And now, with the apparent certainty of reaching our homes, came that nervous apprehension which follows upon hope long deferred. I could not trust myself to take the outside passage, but timidly sought the quiet-water channels running deep into the archipelago which forms a sort of labyrinth along the coast.
Thus it was that at one of our sleeping-halts upon the rocks—for we still adhered to the old routine—Petersen awoke me with a story. He had just seen and recognised a native, who, in his frail kayack, was evidently seeking eider-down among the islands. The man had once been an inmate of his family. “Paul Zacharias, don’t you know me? I’m Carl Petersen!” “No,” said the man; “his wife says he’s dead;” and, with a stolid expression of wonder, he stared for a moment at the long beard that loomed at him through the fog, and paddled away with all the energy of fright.
Two days after this, a mist had settled down upon the islands which embayed us, and when it lifted we found ourselves rowing, in lazy time, under the shadow of Karkamoot. Just then a familiar sound came to us over the water. We had often listened to the screeching of the gulls or the bark of the fox, and mistaken it for the “Huk” of the Esquimaux; but this had about it an inflection not to be mistaken, for it died away in the familiar cadence of a “halloo.”
“Listen, Petersen! oars, men!” “What is it?”—and he listened quietly at first, and then, trembling, said, in a half whisper, “Dannemarkers!”
Carlie Mossyn
By-and-by—for we must have been pulling a good half-hour—the single mast of a small shallop showed itself; and Petersen, who had been very quiet and grave, burst out into an incoherent fit of crying, only relieved by broken exclamations of mingled Danish and English. “Tis the Upernavik oil-boat! The Fraulein Flaischer! Carlie Mossyn, the cooper, must be on his road to Kingatok for blubber.”
It was Carlie Mossyn, sure enough. The quiet routine of a Danish settlement is the same, year after year, and Petersen had hit upon the exact state of things. The Mariane was at Proven, and Carlie Mossyn had come up in the Fraulein Flaischer to get the year’s supply of blubber from Kingatok.
Here we first got our cloudy, vague idea of what had passed in the big world during our absence. The friction of its fierce rotation had not much disturbed this little outpost of civilisation, and we thought it a sort of blunder as he told us that France and England were leagued with the Mussulman against the Greek Church. He was a good Lutheran, this assistant cooper, and all news with him had a theological complexion.
“What of America, eh, Petersen?”—and we all looked, waiting for him to interpret the answer.
“America?” said Carlie; “we don’t know much of that country here, for they have no whalers on the coast; but a steamer and a barque passed up a fortnight ago, and have gone out into the ice to seek your party.”