Boats at last!—only the boats of native Indians, but they came with friendly intentions.
So they committed the bodies of their late comrades to the deep, and, embarking with the Indians, were rowed on shore to a new land. Frank was in a sad way: he was carried to the hut of a chief; medicine men were sent for to look upon him and administer to him herbs strangely compounded, and wise old squaws uttered their spells over his prostrate form; but it was the nursing he received, after all, from Chisholm and Fred that at last brought him round.
Their fare while they lived among the Indians was very poor of its kind; but then, a gift-horse should not be looked in the mouth. These poor people gave them a portion of all they possessed, and they gave it, too, with right good will. Captain Anderson could speak their language—a kind of Yack patois—and held many long conversations with the chief—a great man in the estimation of the tribe, and in reality a true man, although only a savage. Anderson held him spell-bound, as he told of some of the strange cities and countries there were in the world. He liked to hear the captain talk, and still, from the sinister look and incredulous smile on his face as he listened, you could see that he thought the narrator was drawing largely on his imagination.
It was very kind of this chief to invite the captain, our heroes, and the survivors of the melancholy shipwreck to stay with him for the rest of their lives.
“Blubber,” he said, “would never fail them; salt fish and seal’s flesh could always be had in abundance, with now and then a bit of a whale as a treat. Then they could take them wives from the daughters of his people, and the smoke from their wigwams would ascend for ever.”
It was a pretty picture, Anderson allowed; but—there is no accounting for taste; he loved his own home in England better.
“Then in that case,” said Kit Chak—and here spoke the noble savage—“I and my brother will guide you through the great forest to Inchboon, where lies a Danish whaler. The journey will take us one moon.”
One moon!—nearly thirty days. It was a fearful undertaking; but what will not men do for home and country? So all preparations were made for the march, and in three days they were ready to start.