The Professor probably did not understand the word, but he understood perfectly their wishes, and under Hopkins’ admonition stepped forward, and started a harangue. Nothing that had preceded was so likely to ruin our discretion as the scene made by this overture of the Professor’s. Hopkins was compelled to grovel on the ground to suppress his merriment, but this ruse was interpreted fortunately as an expression of reverence for the words or voice of our leader, and his explosions reduced by this means to a subterranean titter were further alleviatingly considered as a phase of weeping.
The Professor was a sight. Not any part of his attire was whole, and his boots were devoid of toes and rent along the soles. He was dirtier, I think, than any one of us, as his ablutions had been less regular, so far as regularity was the appropriation of an opportunity once a month, and he had been torn and bruised and scratched, and had a most despondent expression of hoodlumism. His hands alone were presentable; I have referred to his sensitiveness over his hands. And his hair! It was a bright red, and it had grown profusely, and, exulting in some untamed inclination to revert to savagery, had grown outward in a stiff jungle that now flamed around his ingratiating physiognomy like some angry halo. Under the stress of his nervousness and—his periods, he flourished his hands and shook his head, and this immensely increased the gap between his grandiloquence and his humiliating appearance. It was side splitting.
And then increasing the ludicrousness of it all almost insufferably, was the close attention of the people, and the absurdly critical demeanor and deliberation of the philosophers. Certainly nobody understood a word of what the Professor said and yet they listened with bent heads, devouring eyes, and a mute satisfaction impossible to describe. And the Professor, flattered or deceived by the thrilling effect he was producing, fired off his lingo at a greater speed, with a screaming voice (he probably thought that if he yelled he would be better understood), and more tumultuous gestures. The combination was more unutterably funny than our predicament was possibly grave. Hopkins was unable to raise his head. I heard him groaning, “Such a bizness. Choke him off.” I was compelled to hide my head in my hands and allow my convulsions to go for what they were worth as emotional signals of despair. Goritz, a grave man, lately a fiercely obsessed man, deliberately turned his back and stuck his fingers in his ears.
And this was some of the Professor’s sonorous patter:
“My friends you are amazed to see us, but we have come from the great (hands pressed together) world beyond your continent to find YOU (emphasized by two pointing index fingers). We knew you were here (an ascending shout), and we knew you lived in a world of wonders (miscellaneous flourishes of both hands over his head), and enchantments, scientific miracles (a prolonged crescendo) of which we wish to know more. Do not feel astonished at our appearance (an inclusive sweep of the right arm); we have traveled over the polar sea, over mountain ranges, through a desert; we have crossed the steaming chasm that encircles your country (hands and arms in descriptive attitudes, and constantly moving). We have essayed the impossible (another shout), and we have accomplished it (sudden drop into a growling bass); we have,” etc., etc., etc., for at least ten minutes, with the people positively hypnotized, so it seemed, by his clamorous chatter.
The absurdity of this address was to us evident enough, and yet it was just the kind of demonstration on our part which impressed them. The Professor’s style was valorous and friendly and noisy, and the effect of his rattling appeal was propitious. There would have been real danger for us, I believe now, had they discovered how we had rifled the tree temples. That might have roused their worst hatred and made our position perilous.
Suddenly the benignant looking leader clapped his hands together, and then put one over his mouth, and the Professor wisely took the hint and subsided. There was an animated colloquy begun among the other chiefs and legislators, and we all listened intently, I especially, for it became a stronger and stronger conviction that these dignitaries spoke a strain of Hebrew, to me not at all understandable, and yet approaching my own Hebrew vocabulary, but masked or distorted by their peculiar nasality and squeakiness.
The discussion grew vehement, and the little doctors attained a degree of excitement that threw them into violent gesticulations, their heads dancing with their vigorous utterances, their beards wagging, and their arms and hands flung around in elucidations that seemed never to convince anyone. Well, the upshot of it all was that an order was given to take us in custody, which we were made to comprehend by very expressive signs, and the order was accompanied by a lot of gracious grimace, deprecatory bowing and apologetic shrugs, whose burden of significance we understood to be that an escort would take us to the conveniences we needed—a bath, renewed clothing, food, rest, shelter, etc.—while the procession would pursue its ceremonial transit, which we very well saw was a state occasion connected with their religion and involving perhaps a long journey consuming weeks for its completion. I wondered whether they would discover our thievery, and felt convinced that if they did our sojourn amongst them would be less pleasant.
After some confusion and distracting running to and fro, all of which had quite a civilized aspect from the self-importance of the little actors, and the typical uncertainty and contradiction of orders, we were finally dispatched with an escort or guard of Eskimo men, led by a chief or captain who had received from the council a budget of directions and injunctions, and who, as Hopkins put it, “had rather soured on the job” which would deprive him of the emotional reflexes of the religious revival—surely a sort of vast national picnic.
By this time the spaces around us were jammed tight with people, the little folk and the bulky Eskimos crowding together and picturesquely intermingled; multitudes were leaping into the trees and climbing out on the branches, so that we were literally in a defile of the strangers, whose drums and cymbals were now silent, and who, passive and almost motionless, gazed at us with a fixed wonder that robbed their faces of all expression.