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I need scarcely add that the voyage was a prosperous one, and that the brightest day in it all was that on which we found the boat, with our dear little Edith, beset among the ice near the entrance to Ungava Bay." While Frank was thus occupied in narrating the events of his long journey in the hall of Fort Chimo, Oolibuck was similarly employed in entertaining the men.
Jumping hastily up, Stanley ran to the fort, and bidding his wife and child keep out of sight, put two pair of pistols in his pockets and returned to the beach, where he found Oolibuck gazing at the approaching flotilla with intense eagerness. "Well, Oolibuck, here come your countrymen at last," said Stanley. "Do they look friendly, think you?"
Meanwhile, Stanley went down and stepped into the midst of one of the oomiaks, with a few beads and trinkets in his hands; and while Oolibuck entertained the men on shore, he presented gifts to the women, who received them with the most childish demonstrations of joy. There was something irresistibly comic in the childlike simplicity of these poor natives.
In the midst of all this, Mrs Stanley rushed out of the house, followed by Edith, in great terror at the unearthly sounds that had reached her ears; but on seeing her husband and Oolibuck laughing in the midst of the grotesque group, her fears vanished, and she stood an amused spectator of the scene.
"Please, sir, the net him set," shouted Oolibuck from the shore to his master, who floated in the bay at the distance of a hundred yards, busily engaged with the sounding-line. On receiving this piece of information, Stanley ran the canoe on the beach, and said to his follower
"I will not weary you just now," continued Frank, "with the details of my subsequent journeying, as, although full of incidents, nothing of a very thrilling character occurred except once. At Moose I remained till the rivers were clear of ice, and then set off into the interior of the country with a small canoe and five men, Oolibuck being bowsman.
The men had all been dispatched into the mountains in various directions, some to fish, others to shoot; and none were left at the fort except its commandant with his wife and child, and Oolibuck the Esquimau.
"Now I want you, lads, to get everything in readiness for an immediate start," continued Stanley, glancing upwards at the sky; "if the weather holds, we shan't be long off paying your friends a visit. Are both canoes repaired?" "Yes, sir, they is," replied Oolibuck. "And the baggage, is it laid out? And " "Pardon, monsieur," interrupted Massan, walking up, and touching his cap.
By this time Frank and some of the men had joined the group on the shore, and as it was getting late Stanley commanded silence. "Tell them I have somewhat to say to them, Oolibuck." The interpreter's remark instantly produced a dead silence. "Now ask them if they are glad to hear that we are going to stay to trade with them."
"Oolibuck, I have been thinking much about that river which we saw yesterday, off the mouth of this one; and I cannot help fearing that the ship will run into it, instead of into this, for the land is very deceptive." "Me t'ink dat is true," answered the Esquimau, with a look of grave perplexity. "If de ship go into dat riv'r he t'ink we no arrive, and so he go 'way, and we all starve!"
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