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Updated: May 25, 2025
The chief was holding up a strange-looking object in his hand a short, dark-colored, tapering stick, with hand-holes and finger-grips cut into the lower end, and with a long groove running toward the small end, which was finished with an ivory tip. "I saw that thing in the boat," said John. "That must be what he means by nogock.
Neither did they know that the nogock, or whale-killing weapon, is a sacred object in the native villages, where it is always kept in the charge of the headman, or leader in the whale-hunts, who wraps it up carefully and hides it from view.
When the chief had fitted the butt of this dart against the ivory tip, he grasped the lower end of the nogock firmly in his hand, steadying the shaft in the groove with one finger. He then drew this back, with his arm at full length above his head, and made a motion as though to throw the harpoon.
No one made any attempt to pursue the whale after that. The chief, carefully wiping off the sacred nogock, again wrapped it up in its coverings, made some mysterious passes over it, and restored it to its place in his bidarka, whence, as Rob now began to understand, the guilty Jimmy had some time since stolen it.
With his own paddle in his left hand clinched against the rim of the bidarka hatch, the chief with his right hand slowly and deliberately raised the nogock and its slate-tipped harpoon. His arm, extended at full length and quite rigid, passed now in a straight line above his head and slightly back of his shoulder.
The other boats held back until the chief had taken his place at the head of the procession. It now became plain that his was the task of using the mysterious nogock, over whose loss he had seemed so concerned. Even as his bidarka shot forward with its own momentum, he drew out from the forward hatch this sacred instrument and fitted to it the short harpoon.
The Aleuts never allow the women of their villages to look at the nogock, saying that it brings bad luck for any one to look at it or touch it except the chief himself.
"What you do with bad mans?" asked Rob. "Plenty shoot-um!" answered the chief, sternly, slapping the stock of his gun. "Him steal! Him steal dis! Steal-um nogock! All time my peoples no get-um whale. Him steal-um nogock!" Rob was puzzled. "Now what in the world do you suppose he means?" asked he of John. "And what is that thing he's got?"
Having completed these ceremonies, he placed the nogock and harpoon crosswise on the deck in front of him and bent again to his paddle. Rob himself, no bad canoeman, had meantime been paddling as though he quite understood what was expected of him.
Rob, intent on all these matters, saw the native's thumb and fingers whiten in the intensity of their grip on the butt of the nogock; yet the middle finger lay light and gentle, just holding in place the slender shaft of the harpoon, whose slate head, blue and cold, extended down and in front of the throwing hand.
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