Red Rooney: The Last of the Crew. Robert Michael Ballantyne
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by Okiok and his sons. The sailor was not ignorant of Eskimo ways. His residence in South Greenland had taught him many things. He dropped, therefore, quite naturally—indeed gladly—on his hands and knees on coming to the mouth of the tunnel, and crept slowly into the hut, followed by the whole family, except Ermigit, who was left to unfasten the dogs.
The weather at the time was by no means cold, for spring was rapidly advancing; nevertheless, to one who had been so reduced in strength, the warmth of the Eskimo hut was inexpressibly grateful. With a great sigh of relief the rescued man flung himself on the raised part of the floor on which Eskimos are wont to sit and sleep.
“Thank God, and again I thank you, my friends!” he said, repeating the phrase which he had already used, for the sudden change from despair to hope, from all but death to restored life, had filled his heart with gratitude.
“You are weary?” said Okiok.
“Ay, ay—very weary; well-nigh to death,” he replied.
“Will the Kablunet sleep?” asked Nuna, pointing to a couch of skins close behind the seaman.
Rooney looked round.
“Thankee; yes, I will.”
He crept to the couch, and dropped upon it, with his head resting on an eider-down pillow. Like a tired infant, his eyes closed, and he was asleep almost instantaneously.
Seeing this, the Eskimos began to move about with care, and to speak in whispers, though it was needless caution, for in his condition the man would probably have continued to sleep through the wildest thunderstorm. Even when baby, tumbling headlong off the elevated floor, narrowly missed spiking himself on a walrus spear, and set up a yell that might have startled the stone deaf, the wearied Kablunet did not move. Okiok did, however. He moved smartly towards the infant, caught him by the throat, and almost strangled him in a fierce attempt to keep him quiet.
“Stupid tumbler!” he growled—referring to the child’s general and awkward habit of falling—“Can’t you shut your mouth?”
Curious similarity between the thoughts and words of civilised and savage man in similar circumstances! And it is interesting to note the truth of what the song says:—
“We little know what great things from little things may rise.”
From that slight incident the Eskimo child derived his future name of “Tumbler”! We forget what the precise Eskimo term is, but the English equivalent will do as well.
When supper-time arrived that night, Okiok and Nuna consulted as to whether they should waken their guest, or let him lie still—for, from the instant he lay down, he had remained without the slightest motion, save the slow, regular heaving of his broad chest.
“Let him sleep. He is tired,” said Okiok.
“But he must be hungry, and he is weak,” said Nuna.
“He can feed when he wakens,” returned the man, admiring his guest as a collector might admire a foreign curiosity which he had just found.
“Kablunets sleep sounder than Eskimos,” remarked the woman.
“Stupid one! Your head is thick, like the skull of the walrus,” said the man. “Don’t you see that it is because he is worn-out?”
Eskimos are singularly simple and straightforward in their speech. They express their opinions with the utmost candour, and without the slightest intention of hurting each other’s feelings. Nuna took no offence at her husband’s plain speaking, but continued to gaze with a gratified expression at the stranger.
And sooth to say Reginald Rooney was a pleasant object for contemplation, as well as a striking contrast to the men with whom Nuna had been hitherto associated. His brow was broad; the nose, which had been compared to the eagle’s beak, was in reality a fine aquiline; the mouth, although partially concealed by a brown drooping moustache, was well formed, large, and firm; the beard bushy, and the hair voluminous as well as curly. Altogether, this poor castaway was as fine a specimen of a British tar as one could wish to see, despite his wasted condition and his un-British garb.
It was finally decided to leave him undisturbed, and the Eskimo family took care while supping to eat their food in comparative silence. Usually the evening meal was a noisy, hilarious festival, at which Okiok and Norrak and Ermigit were wont to relate the various incidents of the day’s hunt, with more or less of exaggeration, not unmingled with fun, and only a little of that shameless boasting which is too strong a characteristic of the North American Indian. The women of the household were excellent listeners; also splendid laughers, and Tumbler was unrivalled in the matter of crowing, so that noise as well as feasting was usually the order of the night. But on this great occasion that was all changed. The feasting was done in dead silence; and another very striking peculiarity of the occasion was that, while the six pairs of jaws kept moving with unflagging pertinacity, the twelve wide-open eyes kept glaring with unwinking intensity at the sleeping man.
Indeed this unwavering glare continued long after supper was over, for each member of the family lay down to rest with his or her face towards the stranger, and kept up the glare until irresistible Nature closed the lids and thus put out the eyes, like the stars of morning, one by one; perhaps it would be more strictly correct to say two by two.
Okiok and his wife were the last to succumb. Long after the others were buried in slumber, these two sat up by the lamp-light, solacing themselves with little scraps and tit-bits of walrus during the intervals of whispered conversation.
“What shall we do with him?” asked Okiok, after a brief silence.
“Keep him,” replied Nuna, with decision.
“But we cannot force him to stay.”
“He cannot travel alone,” said Nuna, “and we will not help him to go.”
“We are not the only Innuits in all the land. Others will help him if we refuse.”
This was so obvious that the woman could not reply, but gazed for some time in perplexity at the lamp-smoke. And really there was much inspiration to be derived from the lamp-smoke, for the wick being a mass of moss steeped in an open cup of seal-oil, the smoke of it rose in varied convolutions that afforded almost as much scope for suggestive contemplation as our familiar coal-fires.
Suddenly the little woman glanced at her slumbering household, cast a meaning look at her husband, and laughed—silently of course.
“Has Nuna become a fool that she laughs at nothing?” demanded Okiok simply.
Instead of replying to the well-meant though impolite question, Nuna laughed again, and looked into the dark corner where the pretty little round face of Nunaga was dimly visible, with the eyes shut, and the little mouth wide-open.
“We will marry him to Nunaga,” she said, suddenly becoming grave.
“Pooh!” exclaimed Okiok—or some expression equivalent to that—“Marry Nunaga to a Kablunet? Never! Do you not know that Angut wants her?”
It was evident from the look of surprise with which Nuna received this piece of information that she was not aware of Angut’s aspirations, and it was equally evident from the perplexed expression that followed that her hastily-conceived little matrimonial speculation had been knocked on the head.
After this their thoughts either strayed into other channels, or became too deep for utterance, for they conversed no more, but soon joined the rest of the family in the realms of oblivion.
Chapter Three.
Our Hero and his Friends become Familiar
It was a fine balmy brilliant morning when Red Rooney awoke from the most refreshing sleep he had enjoyed for many a day, gazed thoughtfully up at the blackened roof of the Eskimo hut, and wondered where he was.
There was nothing that met his eyes to recall his scattered senses, for all the members of the family had gone out to their various avocations, and one of them having thrust a sealskin into the hole in the wall which served for a window the sun found admittance only through crevices, and but faintly illumined the interior.
The