It was autumn before Nazinred and Mozwa drew near to their village.
They took things leisurely on the return voyage, for, as Indians have
little else to do besides hunt, trap, fish, eat, and sleep, they have no
particular inducement to hurry their movements.
It is true that, being affectionate men, they were naturally anxious to
rejoin their families, but being also steady-going, with considerable
powers of self-denial, they were good men-of-business, from a savage
point of view, and gave leisurely attention to the duties in hand.
On arriving at the outskirts of their village, they were surprised to
see that one or two children who were playing among the bushes, and who
could not have failed to see them, slunk away as if to avoid a meeting.
Whatever anxiety the men might have felt, their bronzed and stern
countenances betrayed no sign whatever. Landing near the old chief's
hut, they drew up their canoe and Nazinred and Mozwa went to announce
their arrival. It was contrary to Indian etiquette to betray
excitement, or to ask hasty questions.
They saluted the old man, handed him a plug of tobacco, and sat down to
smoke, and it was not till some time had elapsed that Nazinred calmly
asked if Isquay was well.
"Isquay is well," replied the old chief, and a barely perceptible sigh
of relief escaped Nazinred.
Then Mozwa asked about his wife and received a satisfactory answer.
Still, it was obvious to both men, from the old chief's manner, that
there was something wrong.
"Adolay", said the old man, and stopped.
"Dead?" asked Nazinred, with a look of alarm that he did not attempt to
conceal.
"No, not dead--but gone away," he replied, and then related in detail
the circumstances of the girl's disappearance. It must have been a
terrible blow to the poor father, all the more that he was ignorant at
the time of the girl's motive for forsaking her home. But no vestige of
feeling did he betray, save a slight contraction of his brows and a
nervous play of his fingers about the handle of his scalping-knife.
When the recital was ended he made no reply, but, rising slowly, left
the hut and went to his own home.
We will not follow him thither: there are some home-comings which are
better left undescribed.
But next day Nazinred relaunched his canoe, and, with a small quantity
of provisions and a large supply of ammunition, set off alone for the
shores of the Arctic Sea. What he told his wife is not known, but he
gave no explanation whatever to any of his comrades as to his
intentions.
Arrived at the coast, however, his further advance was rendered
impossible by a sharp frost which created the first thin crust that was
ultimately destined to turn the sea into thick ice. As even the
thinnest coat of ice would be certain destruction to birch-bark, the
canoe, he was well aware, was now useless. He therefore returned home,
and quietly engaged in the ordinary hunting and fishing occupation of
his tribe, but from that date he sank into a state of silent despair,
from which his most intimate companions failed to rouse him. Not that
he gave expression to his feelings by word or look. It was
long-continued silence and want of interest in anything that told of the
sorrow that crushed him. It is probable that the fact of Adolay being
capable of forsaking her parents in such a way tended to increase the
grief occasioned by her loss. But he spoke of his feelings to no one--
not even to his wife.
Mozwa, who was very fond of his friend, and pitied him sincerely, made
no attempt to comfort him, for he knew the nature of the man too well to
think that by any words he could assuage his sorrow.
All the fine things that Nazinred had brought home, and with which he
had hoped to rejoice the hearts of his wife and child, were utterly
neglected. He let Isquay do what she pleased with them. The only thing
that seemed to comfort him was the tobacco, for that, he found, when
smoked to excess, blunted the edge of his feelings.
He therefore gave himself up to the unlimited use of this sedative, and
would no doubt have become, like many others, a willing slave to the
pipe, but for the fortunate circumstance that the supply of tobacco was
limited. As the autumn advanced, the diminishing quantity warned him to
restrain himself. He eked it out by mixing with it a kind of leaf much
used by Indians for this purpose, but which, by itself, was not
considered worth smoking. Even with this aid, however, he was compelled
to curtail the indulgence; then the weed failed altogether, and he was
finally induced to engage in philosophical meditations as to the folly
of creating a needless desire which could not be gratified. The
unsatisfied craving, coupled with the injury to his health, added
considerably to the grief with which he was already oppressed. He had a
powerful constitution, however. The enforced abstinence soon began to
tell in his favour, and he actually had the courage, not to say wisdom,
to refuse occasional pipes offered him by Mozwa when he chanced to visit
his friend.
As that friend had not the loss of an only child to mourn, but, on the
contrary, was called upon to rejoice in the addition of a new baby, the
fine things that he had brought home were the cause of great
satisfaction to his family. But alas! Mozwa, although almost perfect,
for a savage, had one fault--one besetting sin and moral disease--he
gambled!
