United States or Northern Mariana Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The other half had passed under the torture. Only Subienkow remained, or Subienkow and Big Ivan, if that whimpering, moaning thing in the snow could be called Big Ivan. Subienkow caught Yakaga grinning at him. There was no gainsaying Yakaga. The mark of the lash was still on his face. After all, Subienkow could not blame him, but he disliked the thought of what Yakaga would do to him.
Subienkow did not waste time in gathering the ingredients for his medicine, he selected whatsoever came to hand such as spruce needles, the inner bark of the willow, a strip of birch bark, and a quantity of moss- berries, which he made the hunters dig up for him from beneath the snow. A few frozen roots completed his supply, and he led the way back to camp.
"He is not yet dead," he announced, flinging the bloody trophy in the snow at the Pole's feet. "Also, it is a good finger, because it is large." Subienkow dropped it into the fire under the pot and began to sing. It was a French love-song that with great solemnity he sang into the brew. "Without these words I utter into it, the medicine is worthless," he explained.
The chief's voice, abruptly breaking the silence, startled him "It shall be done," said Makamuk. "The girl shall go down the river with you. But be it understood that I myself strike the three blows with the axe on your neck." "But each time I shall put on the medicine," Subienkow answered, with a show of ill-concealed anxiety. "You shall put the medicine on between each blow.
Makamuk and Yakaga crouched beside him, noting the quantities and kinds of the ingredients he dropped into the pot of boiling water. "You must be careful that the moss-berries go in first," he explained. "And oh, yes, one other thing the finger of a man. Here, Yakaga, let me cut off your finger." But Yakaga put his hands behind him and scowled. "Just a small finger," Subienkow pleaded.
But at last came the whisper that gave Subienkow courage. In the east lay a great river where were these blue- eyed men. The river was called the Yukon. South of Michaelovski Redoubt emptied another great river which the Russians knew as the Kwikpak. These two rivers were one, ran the whisper. Subienkow returned to Michaelovski. For a year he urged an expedition up the Kwikpak.
The men had finished handling the giant and turned him over to the women. That they exceeded the fiendishness of the men, the man's cries attested. Subienkow looked on, and shuddered. He was not afraid to die. He had carried his life too long in his hands, on that weary trail from Warsaw to Nulato, to shudder at mere dying. But he objected to the torture. It offended his soul.
Here, at this time, the tribes assembled for barter; here were to be found spotted deerskins from Siberia, ivory from the Diomedes, walrus skins from the shores of the Arctic, strange stone lamps, passing in trade from tribe to tribe, no one knew whence, and, once, a hunting-knife of English make; and here, Subienkow knew, was the school in which to learn geography.
"Finish him, and then we will make the test. Here, you, Yakaga, see that his noise ceases." While this was being done, Subienkow turned to Makamuk. "And remember, you are to strike hard. This is not baby-work. Here, take the axe and strike the log, so that I can see you strike like a man." Makamuk obeyed, striking twice, precisely and with vigour, cutting out a large chip. "It is well."
Subienkow urged to go farther. But he quickly reconciled himself to Nulato. The long winter was coming on. It would be better to wait. Early the following summer, when the ice was gone, he would disappear up the Kwikpak and work his way to the Hudson Bay Company's posts. Malakoff had never heard the whisper that the Kwikpak was the Yukon, and Subienkow did not tell him.
Word Of The Day