“It is the same to the village of my kindred,” exclaimed Ujarak, getting quickly on his sledge. “I must hasten on, and so must you. Time must not be wasted.”
With a flourish of his whip, he started his team at full speed, scattering the Eskimos right and left, and scouring over the ice like the wind.
For a moment or two the leader of the band thought of pursuit, but seeing at a glance that none of his teams were equal to that of Ujarak, and feeling, perhaps, that it might be dangerous to pursue an angekok, he gave up the idea, and resumed his northward route.
For two days more the wizard continued his journey, encamping each night at sunset, eating his supper apart, making his bed of bearskins in the lee of a shrub or under the shelter of an overhanging cliff, and leaving his captives to make themselves comfortable as best they could on the sledge. This they did without difficulty, all of them being well accustomed to rough it, and having plenty of bear and deerskins to keep them warm. The dogs also contributed to this end by crowding round the party, with deep humility of expression, as close as they were allowed to come.
At the end of these two days an incident occurred which totally changed the aspect of affairs.
On the morning of the third day they started with the dawn, and drove steadily southward for a couple of hours. They had just traversed a small bay, and were close to the high cape which formed its southern extremity, when one of the bars of the sledge broke, rendering a halt necessary. Breaking the gloomy silence which he had so long maintained, the wizard spoke:
“Go,” he said, “cook some food under the cliffs there. I will mend the sledge.”
The women replied, not by words, but by the more emphatic method of at once obeying the order. Kabelaw seized and shouldered a large piece of raw seal’s flesh. Nunaga took up little Pussi with one hand, and the materials for producing fire with the other, and followed her companion. Tumbler brought up the rear, staggering under the weight of the cooking-lamp.
They had only a couple of hundred yards to go. In a few minutes Kabelaw was busy under the cliffs producing fire, in the usual Eskimo fashion with two pieces of dry wood, while her friend set up the lamp and sliced the meat. The children, inheriting as they did the sterling helpful propensities of their parents, went actively about, interfering with everything, in their earnest endeavours to assist.
“Isn’t he strange?” remarked Kabelaw, glancing in the direction of Ujarak, as she diligently twirled the fire-stick between her palms; “so different from what he was.”