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The store of seal-blubber ran low early in April, and all hands kept a sharp look-out for seals. On April 15 several seals were seen and killed. The operations of killing and skinning made worse the greasy and blackened clothes of the men.
We had now only forty days' food left, and the lack of blubber was being keenly felt. All our suet was used up, so we used seal-blubber to fry the meat in. Once we were used to its fishy taste we enjoyed it; in fact, like Oliver Twist, we wanted more. On Leap Year day, February 29, we held a special celebration, more to cheer the men up than for anything else.
It contains about thirty or forty Indian families, who are scattered along four or five miles of the shore. They are very much secluded from the rest of Chiloe, and have scarcely any sort of commerce, except sometimes in a little oil, which they get from seal-blubber. They are tolerably dressed in clothes of their own manufacture, and they have plenty to eat.
Instead of giving the bear a shock, he tore off a small bit of seal-blubber from the mass at his side, which he dropped into its mouth. It swallowed that morsel with satisfaction, and waited for more. Benjy gave it more. Still it wanted more. "You shall have it, my boy," said Benjy, whose eyes assumed that peculiar glare of glee which always presaged some desperate intention.
Meanwhile, however, we were busying ourselves to satisfy their wants, and it was not long before the savages were as full as they could hold. It was a curious sight to see them eat. They would put one end of a great chunk of meat in the mouth, and, holding tight to the other end, they would cut it off close up to the lips. Our seal-blubber they treated in the same way.
An' you know there's bound t' be loads of Eskimos, 'cause they'd rather see a dog race than eat a seal-blubber banquet." "That's so; but Spot is good friends with all the natives 'round town, an' he's stronger'n Queen, an' wouldn't leave the trail for anything but snowbirds or rabbits, so he'd hold 'er down.
"Just glance at your draggled skirts, for instance. Look at those three-cornered tears. And such a waist! It would not require a Sherlock Holmes to deduce that you have been cooking over a camp-fire, to say nothing of trying out seal-blubber. And to cap it all, that cap! And all that is the woman who wrote 'A Kiss Endured."
At the mouth of the bay they were joined by the Esquimaux of False River, who were carrying supplies of seal-blubber to the fort for the use of the dogs in winter, and a few deerskins to trade. On that day an unusually successful deer-hunt had taken place, and the fiddle had, as Bryan expressed it, been "sarved out" to the men, for the purpose of rejoicing their hearts with sweet sounds.
"Yes," continued the sailor; "they had lands, more or less some of them, at least and some of them had money; but you must know, Okiok, that however much a Kablunet may have, he always wants more." "Is he never content?" asked the Eskimo. "Never; at least not often." "Wonderful!" exclaimed Okiok; "when I am stuffed with seal-blubber as full as I can hold, I want nothing more."
"We think a good deal of strenuousness," objected the bishop. "Have you not noticed that whenever anything, however fantastic, is imposed upon men by physical forces, they straightway make a god of it? That is why you deify strenuousness. You dare not forgo it. The Eskimo doubtless deifies seal-blubber; he could not survive without it.
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