“Things look peaceful,” he whispered when beyond the circle, “but there is no peace in the hearts of cold-blooded murderers. What they have done they will do again. ‘Quick’ is the word. Let us gather a dozen strong young men.”
They had no difficulty in doing this. From among the youths who were indifferent to the proceedings at the meeting they soon gathered twelve of the strongest.
“Now, lads,” said Rooney, after having briefly told them of the recent massacre, “fifteen of these murderers are seated in that meeting. You cannot fail to know them from our own people, for they are all strangers. Let each one here creep into the meeting with a short spear, choose his man, sit down beside him, and be ready when the signal is given by Angut or me. But do not kill. You are young and strong. Throw each man on his back, but do not kill unless he seems likely to get the better of you. Hold them down, and wait for orders.”
No more was said. Rooney felt that delay might be fatal. With the promptitude of men accustomed to be led, the youths crept into the circle of listeners, and seated themselves as desired. Rooney and Okiok selected their men, like the rest. Angut chanced to place himself beside Grimlek.
The chief cast a quick, suspicious glance on him as he sat down, but as Angut immediately became intent on the discussion that was going on, and as the robber himself had become interested in spite of himself, the suspicion was allayed as quickly as roused.
These quiet proceedings took place just before the heavy-faced Eskimo began the speech which we have detailed. Notwithstanding the serious—it might be bloody—work which was presently to engage all his physical energies, the spirit of Angut was deeply stirred by the string of objections which the man had flung out so easily. Most of the points touched on had often engaged his thoughtful mind, and he felt—as many reasoning men have felt before and since—how easy it is for a fool to state a string of objections in a few minutes, which it might take a learned man several hours fully to answer and refute.
Oppressed, and, as it were, boiling over, with this feeling, Angut, as we have said, started to his feet, to the no small alarm of the guilty man at his side. But the chief’s fears were dissipated when Angut spoke.
“Foolish fellow!” he said, turning with a blazing gaze to the heavy-faced man. “You talk like a child of what you do not understand. You ask to see God, else you won’t believe. You believe in your life, don’t you? Yet you have never seen it. You stab a bear, and let its life out. You know when the life is there. You have let it out. You know when it is gone. But you have not seen it. Then why do you believe in it? You do not see a sound, yet you believe in it. Do not lift your stupid face; I know what you would say: you hear the sound, therefore it exists. A deaf man does not hear the sound. Does it therefore not exist? That which produces the sound is there, though the deaf man neither sees nor hears, nor feels nor tastes, nor smells it. My friend, the man of God, says he thinks the cause of sound is motion in the air passing from particle to particle, till the last particle next my ear is moved, and then—I hear. Is there, then, no motion in the air to cause sound because the deaf man does not hear?
“O stupid-face! You say that God does not answer prayer, because you have asked and have not received. What would you think of your little boy if he should say, ‘I asked a dead poisonous fish from my father the other day, and he did not give it to me; therefore my father never gives me what I want.’ Would that be true? Every morning you awake hungry, and you wish for food; then you get up, and you find it. Is not your wish a silent prayer? And is it not answered every day? Who sends the seals, and fishes, and birds, even when we do not ask with our lips? Did these animals make themselves? Stupid-face! you say your soul is healthy. Sometimes you are angry, sometimes discontented, sometimes jealous, sometimes greedy. Is an angry, discontented, jealous, greedy soul healthy? You know it is not. It is diseased, and the disease of the soul is sin. This disease takes the bad forms I have mentioned, and many other bad forms—one of which is murder.”
Angut emphasised the last word and paused, but did not look at the robber beside him, for he knew that the arrow would reach its mark. Then he resumed—