The Walrus Hunters: A Romance of the Realms of Ice

Ridiculous though the two girls might have looked in our eyes, in those of their companions they only seemed peculiar and interesting, for the step between the sublime and ridiculous is altogether relative, in Eskimo-land as elsewhere. There was no opportunity, however, to dwell long in contemplation of any new thing, for the discoveries came thick and fast. Cowlik had barely succeeded in pulling the ear-pieces of the sou’-wester well down, and tying the strings under her fat chin, when a tremendous clanking was heard, as of some heavy creature approaching the cabin door. Cheenbuk dropped forward the point of his spear, and Nazinred kept his gun handy. Not that they were actually alarmed, of course, but they felt that in such unusual circumstances the least they could do was to be ready for whatever might befall—or turn up.

A moment later and Aglootook stalked into the cabin, his legs encased in a pair of fishermen’s sea-boots, so large that they seemed quite to diminish his natural proportions.

In all their discoveries, however, they did not find a single scrap of any kind of food. It was quite clear that the poor fellows had held by the ship as long as provisions lasted, in the hope, no doubt, that they might ultimately succeed in working their way out of the ice, and then, when inevitable starvation stared them in the face, they had tried to escape in their boats, but without success—at least in one case, though how many boats had thus left to undertake the forlorn hope of storming the strongholds of the polar seas it was impossible to tell.

On the second night, as the Eskimos sat in their igloe at supper talking over the events of the day, Nazinred asked Cheenbuk what he intended to do—

“For,” said he, “it is not possible to take back with us on one sledge more than a small part of the many good things that we have found.”

“The man-of-the-woods is right,” interposed the magician; “he is wise. One sledge cannot carry much. I told you that we were sure to find something. Was I not right? Have we not found it? My advice now is that we go back with as much as we can carry, and return with four or five sledges—or even more,—and take home all that it is possible to collect.”

“Aglootook is always full of knowledge and wisdom,” remarked Cheenbuk, as he drove his powerful teeth into a tough bear-steak, and struggled with it for some moments before continuing his remarks; “but—but—ha! he does not quite see through an iceberg. I will— (Give me another, Nootka, with more fat on it),—I will go back, as he wisely advises, with as much as the sledge will carry, and will return not only with four or five sledges, but with all the sledges we have got, and all the dogs, and all the men and women and children—even to the smallest babe that wears no clothes and lives in its mother’s hood, and sucks blubber. The whole tribe shall come here and live here, and make use of the good things that have fallen in our way, till the time of open water draws near. Then we will drive to the place where we have left our kayaks and oomiaks, some of us will go to Waruskeek, and some to pay a visit to the Fire-spouters at Whale River.—Give me another lump, Nootka. The last was a little one, and I am hungry.”

The grandeur of Cheenbuk’s plan, as compared with Aglootook’s suggestion, was so great that the poor magician collapsed.

Anteek looked at him. Then he covered his young face with his hands and bent his head forward upon his knees. It was too early for going to rest. The boy might have been sleeping, but there was a slight heaving of the young shoulders which was not suggestive of repose.

Later on in the evening, while Nazinred was enjoying his pipe, and the Eskimos were looking on in unspeakable admiration, Cheenbuk remembered that the last time he quitted the ship he had left his spear behind him.

“I’ll go and fetch it,” said Anteek, who possessed that amiable and utterly delightful nature which offers to oblige, or do a service, without waiting to be asked. In a few minutes he was out upon the ice on his errand. Soon he gained the snow staircase, and, running up, made his way to the cabin where the spear had been left.

Now it chanced that a polar bear, attracted perhaps by the odour of cooked food, had wandered near to the ship and observed the young Eskimo ascend. Polar bears are not timid. On the contrary, they are usually full of courage. They are also full of curiosity. The night was clear, and when that bear saw the youth go up the stair, it immediately went to the place to inspect it. Courage and caution are not necessarily antagonistic. On arriving at the foot of the stair it paused to paw and otherwise examine it. Then it began to ascend slowly, as if doubtful of consequences.

