“So will I, by suddenly howling at him in the dark,” said Amalatok.
At this his men laughed outright.
“But I will not howl or move,” said the Captain.
“That will be clever,” returned the chief, solemnised in spite of himself. “Let Blackbeard proceed.”
“Order one of your braves to stand before me on that piece of flat skin,” said the Captain.
Amalatok looked round, and, observing a huge ungainly man with a cod-fishy expression of face, who seemed to shrink from notoriety, ordered him to step forward. The man did so with obvious trepidation, but he dared not refuse. The Captain fixed his eyes on him sternly, and, in a low growling voice, muttered in English: “Now, Benjy, give it a good turn.”
Cod-fishiness vanished as if by magic, and, with a look of wild horror, the man sprang into the air, tumbled on his back, rose up, and ran away!
It is difficult to say whether surprise or amusement predominated among the spectators. Many of them laughed heartily, while the Captain, still as grave as a judge, said in a low growling tone as if speaking to himself:—
“Not quite so stiff, Benjy, not quite so stiff. Be more gentle next time. Don’t do it all at once, boy; jerk it, Benjy, a turn or so at a time.”
It is perhaps needless to inform the reader that the Captain was practising on the Eskimos with his electrical machine, and that Benjy was secretly turning the handle inside the hut. The machine was connected, by means of wires, with the piece of skin on which the patients stood. These wires had been laid underground, not, indeed, in the darkness, but, during the secrecy and silence of the previous night.