“You mistake,” rejoined Cheenbuk gravely. “Like you, I have known right but I have not always done it; only sometimes. It is not long since I began to think, and it is since I have been thinking that my spirit seems to have changed, so that I now hate wrong, and desire right. I think that the Maker of all must have caused the change, as He makes the ice-mountains melt, for it is not possible that I could change myself. I had no wish to change till I felt the change.”
“I wish,” said Gartok earnestly, “that—if He exists at all—He would change me.”
At that moment Cheenbuk, who was gazing up into the brilliant sky, seemed to be moved by a sudden inspiration, for he gave utterance to the first audible prayer that had ever passed his lips.
“Maker of all,” he said, “give to Gartok the spirit that loves right and hates wrong.”
The dying Eskimo raised his eyes to Cheenbuk’s face in astonishment; then he turned them to the starry host, as if he almost expected an immediate answer.
“Do you think He hears us?” he asked in a faint voice, for the strength of his feelings and the effort at conversation had exhausted him greatly.
“I will trust Him,” answered Cheenbuk.
“I will trust Him,” repeated Gartok.
For some time they sat in profound silence, and Gartok closed his eyes as if he were falling asleep. The silence was broken by a distant sound. It was the approach of Anteek with the sledge. He had found the runaway dogs anchored fast between two masses of ice where the sledge had got jammed. Turning the team round he plied his whip with vigour, insomuch that they would have arrived much sooner if the storm had not caused delay.
Having arranged the sledge and its wraps so as to form a comfortable couch for the wounded man, they lifted him on to it, but when they removed the bearskin from his face it was found that he was beyond earthly care: he had passed over to the land from which no sound has ever come back.