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

It was indeed a time of immense jubilation—for every one was gratified more or less—from the chief of the Moravian Brethren down to Tumbler and Pussi, who absolutely wallowed in fun and unctuous food, while Angut and Nunaga were of course supremely happy.

The wedding ceremony, performed by Hans Egede, we need hardly say, was simple, and the festivities which followed were not complex. The game at kick-ball which preceded the wedding was admittedly one of the best that had ever been played at that station, partly, no doubt, because the captain and crew of the English ship, headed by Red Rooney, took part in it.

Strange to say, the only man who seemed to be at all cast down on that occasion was Ippegoo. He was found by his mother in the evening in a retired spot by the sea, sitting on the rocks with a very disconsolate countenance.

“My son, what is the matter?”

“Mother, my heart is heavy. I cannot forget Ujarak.”

“But he treated you ill, my son.”

“Sometimes—not always. Often he was kind—and—and I loved him. I cannot help it.”

“Grieve not, Ippe,” rejoined pleasant little Kunelik. “Do we not know now that we shall meet him again in the great Fatherland?”

The poor youth was comforted. He dried his eyes, and went home with his mother. Yet he did not cease to mourn for his departed wizard friend.

We will not harrow the reader’s feelings by describing the leave-taking of the Eskimos from their friend the Kablunet. After he was gone those men of the North remained a considerable time at the settlement, listening to the missionaries as they revealed the love of God to man in Jesus Christ.

What resulted from this of course we cannot tell, but of this we are certain—that their “labour was not in vain in the Lord.” When the time comes for the Creator to reveal His plans to man, surely it will be found that no word spoken, no cup of water given, by these Danish and Moravian Christians, shall lose its appropriate reward.

When at last the northern men and their families stood on the sea-shore, with their kayaks, oomiaks and families ready, Angut stood forth, and, grasping Hans Egede by the hand, said earnestly—

“Brother, farewell till we meet again. I go now to carry the Good News to my kindred who dwell where the ice-mountains cover the land and sea.”

But what of the Kablunet? Shall we permit him to slip quietly through our fingers, and disappear? Nay, verily.

He reached England. He crossed over to Ireland. There, in a well-remembered cottage-home, he found a blooming “widow,” who discovered to her inexpressible joy that she was still a wife! He found six children, who had grown so tremendously out of all remembrance that their faces seemed like a faint but familiar dream, which had to be dreamed over again a good deal and studied much, before the attainment by the seaman of a satisfactory state of mind. And, last, he found a little old woman with wrinkled brow and toothless gums, who looked at and listened to him with benignant wonder, and whose visage reminded him powerfully of another little old woman who dwelt in the land of ice and snow where he used to be known as the Kablunet.

This Kablunet—alias Ridroonee,—now regretfully makes his bow and exit from our little stage as Red Rooney, the Last of the Crew.