The Giant of the North: Pokings Round the Pole. Robert Michael Ballantyne

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ creature with a dark body and towering wings, and a black thing in its middle, from which were vomited volumes of smoke.

      “Kablunets! white men!” he yelled.

      “Kablunets!—huk! huk!” echoed the whole tribe, as they scrambled up the ice-hill one after another.

      And they were right. A vessel of the pale-faces had penetrated these northern solitudes, and was advancing swiftly before a light breeze under sail and steam.

      Despite the preparation their minds had received, and the fact that they were out in search of these very people, this sudden appearance of them filled most of the Eskimos with alarm—some of them with absolute terror, insomuch that the term “pale-face” became most appropriate to themselves.

      “What shall we do?” exclaimed Akeetolik, one of the men.

      “Fly!” cried Ivitchuk, another of the men, whose natural courage was not high.

      “No; let us stay and behold!” said Oolichuk, with a look of contempt at his timid comrade.

      “Yes, stay and see,” said Eemerk sternly.

      “But they will kill us,” faltered the young woman, whom we have already mentioned by the name of Tekkona.

      “No—no one would kill you,” said Eemerk gallantly; “they would only carry you off and keep you.”

      While they conversed with eager, anxious looks, the steam yacht—for such she was—advanced rapidly, threading her way among the ice-fields and floes with graceful rapidity and ease, to the unutterable amazement of the natives. Although her sails were spread to catch the light breeze, her chief motive power at the time was a screw-propeller.

      “Yes, it must be alive,” said Oolichuk to Akeetolik, with a look of solemn awe. “The white men do not paddle. They could not lift paddles big enough to move such a great oomiak,”1, “and the wind is not strong; it could not blow them so fast. See, the oomiak has a tail—and wags it!”

      “Oh! do let us run away!” whispered the trembling Oblooria, as she took shelter behind Tekkona.

      “No, no,” said the latter, who was brave as well as pretty, “we need not fear. Our men will take care of us.”

      “I wish that Chingatok was here!” whimpered poor little Oblooria, nestling closer to Tekkona and grasping her tail, “he fears nothing and nobody.”

      “Ay,” assented Tekkona with a peculiar smile, “and is brave enough to fight everything and everybody.”

      “Does Oblooria think that no one can fight but the giant?” whispered Oolichuk, who stood nearest to the little maid.

      He drew a knife made of bone from his boot, where it usually lay concealed, and flourished it, with a broad grin. The girl laughed, blushed slightly, and, looking down, toyed with the sleeve of Tekkona’s fur coat.

      Meanwhile the yacht drew near to the floe on which our Eskimos were grouped. The ice was cracked right across, leaving a lane of open water about ten feet wide between its inner edge and the shore ice. The Eskimos stood on the land side of this crack, a hundred yards or so from it. On nearing the floe the strange vessel checked her speed.

      “It moves its wings!” exclaimed Eemerk.

      “And turns its side to us,” said Akeetolik.

      “And wags its tail no more,” cried Oolichuk.

      “Oh! do, do let us run away,” gasped Oblooria.

      “No, no, we will not run,” said Tekkona.

      At that moment a white cloud burst from the side of the yacht.

      “Hi! hee! huk!” shouted the whole tribe in amazement.

      A crash followed which not only rattled like thunder among the surrounding cliffs, but went like electric fire to the central marrow of each Eskimo. With a united yell of terror, they leaped three feet into the air—more or less—turned about, and fled. Tekkona, who was active as a young deer, herself took the lead; and Oblooria, whose limbs trembled so that she could hardly run, held on to Oolichuk, who gallantly dragged her along. The terror was increased by a prolonged screech from the steam-whistle. It was a wild scramble in sudden panic. The Eskimos reached their sledges, harnessed their teams, left their spears on the ice, cracked their whips, which caused the dogs to join in the yelling chorus, and made for the land at a furious gallop.

      But their fear began to evaporate in a few minutes, and Oolichuk was the first to check his pace.

      “Ho! stop,” he cried.

      Eemerk looked back, saw that they were not pursued, and pulled up. The others followed suit, and soon the fugitives were seen by those on board the yacht grouped together and gazing intently at them from the top of another ice-hummock.

      The effect of the cannon-shot on board the yacht itself was somewhat startling. The gun had been loaded on the other side of the promontory for the purpose of being fired if Eskimos were not visible on the coast beyond, in order to attract them from the interior, if they should chance to be there. When, however, the natives were discovered on the ice, the gun was, of course, unnecessary, and had been forgotten. It therefore burst upon the crew with a shock of surprise, and caused the Captain, who was in the cabin at the moment, to shoot up from the hatchway like a Jack-in-the-box.

      “Who did that?” he demanded, looking round sternly.

      The crew, who had been gazing intently at the natives, did not know.

      “I really cannot tell, sir,” said the chief mate, touching his cap.

      Two strapping youths—one about sixteen, the other eighteen—leaned over the side and paid no regard to the question; but it was obvious, from the heaving motion of their shoulders, that they were not so much absorbed in contemplation as they pretended to be.

      “Come, Leo, Alf, you know something about this.”

      The Captain was a large powerful man of about forty, with bushy iron-grey curls, a huge beard, and an aquiline nose. The two youths turned to him at once, and Leo, the eldest, said respectfully, “We did not see it done, uncle, but—but we think—”

      “Well, what do you think?”

      At that moment a delicate-looking, slender lad, about twelve years of age, with fair curly hair, and flashing blue eyes, stepped out from behind the funnel, which had hitherto concealed him, and said boldly, though blushingly—

      “I did it, father.”

      “Ha! just like you; why did you do it? eh!”

      “I can hardly tell, father,” said the boy, endeavouring to choke a laugh, “but the Eskimos looked so funny, and I—I had a box of matches in my pocket, and—and—I thought a shot would make them look so very much funnier, and—and—I was right!”

      “Well, Benjamin, you may go below, and remain there till further orders.”

      When Captain Vane called his son “Benjamin,” he was seriously displeased. At other times he called him Benjy.

      “Yes, father,” replied the boy, with a very bad grace, СКАЧАТЬ