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Updated: June 26, 2025
"Will Ujarak carry a message from the Kablunet to his village?" asked Rooney, turning to the wizard. "He will," replied the latter somewhat sulkily. "Does he know the angekok named Angut?" It is doubtful whether anger or surprise was most strongly expressed in the countenance of the Eskimo as he replied sternly, "Yes."
It was not so much that Angut's presence was commanding or noble, as that his grave expression, broad forehead, and earnest gaze suggested the idea of a man of profound thought. The angekok who had been so graphically described to him by Okiok at once recurred to Rooney's mind. Turning to his host, he said, with a bland expression "I suppose this is your friend Angut, the angekok?"
"I cannot tell you that," replied the wizard, "because I have not consulted my torngak about him." It must be explained here that each angekok has a private spirit, or familiar, whose business it is to enlighten him on all points, and conduct him on his occasional visits to the land of spirits. This familiar is styled his "torngak."
"Ippegoo, I have work of more importance for you to do than spearing birds work that requires the wisdom of a young angekok." All Ujarak's backhanders vanished before this confidential remark, and the poor tool began to feel as if he were growing taller and broader even as he walked. "You know the hut of Okiok?" continued the wizard. "Yes; under the ice-topped cliff." "Well, Angut is there.
For a moment or two the leader of the band thought of pursuit, but seeing at a glance that none of his teams were equal to that of Ujarak, and feeling, perhaps, that it might be dangerous to pursue an angekok, he gave up the idea, and resumed his northward route.
So also we may feel or understand the Great Spirit when we look at the growing flowers, and hear the moving winds, and behold the shining stars, and feel the beating of our own hearts. I'm not much of a wise man, an angekok which they would call scholar in my country but I know enough to believe that it is only `the fool who has said in his heart, There is no Great Spirit."
"Now, you must know," said Okiok, after explaining all this, "what puzzles me is, that Ujarak intends to alter the customs at the beginning of the affair. Ippegoo is to be made an angekok to-night, and to be let off all the fasting and hard thinking and fits. If I believed in these things at all, I should think him only a half-made angekok.
Was he strong and a great Angekok? and much more of the same kind. In a week the disease broke out among the children at the mission, and soon word came from islands and fjords where the Eskimos were fishing, of death and misery unspeakable. It was virgin soil for the plague, and it was terribly virulent, striking down young and old in every tent and hut.
Soon they come to a frightful vacuity a sort of vasty deep over which is suspended a narrow wheel, which whirls round with great rapidity. This awful abyss is bridged by a rope, and guarded by seal sentinels. Taking the angekok by the hand, his torngak leads him on the rope over the chasm and past the sentinels into the palace of the Fury.
"I could see that, even if I had not the double sight of the angekok," replied the other, with a touch of sarcasm, for Eskimos, although by no means addicted to quarrelling, are very fond of satire. They are also prone to go straight to the point in conversation, and although fond of similes and figurative language, they seldom indulge in bombast.
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