“Does it make you less of a fool because Magadar is one also? Are you comforted to-day, in your poverty, by the thought that you were well off yesterday?”
Mozwa’s bright glance faded slowly. He was no match for his friend in argument, and, possessing an honest spirit, the look of self-condemnation began to creep again over his visage, but, being of a sanguine temperament and hopeful nature, the bright glance returned suddenly.
“Wisdom falls from the lips of my brother,” he said. “I was well off yesterday and I am badly off to-day, but I may be well off again to-morrow—if I have good luck.”
“Yes, and if Magadar has bad luck?” returned his friend. “You cannot both have good luck. Whatever one gains the other must lose—and so it goes on. Should wise men act thus?”
Mozwa was silent. His friend had never before spoken to him in this way. Indeed, no member of the tribe had ever before given utterance to such curious opinions. He knew not what to reply, and Nazinred relapsed into the moody silence which had characterised him more or less since he became aware of his daughter’s departure.
The short autumn of those Hyperborean regions having passed away, the land was speedily locked in a garment of ice and snow, and the long stern winter began.
It was not long before all the lakes and rivers set fast. At first only the lakes solidified, then the more sluggish streams, while the rapids showed out inky black by contrast. Gradually the liquid margins of these were encroached on by the irresistible frost, until they were fairly bridged over, and their existence was only recalled to memory by hollow rumblings below the ice. At last the intensity of the cold overcame the salt sea itself; the floes, hummocks, and bergs became united into one universal mass, and every sign of liquid disappeared from the polar regions.
It was when this condition of things had arrived that the heart-crushed Nazinred proceeded to carry out a plan over which he had been brooding ever since his return from Great Bear Lake. His inquiries had led him to believe that the Eskimo who had carried off his child belonged to the tribe which had recently been pursued by his compatriots, and that they probably dwelt among the islands, some of which were seen, and others known to exist, off the Arctic coast opposite the mouth of the Greygoose River. Moreover, a faint hope, that he would have found it difficult to define, was aroused by the fact that the kidnapper of his child had formerly been the rescuer of his wife.
As we have seen, his first attempt to go off in his canoe in search of Adolay was frustrated by young ice forming on the sea, and for a considerable time afterwards the Arctic Sea was impassable to any kind of craft. Now that the sea had set fast, however, his difficulty was removed, and he resolved to undertake the journey on foot.
Well he knew that no man of his tribe, not even Mozwa, would agree to accompany him on such a wild-goose chase. He therefore not only refrained from making to any of them the proposal, but avoided any allusion to his intentions. Knowing also that Isquay was gifted with such an intense desire for sympathy that she could not resist communicating whatever she knew to a few of her dearest friends—in the strictest confidence—he did not mention the matter to her until all his preparations were completed. Then he told her.