We almost hear the exclamation of surprise, if not doubt, with which our
reader receives this information. Yes; North American Indians are
gamblers; many of them are confirmed gamblers. They do not indeed
affect anything so intellectual as chess or so skilful as billiards, but
they have a game to the full as intellectual and scientific as that
_rouge et noir_ of Monaco with which highly cultivated people contrive
to rob each other by mutual consent, and without being ashamed! Their
game is not unknown to the juveniles of our own land. It goes by the
name "odd-or-even."
The manner of conducting the game varies a little here and there in its
details, but its principle is the same everywhere: "I want your
possessions, and get them I will, by hook or crook! I couldn't think of
robbing you--O no; there might be jail or penal servitude on the back of
that; and I won't accept your gifts--good gracious, no! that would
involve the loss of self-respect. No, no. Let us humbug each other. I
will rob you if I can, and you will rob me if you can, and we'll
mutually agree to throw dust in each other's eyes and call it `play'!
Nothing, surely, could be fairer than that!"
Of course poor Mozwa did not reason thus. He was not cultured enough
for that. In fact, he did not reason at all about the matter, as far as
we know, but there can be no question that the poor fellow was smitten
with the disease of covetousness, and instead of seeking for a cure,
like a manly savage, he adopted the too civilised plan of encouraging
and excusing it.
Aware of his propensities, Mrs Mozwa was much too knowing to allow the
goods and trinkets destined for herself and family to remain in his
power. She at once appropriated them, and secreted such of them as she
did not require for present use. But there were articles which she
could not well treat in that way with any shadow of excuse: for
instance, the gun, powder and shot, bows and arrows, tobacco and pipes,
hatchets and scalping-knives, blankets and masculine garments, which
were in daily use. These were frequently lost and re-won before winter
had fairly begun, but Mozwa was too fond of the excitement of gambling
to make desperate ventures all at once. He liked to spin it out.
One night he had what is styled a "run of bad luck." Being in something
of a reckless mood, he went to visit a young friend who was as fond of
gambling as himself, and took most of his worldly possessions with him.
The friend, with a number of companions, was seated beside the wigwam
fire, and quite ready to begin.
Taking a button, or some such object, in his hand, and putting both
hands behind his back, the friend began to bob his head and shoulders up
and down in an idiotic fashion, at the same time chanting in a sing-song
monotone, "Ho yo, yo ho, hi ya yoho!" for a considerable length of time,
while Mozwa staked his blanket, a fine thick green one, purchased at
Great Bear Lake. We forget the friend's stake, but it was probably
supposed to be an equivalent.
Suddenly the yo-ho-ing ceased, both hands, tightly closed, were brought
to the front, and the whole party gazed at Mozwa with intense
expectation. He was not long in making up his mind. He pointed to the
left hand. It was opened, and found to be empty! The blanket was lost.
Back went the hands again, and the "yo-ho-ing" was continued. The new
gun was the next stake. It also was lost; and thus the game was carried
on far into the night, with smaller stakes, until Mozwa had lost almost
all that he had brought with him--gun, blanket, pipes, tobacco, flint
and steel, fire-bag, and even his coat, so that he walked home a
half-naked and nearly ruined man!
But ruin in the wilderness of North America is not usually so thorough
as it often is in civilised lands, owing partly to the happy
circumstance that strong drink does not come into play and complete the
moral destruction, as well as the physical, which gambling had begun.
The character therefore, although deteriorated, is not socially lost.
The nature of property, also, and the means of acquiring it, render
recovery more easy.
When Mozwa returned home _minus_ his new blanket and the beautiful
deerskin coat which his wife had made and richly ornamented for him with
her own brown hands while he was away, he found his old coat and his old
blanket ready for him. The old gun, too, was available still, so that
he was not altogether disabled from attending to the duties of the
chase, and in a short time afterwards, "luck" being in his favour, he
had won back some of his lost possessions. But he was too often in that
fluctuating state of alternating excitement and depression which is the
invariable accompaniment, in a greater or less degree, of the gambler's
sin, whether carried on in the depths of the Arctic wilderness, the
well-named "hells" of London, or the gilded _salons_ of Monaco.
"You are a fool," said Nazinred one day to his friend--for even among
savages there are plain-spoken familiar friends gifted with common sense
enough to recognise folly, and spiritual honesty to point it out and
warn against it.
"Why does my brother say so?" asked Mozwa, who was not in the least
offended by the observation.
"Because you gain nothing by all your gaining except trouble and
excitement, and sometimes you gain loss. Here you are, now, obliged to
take to your old gun, whose flint will hardly strike fire more than four
times out of ten; you are obliged to wrap yourself in the old blanket
full of holes; and you come to me to borrow powder and ball."
