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He sank down with a sigh of relief, as one who finishes a journey long and perilous. The fire crackled and the sparks flew gaily. Kaviak sat there in the red glow, dressed only in a shirt, staring with incredulous, mournful eyes at the Farva who had Then, as Mac made no sign, he sighed again, and held out two little shaky hands to the blaze.
Kaviak drew a breath with a catch in it, looked round, and began as firmly as ever: "Weh! eh! eh!" "Sh sh!" The Boy clapped his hands, and lugubriously intoned: "'Dey's de badger and de bah, En de funny lil hah, En de active lil flea, En de lil armadillah Dat sleeps widouter pillah, An dey all gottah mate but me ee ee! "Farva!" Kaviak gasped. "Say, do a nigger breakdown," solicited Potts.
He shouldered Potts out of his way, and while the talk and movement went on all round Maudie's throne, Mac, ignoring her, set forth grimly how, after an awful row with Potts, he had adventured with Kaviak to Holy Cross.
"Reckon our dogs are gettin' into trouble," said Salmon P. anxiously to his deaf and crippled partner. "It's nothing," says the Trader. "A Siwash dog of any spirit is always trailing his coat"; and Salmon P. subsided. Not so Kaviak. Back to the door, head up, he listened. They had observed the oddity before. The melancholy note of the Mahlemeut never yet had failed to stir his sombre little soul.
Kaviak understood the look at least, and smiled back, grew suddenly grave, intent, looked sharply round, loosed his hold of the Colonel, bent down, and retired behind the bed. That was where Nig was. Their foregathering added nothing to the tranquility of the occasion, and both were driven forth by Maudie. Potts read the Colonel his letters, and helped him to sign a couple of cheques.
It was the best place from which to keep a strict eye on the cook. "The gintlemin don't feel conversaytional wid a pint o' surrup in his inside." "I tell you he'd be currled up with colic if he " "Well," said O'Flynn hopefully, "bide a bit. He ain't lookin' very brash." "Come here." Kaviak got up a second time, but with less alacrity. "Have you got a pain?" He stared. "Does it hurt you there?"
He bustled away to harness the dogs. The white men were staring up at the sky. "What's goin' on in heaven, Father? S'pose you call this the Aurora Borealis hey?" "Yes," said the priest; "and finer than we often get it. We are not far enough north for the great displays." He went in to put on his parki. Mac, after looking out, had shut the door and stayed behind with Kaviak.
If he hadn't got snared in his trailing coat he would have won that race. When the two hunters had captured Kaviak, and shut him indoors, they acted on his implied suggestion that the fish-trap ought to be examined. They chopped away the fresh-formed ice. Empty, as usual.
It was that kind of addition to the general gloom that, at first, would fire O'Flynn to raise his own spirits, at least, by roaring out an Irish ditty. But this was seldomer as time went on. Even Jimmie's brogue suffered, and grew less robust. In a depressed sort of way Mac was openly teaching Kaviak his letters, and surreptitiously, down in the Little Cabin, his prayers.
"Keep the rest of it to roast, anyhow, or O'Flynn's heart will be broken." So they deprived Kaviak of the gnawed fragment, and consoled him by helping him to put on his new boots. When the Little Cabin contingent came in to breakfast, "Hello! what you got up on the roof?" says Potts. "Foot of earth and three feet o' snow!" "But what's in the bundle!" "Bundle?" echoes the Boy.
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