The Blue Envelope Part 13

The man, dropping his harpoon, began to talk rapidly. He waved his hands. He bobbed his head. At last he arose, sprang from the sleeping compartment and began to walk the s.p.a.ce before the open fire. He was still talking. It seemed as if he would never run down.

When at last he had finished and had thrown himself once more upon the floor of the sleeping-room, the interpreter began:

"He say, that one, he say, 'Wanna go Cape Prince Wales two month, three month, all right, maybe. Go now? Not go.' He say, that one, 'Wanna go now; never come back.' He say, that one, 'Two, three, four days come ice. Not plenty ice,' say that one. 'Some water, some ice. See water. Too much water. Wanna cross. No cross. Quick starve. Quick freeze.'

"'He say, that one, 'Tide crack spirit all-a-time lift ice, push ice this way, that way. Wanna kill man. No can go.'

"He say, that one, 'Great dead whale spirit wanna lift ice, wanna throw ice this way, that way, all way. Wanna kill man. Man no go Cape Prince Wales.'

"He say, that one, 'Wanna go Cape Prince Wales, mebby two month, mebby three month. Mebby can do. Can't tell,' he say, that one."

The college boy smiled a grim smile and pocketed his gold.

"Which all means," he said, "that the ice is not sufficiently compact, not well enough frozen together for the old boy to risk a pa.s.sage, and that we'll be obliged to wait until he thinks it's O. K. Probably two or three months. Meanwhile, welcome to our village! Make yourselves at home!" He threw back his shoulders and laughed a boyish laugh.

"Oh!" exclaimed Marian, ready to indulge in a childish bit of weeping.

"Yes," smiled the boy, "but think of the sketches you'll have time to make."

"No canvas," she groaned.

"That's easy. Use squares of this sealskin the women tan white for making slippers."

"The very thing!" exclaimed Marian. She was away at once in search of some of this new style canvas, in her eagerness to be at work on some winter sketches of these most interesting people, quite forgetting the peril of natives, the danger of the food supply giving out, the probability of an unpleasant meeting with the bearded stranger.

Lucile, always of a more practical frame of mind, at once attacked the knotty problem of securing comfort and food for her little party. The question of a warm shelter during these months of sweeping winds and biting frost was solved for them by the aged chief Nepos-sok. He furnished them with a winter igloo. An interesting type of home they found it and one offering great comfort. An outer covering of walrus skin was supported by tall poles set in a semicircle and meeting at the top. The inside of this tepee-like structure was lined with a great circling robe of long-haired deerskin. The hair on these winter skins was two inches long and matted thick as felt. When this lining had been hung, a floor of hand-hewn boards was built across the rear side of the inclosure. This floor, about six by eight feet, was covered with a deerskin rug, over which were thrown lighter robes of soft fawn skin and out-of-season fox skins. Above this floor were hung curtains of deerskin. This sleeping room became a veritable box of long-haired deerskins. When it was completed the girls found it, with a seal oil lamp burning in it, warm and cozy as a steam-heated bedroom.

"Who could dream of anything so comfortable in a wilderness like this?"

murmured Lucile before falling asleep in their new home on the first night.

Phi was given a place in the chief's sleeping room.

The s.p.a.ce in the igloo before the girls' sleeping room was given over to stores. It was used too as kitchen and dining room. Here, by a snapping fire of dwarf willows, the three of them sat on the edge of the sleeping room floor and munched hardtack or dipped baked beans from tin cans.

The problem of securing a variety of food was a difficult one. The supply from the ship was found to be over-abundant in certain lines and woefully lacking in others: plenty of beans and sweet corn in cans, some flour and baking powder but no lard or bacon; some frozen and worthless potatoes; plenty of jelly in gla.s.ses; a hundred pounds of sugar. So it ran. Lucile was hard pressed to know how to cook with no oven in which to do baking and with no lard for shortening.

She had been studying this problem for some time when one day she suddenly exclaimed, "I have it!"

Drawing on her parka she hurried to the chief's igloo and asked for seal oil. Gravely he poured a supply of dark liquid from a wooden container into a tin cup.

