Red Rooney by Robert Michael Ballantyne (best sci fi novels of all time txt) 📕

dance upon, and the glorious sunshine to call back the feathered tribes, to open the lovely flowers, to melt the hard ice, and gladden all the land? Yes, he knew well what "change" meant, though it never occurred to him to connect all this with a Creator who changes not. In this respect he resembled his master.

"Besides," continued the wizard in a more confidential tone, which invariably had the effect of drawing the poor youth's heart towards him, "I cannot make whom I will an angekok. It is my torngak who settles that; I have only to obey. Now, what I want you to do is to become very solemn in your manner and speech from this moment till the deed is finished. Will you remember?"

Ippegoo hesitated a moment. He felt just then so unusually solemn that he had difficulty in conceiving it possible to become more so, but remembering the change that was about to take place, he said brightly, "Yes, I'll remember."

"You see," continued his instructor, "we must get people to suppose that you are troubled by a spirit of some sort--"

"Oh! only to suppose it," cried Ippegoo hopefully. "Then I'm not _really_ to be troubled with a spirit?"

"Of course you are, foolish man. But don't you understand people must see that you are, else how are they to know it?"

Ippegoo thought that if he was really to be troubled in that way, the only difficulty would be to prevent people from knowing it, but observing that his master was getting angry, he wisely held his tongue, and listened with earnest attention while Ujarak related the details of the ordeal through which he was about to pass.

At the time this conversation was being held in the sea-green cave, Okiok, rising from his lair with a prodigious yawn, said to his wife--

"Nuna, I go to see Kunelik."

"And what may ye-a-o-u---my husband want with the mother of Ippegoo?" asked Nuna sleepily, but without moving.

"I want to ye-a-o-u---ask about her son."

"Ye-a-a-o-o-u!" exclaimed Nuna, turning on her other side; "go, then," and she collapsed.

Seeing that his wife was unfit just then to enter into conversation, Okiok got up, accomplished what little toilet he deemed necessary in half a minute, and took his way to the hut of Ippegoo's mother.

It is not usual in Eskimo land to indulge in ceremonious salutation. Okiok was naturally a straightforward and brusque man. It will not therefore surprise any one to be told that he began his interview with--

"Kunelik, your son Ippegoo is a lanky fool!"

"He is," assented Kunelik, with quiet good-humour.

"He has given himself," continued Okiok, "spirit and body, to that villain Ujarak."

"He has," assented Kunelik again.

"Where is he now?"

"I do not know."

"But me knows," said a small sweet little child-voice from the midst of a bundle of furs.

It was the voice of Pussi. That Eskimo atom had been so overcome with sleep at the breaking up of the festivities of the previous night that she was unable to distinguish between those whom she loved and those for whom she cared not. In these circumstances, she had seized the first motherly tail that came within her reach, and followed it home. It chanced to belong to Kunelik, so she dropped down and slept beside her.

"_You_ know, my dear little seal?" said Okiok in surprise.

"Yes, me knows. When I was 'sleep, a big man comes an' stump on my toes--not much, only a leetle. Dat wokes me, an' I see Ujiyak. He shooks Ip'goo an' bose hoed out degidder."

Okiok looked at Kunelik, Kunelik looked at Okiok, and both gravely shook their heads.

Before they could resume the conversation, Ippegoo's voice was heard outside asking if his mother was in.

"Go," said Kunelik; "though he is a fool, he is wise enough to hold his tongue when any one but me is near."

Okiok took the hint, rose at once, and went out, passing the youth as he entered, and being much struck with the lugubrious solemnity of his visage.

"Mother," said Ippegoo, sitting down on a skin beside the pleasant little woman, "it comes."

"What comes, my son?"

"I know not."

"If you know not, how do you know that it comes?" asked Kunelik, who was slightly alarmed by the wild manner and unusual, almost dreadful, gravity of her boy.

"It is useless to ask me, mother. I do not understand. My mind cannot take it in, but--but--it comes."

"Yes; when is it coming?" asked Kunelik, who knew well how to humour him.

"How can I tell? I--I think it has come _now_," said the youth, growing paler, or rather greener; "I think I feel it in my breast. Ujarak said the torngak would come to-day, and to-night I am to _be--changed_!"

"Oho!" exclaimed Kunelik, with a slight touch of asperity, "it's a torngak that is to come, is it? and Ujarak says so? Don't you know, Ippe, that Ujarak is an idiot!"

"Mother!" exclaimed the youth remonstratively, "Ujarak an idiot? Impossible! He is to make me an angekok to-night."

"You, Ippe! You are not more fit for an angekok than I am for a seal-hunter."

"Yes, true; but I am to _be--changed_!" returned the youth, with a bright look; then remembering that his _role_ was solemnity, he dropped the corners of his mouth, elongated his visage, turned up his eyes, and groaned.

