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So we cut the tops of our moccasins in strips, and boiled them half of the night, that we might chew them and swallow them. And in the morning we talked of our chance. The next cache was five days' journey; we could not make it. We must find game. "We will go forth and hunt," he said. "Yes," said I, "we will go forth and hunt." 'And he ruled that Unga stay by the fire and save her strength.
Then, our knees shaking with lack of food, and a sickness in our bellies, and our hearts chugging close to our mouths, we climbed the mighty wall for the last time and turned our faces to the back trip. 'The last stretch we dragged Unga between us, and we fell often, but in the end we made the cache. And lo, there was no grub.
'She laughed at me so with the hate in her eye; and she would not come. His voice died away, and he was sinking back when Malemute Kid gripped him by the wrist and shouted, 'Who? Who would not come? 'She, Unga. She laughed, and struck at me, so, and so. And then-' 'Yes? 'And then 'And then what? 'And then he lay very still in the snow a long time.
Unga sat silent among the skins in the corner, her eyes wide, for she seemed to fear. And he with the mane of the sea lion looked upon her straight and long. Then his men came in with bundles of goods, and he piled before me wealth such as was not in all Akatan.
And they knocked our masts out of us till we dragged into the wind like a wounded gull; but he went on over the edge of the sky line he and Unga. 'What could we? The fresh hides spoke for themselves. So they took us to a Russian port, and after that to a lone country, where they set us to work in the mines to dig salt.
And the old men and the mothers of maidens told me to hurry, for even then were the hunters bidding high to the mother of Unga; and should her children grow strong before mine, mine would surely die. 'Nor did I find a maiden till one night coming back from the fishing. The sunlight was lying, so, low and full in the eyes, the wind free, and the kayacks racing with the white seas.
'Unga screamed, and she laid hold of the things of the house with her hands, till they fell all about us as he dragged her to the door. Then he took her in his great arms, and when she tore at his yellow hair laughed with a sound like that of the big bull seal in the rut. 'I crawled to the beach and called upon my people, but they were afraid.
Of a sudden the kayak of Unga came driving past me, and she looked upon me, so, with her black hair flying like a cloud of night and the spray wet on her cheek. As I say, the sunlight was full in the eyes, and I was a stripling; but somehow it was all clear, and I knew it to be the call of kind to kind.
I could see it, though he no longer spoke; and when his lips moved, they moved without sound. 'As I say, he was a great man, and my heart spoke for softness; but I read back in my life, and remembered the cold and hunger of the endless forest by the Russian seas. Besides, Unga was mine, and I had paid for her an untold price of skin and boat and bead.
Many laughed, for they thought me light of head; but sometimes old men turned my face to the light and blessed me, and the eyes of the young women grew soft as they asked me of the strange ship, and Unga, and the men of the sea. 'And in this manner, through rough seas and great storms, I came to Unalaska. There were two schooners there, but neither was the one I sought.
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