The Magnetic North. Elizabeth Robins
it uncooked.
"Let them have some of it raw while the rest is frying"; and he beckoned the visitors to the deal box. They made a dart forward, gathered up the fat bacon several slices at a time, and pushed it into their mouths.
"Ugh!" said the Colonel under his breath.
Mac quickly swept what was left into the frying-pan, and began to cut a fresh lot.
The Boy divided the cold beans, got out biscuits, and poured the tea, while silence and a strong smell of ancient fish and rancid seal pervaded the little tent.
O'Flynn put a question or two, but Nicholas had gone stone-deaf. There was no doubt about it, they had been starving.
After a good feed they sat stolidly by the fire, with no sign of consciousness, save the blinking of beady eyes, till the Colonel suggested a smoke. Then they all grinned broadly, and nodded with great vigour. Even those who had no other English understood "tobacco."
When he had puffed awhile, Nicholas took his pipe out of his mouth, and, looking at the Boy, said:
"You no savvy catch fish in winter?"
"Through the ice? No. How you do it?"
"Make hole—put down trap—heap fish all winter."
"You get enough to live on?" asked the Colonel.
"They must have dried fish, too, left over from the summer," said Mac.
Nicholas agreed. "And berries and flour. When snow begin get soft, Pymeuts all go off—" He motioned with his big head towards the hills.
"What do you get there?" Mac was becoming interested.
"Caribou, moose—"
"Any furs?"
"Yes; trap ermun, marten—"
"Lynx, too, I suppose, and fox?"
Nicholas nodded. "All kinds. Wolf—muskrat, otter—wolverine—all kinds."
"You got some skins now?" asked the Nova Scotian.
"Y—yes. More when snow get soft. You come Pymeut—me show."
"Where have ye been just now?" asked O'Flynn.
"St. Michael."
"How long since ye left there?"
"Twelve sleeps."
"He means thirteen days."
Nicholas nodded.
"They couldn't possibly walk that far in—"
"Oh yes," says the Boy; "they don't follow the windings of the river, they cut across the portage, you know."
"Snow come—no trail—big mountains—all get lost."
"What did you go to St. Michael's for?"
"Oh, me pilot. Me go all over. Me leave N. A. T. and T. boat St. Michael's last trip."
"Then you're in the employ of the great North American Trading and Transportation Company?"
Nicholas gave that funny little duck of the head that meant yes.
"That's how you learnt English," says the Colonel.
"No; me learn English at Holy Cross. Me been baptize."
"At that Jesuit mission up yonder?"
"Forty mile."
"Well," says Potts, "I guess you've had enough walking for one winter."
Nicholas seemed not to follow this observation. The Boy interpreted:
"You heap tired, eh? You no go any more long walk till ice go out, eh?"
Nicholas grinned.
"Me go Ikogimeut—all Pymeut go."
"What for?"
"Big feast."
"Oh, the Russian mission there gives a feast?"
"No. Big Innuit feast."
"When?"
"Pretty quick. Every year big feast down to Ikogimeut when Yukon ice get hard, so man go safe with dog-team."
"Do many people go?"
"All Innuit go, plenty Ingalik go."
"How far do they come?"
"All over; come from Koserefsky, come from Anvik—sometime Nulato."
"Why, Nulato's an awful distance from Ikogimeut."
"Three hundred and twenty miles," said the pilot, proud of his general information, and quite ready, since he had got a pipe between his teeth, to be friendly and communicative.
"What do you do at Ikogimeut when you have these—" "Big fire—big feed—tell heap stories—big dance. Oh, heap big time!"
"Once every year, eh, down at Ikogimeut?"
"Three times ev' year. Ev' village, and"—he lowered his voice, not with any hit of reverence or awe, but with an air of making a sly and cheerful confidence—"and when man die."
"You make a feast and have a dance when a friend dies?"
"If no priests. Priests no like. Priests say, 'Man no dead; man gone up.'" Nicholas pondered the strange saying, and slowly shook his head.
"In that the priests are right," said Mac grudgingly.
It was anything but politic, but for the life of him the Boy couldn't help chipping in:
"You think when man dead he stay dead, eh, and you might as well make a feast?"
Nicholas gave his quick nod. "We got heap muskeetah, we cold, we hungry. We here heap long time. Dead man, he done. Why no big feast? Oh yes, heap big feast."
The Boy was enraptured. He would gladly have encouraged these pagan deliverances on the part of the converted Prince, but the Colonel was scandalised, and Mac, although in his heart of hearts not ill-satisfied at the evidence of the skin-deep Christianity of a man delivered over to the corrupt teaching of the Jesuits, found in this last fact all the stronger reason for the instant organisation of a good Protestant prayer-meeting. Nicholas of Pymeut must not be allowed to think it was only Jesuits who remembered the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
And the three "pore benighted heathen" along with him, if they didn't understand English words, they should have an object-lesson, and Mac would himself pray the prayers they couldn't utter for themselves. He jumped up, motioned the Boy to put on more wood, cleared away the granite-ware dishes, filled the bean-pot and set it back to simmer, while the Colonel got out Mac's Bible and his own Prayer-Book.
The Boy did his stoking gloomily, reading aright these portents. Almost eclipsed was joy in this "find" of his (for he regarded the precious Nicholas as his own special property). It was all going to end in his—the Boy's—being hooked in for service. As long as the Esquimaux were there he couldn't, of course, tear himself away. And here was the chance they'd all been waiting for. Here was a native chock-full of knowledge of the natural law and the immemorial gospel of the North, who would be gone soon—oh, very soon, if Mac and the Colonel went on like this—and they were going to choke off Nicholas's communicativeness with—a service!
"It's Sunday, you know," says the Colonel to the Prince, laying open his book, "and we were just going to have church. You are accustomed to going to church at Holy Cross, aren't you?"
"When me kid me go church."
"You haven't gone since you grew up? They still have church there, don't they?"
"Oh, Father Brachet, him have church."
"Why don't you go?"
Nicholas was vaguely conscious of threatened disapproval.
"Me