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No snow! no ice! Can you imagine such a condition? And up there it is almost the Eskimo's only commodity. He eats it, drinks it, lives in it, sleeps on it, and his castle is built of it. And he endures it year after year, from his babyhood to his gray days, and there appears no hope for him. Bare ground is a curiosity to the Eskimo; and there are no spring freshets.
Thus the Eskimo's expression varied somewhat with the nature of the subjects which chased each other through his mind, while that of the red man never changed from the calm of dignified immobility except, of course, when, as during the recent struggle, his life was in danger. While the goose was roasting, the erstwhile foes sat down to watch the process.
And these Chukchee Indians of the Asiatic Pacific told the Russians of a land beyond the sea, of driftwood floating across the ocean unlike any trees growing in Asia, of dead whales washed ashore with the harpoons of strange hunters, and most comical of all in the light of our modern knowledge about the Eskimo's tail-shaped fur coats of men wrecked on the shores of Asia who might have qualified for Darwin's missing link, inasmuch as they wore "tails."
Bobby had doubtless inherited from his unknown ancestors the peculiar mental qualities that made him a leader. From Abel he had absorbed the Eskimo's apparent contempt of danger. Abel, like all Eskimos, was a fatalist. If he was caught in a perilous position he believed that if the worst came it would be because it was to be. If he escaped unharmed, so it was to be. Therefore why be excited?
Then Kuiktuk took courage, picked up the broken ends of his matrimonial cable, and putting them together as best he could, devoutly hoped he had seen the last of the youthful lover. Now, after a year, he returned. Not only so, but he had brought others with him who might aggravate the situation; and the old Eskimo's heart was sore.
Suddenly there came the Eskimo's voice and the yapping of dogs. It was the first Blake had heard. He swung his head toward the door with a great gasp and the babiche cut like whipcord under the strain of his muscles. Swift as a flash Philip thrust the muzzle of the big Colt against his prisoner's head. "Make a sound and you're a dead man, Blake!" he warned.
We have already made reference to our young Eskimo's unusually advanced views in regard to several matters that do not often as far as we know exercise the aboriginal mind. While he stood there watching the Indians, as they silently toiled at the grave, his thoughts ran somewhat in the following groove: "Poor man!
With babiche cord he re-secured his prisoner with the "manacle-hitch," which gave him free play of one hand and arm his left. Then he secured the Eskimo's whip and gave it to Blake. "Now drive!" he commanded. "Straight for the Coppermine, and by the shortest cut. This is as much your race as mine now, Blake. The moment I see a sign of anything wrong you're a dead man!"
Meanwhile Adolay, who had not herself much faith in her mother's advocacy of the poor Eskimo's cause, resolved upon a separate course of action. Throwing a blanket over her head and shoulders, she started for the place where Cheenbuk stood, scornfully regarding the little boys who surrounded and insulted him by flourishing knives and hatchets close to his defenceless nose.
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.
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