“Humpty Dumpty, as you call him, is perhaps, like yourself, an Englishman?”
“Oh, pardon me, captain, but neither Humpty nor I have the honour to be English. I am an American, sir, born and bred, and so is my mate. I don’t drawl, and I don’t ‘guess’ and ‘calculate,’ and I don’t use my nose much to talk with. Humpty does a little. But Humpty Dumpty was only a man before the mast when we became first acquainted. I’ll run up and speak to him over the side.”
“No, no,” cried the captain. “We’ll have Humpty down here for a minute.”
“What a strange name!” said Walt.
“Well, yes, but it fits him. It fits his shape and build. His real name is a deal too—a—aristocratic, don’t you call it, for him. Hampden is his surname, so I call him Humpty Dumpty for short.”
“Hullo, here he is!”
Humpty stood in the doorway, cap in hand.
He was about five feet or less in height, and in his Eskimo dress, with his tremendous breadth of shoulder, shaped somewhat like the capital letter V.
“You called me, sir?”
“Um, yes, Humpty. You are to drive back to our tribe, and tell them they must get away over the horizon again and camp there, but to return to-morrow before sunrise, because I believe these young gentlemen would like to ride in a dogsledge, and see the village of which I am king.”