The advance was stopped in a second’s time. Down dropped men and dogs, the dogs to rest and pant, the natives to pray, their heads turned sunwards.
Two figures in the tallest sledge, who were wrapped in the skins of the big ice-bear, did not descend. Yet even they bent low their heads in reverence.
“We will have no fight,” said Captain Mayne Brace. “Men who pray never fight, save in a cause that is just.”
“For all that,” said “Dr.” Wright, “look yonder!”
He was pointing northwards, where the Teelies, as the friendly natives were called, could now be seen rapidly advancing in a compact body, all armed with that terrible battle-axe, the seal-club.
They were evidently bent on intercepting the newcomers. Perhaps they knew, of old, those semi-savages from the far interior.
“Now,” said the skipper, “this affair enters on a new phase, and if we cannot intervene as peacemakers, the snow out yonder will soon be brown with blood.”
“I have it, sir,” cried bold young Wright. “Give me ten men, and I will go and meet the Teelies. I don’t want to see bloodshed, captain. I have enough on the sick-list as it is, without the addition of wounded Yaks.”
“Take your men, and off you go, Wright,” cried Mayne Brace, laughing; “but I believe you are just spoiling for a fight all the same.”
Before an Englishman could have said “Auchtermuchty” without choking, Wright and his ten merry men were over the side and away.