“Another rib may open your lips, perhaps,” suggested the old woman, softly.
“True; give me one,” said Chingatok.
The third rib seemed to have the desired effect, for, while busy with it, he began to give his parent a graphic account of the yacht and its crew, and it was really interesting to note how correctly he described all that he understood of what he had seen. But some of the things he had partly failed to comprehend, and about these he was vague.
“And they have a—a Power, mother, shut up in a hard thing, so that it can’t get out unless they let it, and it drives the big canoe through the water. It is very strong—terrible!”
“Is it a devil?” asked Toolooha.
“No, it is not alive. It is dead. It is that,” he pointed with emphasis to a pot hanging over the lamp out of which a little steam was issuing, and looked at his mother with awful solemnity. She returned the look with something of incredulity.
“Yes, mother, the Power is not a beast. It lives not, yet it drives the white man’s canoe, which is as big as a little iceberg, and it whistles; it shrieks; it yells!”
A slightly sorrowful look rested for a moment on Toolooha’s benign countenance. It was evident that she suspected her son either of derangement, or having forsaken the paths of truth. But it passed like a summer cloud.
“Tell me more,” she said, laying her hand affectionately on the huge arm of Chingatok, who had fallen into a contemplative mood, and, with hands clasped over one knee, sat gazing upwards.
Before he could reply the heart of Toolooha was made to bound by a shriek more terrible than she had ever before heard or imagined.