"Yes," he laughed. "I'm going to show the untutored savage the superiority of the rifle over the harpoon."
He learned more about Greenland upon that expedition. There was a floe, perhaps a mile wide, anchored near the mouth of the bay by half a dozen grounded bergs. To this floe the Eskimo and the white man set forth in kayaks. It was midnight when they left and we were asleep, but the Huskies at the village told us that the Professor couldn't manage his canoe, and finally had to permit Daniel to tow him.
Next night they returned with a seal. The Professor had many words of praise for a country where the sun never sets and there is no loss of working-time, but nothing to say about the hunting. At last he confessed that Daniel had killed the seal.
"The phoca barbata is a wary animal," he protested. "He will not permit a white face to approach. Two or three of the creatures were taking sun-baths upon the floe, but before I could creep within shooting distance they flopped into the water—a most ungraceful gait. All Arctic animals seem to be clumsy. I fired at one seal and I think I hit him, but he, too, dived. At last I resigned the rifle to Daniel. The savage squirmed over the ice like a worm. When the seals lifted their heads, Daniel lifted his. It is not surprising that he deceived them. His black muzzle looks precisely like that of the seal, and he wears a seal's fur. But his methods would never do in civilization. It took him half a day to crawl across that ice-floe."
"But he shot the seal," someone put in.
"No," replied the Professor. "That's just the point. He wormed himself along until he could almost reach the creature, and then sprang upon it and clubbed it to death with the butt."
I do not think Praed fully appreciated the marvellous adroitness of the hunter, nor the thoughtfulness of the man in saving a cartridge. He never seemed to comprehend that a charge of powder and bullet is worth more to an Eskimo than a diamond is to a bride at home. However, he began after that to treat the Huskies somewhat as if they were human beings.
His complete enlightenment as to the Eskimo character came all in a blaze at the end of our stay in Greenland. Our work there was done. Our explorations had been successful, our scientific collections were almost completed. There were only the loose ends to be gathered up.
The Professor had seen some desirable flowers in a valley across a glacier. Near that same glacier, in the preceding summer, I, who was acting as mineralogist of the main party, had piled a few specimens in a cranny to be carried to camp later, and I thought I might as well have them. We started forth together. Daniel and one or two other Huskies went with us for comradeship.
At the edge of the glacier we halted. It was a stupendous thing, crawling through a gap in the hills down into the sea like a section of the Midgard serpent. Halfway up the flank, I remember, there was a round hole, and out of it spouted a waterfall, red with basaltic mud. One of the Æsir might have made such a wound with his spear.