Red Rooney: The Last of the Crew Part 23

It was the voice of p.u.s.s.i. That Eskimo atom had been so overcome with sleep at the breaking up of the festivities of the previous night that she was unable to distinguish between those whom she loved and those for whom she cared not. In these circ.u.mstances, she had seized the first motherly tail that came within her reach, and followed it home. It chanced to belong to Kunelik, so she dropped down and slept beside her.

"_You_ know, my dear little seal?" said Okiok in surprise.

"Yes, me knows. When I was 'sleep, a big man comes an' stump on my toes--not much, only a leetle. Dat wokes me, an' I see Ujiyak. He shooks Ip'goo an' bose hoed out degidder."

Okiok looked at Kunelik, Kunelik looked at Okiok, and both gravely shook their heads.

Before they could resume the conversation, Ippegoo's voice was heard outside asking if his mother was in.

"Go," said Kunelik; "though he is a fool, he is wise enough to hold his tongue when any one but me is near."

Okiok took the hint, rose at once, and went out, pa.s.sing the youth as he entered, and being much struck with the lugubrious solemnity of his visage.

"Mother," said Ippegoo, sitting down on a skin beside the pleasant little woman, "it comes."

"What comes, my son?"

"I know not."

"If you know not, how do you know that it comes?" asked Kunelik, who was slightly alarmed by the wild manner and unusual, almost dreadful, gravity of her boy.

"It is useless to ask me, mother. I do not understand. My mind cannot take it in, but--but--it comes."

"Yes; when is it coming?" asked Kunelik, who knew well how to humour him.

"How can I tell? I--I think it has come _now_," said the youth, growing paler, or rather greener; "I think I feel it in my breast. Ujarak said the torngak would come to-day, and to-night I am to _be--changed_!"

"Oho!" exclaimed Kunelik, with a slight touch of asperity, "it's a torngak that is to come, is it? and Ujarak says so? Don't you know, Ippe, that Ujarak is an idiot!"

"Mother!" exclaimed the youth remonstratively, "Ujarak an idiot?

Impossible! He is to make me an angekok to-night."

"You, Ippe! You are not more fit for an angekok than I am for a seal-hunter."

"Yes, true; but I am to _be--changed_!" returned the youth, with a bright look; then remembering that his _role_ was solemnity, he dropped the corners of his mouth, elongated his visage, turned up his eyes, and groaned.

"Have you the stomach twist, my boy?" asked his mother tenderly.

"No; but I suppose I--I--am changing."

"No, you are not, Ippe. I have seen many angekoks made. There will be no change till you have gone through the customs, so make your mind easy, and have something to eat."

The youth, having had no breakfast, was ravenously hungry, and as the process of feeding would not necessarily interfere with solemnity, he agreed to the proposal with his accustomed look of satisfaction--which, however, he suddenly nipped in the bud. Then, setting-to with an expression that might have indicated the woes of a lifetime, he made a hearty breakfast.

Thereafter he kept moving about the village all day in absolute silence, and with a profound gloom on his face, by which the risibility of some was tickled, while not a few were more or less awe-stricken.

It soon began to be rumoured that Ippegoo was the angekok-elect. In the afternoon Ujarak returned from a visit, as he said, to the nether world, and with his brother wizards--for there were several in the tribe-- confirmed the rumour.

As evening approached, Rooney entered Okiok's hut. No one was at home except Nuna and Tumbler. The latter was playing, as usual, with his little friend p.u.s.s.i. The goodwife was busy over the cooking-lamp.

"Where is your husband, Nuna?" asked the sailor, sitting down on a walrus skull.

"Out after seals."

"And Nunaga?"

"Visiting the mother of Arbalik."

The seaman looked thoughtfully at the lamp-smoke for a few moments.

"She is a hard woman, that mother of Arbalik," he said.

"Issek is not so hard as she looks," returned Mrs Okiok; "her voice is rough, but her heart is soft."

"I'm glad to hear you speak well of her," said Rooney, "for I don't like to think ill of any one if I can help it; but sometimes I can't help it.

Now, there's your angekok Ujarak: I cannot think well of him. Have you a good word to say in his favour?"

"No, not one. He is bad through and through--from the skin to the bone.

I know him well," said Nuna, with a flourish of her cooking-stick that almost overturned the lamp.

"But you may be mistaken," remarked Rooney, smiling. "You are mistaken even in the matter of his body, to say nothing of his spirit."

"How so?" asked Nuna quickly.

"You said he is bad through and through. From skin to bone is not through and through. To be quite correct, you must go from skin to marrow."

Nuna acknowledged this by violently plunging her cooking-stick into the pot.

"Well now, Nuna," continued Rooney, in a confidential tone, "tell me--"

At that moment he was interrupted by the entrance of the master of the mansion, who quietly sat down on another skull close to his friend.

"I was just going to ask your wife, Okiok, what she and you think of this business of making an angekok of poor Ippegoo," said Rooney.

"We think it is like a seal with its tail where its head should be, its skin in its stomach, and all its bones outside; all nonsense-- foolishness," answered Okiok, with more of indignation in his look and tone than he was wont to display.

"Then you don't believe in angekoks?" asked Rooney.

"No," replied the Eskimo earnestly; "I don't. I think they are clever scoundrels--clever fools. And more, I don't believe in torngaks or any other spirits."

"In that you are wrong," said Rooney. "There is one great and good Spirit, who made and rules the universe."

"I'm not sure of that," returned the Eskimo, with a somewhat dogged and perplexed look, that showed the subject was not quite new to him. "I never saw, or heard, or tasted, or smelt, or felt a spirit. How can I know anything about it?"

"Do you believe in your own spirit, Okiok?"

"Yes, I must. I cannot help it. I am like other men. When a man dies there is something gone out of him. It must be his spirit."