“That is my opinion, too, sir,” said Rooney, throwing down the bundle he had been carrying.
As the invitation to feed seldom comes amiss to a healthy Eskimo, Egede’s proposal was at once agreed to, and in a few minutes they were all busily engaged.
It was a pretty spot, that on which they dined. Bushes just beginning to bud surrounded them; brilliant sunshine drew forth delicious scents from the long, long frozen earth and the reviving herbage on which they sat. It also drew forth gushing rivulets from the patches of snow and heavy drifts, which here and there by their depth and solidity seemed to bid defiance to the sweet influences of spring. The ice-laden sea sent gentle wavelets to the pebbly shore. A group of large willows formed a background to their lordly hall, and behind them, in receding and grand perspective, uprose the great shoulders of Greenland’s mountains.
On all those natural objects of interest and beauty, however, the travellers did not at first bestow more than a passing glance. They were too much engrossed with “metal more attractive,” in the shape of bear blubber; but when appetite began to fail conversation began to flow. At that point it occurred to Pussi and Tumbler that they would go and have some fun.
Child-nature is much the same all the world over and curiously enough, it bears strong resemblance to adult nature. Having fed to satiety, these chips of Simek and Okiok lifted up their eyes, and beheld the surrounding shrubs. At once the idea arose—“Let us explore.” The very same impulse that sent Mungo Park and Livingstone to Africa; Ross, Parry, Franklin, Kane, and all the rest of them toward the Pole, led our little hero and heroine into that thicket, and curiosity urged them to explore as far as possible. They did so, and, as a natural consequence, lost themselves. But what cared they for that? With youth, and health, and strength, they were as easy in their minds as Lieutenant Greely was with sextant, chart, and compass. As to food, were they not already victualled for, not a three years’, but a three hours’, expedition?
And their parents were not disturbed on their account. Eskimo fathers and mothers are not, as a rule, nervous or anxious about their offspring.
In a remarkably short space of time Pussi and Tumbler, walking hand in hand, put more than a mile of “bush” between them and their feeding-place.
“Oh! wha’s dat?” exclaimed Pussi, stopping short, and gazing into the thicket in front of her.
We pause to remind the reader that our little ones lisped in Eskimo, and that, in order to delineate faithfully, our only resource is to translate into lisping English.
“It’s a man,” exclaimed Tumbler.