The Walrus Hunters | Page 7

things he is after: he wants to stir up our young men to go and fight with the Fire-spouters, and he wants our Nootka for a wife."
"The dirty walrus!" exclaimed Mrs Mangivik, with as much vigour as if she had been civilised, "he shall never have Nootka. As for fighting with the Fire-spouters, I only hope that if he does go to do so, he will get killed and never come back."
"H'm!" grunted Mangivik, "if he does get killed he's not likely to come back."
"Who is not likely to come back?" asked a young girl, with an affectionate expression in her pretty brown eyes, issuing from the hut at that moment and seating herself close to the old man. The girl's face, on the whole, was unusually pretty for that of an Eskimo, and would have been still more so but for the grease with which it was besmeared--for the damsel had just been having a little refreshment of white-whale blubber. Her figure was comparatively slim and graceful, and would have been obviously so but for the ill-fitting coat and clumsy boots with which it was covered.
"Your mother and I were talking of a bad man, Nootka," said Mangivik.
"Ay, a very very bad man," exclaimed Mrs Mangivik, with a decided nod of her head.
"If he is so very bad," returned Nootka, "it would be good that he should never come back. Who is it?"
"Gartok," answered her mother, with the air of one who has mentioned the most hateful thing in creation.
Nootka laughed.
"Surely you are not fond of him!" exclaimed Mangivik, regarding his daughter with a look of anxiety.
"You know that I'm not," answered the girl, playfully hitting her sire on the back with the flap of her tail.
"Of course not--of course not; you could not be fond of an ugly walrus like him," said the father, replying to her pleasantry by fondly patting her knee.
Just then a young man was seen advancing from the beach, where he had left his kayak.
"It is Oolalik," said Mrs Mangivik, shading her eyes with her hand from the sun, which, in all the strength of its meridian splendour, was shining full on her fat face. "He must have made a good hunt, or he would not have come home before the others."
As she spoke Nootka arose hastily and re-entered the hut, from out of which there issued almost immediately the sounds and the savoury odours of roasting flesh.
Meanwhile Oolalik came up and gave vent to a polite grunt, or some such sound, which was the Eskimo method of expressing a friendly salutation.
Mangivik and his wife grumped in reply.
"You are soon back," said the former.
"I have left a walrus and two seals on the rocks over there," answered the youth, sitting down beside the old man.
"Good," returned the latter. "Come in and feed."
He rose and entered the hut. The young man who followed him was not so much a handsome as a strapping fellow, with a quiet, sedate expression, and a manly look that rendered him attractive to most of his friends. Conversation, however, was not one of his strong points. He volunteered no remarks after seating himself opposite to Nootka, who handed him a walrus rib which she had just cooked over the oil lamp. Had Nootka been a civilised girl she might have been suspected of conveying a suggestion to the youth, for she was very fond of him, but, being an Eskimo of the Far North, she knew nothing about ribs or of Mother Eve. The young man however required no delicate suggestion, for he was equally fond of Nootka, and he endeavoured to show his feelings by a prolonged stare after he had accepted the food.
One is irresistibly impressed with the homogeneity of the human race when one observes the curious similarities of taste and habit which obtain alike in savage and civilised man. For a few moments this youth's feelings were too much for him. He stared in admiration at the girl, apparently oblivious of the rib, and sighed profoundly. Then he suddenly recovered himself, appeared to forget the girl, and applied himself tooth and nail to the rib. Could anything be more natural--even in a European prince?
Nootka did not speak--young women seldom do among savages, at least in the company of men,--but she looked many and very unutterable things, which it is impossible, and would not be fair, to translate.
"Will the others be back soon?" asked Mangivik.
Oolalik looked over the rib and nodded. (In this last, also, there was indication of homogeneity.)
"Have they got much meat?"
Again the young man nodded.
"Good. There is nothing like meat, and plenty of it."
The old man proceeded to illustrate his belief in the sentiment by devoting himself to a steak of satisfying dimensions. His better-half meanwhile took up the conversation.
"Is Gartok with them?" she