"Oh, I guess you will stand it!" laughed Kit. "But, Raed, if I were you, I wouldn't show quite so much of my righteous indignation. You want your supper as well as the rest of us."
"No doubt."
"Well, honestly, old fellow, I could not see any better way to get it for you."
"Well, I hoped never to eat a supper procured by slave-labor."
"You won't notice any great difference in the taste, I dare say," replied Wade.
Donovan was preparing splints from the old thwart, and covering them with the blubber in the arch. Ten or a dozen of the Esquimaux were looking on. When he struck a match on his sleeve, exclamations of wonder broke out. Matches were a novelty with them. From their strange looks, and glances toward each other, we concluded that they took us to be either great saints, or devils; most likely the latter, from the way we had previously deported ourselves. The eggs were fried, and eaten with a sprinkling of salt. A fire of seal-blubber was probably a very extravagant luxury in the eyes of our Husky subjects. They had no fire while we were with them, save their flickering stone lamps. Yet the use of cooked food seemed not to be wholly unknown among them. On several occasions we saw them boiling, or at least parboiling, a duck in a stone kettle over five or six of their lamps set together. They often gave food cooked in this way to their young children, and in cases where any of their number are sick. If wood were plenty, they would doubtless soon come to relish it best; since it is undoubtedly the scarcity of wood which has driven them to raw food.
Whatever we did,—in our cooking, eating, and in all our movements,—we were sure of a curious and admiring crowd. There were, in all, thirty-seven of the Esquimaux on the island,—nine men and eleven women, adults: the remaining seventeen ranged from one to eighteen years apparently. So far as we could learn, they kept little or no record of their ages. One man, whom they called Shug-la-wina, seemed to exercise a sort of authority over the rest; but whether it was from any hereditary claim to power, or simply from the fact that he was rather larger in stature than the others, was not very clear. Another, the little dark chap whom Donovan had punished for his snappishness, was almost continually slapping and cuffing the rest about. His name was Twee-gock. Besides Wutchee and Wunchee, there were, of the girls, one named Coonee,—a very laughing little creature,—and another called Iglooee ("hut-keeper" or "house-keeper"). Neither of these was so large nor so handsome as Wutchee or Wunchee. The last two were Kit and Wade's favorites.
They were quaint little creatures, just about four feet and a half in height; chubby, and rather fleshy; and would have weighed rising a hundred pounds, probably. Their faces were rather larger in proportion than our American girls, rounder and flatter; noses inclined to the pug order; eyes black, and pretty well drawn up at the inner corners; cheek-bones rather high, though their flesh prevented them from appearing disagreeably prominent; mouths large, showing large white teeth; ears big enough to hear well; hair black, straight, and occasionally pugged up behind; complexion swarthy, though, in their case, tolerably clear; feet very small; and hands sizable. Add to this description an ever-genial, pleased expression of countenance, with considerable sprightliness of manner dashed with something like naïveté; then picture them in trousers and jackets, with their hoods, and those irresistibly comical "tails,"—and you have Wutchee and Wunchee, the belles of our island kingdom.
After our supper of eggs, of which they soon brought as many as seven or eight dozen, Raed proposed that we should take a look at the interior of some of their huts. So, leaving the two sailors with Guard on sentinel duty, we went along to the hut belonging to Shug-la-wina, and by signs expressed our desire to go in. He pulled aside the flap in front, and we stepped under. The tent-frame was of small sticks of the yellow pine, with a straight ridge-pole. Over the frame was thrown a covering of cured seal-skin or walrus-skin. A stone lamp, suspended by seal-skin thongs, hung at the farther end. It was burning feebly. The wick seemed to be of long fibers of moss. The lamp itself was simply an open bowl hollowed out of a stone, about the size of a two-quart measure. The oil was the fat of seals or walruses. On one side there was a quantity of fox-skins and bear-skins thrown down promiscuously. Upon these reclined Shug-la-wina's wife Took-la-pok and his daughter Iglooee. Kit made them a present of three pins each. On the other side of the hut there was stowed a sledge, with runners of bone firmly lashed together with thongs. On it was a stone pot, hollowed, like the lamp, out of a large stone. Several harpoons stood in the farther corner. A coil of thong lay on the sledge; also two whips with short handles of bone, but exceedingly long lashes,—not less than fifteen or twenty feet in length. There were lying about half a dozen tusks of the walrus, and, on a low stone shelf, a hundred-weight or more of seal-pork. We were turning to go out, when Wade pointed to the end of a bow and the heads of two arrows protruding from under the furs. Kit took them up; but Shug-la-wina very gravely took them from his hands, and returned them to their hiding-place. The bow was of some dark bone, I thought,—possibly whalebone; the bow-string of sinew; and the arrows of wood, but provided with rough iron heads. The sight of these iron heads surprised us a little, as well as the discovery in another hut of an English case-knife. That knife, doubtless, had a history. On going out, Wade took up one of the bear-skins, and pointed off to our tent.
"Abb," replied the Esquimau, nodding.