The Walrus Hunters: A Romance of the Realms of Ice by R. M. Ballantyne (books to read now .TXT) 📕

Wherever half a dozen average men are banded together and condemned to make the best of each other’s society for a prolonged period, there is apt to be a stagnation of ideas as well as of aspirations, which tends more or less to develop the physical, and to stunt the spiritual, part of our nature.

So thought MacSweenie as he sat one fine spring morning on a rude chair of his own making in front of the outpost on Great Bear Lake which he had helped to build.

The Scottish Highlander possessed a comparatively intellectual type of mind. We cannot tell precisely the reach of his soul, but it was certainly “above buttons.” The chopping of the firewood, the providing of food, the state of the weather, the prospects of the advancing spring, and the retrospect of the long dreary winter that was just vanishing from the scene, were not sufficient to appease his intellectual appetite. They sufficed, indeed, for his square, solid, easy-going, matter-of-fact interpreter, Donald Mowat; and for his chief fisherman, guide, and bowman, Bartong, as well as for his other men, but they failed to satisfy himself, and he longed with a great longing for some congenial soul with whom he might hold sweet converse on something a little higher than “buttons.”

Besides being thus unfortunate in the matter of companionship, our Highlander was not well off as to literature. He had, indeed, his Bible, and, being a man of serious mind, he found it a great resource in what was really neither more nor less than banishment from the world; but as for light literature, his entire library consisted of a volume of the voyages of Sir John Franklin, a few very old numbers of Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, and one part of that pioneer of cheap literature, The Penny Magazine. But poor MacSweenie was not satisfied to merely imbibe knowledge; he wished also to discuss it; to philosophise and to ring the changes on it.

He occasionally tried his hand on Mowat, who was undoubtedly the most advanced of his staff intellectually, but the results were not encouraging. Donald was good-natured, amiable, ready to listen and to accord unquestioning belief, but, not having at that time risen above “buttons,” he was scarcely more able to discuss than an average lamp-post.

Occupying the position of a sort of foreman, or confidential clerk, the interpreter had frequent occasion to consult his superior on the details of the establishment and trade.

“I’m thinking, sir,” said he, approaching his master on the spring morning in question, “that we may as well give the boat an overhaul, for if this weather lasts the open water will soon be upon us.”

“You are right, Tonal’,” answered the trader, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, and proceeding to refill it. “That iss just what wass in my own mind, for we must be thinkin’ about makin’ preparations for our trip to the Ukon Ruver. We will hev to start whenever my successor arrives here. Man, it will be a goot job when we are off, for I am seek—tired of this place. Wan hes nothin’ in the world to think about but his stamik, an’ that iss not intellectooal, whatever.”

“Are we to use the inch or the inch-an’-a-half nails?” asked Mowat, after a moment’s pause.

“Whichever you like, Tonal’. There iss plenty of both in the store, an’ ye are as goot a judge o’ these metters as I am myself. Just help yoursel’, man; only see that the work is done well, for there iss a rough trup before us when we do git away. An’ the load will be heavy moreover, for there will be a deal of stuff needed if we are to build an outpost fit to spend a winter in. Man, it iss pleasant to think that we will break up new ground—open up a new country among savitches that scarce knows what like a white man iss. We will feel quite like what we felt as boys when we was readin’ Robinson Crusoe.”

“We will need two pit-saws,” remarked the practical Orkney-man in a meditative tone.

“No doubt, no doubt,” returned MacSweenie, “and a grindstone too. Do you remember what that man Nazinred said when he came here on his last trup,—that the Indians about his country would be fery pleased to see traders settle among them? He little thought—an’ no more did I—that we would be so soon sent to carry out their wishes; but our Governor is an active-minded man, an’ ye never know what he’ll be at next. He’s a man of enterprise and action, that won’t let the gress grow under his feet—no, nor under the feet of anybody that he hes to do wi’. I am well pleased, whatever, that he hes ordered me on this service. An’ no doubt ye are also well pleased to go, Tonal’. It will keep your mind from gettin’ rusty.”

“I am not ill-pleased,” returned the interpreter gravely.—“I’m thinkin’ there won’t be enough o’ pitch to go over all the seams o’ the boat. I was—”

“Hoot, man! never mind the putch, Tonal’. What there iss will do fery well, an’ the boat that comes with supplies for the new post will be sure to hev plenty. By the way, I wonder if that fine man Nazinred will hev come back when we get to the Ukon River. It wass a strange notion of his the last comers told us about, to go off to seek his daughter all by himself. I hev my doubts if he’ll ever come back. Poor man! it wass naitural too that he should make a desperate attempt to get back his only bairn, but it wass not naitural that a wise man like him should go off all his lone. I’m afraid he wass a little off his head. Did they tell you what supplies he wass supposed to have taken?”

“Yes. The wife said he had a strong sled with him, an’ the best team o’ dogs in the camp.—Do you think the boat will need a new false keel? I was lookin’ at it, an’ it seemed to me rather far gone for a long trup.”

“I will go an’ hev a look at it, Tonal’. But I hev been wonderin’ that Mozwa, who seemed so fond o’ his frund, should hev let him start away all by his lone on such a trup.”

“He couldn’t help lettin’ him,” said Mowat, “for he didn’t know he was goin’ till he was gone.”

“You did not tell me that,” said the trader sharply.

“Well, perhaps I did not,” returned the interpreter, with an amiable smile. “It is not easy to remember all that an Indian says, an’ a good deal of it is not worth rememberin’.—Would you like me to set-to an’ clean up the store to-day, or let the men go on cuttin’ firewood?”

“Let them do whatever you think best, Tonal’,” replied MacSweenie, with a sigh, as he rose and re-entered his house, where he busied himself by planning and making elaborate designs for the new “fort,” or outpost, which he had been instructed to establish on the Ukon River. Afterwards he solaced himself with another pipe and another dip into the well-worn pages of the Penny Magazine.

Not long after the conversation just narrated, the boat arrived with the gentleman appointed to relieve MacSweenie of his charge on Great