CHAPTER XVII.
A very Peculiar Person appears and disappears, and theCastaways are filled alternately with Hope and Fear.
"How long we slept I have not the least idea. It may have been a wholeday, or it may have been two days. It was not a twenty years' sleep,(how we wished it was!) like that of Rip Van Winkle, yet it was a verylong sleep; and, indeed, neither of us cared how long it lasted, we wereso heartbroken about what seemed to be the greatest misfortune that hadyet happened to us. If we woke up at any time, we went to sleep again asquickly as possible, not caring at all to come back any sooner than wasnecessary to the contemplation of our miserable situation,--neverreflecting for a moment that the situation had not been changed in theleast by the unknown man who had appeared and disappeared in such amysterious way. But the sight of him had brought our thoughts freshlyback to the world from which we had been cut off,--a world with humanbeings in it like ourselves; and it was not unnatural, therefore, thatwe should be made miserable by the event. And so we slept on and on, andthus we drowned everything but our dreams, which are everywhere very aptto be most bright and cheering in the most gloomy and despondent times.Such, at least, was the case with me; and if I could have kept dreamingand dreaming on forever, about pleasant things to eat, and pleasantpeople talking to me, I should have been quite well satisfied.
"Thus you see what a great number of ups and downs we had,--sometimesbeing cheerful and fully resigned, then again buried in the very depthsof despair. Sometimes we felt real pleasure in the life to which we hadbecome so well accustomed; and it seemed to us, as we chatted togetherin our warm and well-lighted hut, that, since every necessary want waswell supplied, and we were entirely free from care, we should be wellsatisfied to continue in that situation all our lives. We had, in truth,few troubles and few anxieties. Food, fuel, and clothing we possessed inabundance, and no fears crossed our minds that they would ever fail us.
"But this satisfactory state of mind, so natural at times, was apt to bebroken up by a very slight occurrence,--unusual fatigue, a restlesssleep, a severe storm confining us to the hut for many days together, orby the disappointment we so often experienced when an object which wehad confidently believed to be a ship proved to be but an iceberg. Norwas this more unnatural than that we should at times be perfectly happyand well contented. Thus are we all made, and thus are we all, at times,inconsistent; being often unhappy when there is no assignable cause, andoften experiencing the sense of great happiness, under circumstancesapparently the most distressing.
"You will see, therefore, that there is but one way for any of us topreserve an even temper and uniform disposition; that is, I mean, alwaysto be cheerful, never despondent, ever hopeful; and this can only beattained by always feeling the real presence of God with us; when wemeet with disappointment, to say in our hearts, 'Well, it was not thewill of God,' or, if we meet with what seems great good fortune, 'It isthe will of God that we do some good work, and therefore he has thusblessed us.' Thus only can we be truly happy. With this feeling there isalways consolation in distress. It begets charity, and love, andconfidence, and gentleness; it makes the heart light and the facecheerful, and the life like a sunbeam gladdening where it goes. That'swhat the love of God does.
"These thoughts are suggested to me by the experiences that the Dean andI were having at the time I speak of. How much more happy we should havebeen, had we felt always as I have last described! we should then neverhave been cast down, but should have been always hopeful,--never wishingto sleep on and on, and thus drown sorrow. We should not have felt as wedid now when the strange man had come from the frozen sea anddisappeared again.
"Well, to come back to the story, we were not allowed to sleep as longas we wanted to. Our sleep was indeed brought to an end very suddenly. Iwas first startled by a great noise, and then, springing up, muchalarmed, I aroused the Dean, who was a sounder sleeper even than myself.
"'What's the matter?' cried he.
"'Didn't you hear a noise?' I asked.
"'No!' answered the Dean; 'nothing more, at least, than a church-bell,and that was in my sleep,'--which was clear enough.
"Presently I heard the noise again, and this time it seemed to proceedfrom something not far off. It was now the Dean's turn to be amazed.
"'Did you hear?' I asked again.
"'Yes,' said the Dean, holding his breath to listen.
"Again the strange sound was repeated.
"'Is it the wind?'
"'How can it be? the wind does not make a noise like that!'
"'Can it be a bear?'
"'No! it cannot be a bear!'
