“He’s making a bow,” he told himself, “a bow, that’s it. Wonder what sort of wood it is?”
To this question he could find no answer. Many strange woods were found here. Besides, it is known that trade between the strange northern tribes extends over thousands of miles.
“May have come from Russia or Greenland,” he told himself.
When his bumps and bruises began to make themselves felt and his eyes grew heavy he dropped back among the deer skins and, entrusting himself to the One who notes the sparrow’s fall, passed into the land of dreams.
When he awoke, several hours later, the bow was fully fashioned but still the hunchback stood bending over it.
“He’s backing it with some tissue,” the boy told himself. “I know. It’s reindeer sinew. I’ve heard of that. A bow so backed will never crack.”
Then a thought struck him all of a heap.
“He’s making that bow for me!” His heart gave a great leap. Perhaps no boy in all the world ever felt such real joy over prospects of a new bow.
That it was intended for him he could not doubt for, though made on the same lines and in the identical manner of Omnakok’s own, it was much lighter.
“Fifty pounds, perhaps sixty,” he told himself. “How well he has judged my strength.”