“N’loan pes-saus, mok glint ont-aven,
Glint ont-aven, nosh morgan.”
“What on earth is that outlandish thing you’re singing, Herb?” roared Neal Farrar from the bunk, awakened by the sounds. “Give us that stave again—do!”
The guide started. He had scarcely been aware of what he was humming, and his laugh was a trifle disconcerted.
“So you’re waking up, are ye?” he said. “Tain’t time to be stirring yet; I ought to be kicked for making such a row.”
“But what’s that you were singing?” reiterated Neal. “The words weren’t English, and they had a fine sort of roll.”
“They’re Injun,” was the answer. “I guess ’twas all the talking I done last night that brung ’em into my head. I picked ’em up from that fellow I was telling you about. He’d start crooning ’em whenever he looked at the stars to find out the hour.”
“Are they about the stars?”
“I guess so. A city man, who had studied the redskins’ language a lot, told me they meant:—
‘We are the stars which sing,
We sing with our light.’”[[2]]
[2] Mr. Leland’s translation.