Red Rooney | Page 4

quickly seated himself on a raised platform, and had
done some justice to it before Nuna recovered the use of her tongue.
"A Kablunet!" she exclaimed, almost solemnly. "Is he dead?"
Okiok paused, with a lump of blubber in his fingers close to his mouth.
"No; he is alive. At least he was alive when I left him. If he has not
died since, he is alive still."
Having uttered this truism, he thrust the blubber well home, and
continued his meal.
Nuna's curiosity, having been aroused, was not easily allayed. She sat
down beside her spouse, and plied him with numerous questions, to
which Okiok gave her brief and very tantalising replies until he was
gorged, when, throwing down the platter, he turned abruptly to his wife,
and said impressively--
"Open your ears, Nuna. Okiok is no longer what he was. He has been
born only to-day. He has at last seen with his two eyes--a Kablunet!"

He paused to restrain his excitement. His wife clasped her hands and
looked at him excitedly, waiting for more.
"This Kablunet," he continued, "is very white, and not so ruddy as we
have been told they are. His hair is brown, and twists in little circles.
He wears it on the top of his head, and on the bottom of his head
also--all round. He is not small or short. No; he is long and broad,--but
he is thin, very thin, like the young ice at the beginning of winter. His
eyes are the colour of the summer sky. His nose is like the eagle's beak,
but not so long. His mouth--I know not what his mouth is like; it is hid
in a nest of hair. His words I understand not. They seem to me
nonsense, but his voice is soft and deep."
"And his dress--how does he dress?" asked Nuna, with natural feminine
curiosity.
"Like ourselves," replied Okiok, with a touch of disappointment in his
tone. "The men who said the Kablunets wear strange things on their
heads and long flapping things on their legs told lies."
"Why did you not bring him here?" asked Nuna, after a few moments'
meditation on these marvels.
"Because he is too heavy to lift, and too weak to walk. He has been
starving. I wrapped him in the skin of a bear, and left him with a piece
of blubber at his nose. When he wakes up he will smell; then he will eat.
Perhaps he will live; perhaps he will die. Who can tell? I go to fetch
him."
As the Eskimo spoke, the yelping of dogs outside told that his sons had
obeyed his commands, and got ready the sledge. Without another word
he crept out of the hut and jumped on the sledge, which was covered
with two or three warm bearskins. Ermigit restrained the dogs, of
which there were about eight, each fastened to the vehicle by a single
line. Norrak handed his father the short-handled but heavy, long-lashed
whip.
Okiok looked at Norrak as he grasped the instrument of punishment.

"Jump on," he said.
Norrak did so with evident good-will. The whip flashed in the air with
a serpentine swing, and went off like a pistol. The dogs yelled in alarm,
and, springing away at full speed, were soon lost among the hummocks
of the Arctic sea.
CHAPTER TWO.
DESCRIBES A RESCUE AND A HAPPY FAMILY.
While the Eskimos were thus rushing to his rescue, poor Red Rooney--
whose shipmates, we may explain at once, had thus contracted his
Christian name of Reginald--began to recover from his swoon, and to
wonder in a listless fashion where he was. Feeling comparatively
comfortable in his bear-skin, he did not at first care to press the inquiry;
but, as Okiok had anticipated, the peculiar smell near his nose tended to
arouse him. Drawing his hand gently up, he touched the object in front
of his mouth. It felt very like blubber, with which substance he was
familiar. Extending his tongue, he found that it also tasted like blubber.
To a starving man this was enough. He pulled the end of the raw
morsel into his mouth and began to chew.
Ah, reader, turn not up your refined nose! When you have been for
several months on short allowance, when you have scraped every shred
of meat off the very last bones of your provisions, and sucked out the
last drop of marrow, and then roasted and eaten your spare boots, you
may perhaps be in a position to estimate and enjoy a morsel of raw
blubber.
Regardless of time, place, and circumstance, our poor wanderer
continued to chew until in his great weakness he fell into a sort of half
slumber, and dreamed--dreamed of feasting on viands more delightful
than the waking imagination