While they knew the captain was looking after their safety, it galled the two boys to think that their sled trips must be chaperoned by a native and that they were being treated like “tenderfeet,” as Tom put it. But as they looked at the enormous shaggy skin—twelve feet from nose to tail—and thought how it would look upon the polished floor of the house in Fair Haven, all else was forgotten in their pride at having secured such a trophy, and their hearts beat more quickly as vivid memories of their narrow escape from such a terrible death came to them.
CHAPTER XIV
AN ARCTIC CHRISTMAS
Although the boys’ fathers had painted a picture of long and dreary months in the Arctic with the ship frozen in, and only the whalemen and Eskimos for company, the boys found it far from dull.
To be sure there were many days when snowstorms raged and the wind howled, and no one stirred from the long house on the deck. But even then there were things to amuse and interest the boys. A number of the native Eskimos were usually there, as well as those from Hebron, and the two lots of tribesmen were never tired of holding competitions of skill or strength. Gathered in a circle about the contestants, the whalemen and the boys would clap and applaud, shout encouragement and roar with laughter as the stocky natives struggled and strained in friendly, good-natured contests. Often a prize of tobacco, knives, clothes, or hatchets would be offered to the winner.
Many of the contests were wonderfully novel and amusing and sometimes the two boys would try their hands at them, much to the merriment of the assembled men.
One game which was a favorite with the Eskimos was a sort of tug of war. Kneeling on the deck with heads close together, the competitors would have their friends tie their necks together by a rope or thong, and then, at a signal, would strain and tug and heave, each trying his utmost to drag the other over a chalk line on the deck. Evidently there was a knack in it, aside from strength of neck muscles; for very often the smaller and weaker man would win. The boys after one or two trials decided this was too strenuous a contest.
Another game consisted of two Eskimos locking arms and legs together while perched on a third man’s back, and then trying to see who could dismount the other. Hard bumps and thumps always resulted, but the men’s heads were well padded with their mops of coarse black hair, and they always rose grinning and as good-natured as ever.