Daniel Webster cut from the seal a morsel of meal eight inches long by two inches square. He crowded out of sight as much of the delicacy as his mouth and part of his œsophagus would hold—about six inches—and sliced off the visible two inches with a blow of his knife.
"I never knew before," commented Praed, "why the Eskimo nose was so snubby. I now see it all. It is a beautiful example of the law of survival. If you touch an Eskimo anywhere, you draw blood. The long-nosed men of the Stone Age slashed their skins at meal-times and died of hemorrhage. Only the short-nosed men could live. Even Daniel carves perilously close to his lovely snub—and if Daniel's nose were a little shorter it would be a cavity."
"Just so," I replied, indifferently. Praed's jaunty talk jarred upon me, and his superior tone toward the Eskimos displeased me. He was attached to the Relief Party as botanist. I believe he was a Professor of Natural History in some Western college. He had climbed a mountain in the Canadian Rockies, a minor peak, no difficult ascent. I am told that a carriage road has recently been opened to the summit. But the mountain was a virgin peak and bore a living glacier, and Praed wrote for the papers about it and made a great achievement of his exploit. Upon the strength of his reputation he assumed to direct the policy of the Relief Expedition, and when the leader refused to fall in with his views, Praed grumbled, and once or twice approached open insubordination. The leader, a modest fellow, took his unruly botanist quietly, but several members of the party told me the man worried him.
However, when it suited his purpose, Praed could be humble enough. He discovered my irritation at once and evidently thought to soothe it.
"Oh, come now, old fellow," he said. "Don't take your Eskimos too seriously; I admire them as much as you do. Here, Daniel—Dahlgren, how do you say 'I like you' in Husky-tongue?"
"Iblee pee-yook amishuwa," answered I, in the pidgin-Eskimo we had learned to use during our year in the Far North.
"Iblee kumook amistwa," repeated Praed. Daniel received the communication with that heavy gravity which had won him his nick-name; his birth-name was Meeoo. Praed shrugged his shoulders.
"I never shall learn the lingo," he sighed. "Tell him I am going to give him this knife."
"Ooma pilletay iblee savik," I translated.
Daniel received the knife without comment. I caught a flash of pleasure in his eye, but it escaped Praed.