"See here, you 'Fifteenth Amendment'!" exclaimed the captain, turning to him: "you had better stay aboard in future."
"I tink so too, sar," said Palmleaf.
The crowd on the shore had grown larger. There could not have been much less than two hundred of them, we thought. The women and children had come. A pack of wolves could hardly have made a greater or more discordant din. We went to dinner, and, after that, lay down to rest a while; but when we went on deck again at three, P.M., the crowd was still there, in greater numbers than before.
"I wonder what they can be waiting for so long," said Wade.
There was little or no wind, or we should have weighed anchor and made off. After watching them a while longer, we went down to read. But, about four, the captain called us. We went up.
"That was what they were waiting for," said he, pointing off the starboard quarter.
About a mile below the place where the Esquimaux were collected, a whole fleet of kayaks were coming along the shore.
"Waiting for their boats," remarked the captain.
"They're coming off to us!"
"Do you suppose they really have hostile intentions?" Raed asked.