“Anders,” said Leo, whose knowledge of the Eskimo tongue was sufficient, by that time, to enable him in a measure to follow the drift of a speech, “Anders, if you don’t tell him exactly what I say I’ll kick you into the sea!”
As Anders stood on a rock close to the water’s edge, and Leo looked unusually stern, he thereafter rendered faithfully what the latter told him to say. The speech was something to the following effect:—
“I am one of a small band of white men who have come here to search out the land. We do not want the land. We only want to see it. We have plenty of land of our own in the far south. We have been staying with the great chief Amalatok in Poloeland.”
At the mention of his enemy’s name the countenance of Grabantak darkened. Without noticing this, Leo went on:—
“When I was out hunting with my man and a woman, the wind arose and blew us hither. We claim your hospitality, and hope you will help us to get back again to Poloeland. If you do so we will reward you well, for white men are powerful and rich. See, here are gifts for Grabantak, and for his wife.”
This latter remark was a sort of inspiration. Leo had observed, while Anders was speaking, that a stout cheerful-faced woman had been pushing aside the men and gradually edging her way toward the Eskimo chief with the air of a privileged person. That he had hit the mark was obvious, for Grabantak turned with a bland smile, and hit his wife a facetious and rather heavy slap on the shoulder. She was evidently accustomed to such treatment, and did not wince.
Taking from his bundle a gorgeous smoking-cap richly ornamented with brilliant beads, Leo coolly crowned the chief with it. Grabantak drew himself up and tried to look majestic, but a certain twitching of his face, and sparkle in his eyes, betrayed a tendency to laugh with delight. Fortunately, there was another cap of exactly the same pattern in the bundle, which Leo instantly placed on the head of the wife—whose name he afterwards learned was Merkut.
The chief’s assumed dignity vanished at this. With that childlike hilarity peculiar to the Eskimo race, he laughed outright, and then, seizing the cap from Merkut’s head, put it above his own to the amusement of his grinning followers.
Leo then selected a glittering clasp-knife with two blades, which the chief seized eagerly. It was evidently a great prize—too serious a gift to be lightly laughed at. Then a comb was presented to the wife, and a string of gay beads, and a pair of scissors. Of course the uses of combs and scissors had he explained, and deep was the interest manifested during the explanation, and utter the forgetfulness of the whole party for the time being in regard to everything else in the world—Oblooria included, who sat unnoticed on the rocks with her face still buried in her hands.
When Grabantak’s possessions were so numerous that the hood of his coat, and the tops of his wife’s boots were nearly filled with them, he became generous, and, prince-like, (having more than he knew what to do with), began to distribute things to his followers.