“I think,” returned the boy, regarding it attentively, “we might try it on Aglootook’s nose. That wants cutting short, and rubbing down too, for it seems very hard to look at it.”
Nazinred did not smile. He was slow to understand a joke. Perhaps he thought it a poor one, but Cheenbuk appreciated it, and met it with the suggestion that an axe might be more effective.
They were gravely debating this point in front of the snow stores, when Ondikik came up and asked when it was likely that a start would be made for home, as he styled their old winter village.
“Go and ask Mangivik. When he gives the order I’m ready,” said Cheenbuk.
“Don’t say a word to Aglootook,” said Anteek, as the young man turned to go; “he will be sure to say that something will happen if you do.”
“Yes, and as something always does happen,” remarked Cheenbuk, “he’s sure to be right, the moosquat.”
“Moo-squat” seemed to be used as a term of extreme contempt; it may not therefore be incorrect to translate it—“humbug!”
On being consulted, old Mangivik, who was generally credited with being weather-wise and intelligent, gave it as his opinion that, as the things from the white man’s kayak were all ready packed on the sledges, and the weather was very warm, and the days were growing long, and the ice and snow were melting fast, the sooner they set out the better.
Aglootook coincided with that opinion, because he had been led to the same conclusion some days before, chiefly in consequence of profound thought during the dark hours of night. “And if we don’t start off now,” he added at the end of a portentous oration, “no one can tell what will happen—something fearful, I know, though of course it is not possible to say what.”
As no one felt disposed to object, the preparations were hurried forward, and, soon after, the whole tribe went off on the return journey, leaving behind them a black and yawning gulf in the Arctic solitude where so lately a noble ship had been.