The Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Rooney, by R.M. Ballantyne

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Title: Red Rooney
The Last of the Crew

Author: R.M. Ballantyne

Release Date: June 6, 2007 [EBook #21696]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED ROONEY ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

RED ROONEY, BY R.M. BALLANTYNE.

A Tale of Eskimo (Innuit) Life in Greenland at the end of the
Eighteenth Century.

CHAPTER ONE.

THE LAST OF THE CREW.

LOST AND FOUND.

There is a particular spot in those wild regions which lie somewhere
near the northern parts of Baffin's Bay, where Nature seems to have set
up her workshop for the manufacture of icebergs, where Polar bears, in
company with seals and Greenland whales, are wont to gambol, and where
the family of Jack Frost may be said to have taken permanent possession
of the land.

One winter day, in the early part of the eighteenth century, a solitary
man might have been seen in that neighbourhood, travelling on foot over
the frozen sea in a staggering, stumbling, hurried manner, as if his
powers, though not his will, were exhausted.

The man's hairy garb of grey sealskin might have suggested that he was a
denizen of those northern wilds, had not the colour of his face, his
brown locks, and his bushy beard, betokened him a native of a very
different region.

Although possessing a broad and stalwart frame, his movements indicated,
as we have said, excessive weakness. A morsel of ice in his path, that
would have been no impediment even to a child, caused him to stumble.
Recovering himself, with an evidently painful effort, he continued to
advance with quick, yet wavering steps. There was, however, a strange
mixture of determination with his feebleness. Energy and despair seemed
to be conjoined in his look and action--and no wonder, for Red Rooney,
although brave and resolute by nature, was alone in that Arctic
wilderness, and reduced to nearly the last extremity by fatigue and
famine. For some days--how many he scarcely remembered--he had
maintained life by chewing a bit of raw sealskin as he travelled over
the frozen waste; but this source of strength had