The Walrus Hunters | Page 7

am troubled about that
jump-about man Gartok."
"Has he been here again?" asked the wife, with something of a frown
on her fat face. "He is just as you say, a jump-about like the little birds
that come to us in the hot times, which don't seem to know what they
want."

"He is too big to look like them," returned the husband. "He's more like
a mad walrus. I met him on one of the old floes when I was after a seal,
and he frightened it away. But it is not that that troubles me. There are
two 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