judge of Kablunet vitality.
He was yet rubbing the man's broad chest, with a sort of pathetic pity,
when a flutter of the heart startled him. He rubbed with more vigour.
He became excited, and, seizing Red Rooney by the arms, shook him with
considerable violence, the result being that the foreigner opened his
eyes and looked at him inquiringly.

"Hallo, my lad," said Rooney, in a faint voice; "not quite so hard. I'm
all right. Just help me up, like a good fellow."

He spoke in English, which was, of course, a waste of breath in the
circumstances. In proof of his being "all right," he fell back again,
and fainted away.

The Eskimo leaped up. He was one of those energetic beings who seem to
know in all emergencies what is best to be done, and do it promptly.
Unrolling the bear-skin, which yet retained a little of its first
owner's warmth, he wrapped the Kablunet in it from head to foot, leaving
an opening in front of his mouth for breathing purposes. With his
knife--a stone one--he cut off a little lump of blubber from the seal,
and placed that in the opening, so that the stranger might eat on
reviving, if so inclined, or let it alone, if so disposed. Then,
turning his face towards the land, he scurried away over the ice like a
hunted partridge, or a hairy ball driven before an Arctic breeze.

He made such good use of his short legs that in less than an hour he
reached a little hut, which seemed to nestle under the wing of a great
cliff in order to avoid destruction by the glittering walls of an
impending glacier. The hut had no proper doorway, but a tunnel-shaped
entrance, about three feet high and several feet long. Falling on his
knees, the Eskimo crept into the tunnel and disappeared. Gaining the
inner end of it, he stood up and glared, speechless, at his astonished
wife.

She had cause for surprise, for never since their wedding-day had Nuna
beheld such an expression on the fat face of her amiable husband.

"Okiok," she said, "have you seen an evil spirit?"

"No," he replied.

"Why, then, do you glare?"

Of course Nuna spoke in choice Eskimo, which we render into English with
as much fidelity to the native idiom as seems consistent with the
agreeable narration of our tale.

"Hoi!" exclaimed Okiok, in reply to her question, but without ceasing to
glare and breathe hard.

"Has my husband become a walrus, that he can only shout and snort?"
inquired Nuna, with the slightest possible twinkle in he