Now, if it were not for coincidences a great many of the extraordinary events of this life would never have happened. For instance—but the instances are so numerous that it may be well not to begin them. It happened that just as the bear began to ascend the snow staircase Anteek with the spear in his hand began to ascend the companion-ladder. But the chief point of the coincidence lay here—that just as the bear reached the top of the stair the boy reached the very same spot, and next moment the two stood face to face within four feet of each other.

We will not go into the irrelevant question which was the more surprised. Anteek at once uttered a yell, compounded of courage, despair, ferocity, horror, and other ingredients, which startled into wild confusion all the echoes of the cliffs. The bear opened its mouth as if to reply, and the boy instantly rammed the spear into it.

He could not have done anything worse, except run away, for a bear’s mouth is tough. Happily, however, the monster was standing in a very upright position, and the violence of the thrust sent him off his balance. He fell backwards down the stair, and came on the ice with an astounding crash that doubled him up and crushed all the wind out of his lungs in a bursting roar.

Fortunately his great weight caused the destruction of five or six of the lower steps, so that when he rose and tried viciously to re-ascend, he was unable to do so.

Of course the uproar brought the men on shore to the rescue, and while the bear was making furious attempts to reconstruct the broken staircase, Nazinred went close up and put a bullet in its brain.

Chapter Twenty Eight.

The Ship Re-visited and Re-explored

Cheenbuk’s plan was afterwards fully carried out. On the return of the party with all their wonderful news and wealth of old iron, the greatest excitement prevailed in the tribe, and the persons composing the expedition became heroes and heroines for the time being. Each member formed a centre of attraction and a subject of cross-examination to its own particular relatives and friends.

In the igloe of Aglootook was assembled, perhaps, one of the most surprised, if not one of the most credulous, of the gatherings—for the magician had a strong hold on the imagination of the greater number of his tribe, and a wonderful power of oratory. His wife in particular idolised him, which said much for his amiability, and his only sister worshipped him, which spoke volumes for her gullibility.

“Yes,” he exclaimed, gazing round on the circle of his admirers; “I said from the first that this would be a wonderful trip, and that we would be sure to find something. And did we not find it?”

(Vigorous assent by look and voice from the audience.)

“And,” he continued, with a lowered voice and solemn look, “if Cheenbuk had not turned to the left when I told him, we never would have found it.”

“But what was it like?” asked an elderly man with a squat-nose, whose mind was not quite clear, although he had already listened to an elaborate description.

“Like? Ho! it was like—like—”

“Like a big kayak?” remarked some one.

“No, no. Far, far bigger,” said the magician, making an imbecile attempt to indicate inconceivable size by waving arms and outspread fingers; “it was—as big—as—as—”

“A whale?” suggested Squat-nose.

“Bigger—Bigger!” said Aglootook, with a lost look in his eyes. “You could stuff twenty igloes into it; and there were three great poles rising out of it as thick as—as me, with other poles across them, low down and high up, and walrus-lines hanging about in all directions, some as thick as my wrist, others as thin as my finger, and strange igloes inside of it—not of snow, but of wood—with all kinds of things you could think of in there; and things that—that—you could not think of even if you were to try—that nobody ever thought of since the world began—wonderful!”

This seemed to fairly take away the breath of the audience, for they could only glare and remain dumb. For a few moments they breathed hard, then Squat-nose said in a deep whisper—

“Go on.”

Aglootook did go on, and kept going on so long that his audience were forced to go off and assuage the pangs of hunger which prolonged abstinence and mental excitement at last rendered unendurable. But no sooner was appetite appeased than the magician and his hearers returned to the subject with redoubled energy.

“Is it very, very far away?” asked Aglootook’s wife, with a sigh, when he explained to her the wonders of the mirror.

“Yes, a long, long way, and some of the ice is very rough for the dogs.”

“Not too far for some of us to go and return before the open water?” Squat-nose ventured to hope.

“Plenty of time,” returned Aglootook, with a patronising smile. “In fact I advised Cheenbuk to start away back as fast as possible with many sledges, so that my woman will see it with her own eyes.”

“And me too?” exclaimed the sister, bringing her palms together with a smack.

“And you too. I advised Cheenbuk to take the whole tribe there to stay till the time of open water, and he agreed. Cheenbuk is a wise young man: he always takes my advice.”

