“What you do with bad mans?” asked Rob.
“Plenty shoot-um!” answered the chief, sternly, slapping the stock of his gun. “Him steal! Him steal dis! Steal-um nogock! All time my peoples no get-um whale. Him steal-um nogock!”
Rob was puzzled.
“Now what in the world do you suppose he means?” asked he of John. “And what is that thing he’s got?”
The chief was holding up a strange-looking object in his hand—a short, dark-colored, tapering stick, with hand-holes and finger-grips cut into the lower end, and with a long groove running toward the small end, which was finished with an ivory tip.
“I saw that thing in the boat,” said John. “That must be what he means by nogock. I don’t see how they would kill a whale with it, though, or anything else.”
The chief evidently understood their ignorance. With a smile he fitted to the groove of the short stick the shaft of a short harpoon, whose head, about a foot and a half in length, they now discovered to be made of thin, dark slate, ground sharp on each edge and at the point. When the chief had fitted the butt of this dart against the ivory tip, he grasped the lower end of the nogock firmly in his hand, steadying the shaft in the groove with one finger. He then drew this back, with his arm at full length above his head, and made a motion as though to throw the harpoon. In short, the boys now had an excellent chance to see one of the oldest aboriginal inventions—the throwing-stick, used from Australia to Siberia by various tribes in one form or another. As they themselves had sometimes thrown a crab-apple from a stick in their younger days in the States, they could readily see that the greater length added to the arm gave greater leverage and power.
“I’ll bet he could make that old thing whiz,” muttered John. “Still, I don’t see how he could hurt a whale with it.”
None of them knew at that time anything about the native Aleut method of whale-killing. Neither did they know that the nogock, or whale-killing weapon, is a sacred object in the native villages, where it is always kept in the charge of the headman, or leader in the whale-hunts, who wraps it up carefully and hides it from view. The Aleuts never allow the women of their villages to look at the nogock, saying that it brings bad luck for any one to look at it or touch it except the chief himself. Therefore, had the boys known that their prisoner had stolen this sacred object, as well as the bidarka and much of its cargo, they would better have understood the nature of this pursuit and the intentness of the Aleut chief to punish the offender, who had been guilty of a crime held, in their eyes, to be as bad or worse than murder.
Not, however, understanding all these things, and being very well disposed toward their captive, who had been of such service to them, the boys were not willing to turn him over at once to these people whom he so evidently feared, and who with so little ado announced their intention of killing him. For the time Rob could think of nothing better than continuing the parley.