We have said that fifteen robbers had been captured; but there were sixteen who had entered the camp and joined the meeting. One of these had, without particular motive, seated himself on the outskirt of the circle under the shadow of a bush, which shadow had grown darker as the twilight deepened. Thus it came to pass that he had been overlooked, and, when the mêlée took place, he quietly retreated into the brush-wood. He was a brave man, however, although a robber, and scorned to forsake his comrades in their distress. While the discussion above described was going on, he crept stealthily towards the place where the captives had been ranged.
This he did the more easily that they sat on the summit of a bank or mound which sloped behind them into the bushes. Thus he was able to pass in a serpentine fashion behind them all without being seen, and, as he did so, to cut the bonds of each. Their knives had been removed, else, being desperate villains, they might now have attacked their captors. As it was, when the cords of all had been cut, they rose up with a mingled yell of laughter and triumph and dashed into the bushes.
The hunters were not slow to follow, with brandished knives and spears, but their chief called them back with a Stentorian roar, for well he knew that his men might as well try to follow up a troop of squirrels as pursue a band of reckless men in the rapidly increasing darkness, and that there was nearly as much likelihood of their stabbing each other by mistake in the dark, as of killing or catching their foes.
When the hunters had again re-assembled in front of their chief man’s house, they found new cause of anxiety which effectually put to flight their annoyance at having been outwitted by the robbers.
This was the fact that, although night was coming on, the oomiak with the women had not returned.
Note. This is no fanciful speech. It is the substance of an actual speech made by a Greenlander to the Moravian brethren in 1737.