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

felt depressed. The impossibility of his ever getting these people to understand or believe many things was forced upon him. The undisguised assurance that they looked upon him as the best liar they had ever met with was unsatisfactory.

“Besides all this, my friends,” he cried, with a feeling and air of reckless gaiety, “we have grand feasts, just as you have, and games too, and dances, and songs—”

“Songs!” shouted Simek, with an excited look; “have you songs? can you sing?”

“Well, after a fashion I can,” returned Rooney, with a modest look, “though I don’t pretend to be much of a dab at it. Are you fond o’ singin’?”

“Fond!” echoed Simek, with a gaze of enthusiasm, “I love it! I love it nearly as much as I love Pussimek; better, far, than I love blubber! Ho! sing to us, Ridroonee.”

“With all my heart,” said Rooney, starting off with all his lung-power, which was by no means slight.

“Rule Britannia,” rendered in good time, with tremendous energy, and all the additional flourishes possible, nearly drove the audience wild with delight. They had never heard anything like it before.

“That beats you, Okiok,” said Simek.

“That is true,” replied Okiok humbly.

“What! does he sing?” asked Rooney.

“Yes; he is our maker of songs, and sings a little.”

“Then he must sing to me,” cried the sailor. “In my land the man who sings last has the right to say who shall sing next. I demand a song from Okiok.”

As the company approved highly of the demand, and Okiok was quite willing, there was neither difficulty nor delay. The good-natured man began at once, with an air of humorous modesty, if we may say so.

Eskimos, as a rule, are not highly poetical in their sentiments, and their versification has not usually the grace of rhyme to render it agreeable, but Okiok was an exception to the rule, in that he could compose verses in rhyme, and was much esteemed because of this power. In a tuneful and moderate voice he sang. Of course, being rendered into English, his song necessarily loses much of its humour, but that, as every linguist knows, is unavoidable. It was Red Rooney who translated it, which will account for the slightly Hibernian tone throughout. I fear also that Rooney must have translated rather freely, but of course at this late period of the world’s history it is impossible to ascertain anything certain on the point. We therefore give the song for what it is worth.

Okiok’s Song.

I.

 

A seal once rowled upon the sea

    Beneath the shining sun,

Said I, “My friend, this very day

    Your rowlin’ days are done.”

“No, no,” said he, “that must not be,”

    (And splashed the snowy foam),

“Beneath the wave there wait for me

    A wife and six at home.”

 

II.

 

“A lie!” said I, “so you shall die!”

    I launched my whistling spear;

Right up his nose the weapon goes,

    And out behind his ear.

He looked reproachful; then he sank;

    My heart was very sore,

For down, and down, and down he went.

    I never saw him more.

 

III.

 

Then straight from out the sea arose

    A female seal and six;

“O kill us now, and let our blood

    With that of father’s mix.

We cannot hunt; we dare not beg;

    To steal we will not try;

There’s nothing now that we can do

    But blubber, burst, and die.”

 

IV.

 

They seized my kayak by the point,

    They pulled me o’er the sea,

They led me to an island lone,

    And thus they spoke to me:

“Bad man, are there not bachelors

    Both old and young to spare,

Whom you might kill, and eat your fill,

    For all the world would care?”

 

V.

 

“Why stain your weapon with the blood

    Of one whose very life

Was spent in trying to provide

    For little ones and wife?”

They paused and wept, and raised a howl.

    (The youngest only squealed).

It stirred the marrow in my bones,

    My very conscience reeled.

 

VI.

 

I fell at once upon my knees,

    I begged them to forgive;

I said I’d stay and fish for them

    As long as I should live.

“And marry me,” the widow cried;

    “I’d rather not,” said I

“But that’s a point we’d better leave

    To talk of by and by.”

 

VII.

 

I dwelt upon that island lone

    For many a wretched year,

Serving that mother seal and six

    With kayak, line, and spear.

And strange to say, the little ones

    No bigger ever grew;

But, strangest sight of all, they changed

    From grey to brilliant blue.