"Have you the stomach twist, my boy?" asked his mother tenderly.

"No; but I suppose I--I--am changing."

"No, you are not, Ippe. I have seen many angekoks made. There will be no change till you have gone through the customs, so make your mind easy, and have something to eat."

The youth, having had no breakfast, was ravenously hungry, and as the process of feeding would not necessarily interfere with solemnity, he agreed to the proposal with his accustomed look of satisfaction--which, however, he suddenly nipped in the bud. Then, setting-to with an expression that might have indicated the woes of a lifetime, he made a hearty breakfast.

Thereafter he kept moving about the village all day in absolute silence, and with a profound gloom on his face, by which the risibility of some was tickled, while not a few were more or less awe-stricken.

It soon began to be rumoured that Ippegoo was the angekok-elect. In the afternoon Ujarak returned from a visit, as he said, to the nether world, and with his brother wizards--for there were several in the tribe-- confirmed the rumour.

As evening approached, Rooney entered Okiok's hut. No one was at home except Nuna and Tumbler. The latter was playing, as usual, with his little friend Pussi. The goodwife was busy over the cooking-lamp.

"Where is your husband, Nuna?" asked the sailor, sitting down on a walrus skull.

"Out after seals."

"And Nunaga?"

"Visiting the mother of Arbalik."

The seaman looked thoughtfully at the lamp-smoke for a few moments.

"She is a hard woman, that mother of Arbalik," he said.

"Issek is not so hard as she looks," returned Mrs Okiok; "her voice is rough, but her heart is soft."

"I'm glad to hear you speak well of her," said Rooney, "for I don't like to think ill of any one if I can help it; but sometimes I can't help it. Now, there's your angekok Ujarak: I cannot think well of him. Have you a good word to say in his favour?"

"No, not one. He is bad through and through--from the skin to the bone. I know him well," said Nuna, with a flourish of her cooking-stick that almost overturned the lamp.

"But you may be mistaken," remarked Rooney, smiling. "You are mistaken even in the matter of his body, to say nothing of his spirit."

"How so?" asked Nuna quickly.

"You said he is bad through and through. From skin to bone is not through and through. To be quite correct, you must go from skin to marrow."

Nuna acknowledged this by violently plunging her cooking-stick into the pot.

"Well now, Nuna," continued Rooney, in a confidential tone, "tell me--"

At that moment he was interrupted by the entrance of the master of the mansion, who quietly sat down on another skull close to his friend.

"I was just going to ask your wife, Okiok, what she and you think of this business of making an angekok of poor Ippegoo," said Rooney.

"We think it is like a seal with its tail where its head should be, its skin in its stomach, and all its bones outside; all nonsense-- foolishness," answered Okiok, with more of indignation in his look and tone than he was wont to display.

"Then you don't believe in angekoks?" asked Rooney.

"No," replied the Eskimo earnestly; "I don't. I think they are clever scoundrels--clever fools. And more, I don't believe in torngaks or any other spirits."

"In that you are wrong," said Rooney. "There is one great and good Spirit, who made and rules the universe."

"I'm not sure of that," returned the Eskimo, with a somewhat dogged and perplexed look, that showed the subject was not quite new to him. "I never saw, or heard, or tasted, or smelt, or felt a spirit. How can I know anything about it?"

"Do you believe in your own spirit, Okiok?"

"Yes, I must. I cannot help it. I am like other men. When a man dies there is something gone out of him. It must be his spirit."

"Then you believe in other men's spirits as well as your own spirit," said Rooney, "though you have never seen, heard, tasted, smelt, or felt them?"

For a moment the Eskimo was puzzled. Then suddenly his countenance brightened.

"But I _have_ felt my own," he cried. "I have felt it moving within me, so that it made me _act_. My legs and arms and brain would not go into action if they were dead, if the spirit had gone out of them."

"In the very same way," replied the seaman, "you may _feel_ the Great Spirit, for your own spirit could not go into action so as to cause your body to act unless a greater Spirit had given it life. So also we may feel or understand the Great Spirit when we look at the growing flowers, and hear the moving winds, and behold the shining stars, and feel the beating of our own hearts. I'm not much of a wise man, an angekok-- which they would call _scholar_ in my country--but I know enough to believe that it is only `the fool who has said in his heart, There is no Great Spirit.'"

"There is something in what you say," returned the Eskimo, as the lines of unusually intense thought wrinkled his brow; "but for all that you say, I think there are no torngaks, and that Ujarak is a liar as well as a fool."

"I agree with you, Okiok, because I think you have good reason for your disbelief. In the first place, it is well-known that Ujarak is a liar, but that is not enough, for liar though he be, he _sometimes_ tells the truth. Then, in the second place, he is