "it would be good that he
should never come back. Who is it?"
"Gartok," answered her mother, with the air of one who has mentioned the
most hateful thing in creation.
Nootka laughed.
"Surely you are not fond of him!" exclaimed Mangivik, regarding his
daughter with a look of anxiety.
"You know that I'm not," answered the girl, playfully hitting her sire
on the back with the flap of her tail.
"Of course not--of course not; you could not be fond of an ugly walrus
like him," said the father, replying to her pleasantry by fondly patting
her knee.
Just then a young man was seen advancing from the beach, where he had
left his kayak.
"It is Oolalik," said Mrs Mangivik, shading her eyes with her hand from
the sun, which, in all the strength of its meridian splendour, was
shining full on her fat face. "He must have made a good hunt, or he
would not have come home before the others."
As she spoke Nootka arose hastily and re-entered the hut, from out of
which there issued almost immediately the sounds and the savoury odours
of roasting flesh.
Meanwhile Oolalik came up and gave vent to a polite grunt, or some such
sound, which was the Eskimo method of expressing a friendly salutation.
Mangivik and his wife grumped in reply.
"You are soon back," said the former.
"I have left a walrus and two seals on the rocks over there," answered
the youth, sitting down beside the old man.
"Good," returned the latter. "Come in and feed."
He rose and entered the hut. The young man who followed him was not so
much a handsome as a strapping fellow, with a quiet, sedate expression,
and a manly look that rendered him attractive to most of his friends.
Conversation, however, was not one of his strong points. He volunteered
no remarks after seating himself opposite to Nootka, who handed him a
walrus rib which she had just cooked over the oil lamp. Had Nootka been
a civilised girl she might have been suspected of conveying a suggestion
to the youth, for she was very fond of him, but, being an Eskimo of the
Far North, she knew nothing about ribs or of Mother Eve. The young man
however required no delicate suggestion, for he was equally fond of
Nootka, and he endeavoured to show his feelings by a prolonged stare
after he had accepted the food.
One is irresistibly impressed with the homogeneity of the human race
when one observes the curious similarities of taste and habit which
obtain alike in savage and civilised man. For a few moments this
youth's feelings were too much for him. He stared in admiration at the
girl, apparently oblivious of the rib, and sighed profoundly. Then he
suddenly recovered himself, appeared to forget the girl, and applied
himself tooth and nail to the rib. Could anything be more natural--even
in a European prince?
Nootka did not speak--young women seldom do among savages, at least in
the company of men,--but she looked many and very unutterable things,
which it is impossible, and would not be fair, to translate.
"Will the others be back soon?" asked Mangivik.
Oolalik looked over the rib and nodded. (In this last, also, there was
indication of homogeneity.)
"Have they got much meat?"
Again the young man nodded.
"Good. There is nothing like meat, and plenty of it."
The old man proceeded to illustrate his belief in the sentiment by
devoting himself to a steak of satisfying dimensions. His better-half
meanwhile took up the conversation.
"Is Gartok with them?" she asked.
"Yes, he is with them," said the youth, who, having finished the rib,
threw away the bone and looked across the lamp at Nootka, as if asking
for another. The girl had one ready, and handed it to him.
Again Oolalik was overcome. He forgot the food and stared, so that
Nootka dropped her eyes, presumably in some confusion; but once more the
force of hunger brought the youth round and he resumed his meal.
"Has Gartok killed much?" continued the inquisitive Mrs Mangivik.
"I know nothing about Gartok," replied the young man, a stern look
taking the place of his usually kind expression; "I don't trouble my
head about him when I am hunting."
He fastened his teeth somewhat savagely in the second rib at this point.
"Do you know," said Mangivik, pausing in his occupation, "that Gartok
has been trying to get the young men to go to the Whale River, where you
know there are plenty of birds and much wood? He wants to fight with
the Fire-spouters."
"Yes, I know it. Gartok is always for fighting and quarrelling. He
likes it."
"Don't you think," said the old man suggestively, "that you could give
him a chance of getting what he likes without going so far from home?"
"No, I don't choose to fight for the sake of pleasing every fool who
delights to brag and look fierce."
Mrs Mangivik laughed at this, and her daughter giggled, but the old man
shook his head as if he had hoped better things of the young one. He
said no more, however, and before the conversation was resumed the voice
of a boy was heard outside.
"Anteek," murmured Nootka, with a smile of pleasure.
"The other hunters must have arrived," said Oolalik, polishing off his
last bone, "for Anteek was with them."
"He always comes first to see me when he has anything to tell," remarked
Mrs Mangivik, with a laugh, "and from the noise he makes I think he has
something to tell to-day."
If noise was the true index of Anteek's news he evidently was brimful,
for he advanced shouting at the top of his voice. With that
unaccountable ingenuity which characterises some boys, all the world
over, he produced every sort of sound except that which was natural to
him, and caused the surrounding cliffs to echo with the mooing of the
walrus, the roaring of the polar bear, the shriek of the plover, the
bellow of the musk-ox, and, in short, the varied cries of the whole
Arctic menagerie. But he stopped short at the door of the hut and
looked at Oolalik in evident surprise.
"You are back before me?" he said.
"That is not strange: I am stronger."
"Yes, but I started off long before you."
"So you thought, but you were mistaken. I saw you creeping away round
the point. When you were out of sight I carried my kayak over the neck
of land, and so got here before you."
"Have you told?" asked the boy anxiously.
"Never said a word," replied Oolalik.
"Here," said Nootka, holding out a piece of half-cooked blubber to the
boy, "sit down and tell us all about it. What is the news?"
"Ha!" exclaimed Anteek, accepting the food as if he appreciated it.
"Well, I've killed my first walrus--all alone too!"
"Clever boy! how was it?" said Mrs Mangivik.
"This was the way. I was out by myself--all alone, mind--among the
cliffs, looking for eggs; but I had my spear with me, the big one that
Cheenbuk made for me just before he went off to the Whale River. Well,
just as I was going to turn round one of the cliffs, I caught sight of a
walrus--a big one--monstrous; like that," he said, drawing an imaginary
circle with both arms, "fat, brown, huge tusks, and wide awake! I knew
that, because his back was to me, and he was turning his head about,
looking at something in the other direction. I was astonished, for
though they climb up on the cliffs a good height to sun themselves on
the warm rocks, I had never seen one climb so high as that.
"Well, I drew back very quick, and began to creep round so as to come at
him when he didn't expect me. I soon got close enough, and ran at him.
He tried to flop away at first, but when I was close he turned and
looked fierce--terrible fierce! My heart jumped, but it did not sink.
I aimed for his heart, but just as I was close at him my foot struck a
stone and I fell. He gave a frightful roar, and I rolled out of his
way, and something twisted the spear out of my hand. When I jumped up,
what do you think? I found the spear had gone into one of his eyes, and
that made the other one water, I suppose, for he was twisting his head
about, but couldn't see me. So I caught hold of the spear, pulled it
out, and plunged it into his side; but I had not reached the heart, for
he turned and made for the sea.
"There was a steep place just there, and he tumbled and rolled down. I
lost my foothold and rolled down too--almost into his flippers, but I
caught hold of a rock. He got hold at the same time with his tusks and
held on. Then I jumped up and gave him the spear again. This time I
hit the life, and soon had him killed. There!"
On concluding his narrative the excited lad applied himself to his yet
untasted piece of blubber, and Nootka plied him with questions, while
Oolalik rose and went off to assist his comrades, whose voices could now
be heard as they shouted to the women and children of the colony to come
and help them to carry up the meat.