The subject of this eulogium was meanwhile giving a graphic and much more truthful account of the expedition to Adolay, Mangivik, his mother, and a select circle of friends; yet, although he did his best, like Aglootook, to convey an adequate impression of what they had seen, we make bold to say that the utmost power of language in the one, and of imagination in the other, failed to fill the minds of those unsophisticated natives with a just conception of the truth.

But they did succeed in filling most of their hearts with an unconquerable desire to go and see for themselves, so that no difficulty was experienced in persuading the whole tribe—men, women, children, and dogs—to consent to a general migration.

Even Anteek held his court that night in the tent of old Uleeta.

Since the death of Gartok Anteek had shown much sympathy with that poor old woman. Ill-natured people, (for there are such in Eskimo-land), said that sympathy with young Uleeta had something to do with his frequent visits to the tent. Well, and why not? The sympathy was not the less sincere that it was extended to both.

Anyhow, a large circle of juvenile admirers of both sexes assembled under the snow roof to hear the young lecturer, and we are inclined to think that his discourse was quite as instructive and interesting as the narratives of his seniors. He did not exaggerate anything, for Anteek was essentially truthful in spirit. Nothing would induce him to lie or to give a false impression if he could help it, but the vivid play of his fancy and the sparkling flow of his young imagination were such that he kept his audience in a constant ripple of amusement and fever of anticipation. He was particularly strong on Aglootook, and whatever that wily magician gained in the esteem of the adults, he certainly lost among the juveniles.

So eager were the Eskimos to see the wonderful sights that had been described to them, that they at once set about preparation for departure. On the second day after the return of the exploring party the entire village, having previously hidden away in a secure place the things already obtained from the ship, mounted their sledges and commenced their journey amid much noise and glee in the direction of what was to them the far east.

It is needless, and would be tedious, to carry the patient reader a second time over the same ground. Suffice it to say that when they reached the spot, and were introduced to the white man’s “Big kayak,” they felt disposed to echo the words of the Queen of Sheba, and exclaim that half had not been told them—not even although that huge humbug Aglootook had told them a great deal too much!

New circumstances are apt to engender new conditions in savage as well as civilised life. It is scarcely credible what an amount of hitherto latent vanity was evoked by that mirror in the cabin, and that too in the most unlikely characters. Mangivik, for instance, spent much of his time the first few days in admiring his grey locks in the glass. And old Uleeta, although one of the plainest of the tribe, seemed never to tire of looking at herself. Squat-nose, also, was prone to stand in front of that mirror, making hideous faces at himself and laughing violently; but there is reason to believe that it was not vanity which influenced him so much as a philosophical desire to ascertain the cause of his own ugliness! Aglootook likewise wasted much of his valuable time before it.

A new sense of shame was by this means developed among these natives, as well as the power to blush; because after people had been interrupted frequently in this act of self-admiration, they were laughed at, and the constant recurrence of this laughter aroused a feeling of indignation, at the same time a tendency to hop away and pretend interest in other things! Squat-nose never did this. All his actions were open as the day—of course we mean the summer day,—and he would sometimes invite an intruder to come and have a look at his reflection, as if it were a treat. Hence our opinion of his motive.

Not so the magician. The very way he stood, and moved about, and frowned at his double, betrayed his state of mind, while the sensitive way in which he started off to gaze out at the stern windows or have a look at the swinging barometer showed his feeling of guilt when caught in the act. Anteek soon found this out, and was wont to lie in wait so as to catch him in the act suddenly and with exasperating frequency.

After the first excitement of arrival was over, the Eskimos built igloes on the shore and settled down to dismantle the vessel and take possession of her stores, and of all that could be of use to them. They built an elongated oval igloe on the shore as a store to receive the lighter and, as they esteemed them, more valuable articles. Among these were included all the axes, hoop-iron, and other pieces of manageable metal that could be easily carried. There were also numbers of tin cans, iron pots, cups, glass tumblers, earthenware plates, and other things of the kind, which were esteemed a most valuable possession by people whose ordinary domestic furniture consisted chiefly of seal-skin bowls and shallow stone dishes.