“You’d better give them a taste of dynamite, father,” said Benjy that evening, as they all sat round their supper-kettle.
“No, no, boy. It is bad policy to fire off all your ammunition in a hurry. We’ll give it ’em bit by bit.”
“Just so, impress them by degrees,” said Alf.
“De fust warrior was nigh bu’sted by degrees,” said Butterface, with a broad grin, as he stirred the kettle. “You gib it ’im a’most too strong, Massa Benjee.”
“Blackbeard must be the bad spirit,” remarked Amalatok to his son that same night as they held converse together—according to custom—before going to bed.
“The bad spirit is never kind or good,” replied Chingatok, after a pause.
“No,” said the old man, “never.”
“But Blackbeard is always good and kind,” returned the giant.
This argument seemed unanswerable. At all events the old man did not answer it, but sat frowning at the cooking-lamp under the influence of intense thought.
After a prolonged meditation—during the course of which father and son each consumed the tit-bits of a walrus rib and a seal’s flipper—Chingatok remarked that the white men were totally beyond his comprehension. To which, after another pause, his father replied that he could not understand them at all.