“And what have you to say about yourself?” asked the captain that evening, after a long animated conversation on the country and its productions.
“I have little to say,” replied the old man, sadly. “There is no mystery about my family except its beginning in the long past.”
“But is not all mystery in the long past?” asked the Captain.
“True, my son, but there is a difference in my mystery. Other Eskimos can trace back from son to father till they get confused and lost, as if surrounded by the winter-fogs. But when I trace back—far back—I come to one man—my first father, who had no father, it is said, and who came no one knows from where. My mind is not confused or lost; it is stopped!”
“Might not the mystery-bundle that you call buk explain matters?” asked Alf.
When this was translated, the old man for the first time looked troubled.
“I dare not open it,” he said in an undertone, as if speaking to himself. “From father to son we have held it sacred. It must grow—ever grow—never diminish!”
“It’s a pity he looks at it in that light,” remarked Leo to Benjy, as they lay down to sleep that night. “I have no doubt that the man whom he styles first father wrapped up the thing, whatever it is, to keep it safe, not to make a mystery of it, and that his successors, having begun with a mistaken view, have now converted the re-wrapping of the bundle by each successive heir into a sacred obligation. However, we may perhaps succeed in overcoming the old fellow’s prejudices. Good-night, Benjy.”
A snore from Benjy showed that Leo’s words had been thrown away, so, with a light laugh, he turned over, and soon joined his comrade in the land of dreams.
For two weeks the party remained on Great Isle, hunting, shooting, fishing, collecting, and investigating; also, we may add, astonishing the natives.