 

VII.

 

“O set me free! O set me free!”

    I cried in my despair,

For by enchantments unexplained

    They held and kept me there.

“I will. But promise first,” she said,

    “You’ll never more transfix

The father of a family,

    With little children six.”

 

IX.

 

“I promise!” Scarce the words had fled,

    When, far upon the sea,

Careering gaily homeward went

    My good kayak and me.

A mist rolled off my wond’ring eyes,

    I heard my Nuna scream—

Like Simek with his walrus big,

    I’d only had a dream!

The reception that this peculiar song met with was compound, though enthusiastic. As we have said, Okiok was an original genius among his people, who had never before heard the jingle of rhymes until he invented and introduced them. Besides being struck by the novelty of his verses, which greatly charmed them, they seemed to be much impressed with the wickedness of killing the father of a family; and some of the Eskimo widows then present experienced, probably for the first time in their lives, a touch of sympathy with widowed seals who happened to have large families to provide for.

But there was one member of the company whose thoughts and feelings were very differently affected by the song of this national poet—this Eskimo Burns or Byron—namely the wizard Ujarak. In a moment of reckless anger he had challenged Okiok to combat, and, knowing that they would be called on to enter the arena and measure, not swords, but intellects, on the morrow, he felt ill at ease, for he could not hope to come off victorious. If it had been the ordinary battle of wits in blank verse, he might have had some chance he thought, but with this new and telling jingle at the end of alternate lines, he knew that he must of a surety fail. This was extremely galling, because, by the union of smartness, shrewd common sense, and at times judicious silence, he had managed up to that time to maintain his supremacy among his fellows. But on this unlucky day he had been physically overcome by his rival Angut, and now there was the prospect of being intellectually beaten by Okiok.

“Strange!” thought the wizard; “I wonder if it was my intention to run away with Nunaga that brought this disgrace upon me.”

“It was,” said a voice very close to him.

The wizard looked round quickly, but no one seemed to be thinking of him.

It was the voice of Conscience. Ujarak felt uneasy, and stifled it at once. Everybody can do that without much difficulty, as the reader knows, though nobody has ever yet succeeded in killing Conscience outright. He then set himself to devise some plan for escaping from this duel. His imagination was fertile. While the revellers continued to amuse themselves with food, and song, and story, the wizard took to thinking.

No one thought his conduct strange, or sought to disturb him, for angekoks belong to a privileged class. But think as hard and as profoundly as he could, no way of escape presented itself until the evening was far advanced, and then, without an appreciable effort of thought, a door seemed to fly open, and that door was—Ippegoo.

“Yes,” thought the wizard; “that will do. Nothing could be better. I’ll make him an angekok.”

It may be needful to explain here that the creation of an angekok is a serious matter. It involves much ceremonial action on the part of him who operates, and preparation on the part of him who is operated on. Moreover, it is an important matter. When once it has been decided on, nothing can be allowed to interfere with it. All other things—save the unavoidable and urgent—must give way before it.

He would announce it that very night. He would boldly omit some of the preliminary ceremonial. The morrow would be a day of preparation. Next day would be the day of the ceremony of induction. After that it would be necessary for him to accompany the new-made wizard on his first journey to the realm of spirits. Thus the singing duel would have to be delayed. Ultimately he would manage to carry off Nunaga to the land of the southern Eskimo; thus he would be able to escape the ordeal altogether, and to laugh at Okiok and his jingling rhymes.

When he stood up and made the announcement, declaring that his torngak had told him that another angekok must be created, though who that other one was had not yet been revealed to him, there was a slight feeling of disappointment, for Eskimos dearly love a musical combat; but when he pointed out that after the ceremonies were over, the singing duel might then come off, the people became reconciled to the delay. Being by that time exhausted in body and mind, they soon after retired to rest.

Ere long oblivion brooded over the late hilarious crew, who lay down like bundles of hair in their festal garments, and the northern lights threw a flickering radiance over a scene of profound quietude and peace.