"That is true," replied Mozwa, with a look of self-condemnation. "But,"
he added, with a sort of brightly apologetic glance, "sometimes I win,
and then I am well off, and it is Magadar who is the fool."
"Does it make you less of a fool because Magadar is one also? Are you
comforted to-day, in your poverty, by the thought that you were well off
yesterday?"
Mozwa's bright glance faded slowly. He was no match for his friend in
argument, and, possessing an honest spirit, the look of
self-condemnation began to creep again over his visage, but, being of a
sanguine temperament and hopeful nature, the bright glance returned
suddenly.
"Wisdom falls from the lips of my brother," he said. "I was well off
yesterday and I am badly off to-day, but I may be well off again
to-morrow--if I have good luck."
"Yes, and if Magadar has bad luck?" returned his friend. "You cannot
both have good luck. Whatever one gains the other must lose--and so it
goes on. Should wise men act thus?"
Mozwa was silent. His friend had never before spoken to him in this
way. Indeed, no member of the tribe had ever before given utterance to
such curious opinions. He knew not what to reply, and Nazinred relapsed
into the moody silence which had characterised him more or less since he
became aware of his daughter's departure.
The short autumn of those Hyperborean regions having passed away, the
land was speedily locked in a garment of ice and snow, and the long
stern winter began.
It was not long before all the lakes and rivers set fast. At first only
the lakes solidified, then the more sluggish streams, while the rapids
showed out inky black by contrast. Gradually the liquid margins of
these were encroached on by the irresistible frost, until they were
fairly bridged over, and their existence was only recalled to memory by
hollow rumblings below the ice. At last the intensity of the cold
overcame the salt sea itself; the floes, hummocks, and bergs became
united into one universal mass, and every sign of liquid disappeared
from the polar regions.
It was when this condition of things had arrived that the heart-crushed
Nazinred proceeded to carry out a plan over which he had been brooding
ever since his return from Great Bear Lake. His inquiries had led him
to believe that the Eskimo who had carried off his child belonged to the
tribe which had recently been pursued by his compatriots, and that they
probably dwelt among the islands, some of which were seen, and others
known to exist, off the Arctic coast opposite the mouth of the Greygoose
River. Moreover, a faint hope, that he would have found it difficult to
define, was aroused by the fact that the kidnapper of his child had
formerly been the rescuer of his wife.
As we have seen, his first attempt to go off in his canoe in search of
Adolay was frustrated by young ice forming on the sea, and for a
considerable time afterwards the Arctic Sea was impassable to any kind
of craft. Now that the sea had set fast, however, his difficulty was
removed, and he resolved to undertake the journey on foot.
Well he knew that no man of his tribe, not even Mozwa, would agree to
accompany him on such a wild-goose chase. He therefore not only
refrained from making to any of them the proposal, but avoided any
allusion to his intentions. Knowing also that Isquay was gifted with
such an intense desire for sympathy that she could not resist
communicating whatever she knew to a few of her dearest friends--in the
strictest confidence--he did not mention the matter to her until all his
preparations were completed. Then he told her.
Like a good submissive squaw, she made no objection, though the
expression of her face showed that she felt much anxiety.
"Who goes with you?" she asked.
"No one."
"Is it wise to go alone?" she ventured to suggest.
"It may not be wise, but no one would go with me, I know, and I am
determined to find Adolay!"
"How will you travel?"
"With a sledge and four dogs. That will enable me to carry food enough
for a long journey. I will take my gun, of course."
"But what will you do for fire?" objected Isquay; "there are no woods on
the ice."
"I will do without it."
The poor woman was so amazed at this reply that she gave up further
questioning.
"You have plenty strong moccasins ready, have you not?" asked Nazinred,
"and pemmican, and dried meat?"
"Yes, plenty. And your snow-shoes are mended, and very strong."
"That is well. I will take them, but I do not expect to use them much,
for the snow on the Great Salt Lake is not soft like the snow in the
woods."
It was afternoon when this conversation was held, and very dark, for the
sun had by that time ceased to rise much above the horizon, even at
noon. Late in the night, however, there was brilliant light both from
the stars and the aurora. Taking advantage of this, Nazinred left his
lodge and hastened to the outskirts of the village, where a little boy
awaited him with the sledge and team of dogs all ready for a start.
Without saying a word the Indian put on his snow-shoes and took hold of
the tail-line of the sledge, which was heavily laden, and well packed.
With a slight crack of the whip he set the team in motion.
"Tell the old chief," he said to the boy at parting, "that I go to seek
for my daughter among the people of the Frozen Lake. When I find her I
will return."