United States or Saudi Arabia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


"So will I," thought the boy, but he was too modest to say so. The thought had barely passed when the walrus came up with a puff and snort that might have been heard a mile off. Cheenbuk's weapon was successfully launched in a moment. So was that of Anteek, though he missed the animal's side, but hit in the neck.

He had just returned from a hunting expedition the day before, and was jealous of the interest aroused by Cheenbuk's arrival. Moreover, Cheenbuk was one of the few men of the tribe whom he disliked, and rather feared. "What folly is this that I hear?" said Aglootook, as he frowned on the assembly.

On the same evening, during a moonlight ramble, Adolay asked him to give her a little instruction in the Eskimo tongue, and, just before he retired for the night, his mother asked him if he intended to take the Indian girl as one of his wives. "You know, mother," was Cheenbuk's reply, "I have always differed from my friends about wives.

Watching her opportunity when the sentinel had just turned and was marching away from the tree, she cut, with a scalping-knife, the cord that bound Cheenbuk's right arm and placed the knife in his hand. Almost at the same moment she slipped back into the bush. Cheenbuk made no attempt, however, to free himself. The sentinel's beat was too short to permit of his doing so without being observed.

The dying Eskimo raised his eyes to Cheenbuk's face in astonishment; then he turned them to the starry host, as if he almost expected an immediate answer. "Do you think He hears us?" he asked in a faint voice, for the strength of his feelings and the effort at conversation had exhausted him greatly. "I will trust Him," answered Cheenbuk. "I will trust Him," repeated Gartok.

A few days after Cheenbuk's arrival, it was arranged by the heads of the village that there should be a general scattering of the tribe for a great hunt after seals and wild-fowl, as provisions were not so plentiful as might have been desired.

"No fear of danger," said Adolay, with a laugh, "when Magadar leads the way. Don't you see him there in front? Mother knows how to draw faces only his nose is too long." "That is to show that he is the guide," observed Nazinred. "Did you not do the very same thing yourself when you made Cheenbuk's nose far too long for the same purpose?"

"How do you know that there is `nothing' in the place where you are going?" asked Cheenbuk, simply. Gartok was silent. Probably his logical faculty told him that his own thinking, and coming to a conclusion without knowing, was as foolish in himself as in his comrades. The subject of conversation happened to be very congenial to Cheenbuk's cast of mind.

In the course of time Cheenbuk's youngsters and Nootka's progeny insisted on keeping up the intercourse that had been so auspiciously begun, and even the easy-going Cowlik became uneasy unless the fire-eating Magadar went with her occasionally to Waruskeek.

In like manner the Indian stood at first as if thunderstruck, for Cheenbuk's information had not led him to expect this. Then his wonted dignity utterly forsook him; for the first time in his life, perhaps, he expressed his feelings of affection with a shout, and, meeting the girl half-way, enfolded her in an embrace that lifted her completely off her legs.