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"Surely no one has taken it away," said Cheenbuk, looking round with an expression that would have sunk Doocheek through the snow into the earth if he had been there. "If any one has taken it away," said Aglootook, with a profundity of meaning in his tone that was meant to paralyse the guilty, and serve as a permanent caution to the innocent, "something awful will happen.
Far, far bigger," said the magician, making an imbecile attempt to indicate inconceivable size by waving arms and outspread fingers; "it was as big as as " "A whale?" suggested Squat-nose. "Bigger Bigger!" said Aglootook, with a lost look in his eyes.
The boy, with a mass of half-melted snow still in his hand, sprang up the ladder, scarce knowing what he did, and appeared on deck, blackened and wildly dishevelled. Aglootook was close to the opening at the moment, giving sententious directions to some little boys.
"Not every one who wishes it shall have a taste of this to-day. Only a great man of our tribe shall try it. Some one who has done great things above his fellows." He looked pointedly at Aglootook as he spoke, with solemnity on his face but mischief in his heart. Oolalik, however, with the reverse of mischief in his heart, interfered unwittingly with his designs.
Aglootook coincided with that opinion, because he had been led to the same conclusion some days before, chiefly in consequence of profound thought during the dark hours of night. "And if we don't start off now," he added at the end of a portentous oration, "no one can tell what will happen something fearful, I know, though of course it is not possible to say what."
"There is bad fortune here," said Aglootook, endeavouring to look oracular, as he came up at that moment with Anteek. "We must go far away in that direction," he added, pointing to the right, and looking at his leader with the aspect as well as the wisdom of an owl.
On beholding it Aglootook recovered some of his self-respect, and, with a look of wisdom quite inconceivable by those who have not seen it, expressed his solemn belief that they would have escaped this difficulty if they had only acted on his advice, and travelled to the right.
Be this as it may, the wholesale wedding eventually took place; the feast came off; Tonal' Mowat charmed the souls of the Eskimos with his violin, even more powerfully than he had charmed those of the Indians; and Aglootook, almost carried out of himself with delight, volunteered an oration in which he reminded his hearers that he had told them that something would certainly happen.
"It might have been a greater loss," said Nazinred, glancing towards the well-filled storehouses on shore. "That is true; but just think of what a supply of wood for spears and sledges! It would have been enough to last the lives of our children's children, if not longer." "Did I not tell you that something would happen?" said Aglootook, coming forward at that moment.
Squat-nose, also, was prone to stand in front of that mirror, making hideous faces at himself and laughing violently; but there is reason to believe that it was not vanity which influenced him so much as a philosophical desire to ascertain the cause of his own ugliness! Aglootook likewise wasted much of his valuable time before it.
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