Soon they all filed out again, two of them bearing the boy with the crushed foot.
Only one remained. He was a young Eskimo with a clean-cut intelligent face. Lucile, by his posture, recognized the one who had championed their cause from the first.
"Perhaps you wonder much?" he began. "Perhaps you ask how is this?
Sit down. I will say it to you."
The very sound of their own tongue, badly managed though it might be, was music to the two worn out and nerve-wrecked girls. They sat down on the sleeping-bag to listen, while the yellow light of the seal-oil lamp flickered across the dark, expressive face of the Eskimo.
He bent over and drew imaginary circles on the floor, one small and one large, just as the boy had done with charcoal.
"Here," he smiled, "one island. Here one. This island one house.
Here—"
"Where is this island?" broke in Lucile, too eager to know their position on the shore of the Arctic to hear him through.
"Yes," he smiled, "this island is here, very small. This one is here, very large." Again the imaginary circles were drawn.
Lucile smiled and was silent.
"This one large island," the native went on, "this one plenty Eskimo.
Come to visit some Eskimo. Some live here, these Eskimo.