"'A fox? perhaps it is a fox!'
"'No, listen! there it is again.'
"The sound was louder now, and nearer to the hut. Again and again it wasrepeated,--nearer now and more constant; then a footfall on the crustedsnow.
"'It is a man! the bear-hunter has come back again!' spoke the Dean,throwing up his hands.
"Again the noise was heard; again the footfall creaked upon the snow.
"'The bear-hunter, it must be!' cried the Dean, again.
"'O, I pray that it is so!' I added, earnestly.
"Again the voice was heard. I answered it. The answer was returned, andwith the answer came a heavier and more rapid creaking of the footfallson the snow.
"We rushed from the hut into the open air without another moment's lossof time, and without saying another word; and there, not ten yards away,stood the very man who had passed us on the sledge,--the bear-hunter ofthe frozen sea.
"And a strange-looking creature he was, to be sure. There was not theleast sign of alarm or fear about him; but, on the contrary, he waslooking mightily pleased, and was talking very fast in a language ofwhich the Dean and I could neither of us understand a single word. Whenhe was not talking he was laughing, and his enormous mouth was stretchedalmost from ear to ear. '_Yeh, yeh!_' he went, and I went that way too,by way of answer, which seemed greatly to delight him. He was dressedall over in furs, and looked very wild; but, as he kept _yeh-yeh_-ingall the time, we were not afraid. As he came up to us, we greeted himvery cordially; but he could no more understand what we said than wecould understand him. He talked very much, and gesticulated a greatdeal, pointing very often in one particular direction with his righthand. Then he cried, 'Mick-ee, mick-ee!' and pointed to the beach below,towards which we followed him. There we found a sledge and seven dogs;and now we understood very certainly, if we had any doubts before, thatthis was the man and these were the dogs that had passed us, followingthe bear.
"The man tried his best to explain to us the whole affair, talking veryrapidly; but we could not gather from what he said more than our eyestold us already, for on the sledge we soon discovered a large bear-skin,all bloody and folded up, and some large pieces of bear's meat. The dogswere tied some distance from the sledge, and were securely fastened bytheir traces to a heavy stone, which I was very glad of, for thewolfish-looking beasts were snarling at each other, and fighting, andhowling at us continually,--seeming all the while to wish themselvesloose, that they might fly upon us, and tear us to pieces.
"If we could not understand the hunter's words, we made out by hissigns, after a while, that he had seen us when he passed in pursuit ofthe bear. After overtaking and capturing the animal, he turned aboutupon his track to look for us, and, finding our footmarks at last, hehad followed us to the hut, calling loudly, as he neared us, to attractour attention, for he could not find us easily,--our hut was so buriedup in snow.
"After being fully satisfied with the inspection of the dogs and sledge,and what there was upon it, we all three went up to the hut.
"It would be difficult to describe our visitor. I have said that he waswholly dressed in furs. His pantaloons were made of bear-skins reachingto the knees, where they met the boots, which were made of the samematerials. His underclothing was made of birds' skins, like our own, andhe wore a coat of fox-skins, with a heavy hood covering up the headcompletely. On his hands he wore mittens
made of seal-skins, with warmdog-skin for an inside lining, and his stockings were of the same. Soyou see no part of him was exposed but his face, which was quite dark,or, rather, copper-colored (something darker than a North AmericanIndian), and it was very broad and very round. The nose was very smalland very flat, and the eyes were small and narrow. His hair was jetblack, long and tangled, and was cut straight across the forehead. Hehad but little beard,--only a few black, wiry-looking bristles growingon his upper lip and on the tip of his chin. You would hardly supposethat such a creature could be anything but savage and repulsive; yetthis he did not seem to be at all; on the contrary he appeared like themost amiable fellow that ever was seen.
"He sat down before the fire on one of the big stones we used forstools, and the Dean and I sat one on either side of him; and I cannever tell you how strange it seemed to be sitting there with anotherhuman being besides ourselves, after all that time spent without everseeing anybody but each other. It was like a dream. We could hardlyrealize that it was true, as there we sat, staring at the strange man inwonder and astonishment.