Lucile put this to her lips for a taste. The next instant she with great difficulty set the cup on the floor while all her face was distorted with loathing.

"Rotten!" she sputtered. "A year old!"

"Eh--eh," grinned the chief, "always eat 'em so, Chukche." Thoroughly disheartened, she left the igloo. But on her way back she came upon a woman skinning a seal. Seeing the thick layer of fat that was taken from beneath the animal's skin she hastened to trade three cans of beans for it. Bearing this home in triumph she soon had the fat trying out over a slow fire.

Seal oil proved to be quite as good cooking oil as lard. Even doughnuts fried in it were p.r.o.nounced delicious by the ever-hungry Phi.

Experimenting with native food was interesting. Seal steak was not bad, and seal liver was as good as calf's liver. Polar bear steak and walrus stew were impossible. "Wouldn't even make good hamburger," was Phi's verdict. The boiled flipper of a white-whale was tender as chicken. But when a hind quarter of reindeer meat found its way into the village there was feasting indeed.

In a land so little known as this one does not seek long for opportunities to express strange and unusual things. Marian had not been established a week with Lucile in their igloo, when an unusual opportunity presented itself.

Among the supplies brought from the ship was found a well-equipped medicine-chest. During her long visits in out-of-the-way places, Marian had learned much of the art of administering simple remedies.

She had not been in the village three days before her fame as a doctor became known to all the village.

She had learned, with a feeling of great relief, that the bearded stranger who had posed as a witch-doctor had gone away from the village. Whether he had gone toward Whaling, or south to some other village, no one appeared to know. Now that he had departed, it seemed obvious that she was destined to take his place as the village pract.i.tioner.

It was during one of her morning "clinics," as she playfully called them, that a native of strange dress brought his little girl to her for treatment. The ailment seemed but a simple cold. Marian prescribed cough syrup and quinine, then called for the next patient. Patients were few that morning. She soon found herself wandering up the single street of the village. There she encountered the strange native and his child.

"Who are they?" she asked of a boy who understood English.

"Reindeer Chukches."

"Reindeer Chukches?" she exclaimed excitedly. "Where do they live?"

"Oh, mebby fifteen miles from here."

"Do they live on the tundra as they used to?"

"Yes."

"Are there many of them?"

"Not now. Many, one time. Now very few. Not many reindeer. Too much not moss. Plenty starve. Plenty die."

"Ask the Chukche," Marian said eagerly, "if I may go home with him to see his people."

The boy spoke for a moment with the grave-visaged stranger.

"He say, that one, he say yes," smiled the boy.

"Tell him I will be back quick." Marian was away like a shot.

Tearing into their igloo she drove Lucile into a score of activities.

The medicine chest was filled and closed, paints stowed in their box, garments packed, sleeping-bags rolled up. Then they were away.

Ere she knew it, Lucile was tucked in behind a fleet-footed reindeer, speeding over the low hills.

"Now, please tell me where we are going," she asked with a smile.

"We are going to visit the most unique people in all the world--the Reindeer Chukches. They are almost an extinct race now, but the time was when every clump of willows that lined the banks of the rivers of the far north in Siberia hid one of their igloos, and every hill and tundra fed one of their herds.

"Long before the Eskimos of Alaska thought of herding the reindeer, short-haired deerskin and soft, spotted fawn-skins were traded across Bering Straits and far up along the Alaskan coast. These skins came from the camps of the Reindeer Chukches of Siberia. Many years ago the Mikado of j.a.pan, in the treasure of furs with which he decorated his royal family, besides the mink, ermine and silver fox, had skins of rare beauty, spotted skins, brown, white and black. These were fawn-skins traded from village to village until they reached j.a.pan.

They came from the camps of the Reindeer Chukches. And now we are to see them as they were many years ago, for they have not changed. And I am to paint them! Paint them! Think of it!"

"Yes, but," Lucile smiled doubtfully, "supposing the ice gets solid while we're gone. Suppose Phi takes a fancy to cross without us? What then?"

Marian's face sobered for a moment. But the zeal of a born artist and explorer was upon her.