Arrived at the old village, these lively and energetic nomads occupied themselves during the brief remainder of winter and the early spring in securely hiding the goods of which they had become possessed, excepting such light portions as they meant to carry along with them to their summer retreat. Among these were a number of bows, spears, and arrows made from the wood of the burnt vessel, with cleverly adapted iron heads, filed to fine sharp points, and burnished until they glittered in the light. Of knives and axes there were also sufficient to equip most of the young men, and those for whom there were none made to themselves pretty good knives out of pieces of hoop-iron.
When at last the ocean currents and summer heat broke up the solid floes and set the icebergs free to resume their majestic southward course, our Eskimos put their sledges en cache, got out kayaks and oomiaks, and, wielding both the short and the long paddle, started off towards the southwest, in the direction of Waruskeek—some of the tribe, however, with a few of the old people, remaining behind.
“Now, Adolay, we are going to take you home,” said Cheenbuk, the day they started, while walking with her towards the oomiak in which she was to take her seat and a paddle. “Will the Indian girl be glad to leave us?”
The faintest possible tinge of red suffused her cheek, as she dropped her eyes and replied—
“She will be glad to get home.”
“When you have got home, and stayed for a time with your people,” returned Cheenbuk, who was usually blunt and to-the-point in his conversation, “will you come away with me and be my woman—my squaw?” he added, accommodating his words to the Indian vocabulary.
“I cannot leave my mother,” answered the maiden in a low voice.
“That is good,” returned the gallant Eskimo, “but Cheenbuk can leave his mother and his father too. If I go and live with the men-of-the-woods, will you be my squaw?”
Adolay with downcast eyes gave no answer.
It is said that silence gives consent. We are ignorant as to Arctic opinion on this point, but before light could be thrown on the subject, Anteek came rushing round the corner of a stranded berg with the exclamation—