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"Now, then, Angut, what is the next thing to be done?" asked Rooney, after Ippegoo had left. "Make Ujarak fight his duel," said Angut. "What! the singing duel with Okiok?" "Yes. The people have set their hearts on the thing, and Ujarak will try to escape. He will perhaps say that his torngak has told him to go hunting to-morrow. But our customs require him to keep his word.
But our angekoks believe in torngaks, familiar spirits, which they say meet and talk with them. There is no torngak. It is a lie." "But you believe in one great and good Spirit, don't you?" asked the seaman, with a serious look. "Yes; I believe in One," returned the Eskimo in a low voice, "One who made me, and all things, and who must be good."
His self-esteem, however, was somewhat compensated by the fact that he should be the bearer of such wonderful news to his people, and by the consideration that he could say his torngak had told him of the arrival of the Kablunet an assertion which they would believe all the more readily that he had left home with some mysterious statements that something wonderful was likely to be discovered.
"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."
Observing the fresh skin in a corner, and one or two ribs, he bolted the bite, and said "O yes. My torngak is kind; he tells me many things without being asked. He said to me two days ago, `Okiok is a clever man. Though all the people are starving just now, he has killed a seal and a bear." "Can torngaks make mistakes?" asked Okiok, with a puzzled look.
White men, he said, showed no respect for Torngak, and it was quite reasonable, therefore, that Torngak should resent it and wish not only to destroy the white men, but punish the innuit who gave the kablunok shelter or assistance. If this were the case they could only hope for relief after first driving Bob from their camp.
His own account to the missionaries, was as follows: "My parents told me, that their familiar spirit, or Torngak, lived in the water; if I wished to consult him, I must call upon him, as the spirit of my parents, to come forth out of the water, and remember this token, that I should observe, in some part of the house, a vapour ascending, soon after which, the spirit would appear, and grant what I asked.
He paused for a moment or two, to let his tissue of lies have full effect, but the very matter-of-fact leader took advantage of the pause to ask how it was that if he, Ujarak, had been told by his torngak of the coming of the trading party, he had failed to tell his tribe not to go on a hunting expedition, but to await their arrival.
But some Eskimos, not less than many civilised people, are deeply imbued with superstition, and the bare idea of an invisible torngak pursuing her to the death in the possibility of which she and Nunaga more or less believed was too much for her. In fear and trembling she made up her mind to be silent, and submit to her fate. It need scarcely be added, so did her more timid companion.
"Did your torngak tell you that he was a Kablunet?" asked Okiok simply so simply that there was no room for Ujarak to take offence. "No; my eyes told me that." "I did not know that you had ever seen a Kablunet," returned the other, with a look of surprise. "Nor have I. But have I not often heard them described by the men of the south? and has not my torngak showed them to me in dreams?"
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