“Did he?” cried the mother, with a much relieved expression, “then let your mind rest, my son, for Blackbeard must be a fool if he laughed at you.”
“Blackbeard is no fool,” replied Chingatok.
“Has he not come to search for new lands here, as you went to search for them there?” asked Toolooha, pointing alternately north and south.
“No—if I have understood him. Perhaps the brainless walrus translated his words wrongly.”
“Is the thing he searches for something to eat?”
“Something to drink or wear?”
“No, I tell you. It is nothing! Yet he gives it a name. He calls it Nort Pole!”
Perhaps it is needless to remind the reader that Chingatok and his mother conversed in their native tongue, which we have rendered as literally as possible, and that the last two words were his broken English for “North Pole!”
“Nort Pole!” repeated Toolooha once or twice contemplatively. “Well, he may search for nothing if he will, but that he cannot find.”
“Nay, mother,” returned the giant with a soft smile, “if he will search for nothing he is sure to find it!”