Red Rooney: The Last of the Crew by R. M. Ballantyne (free e books to read .txt) 📕

of the lies that would have to be taken in, but Ujarak’s vanity rendered him invulnerable to such light shafts. After glaring round with impressive solemnity, so as to deepen the silence and intensify the expectation, he began:—

“It was about the time when the ravens lay their eggs and the small birds appear. My torngak had told me to go out on the ice, far over the sea in a certain direction where I should find a great berg with many white peaks mounting up to the very sky. There, he said, I should find what I was to do. It was blowing hard at the time; also snowing and freezing. I did not wish to go, but an angekok must go forward and fear nothing when his torngak points the way. Therefore I went.”

“Took no food? no sleigh? no dogs?” asked Okiok in surprise.

“No. When it is a man’s duty to obey, he must not think of small things. It is the business of a wise man to do or to die.”

There was such an air of stern grandeur about Ujarak as he gave utterance to this high-flown sentiment, that a murmur of approval burst from his believers, who formed decidedly the greater part of the revellers, and Okiok hid his diminished head in the breast of his coat to conceal his laughter.

“I had no food with me—only my walrus spear and line,” continued the wizard. “Many times I was swept off my feet by the violence of the gale, and once I was carried with such force towards a mass of upheaved ice that I expected to be dashed against it and killed, but just as this was about to happen the—”

“Torngak helped—eh?” interrupted Okiok, with a simple look.

“No; torngaks never help while we are above ground. They only advise, and leave it to the angekok’s wisdom and courage to do the rest,” retorted the wizard, who, although roused to wrath by these interruptions of Okiok, felt that his character would be damaged if he allowed the slightest appearance of it to escape him.

“When, as I said, I was about to be hurled against the berg of ice, the wind seemed to bear me up. No doubt it was a long hollow at the foot of the ice that sent the wind upwards, but my mind was quick. Instead of resisting the impulse, I made a bound, and went up into the air and over the berg. It was a very low one,” added the wizard, as a reply to some exclamations of extreme surprise—not unmingled with doubt—from some of his audience.

“After that,” continued Ujarak, “the air cleared a little, and I could see a short way around me, as I scudded on. Small bergs were on every side of me. There were many white foxes crouching in the lee of these for shelter. Among them I noticed some white bears. Becoming tired of thus scudding before the wind, I made a dash to one side, to get under the shelter of a small berg and take rest. Through the driving snow I could see the figure of a man crouching there before me. I ran to him, and grasped his coat to check my speed. He stood up—oh, so high! It was not a man,” (the wizard deepened his voice, and slowed here)—“it—was—a—white—bear!”

Huks and groans burst at this point from the audience, who were covered with the perspiration of anxiety, which would have been cold if the place had not been so warm.

“I turned and ran,” continued the angekok; “the bear followed. We came to a small hummock of ice. I doubled round it. The bear went past—like one of Arbalik’s arrows—sitting on its haunches, and trying to stop itself in vain, for the wind carried it on like an oomiak with the sail spread. When the bear stopped, it turned back, and soon came up with me, for I had doubled, and was by that time running nearly against the wind. Then my courage rose! I resolved to face the monster with my walrus spear. It was a desperate venture, but it was my duty. Just then the snow partly ceased, and I could see a berg with sloping sides. ‘Perhaps I may find a point of vantage there that I have not on the flat ice,’ I thought, and away I ran for the sloping berg. It was rugged and broken. Among its masses I managed to dodge the bear till I got to the top. Here I resolved to stand and meet my foe, but as I stood I saw that the other side of the berg had been partly melted by the sun. It was a clear steep slope from the top to the bottom. The bear was scrambling up, foaming in its fury, with its eyes glaring like living lamps, and its red mouth a-gape. Another thought came to me—I have been quick of thought from my birth! Just as the bear was rising to the attack, I sat down on the slope, and flew rather than slid to the bottom. It was an awful plunge! I almost shut my eyes in horror—but—but—kept them open. At the bottom there was a curve like a frozen wave. I left the top of this curve and finished the descent in the air. The crash at the end was awful, but I survived it. There was no time for thought. I looked back. The bear, as I expected, had watched me in amazement, and was preparing to follow—for bears, you know, fear nothing. It sat down at the top of the slope, and stuck its claws well into the ice in front of it. I ran back to the foot of the slope to meet it. Its claws lost hold, and it came down thundering, like a huge round stone from a mountain side. I stood, and, measuring exactly its line of descent, stuck the butt of my spear into the ice with the point sloping upwards. Then I retired to see the end, for I did not dare to stand near to it. It happened as I had wished: the bear came straight on my spear. The point went in at the breast-bone, and came out at the small of the back; but the bear was not checked. It went on, taking the spear along with it, and sending out streams of blood like the spouts of a dying whale. When at last it ceased to roll, it lay stretched out upon the ice—dead!”

