Part 14 (2/2)
We ran our eyes over the islands. They looked bare of any thing like an Esquimau convention. Presently Kit uttered an exclamation.
”Why, just turn your gla.s.s off to the main, beyond the islands; right over the ice-field; on that lofty brown headland that juts out from the main! There they are!”
There they were, sure enough,--a grimy, bare-headed crowd, swinging their arms, and gesticulating wildly. It could not have been less than five miles; but the faint ”_Ta-yar-r-r!_” still came to our ears.
”Suppose they are calling to us?” cried Raed.
”Yes; looks like that,” replied the captain.
”Heard the guns, you see,” said Kit; ”those we fired at the bear.”
”Port the helm!” ordered the captain. ”We'll beat up through this channel to the north side of the ice-field.”
”Perhaps we had best not go up too near them at first,” remarked Raed, ”till we find out what sort of _folks_ they are.”
”No: two miles will be near enough. They will come off to us,--as many of them as we shall want on board at one time, I dare say.”
The schooner bore up through the channel, and wore along the ice-field on the north side at a distance of a few hundred yards from it. We saw the bear running off round to the south-east side to keep away from us; though, as may readily be supposed, our attention was mainly directed to the strange people on the headland, whose discordant cries and shouts could now be plainly heard. We could see them running down to the sh.o.r.e; and immediately a score of canoes shot out, and came paddling towards us.
”You don't doubt that their coming off is from friendly motives, captain?” Kit asked.
”Oh, no!”
”Still forty or fifty stout fellows might give us our hands full, if they were ill-disposed,” remarked Wade.
”That's a fact,” admitted the captain; ”though I don't believe they would attempt any thing of the sort.”
”Well, there is no harm in being well armed,” said Raed. ”Kit, you and Wash get up half a dozen of the muskets, and load them. Fix the bayonets on them too. Wade and I will load the howitzer and the mighty rifle. And, captain, I don't believe we had better have more than a dozen of them on board at one time till we know them better.”
”That may be as well,” replied Capt. Mazard. ”It will be unpleasant having too many of them aboard at once, anyway. And, in order to have the deck under our thumb a little more, I am going to station two of the sailors with muskets, as a guard, near the man at the wheel, another amids.h.i.+ps, and two more forward.”
Meanwhile the _kayaks_ were approaching, a whole school of them, shouting and racing with each other. Such a barbaric din! The crowd on the sh.o.r.e added their distant shouts.
”There's another thing we must look out for,” remarked the captain.
”These folks are said to be a little thievish. It will be well enough to put loose small articles out of sight.”
Hastily perfecting our arrangements, we provided ourselves each with a musket, and were ready for our strange visitors. They came paddling up, one to a canoe. Their paddles had blades at each end, and were used on either side alternately, with a queer windmill sort of movement.
”Twenty-seven of them,” said Kit.
”Bareheaded, every mother's son of them!” exclaimed Weymouth.
”Only look at the long-haired mokes!” laughed Donovan.
”Why, they're black as Palmleaf!” cried Hobbs.
”Oh, no! not nearly so black,” said Bonney. ”Just a good square dirt-color.”
This last comparison was not far from correct. The Esquimaux are, as a matter of fact, considerably darker than the red Indians of the United States. They are not reddish: they are brown, to which grease and dinginess add not a little. On they came till within fifty yards; when all drew up on a sudden, and sat regarding us in something like silence. Perhaps our bayonets, with the sunlight flas.h.i.+ng on them, may have filled them with a momentary suspicion of danger. Seeing this, we waved our arms to them, beckoning them to approach. While examining the relics of a past age,--the stone axes, arrow-heads, and maces,--I have often pictured in fancy the barbarous habits, the wild visages, and harsh accents, of prehistoric races,--races living away back at the time when men were just rising above the brute. In the wild semi-brutish shouts and gesticulations which followed our own gesture of friendliness I seemed to hear and see these wild fancies verified,--verified in a manner I had not supposed it possible to be observed in this age. And yet here were primitive savages apparently, not fifteen hundred miles in a direct course from our own enlightened city of Boston, where, as we honestly believe, we have the cream (some of it, at least) of the world's civilization. Reflect on this fact, ye who think the whole earth almost ready for the reign of scientific righteousness!
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