The World of Ice

by R. M. Ballantyne

Meetuck was the pattern and the chief instrument in effecting this change. At Uppernavik Captain Guy had been induced to purchase a large number of fox-skins, deer-skins, seal-skins, and other furs as a speculation, and had them tightly packed and stowed away in the hold, little imagining the purpose they were ultimately destined to serve. Meetuck had come on board in a mongrel sort of worn-out seal-skin dress, but the instant the cold weather set in he drew from a bundle, which he had brought with him, a dress made of the furs of the Arctic fox, some of the skins being white and the others blue. It consisted of a loose coat somewhat in the form of a shirt, with a large hood to it, and a short elongation behind like the commencement of a tail. The boots were made of white bear-skin which, at the end of the foot, were made to terminate with the claws of the animal, and they were so long that they came up the thigh under the coat, or “jumper” as the men called it, and thus served instead of trousers. He also wore fur mittens, with a bag for the fingers, and a separate little bag for the thumb. The hair on these garments was long and soft, and worn outside, so that when a man enveloped himself in them, and put up the hood, which well-nigh concealed the face, he became very much like a bear, or some such creature, standing on its hind-legs.

Meetuck was a short, fat, burly little fellow by nature, but when he put on his winter dress he became such a round, soft, squat, hairy, and comical-looking creature that no one could look at him without laughing; and the shout with which he was received on deck the first time he made his appearance in his new costume was loud and prolonged. But Meetuck was as good-humoured an Esquimaux as ever speared a walrus or lanced a polar bear. He joined in the laugh, and cut a caper or two to show that he entered into the spirit of the joke.

When the ship was set fast, and the thermometer fell pretty low, the men found that their ordinary dreadnoughts and pea-jackets, etcetera, were not a sufficient protection against the cold, and it occurred to the captain that his furs might now be turned to good account. Sailors are proverbially good needle-men of a rough kind. Meetuck showed them how to set about their work; each man made his own garments, and in less than a week they were completed. It is true the boots perplexed them a little, and the less ingenious among the men made very rare and curious-looking foot-gear for themselves, but they succeeded after a fashion, and at last the whole crew appeared on deck in their new habiliments, as we have already mentioned, capering among the snow like bears, to their own entire satisfaction and to the intense delight of Meetuck, who now came to regard the white men as brothers—so true is it that “the tailor makes the man!”

“’Ow ’orribly ’eavy it is, hain’t it?” gasped Mivins, after dancing round the main-hatch till he was nearly exhausted.

“Heavy?” cried Buzzby, whose appearance was such that you would have hesitated to say whether his breadth or length was greater,—“heavy, d’ye say? It must be your sperrits wot’s heavy, then, for I feel as light as a feather myself.”

“O morther! then may I niver sleep on a bed made o’ sich feathers!” cried O’Riley, capering up to Green, the carpenter’s mate, and throwing a mass of snow in his face. The frost rendered it impossible to form the snow into balls, but the men made up for this by throwing it about each other’s eyes and ears in handfuls.

“What d’ye mean by insultin’ my mate?—take that!” said Peter Grim, giving the Irishman a twirl that tumbled him on the deck.

“Oh, bad manners to ye,” spluttered O’Riley, as he rose and ran away, “why don’t ye hit a man o’ yer own size.”

“’Deed, then, it must be because there’s not one o’ my own size to hit,” remarked the carpenter with a broad grin.

This was true. Grim’s colossal proportions were increased so much by his hairy dress that he seemed to spread out into the dimensions of two large men rolled into one. But O’Riley was not to be overturned with impunity. Skulking round behind the crew, who were laughing at Grim’s joke, he came upon the giant in the rear, and seizing the short tail of his jumper, pulled him violently down on the deck.