Others blew up in the kettle, scattering hot oil, and sending the crowd in a wild plunge for the doorway. Out they scrambled, Harluk well in advance, as he had had the first warning. He plunged head first from the outer end of the entrance and butted Joe, who was about to enter, into a sitting position on the snow.
“Huh!” said Joe, partly because that is what one usually says when suddenly butted in the stomach, but partly in surprise at this exodus from the galley. “What is the matter?” he asked, as soon as he could get breath.
The answer came from Pickalye, who was fat, and who scrambled out on his knees and one hand, holding a hot wad of half-fried doughnut to the back of his neck with the other. Finding himself outside, he ducked until his head was well under one arm and he could lay his burnt neck gently in the snow. From this contortionist’s position he looked up solemnly sidewise at Joe.
“White man’s grub too much shoot,” he said.
The appearance of this fat Eskimo, tied in such an absurd knot to keep the back of his neck cool, was too much for Joe, who went off into howls of laughter, which were answered by cries from within. Hurrying thither, Joe saw the fat on fire on the stove, the feet of Atchoo and her older child protruding from beneath his lower bunk, while in the upper one lay Harry in a worse gale of laughter than he. Joe put out the burning fat, prodded Atchoo and her youngster from beneath his bunk, and by the time he had found out who was burned and how much, and attended to them by binding the wounds with moist cooking soda, he and Harry had sobered down a bit and learned the cause of the disaster.
It was a good while before the Eskimos were willing to come into the galley again, and Joe profited by it by having them set up housekeeping in the forecastle while aboard ship. They did no more white man’s cooking for some time, and doughnuts were especially avoided, but they were so fond of them that Harluk finally induced Atchoo to try her luck again. That day Harry beckoned Joe to look in on the forecastle. There was Atchoo frying doughnuts, indeed, but she put them into the fat, turned them, and took them out on the tip end of Harluk’s favorite seal spear, which was at least six feet long.
With the exception of using modern harpoons and killing their whales directly, when possible, with the bomb gun, the boys and their assistants followed Eskimo methods with great success. The whales are particularly unsuspicious when in the ice, and the killing of them was usually attended with little excitement or danger. They did not attempt to do anything with the blubber, as the distance they would have to haul it from the open leads to the ship was too great. The bone of these smaller whales was not so good either as that of those which come later in the open water, but it was nevertheless of much value, and footed up a thousand pounds or so to each catch. Thus the value of the stores aboard ship increased quite rapidly, and by the first of June half a dozen whales had added twelve or fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of bone to the credit of the adventurers. They had paid the Eskimos a satisfactory amount of trade goods for their share, as well as the meat and blubber, and the little community was quite literally rolling in Eskimo wealth. Joe was afraid that prosperity would give them ideas above work, as it does some other more civilized people, but it did not seem to. They did not work for the returns alone, but out of loyalty and admiration for their white friends.
The sun now skimmed the northern horizon without setting, and daylight was once more continuous. Gulls, terns, and ducks in clouds came along the edge of the ice, working northward, and the weather was warm and springlike. To the first gull seen the Eskimos sang a greeting. Just as young people the world over apostrophize the first star they see at night, and wish on it in the more or less firm belief that their wish will be granted, so the Eskimos sang a greeting to this first gull:—