“None but what I’ve seed on this voyage.”
“They’re remarkable creeturs,” rejoined Buzzby, slapping his hand on his thigh. “I’ve seed many a one in my time, an I can tell ye, lad, they’re ugly customers. They fight like good ’uns, and give the Esquimaux a deal o’ trouble to kill them—they do.”
“Tell me a story about ’em, Buzzby—do, like a good chap,” said Davie Summers, burying his nose in the skirts of his hairy garment to keep it warm. “You’re a capital hand at a yarn, now, fire away.”
“A story, lad; I don’t know as how I can exactly tell ye a story, but I’ll give ye wot they calls a hanecdote. It wos about five years ago, more or less, I wos out in Baffin’s Bay, becalmed off one o’ the Eskimo settlements, when we wos lookin’ over the side at the lumps of ice floatin’ past, up got a walrus not very far offshore, and out went half a dozen kayaks, as they call the Eskimo men’s boats, and they all sot on the beast at once. Well, it wos one o’ the brown walrusses, which is always the fiercest; and the moment he got the first harpoon he went slap at the man that threw it; but the fellow backed out, and then a cry was raised to let it alone, as it wos a brown walrus. One young Eskimo, howsiver, would have another slap at it and went so close that the brute charged, upset the kayak, and ripped the man up with his tusks. Seein’ this, the other Eskimos made a dash at it, and wounded it badly; but the upshot wos that the walrus put them all to flight and made off, clear away, with six harpoons fast in its hide.”
“Buzzby’s tellin’ ye gammon,” roared Tom Green, who rode on the second sledge in rear of that on which Davie Summers sat. “What is’t all about?”
“About gammon, of coorse,” retorted Davie. “Keep yer mouth shut for fear your teeth freeze.”
“Can’t ye lead us a better road?” shouted Saunders, who rode on the third sledge; “my bones are rattlin’ about inside a’ me like a bag o’ ninepins.”
“Give the dogs a cut, old fellow,” said Buzzby, with a chuckle and a motion of his arm to the Esquimaux who drove his sledge.
The Esquimaux did not understand the words, but he quite understood the sly chuckle and the motion of the arm, so he sent the lash of the heavy whip with a loud crack over the backs of the team.
“Hold on for life!” cried Davie, as the dogs sprang forward with a bound.