“Do you know,” said Mangivik, pausing in his occupation, “that Gartok has been trying to get the young men to go to the Whale River, where you know there are plenty of birds and much wood? He wants to fight with the Fire-spouters.”
“Yes, I know it. Gartok is always for fighting and quarrelling. He likes it.”
“Don’t you think,” said the old man suggestively, “that you could give him a chance of getting what he likes without going so far from home?”
“No, I don’t choose to fight for the sake of pleasing every fool who delights to brag and look fierce.”
Mrs Mangivik laughed at this, and her daughter giggled, but the old man shook his head as if he had hoped better things of the young one. He said no more, however, and before the conversation was resumed the voice of a boy was heard outside.
“Anteek,” murmured Nootka, with a smile of pleasure.
“The other hunters must have arrived,” said Oolalik, polishing off his last bone, “for Anteek was with them.”
“He always comes first to see me when he has anything to tell,” remarked Mrs Mangivik, with a laugh, “and from the noise he makes I think he has something to tell to-day.”
If noise was the true index of Anteek’s news he evidently was brimful, for he advanced shouting at the top of his voice. With that unaccountable ingenuity which characterises some boys, all the world over, he produced every sort of sound except that which was natural to him, and caused the surrounding cliffs to echo with the mooing of the walrus, the roaring of the polar bear, the shriek of the plover, the bellow of the musk-ox, and, in short, the varied cries of the whole Arctic menagerie. But he stopped short at the door of the hut and looked at Oolalik in evident surprise.
“You are back before me?” he said.