I asked Hans if he would go with us.
"Yes!"
Would he take his wife and baby.
"Yes!"
Would he go without them.
"Yes!"
RESCUE OF HANS.
Having no leisure to examine critically into the state of his mind, and having an impression that the permanent separation of husband and wife is regarded as a painful event, I gave the Esquimau mother the benefit of this conventional suspicion, and brought them both aboard, with their baby and their tent and all their household goods. The old woman and bright-eyed boy cried to be taken along; but I had no further room, and we had to leave them to the care of the remainder of the tribe, who, about twenty in number, had discovered the vessel, and came shouting gleefully over the hill. After distributing to them some useful presents, we pushed off for the schooner.
Hans was the only unconcerned person in the party. I subsequently thought that he would have been quite as well pleased had I left his wife and child to the protection of their savage kin; and had I known him as well then as, with good reason, I knew him afterward, I would not have gone out of my way to disturb his barbarous existence.