"And all this time we were speculating about him,--where he came from,where he was going to, what relation did he hold to the world from whichwe had come in the _Blackbird_, could he tell us where we were, would hetake us from the island, would he rescue us from this dreary life.
"O, how much we would have given for a few words from him that we couldunderstand! How rejoiced we would have been to have these questionsanswered! Answering them, however, he might be even then, for anythingwe knew to the contrary; for he scarcely left off talking a singleinstant, but away he rattled as lively as a magpie and just asintelligibly. We could make nothing at all out of what he said, any morethan I could of the hieroglyphics I have since seen on the stones ofEgypt, until he put his hand to his mouth, at the same time throwing hishead back a little, and repeating, several times, '_Me drinkum, Medrinkum._'
"This very much surprised us, as we knew that he was asking for water,which having been given him, he then said, '_Me eatum_', signifying thathe was hungry. We lost no time, therefore, in preparing him a heartymeal of ducks and bear's meat, which he appeared to think very fine.Then he had a great deal to tell us about something that he called'_Oomeaksuak_', the meaning of which we could not make out; but, as hepointed in a particular direction, we thought he meant the place wherehe lived. We could not understand from him what his name was; so, as wehad to speak of him to each other constantly, we called him at once'Eatum,' as that was the word he used most. He amused us very much withhis frequent repetition of it, and with the enormous quantities of foodhe took into his stomach after he did repeat it; for he only had to say,'_Me eatum_' to get as much food as he wanted. It soon got to be quite ajoke with us, and when he said, '_Me eatum_' we all three fell, not onlyto feeding, but to laughing besides.
"Finding himself in such good quarters, Eatum manifested no dispositionto leave them; but, after he had taken a sound sleep, he had a greatdeal to say about '_mickee_', as before; and since he made a great manymotions, as if using a whip (pointing all the while towards the beach),we concluded that he must mean something about his dogs, which we foundto be true, for '_mickee_' in his language means dog, as we afterwardsdiscovered. As soon as we had settled this, we all went out of the hutagain, and went down and brought the bear's meat and skin on the sledgeup to the hut, and then we fastened the dogs near by. After being fed,they all lay down and went to sleep on the snow. These dogs were verylarge and strong animals; and the seven could draw a very heavy load,--Ishould think that the whole seven could draw as much as a small horse.
"Eatum seemed to have been quite exhausted with long hunting when hecame to us, and he did very little but eat and sleep for several days.His nose had been a little touched by the frost, but he scorched someoil, and rubbed it on as we would ointment, and cured it very quickly.
"After he had eaten and slept to his entire satisfaction, he appeared togrow more lively, and showed a great deal of curiosity about our hut andfurniture, and hunting implements, being highly pleased with every newthing he saw. It was very surprising to see how nearly like his own manyof our things were,--our lamp and pot and cups, for instance, and alsoour clothing. Our harpoon (the 'Dean's Delight') was almost exactly amatch for his.
"It was a great drawback to our satisfaction that we could notunderstand him or he us, but little by little we got over part of thisdifficulty; for, upon discovering that he used one particular word veryoften, I guessed that he must be asking a question. The word was'_Kina_'; so once when he used it he was pointing to our lamp, and Isaid 'lamp' at a venture, whereupon, after repeating it several times,he appeared to be much gratified, and then said, '_Kolipsut_', and thisI repeated after him, which pleased him again. Then I knew that'_Kina?_' meant 'What is it?' or 'What's this?' so after that we_kina_-ed everything, and got on finely. We, of course, learned morerapidly than Eatum, picking up a great many words from him; and, havingboth of us good memories, we got to be able to make him understand us alittle in the course of time; and as fast as we learned we taught him,and he got to know some of our language, in which we encouraged him. 'Mespeakum much bad,' he would say sometimes, which was very true; but solong as we understood him it made little matter.
"And now it was that we got to find out how he had picked up the fewwords such as _me drinkum_, _me eatum_, and so on, that he had used atfirst; for he gave us to know that we were not a long way from whereships came every year, and that some of his people saw the ships whenthey passed, and sometimes went aboard of them. 'Ship' was what he meantby '_Oomeaksuak_', which word he had at first used so often. He hadfrequently been aboard of an _Oomeaksuak_, he said.
