Ungava. Robert Michael Ballantyne
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left palm, as if he were about to make a speech. “Because, Eda, because there is such a thing as heat—long-continued, never-ending, sweltering heat. Because there are such reprehensible and unutterably detestable insects as mosquitoes, and sand-flies, and bull-dogs; and there is such a thing as being bitten, and stung, and worried, and sucked into a sort of partial madness; and I have seen such sights as men perpetually slapping their own faces, and scratching the skin off their own cheeks with their own nails, and getting no relief thereby, but rather making things worse; and I have, moreover, seen men’s heads swelled until the eyes and noses were lost, and the mouths only visible when opened, and their general aspect like that of a Scotch haggis; and there is a time when all this accumulates on man and beast till the latter takes to the water in desperation, and the former takes to intermittent insanity, and that time is—summer.—Another cup, please, Mrs Stanley. ’Pon my conscience, it creates thirst to think of it.”
At this stage the conversation of the party in the tent was interrupted by a loud peal of laughter mingled with not a few angry exclamations from the men. La Roche, in one of his frantic leaps to avoid a tongue of flame which shot out from the fire with a vicious velocity towards his eyes, came into violent contact with Bryan while that worthy was in the act of lifting a seething kettle of soup and boiled pork from the fire. Fortunately for the party whose supper was thus placed in jeopardy, Bryan stood his ground; but La Roche, tripping over a log, fell heavily among the pannikins, tin plates, spoons, and knives, which had been just laid out on the ground in front of the canoe.
“Ach! mauvais chien,” growled Gaspard, as he picked up and threw away the fragments of his pipe, “you’re always cuttin’ and jumpin’ about like a monkey.”
“Oh! pauvre crapaud,” cried François, laughing; “don’t abuse him, Gaspard. He’s a useful dog in his way.”
“Tare an’ ages! you’ve done it now, ye have. Bad luck to ye! wasn’t I for iver tellin’ ye that same. Shure, if it wasn’t that ye’re no bigger or heavier than a wisp o’ pea straw, ye’d have druve me and the soup into the fire, ye would. Be the big toe o’ St. Patrick, not to mintion his riverince the Pope—”
“Come, come, Bryan,” cried Massan, “don’t speak ill o’ the Pope, an’ down wi’ the kettle.”
“The kittle, is it? Sorra a kittle ye’ll touch, Massan, till it’s cool enough to let us all start fair at wance. Ye’ve got yer mouth and throat lined wi’ brass, I believe, an’ would ate the half o’t before a soul of us could taste it!”
“Don’t insult me, you red-faced racoon,” retorted Massan, while he and his comrades circled round the kettle, and began a vigorous attack on the scalding mess; “my throat is not so used to swallowin’ fire as your own. I never knowed a man that payed into the grub as you do.—Bah! how hot it is.—I say, Oolibuck, doesn’t it remember you o’ the dogs o’ yer own country, when they gits the stone kettle to clean out?”
Oolibuck’s broad visage expanded with a chuckle as he lifted an enormous wooden spoonful of soup to his ample mouth. “Me tink de dogs of de Innuit (Esquimaux) make short work of dis kettle if ’e had ’im.”
“Do the dogs of the Huskies eat with their masters?” inquired François, as he groped in the kettle with his fork in search of a piece of pork.
“Dey not eat wid der masters, but dey al’ays clean hout de kettle,” replied Moses, somewhat indignantly.
“Ha!” exclaimed Massan, pausing for a few minutes to recover breath; “yes, they always let the dogs finish off the feast. Ye must know, comrades, that I’ve seed them do it myself—anyways I’ve seed a man that knew a feller who said he had a comrade that wintered once with the Huskies, which is pretty much the same thing. An’ he said that sometimes when they kill a big seal, they boil it whole an’ have a rig’lar feast. Ye must understand, mes garçons, that the Huskies make thumpin’ big kettles out o’ a kind o’ soft stone they find in them parts, an’ some o’ them’s big enough to boil a whole seal in. Well, when the beast is cooked, they take it out o’ the pot, an’ while they’re tuckin’ into it, the dogs come and sit in a ring round the pot to wait till the soup’s cool enough to eat. They knows well that it’s too hot at first, an’ that they must have a deal o’ patience; but afore long some o’ the young uns can’t hold on, so they steps up somewhat desperate like, and pokes their snouts in. Of course they pulls them out pretty sharp with a yell, and sit down to rub their noses for a bit longer. Then the old uns take courage an’ make a snap at it now and again, but very tenderly, till it gits cooler at last, an’ then at it they go, worryin’, an’ scufflin’, an’ barkin’, an’ gallopin’, just like Moses there, till the pot’s as clean as the day it wos made.”
“Ha! ha! oh, ver’ goot, très bien; ah! mon coeur, just très splendiferous!” shouted La Roche, whose risibility was always easily tickled.
“It’s quite true, though—isn’t it, Moses?” said Massan, as he once more applied to the kettle, while some of his comrades cut up the goose that Frank had shot in the afternoon.
“Why, Moses, what a capacity you have for grub!” said François. “If your countrymen are anything like you, I don’t wonder that they have boiled seals and whales for dinner.”
“It’ll take a screamin’ kittle for a whale,” spluttered Bryan, with his mouth full, “an’ a power o’ dogs to drink the broth.”
“You tink you funny, Bryan,” retorted Moses, while an oily smile beamed on his fat, good-humoured countenance; “but you not; you most dreadful stupid.”
“Thrue for ye, Moses; I was oncommon stupid to let you sit so long beside the kittle,” replied the Irishman, as he made a futile effort to scrape another spoonful from the bottom of it. “Och! but ye’ve licked it as clane as one of yer own dogs could ha’ done it.”
“Mind your eye!” growled Gaspard, at the same time giving La Roche a violent push, as that volatile worthy, in one of his eccentric movements, nearly upset his can of water.
“Oh! pardon, monsieur,” exclaimed La Roche, in pretended sorrow, at the same time making a grotesque bow that caused a general peal of laughter.
“Why, one might as well travel with a sick bear as with you, Gaspard,” said François half angrily.
“Hold your jaw,” replied Gaspard.
“Not at your bidding,” retorted François, half rising from his reclining posture, while his colour heightened. Gaspard had also started up, and it seemed as if the little camp were in danger of becoming a scene of strife, when Dick Prince, who was habitually silent and unobtrusive, preferring generally to listen rather than to speak, laid his hand on Gaspard’s broad shoulder and pulled him somewhat forcibly to the ground.
“Shame on you, comrades!” he said, in a low, grave voice, that instantly produced a dead silence; “shame on you, to quarrel on our first night in the bush! We’ve few enough friends in these parts, I think, that we should make enemies o’ each other.”
“That’s well said,” cried Massan, in a very decided tone. “It won’t do to fall out when there’s so few of us.” And the stout voyageur thrust his foot against the logs on the fire, causing a rich cloud of sparks to ascend, as if to throw additional light on his remark.
“Pardon me, mes comrades,” cried François; “I did not intend to quarrel;” and he extended his hand to Gaspard, who took it in silence, and dropping back again to his recumbent posture, resumed his pipe.
This little scene was witnessed by the party in the tent, who were near enough to overhear all that was said by the men, and even to converse with them if they should desire to do so. A shade of anxiety crossed Mr Stanley’s countenance, and some time after, recurring to the subject, he said—
“I don’t feel quite easy about that fellow Gaspard. He seems a sulky dog, and is such a Hercules that he might give us a deal of trouble if he were high-spirited.”
A slight smile of contempt curled Frank’s lip as he said, “A strong arm without a bold heart is not of more value than that