The wizard paused, and looked round. There was a deep-drawn sigh, as if the audience had been relieved from a severe strain of attention. And so they had; and the wizard accepted that involuntary sigh as an evidence of the success of his effort to amuse.

“How big was that bear?” asked Ippegoo, gazing on his master with a look of envious admiration.

“How big?” repeated Ujarak; “oh, as big—far bigger than—than—the—biggest bear I have ever seen.”

“Oh, then it was an invisible bear, was it?” asked Okiok in surprise.

“How? What do you mean?” demanded the wizard, with an air of what was meant for grave contempt.

“If it was bigger than the biggest bear you have ever seen,” replied Okiok, with a stupid look; “then you could not have seen it, because, you know, it could not well be bigger than itself.”

“Huk! that’s true,” exclaimed one, while others laughed heartily, for Eskimos dearly love a little banter.

“Boh! ba! boo!” exclaimed Simek, after a sudden guffaw; “that’s not equal to what I did to the walrus. Did I ever tell it you, friends?—but never mind whether I did or not. I’ll tell it to our guest the Kablunet now.”

The jovial hunter was moved to this voluntary and abrupt offer of a story by his desire to prevent anything like angry feeling arising between Okiok and the wizard. Of course the company, as well as Rooney, greeted the proposal with pleasure, for although Simek did not often tell of his own exploits, and made no pretension to be a graphic story-teller, they all knew that whatever he undertook he did passably well, while his irrepressible good-humour and hilarity threw a sort of halo round all that he said.

“Well, my friends, it was a terrible business!”

Simek paused, and looked round on the company with a solemn stare, which produced a smothered laugh—in some cases a little shriek of delight—for every one, except the wizard himself, recognised in the look and manner an imitation of Ujarak.

“A dreadful business,” continued Simek; “but I got over it, as you shall hear. I too have a torngak. You need not laugh, my friends. It is true. He is only a little one, however—about so high, (holding up his thumb), and he never visits me except at night. One night he came to me, as I was lying on my back, gazing through a hole in the roof at our departed friends dancing in the sky. (See note.) He sat down on the bridge of my nose, and looked at me. I looked at him. Then he changed his position, sat down on my chin, and looked at me over my nose. Then he spoke.

“‘Do you know White-bear Bay?’ he asked.

“‘Know it?’ said I—‘do I know my own mother?’

“‘What answer is that?’ he said in surprise.

“Then I remembered that torngaks—especially little ones—don’t understand jokes, nothing but simple speech; so I laughed.

“‘Don’t laugh,’ he said, ‘your breath is strong.’ And that was true; besides, I had a bad cold at the time, so I advised him to get off my chin, for if I happened to cough he might fall in and be swallowed before I could prevent it.

“‘Tell me,’ said he, with a frown, ‘do you know White-bear Bay?’

“‘Yes!’ said I, in a shout that made him stagger.

“‘Go there,’ said he, ‘and you shall see a great walrus, as big as one of the boats of the women. Kill it.’

“The cold getting bad at that moment, I gave a tremendous sneeze, which blew my torngak away—”

A shriek of delight, especially from the children, interrupted Simek at this point. Little Tumbler, who still sat on Rooney’s knee, was the last to recover gravity, and little Pussi, who still nestled beside Nunaga, nearly rolled on the floor from sympathy.

Before the story could be resumed, one of the women announced that a favourite dish which had been for some time preparing was ready. The desire for that dish proving stronger than the desire for the story, the company, including Simek, set to work on it with as much gusto as if they had eaten nothing for hours past!

Note. Such is the Eskimo notion of the Aurora Borealis.