"Now this was great news for us, and we began at once to devise means ofescape from the island. We made Eatum understand as much of what wewanted as possible. All this time I must not neglect to mention,however, that Eatum was of the greatest service to us; for when theweather was good he would fasten his dogs to the sledge, and all threeof us would go out together on the sea to hunt,--Eatum driving. It wasvery lively sport; and sometimes, when the ice was very smooth and thesnow hard, we went very fast, almost as fast as a horse would run, evenwith the three of us upon the sledge. The sledge, by the way, I musttell you, was made out of bits of bones, all cunningly lashed togetherwith seal-skin thongs. Once we were caught in a severe gale a good wayfrom home, and had to make a little house to shelter ourselves from itout of snow; and in this, with our furs on, we managed to sleep quitecomfortably, and remained there about twenty-four hours before theweather would permit us to go on again.
"While in the snow hut we had a lamp to give us light and warmth; andthis lamp (which was Eatum's) was made like ours, and Eatum made aspark, and started a flame, and kept it burning just as we haddone,--the tinder being the down of the willow blossom (which he carriedwrapped up in several layers of seal-skin), with moss for wick and theblubber for fuel. The pot in which he melted snow for water, and cookedour supper, was made, like ours, of soapstone.
"When the storm broke, we left the snow hut, and set out for the island;catching two seals by the way, and in the very same manner, too, thatthe Dean and I had done long before we ever knew there was such a personas Eatum in the world. We were much disappointed at not discovering anybears, and so were the dogs.
"But not many days afterward, the weather being fine, we went out uponthe sea a great way, and were rejoiced to come across a bear's track,which Eatum said was very fresh. No sooner had the dogs seen it thanaway they started upon it; and over the ice and snow--rough and smooth,right upon the track--they ran as fast as they could go.
"The bear had been sleeping behind an iceberg, and we had come upon himso suddenly that he had not time even to get out of sight, and we sawhim almost as soon as we had discovered the track. '_Nen-ook,nen-ook!_' cried Eatum, pointing towards the bear; and there he was,sure enough, running as fast as he could. But, no matter how fast heran, we went still faster; and it could not have been an hour before w
eovertook him. Then Eatum leaned forward and untied his dogs, lettingthem run ahead while the sledge stopped. In a few minutes the dogs hadbrought the bear to bay,--surrounding the huge wild beast, and flying athis sides, and tormenting him in a very fierce manner. But I alwaysobserved that they took good care to keep away from his head, for if heshould get a chance at one of them, and hit him with his huge paws, hewould mash him flat enough, or knock him all into little bits.
"While the dogs were worrying the bear we got out our weapons,--the Deanhis 'Delight,' I 'Old Crumply,' and Eatum a spear made of a narwhalhorn, and looking, for all the world, just like 'Old Crumply's' twinbrother. Then we rushed up to the bear, Eatum leading; and fierce thoughthe animal looked, and awfully as he roared, we closed right in uponhim, and quickly made an end of him. Then we drove off the dogs, andtied them to a hummock of ice, while we butchered the dead animal andsecured the skin and what meat we wanted, after which we allowed thedogs to gorge themselves. Being now too full to haul, we had to let themlie down and sleep, while we built a snow hut, and, crawling into it,got a good rest. Then we returned to the island, mighty well satisfiedwith ourselves.
"After this we fell again into conversation about the _Oomeaksuaks_, orships, as I have explained before; and, having learned more and more ofthe language which Eatum spoke, we got to comprehend him better, so wefixed clearly in our minds where the place was that the ships came to,and were fully satisfied that Eatum told the truth about it. We nowoffered to give him everything we had if he would take us there, andstay with us until the ships should come along and take us off hishands. About this we had several conversations; but just when we thoughtthe treaty was complete, and Eatum was going to carry out the plan wehad fixed upon, this singular savage disappeared very suddenly,--dogs,sledge, and all,--without saying a single word to us about it.
"When we made the discovery that he was gone, we were filled withastonishment and dismay. We hoped, at first, that he had gone offhunting; but, finding that he did not return, we tried to follow thetracks of his sledge, but the wind had drifted snow over them, and wecould not.
