“Oh, dry up!” burst out the second officer. “Don’t care if you are mate, you’re an old croaker. Ain’t nothin’ to do with the puss. You know’s well as any one glaciers is always calving in summer.”
Cap’n Pem’s eyes opened in wonder and he stared speechless at Mr. Kemp. Twice he opened his mouth as if about to speak, but both times he failed. At last, shaking his grizzled head dolefully, he turned and walked away.
Soon the schooner was again under way, chugging out of the fiord under her own power. Once more in the open sea, she heeled to the wind and bore northward for Disko Bay. As she came in sight of Disko Island, passing close to the many islets at the bay’s mouth, the boys were enthusiastic over the beauty of the scene. Presently they caught sight of a little cluster of huts and tents before which a row of kayaks were drawn upon the beach.
Before the Narwhal’s anchor plunged overboard the schooner was surrounded by the little bobbing skin canoes. To the boys’ joy they saw that these Eskimos were clad in skins and were exactly like the pictures they had always seen of these people. The Eskimo hands on the schooner greeted them with yells and chattered rapidly with them. Presently the newcomers were scrambling on to the Narwhal’s deck. But at close quarters these Greenland Eskimos proved as greasy and filthy as those the boys had seen at Hebron.
“I never saw such dirty people!” exclaimed Tom as he edged away from the ill-smelling crowd.
“Don’t be expectin’ of ’em to be nothin’ else, do ye?” said Cap’n Pem. “How the Sam Hill they goin’ fer to keep clean? Reckon ye’d be a mite dirty if all the fresh water ye had fer to bathe in wuz melted snow.”
“But I should think they’d all be sick and die,” said Jim. “Why, they must live exactly like pigs.”
“Shure thin’, ain’t pigs the hilthiest av’ cr’atures!” exclaimed Mike.
But later, when, the boys went ashore, they found much of interest, despite the odors and the dirty inhabitants. They saw fat-faced Eskimo women, their hair done up in big greasy topknots, industriously chewing skins to cure them. They saw others carrying their bright-eyed little kiddies in the pouchlike hoods on their backs. They peered into the smoky reindeer skin tents and saw the soapstone lamps with their wicks of moss floating in oil. They saw the men carving walrus tusks into weapons and utensils, and they watched a couple of boys as they broke a dog team to harness. The Eskimos seemed very friendly and good-natured, and when Tom uttered an exclamation of surprise as a boy lashed out with his rawhide whip and deftly flipped the ear of a surly dog a dozen feet distant, the young Eskimo grinned broadly and said something in his own tongue.