"We now made up our minds that Eatum was nothing more than a treacheroussavage; and we were afraid that he would come back with more savages andmurder us, in order that he might get the furs and other things that wehad; so for a while we were much alarmed, and were more heartbroken Ibelieve, than ever before, for our hopes of rescue had been raised veryhigh by hearing of Eatum's people and the ships. The suddenness withwhich all our expectations were thus dashed to the ground quite overcameus, and we passed the next five days very miserably, hardly stirring outof the hut during all that time. But at length we saw the folly ofgiving way to despair.
"One thing we quickly determined upon, and that was to leave the island,one way or another; for now we were so afraid of the savages coming tomurder us, that we would suffer any risk and hardship rather than remainthere longer. So once more we began to devise means for our safety.
"It was no longer what we should do for food and fuel, or clothing, buthow we should escape. The ships we had given up long ago, and with theships had vanished every hope of rescue. But now a wild man had come tous out of the ice-desert, and had told us that ships came in the summernot far from where we were, and through this intelligence we hadobtained a glimpse of home and our native country, as it were; and thistoo at the very time when we had become most reconciled to ourcondition, and had made up our minds to live as best we could on theRock of Good Hope for the remainder of our days.
"But now our minds were wholly changed. 'We are worse off than ever,'said the Dean, 'for this little hope the savage gave us, and the fear,besides, that he has put into us,'--which was true enough.
"Stimulated now by the memory of that hope and the presence of thatfear, we prepared to undertake the bold task of rescuing ourselves. Thesavage had pointed out to us the direction of the place where the shipspassed, 'And now,' we thought, 'if we can only reach the land therebefore the summer comes we shall be all right.' But if we should not getto the proper place, or if the ships did not come along, then thechances were that we might starve or freeze to death. Nothing daunted,however, by the contemplation of that gloomy side of the picture, wewent earnestly to work, and very soon had contrived a plan.
"Of course we must have a sledge, as we were obliged to travel a longdistance, and must carry not only food to eat by the way, but blubberfor a lamp with which to melt water from the snow, and furs to keep uswarm while we slept. Eatum had taught us how to construct a snow hut, sothat we felt sure of being able to shelter ourselves from the storms.
"But the sledge was the great difficulty. How should we make a sledge?was the question which most occupied our thoughts, and taxed ouringenuity. Apparently we had nothing to make it of, nor tools to make itwith. To fasten together pieces of bone in the manner that Eatum haddone, and thus construct a runner, was not possible, as we had no drillto make holes with,--and besides, if we had, the work would haverequired too long a time for our present necessities. Our purpose was toget away from the island with all possible haste.
"We made a sledge, however, at last, and in a very ingenious way as wethought, though not a particularly good way as we afterwards discovered.First we cut two strips of seal-skin, and sewed them into tubes. Then wefilled the tubes with hair, and pieces of meat chopped very fine, andalso bits of moss. Then we poured water into the tubes, and flattenedthem down by stamping upon them. Very soon the whole froze together,solid as a board, and these we soon fashioned into the proper shape forrunners. We found no difficulty in fastening the two together withcross-ties of bone, which we lashed firmly to the runners. Thus, inseven days from the time of beginning to work upon it, our sledge wascomplete.
"Very much rejoiced over this triumph, we put a load on the sledge, andset out to give it a trial. But one runner gave way before we had gone adozen fathoms, and we were in a state of great perplexity. We resolvednow to bundle up everything we needed in a bear-skin, and drag that overthe snow after us, so great was our haste to get away. We would drag thebear-skin head-foremost, so that the fur would slip more easily over thesnow. But when we had done this, we discovered that, to say nothing ofdragging the load, we could not even start it. Our united efforts werewholly unequal to the task of moving it even so much as an inch; and,like Robinson Crusoe with his boat, we had wholly miscalculated themeans, thinking only of the end. And so it is sometimes, even with wiserheads than ours.
"We were now in even greater trouble than ever; but being at lengthfully satisfied of the utter hopelessness of proceeding in this manner,we went back next day to the sledge, and began to work upon it again;all the while looking out for the savages, and expecting them everyminute to come and murder us."