ig?"

Rooney laughed at this, and said, Yes; they were much bigger--as big as
the cliffs alongside.

"Huk!" exclaimed the Eskimos in various tones. Okiok's tone, indeed,
was one of doubt; but Angut did not doubt his new friend for a moment,
though his credulity was severely tested when the seaman told him that
one of the villages of his countrymen covered a space as big as they
could see--away to the very horizon, and beyond it.

"But, Angut," said Rooney, growing somewhat weary at last, "you've asked
me many questions; will you answer a few now?"

"I will answer."

"I have heard it said," began the sailor, "that Angut is a wise man--an
angekok--among his people, but that he denies the fact. Why does he
deny it?"

The Eskimo exchanged solemn glances with his host, then looked round the
circle, and said that some things could not be explained easily. He
would think first, and afterwards he would talk.

"That is well said," returned Rooney. "`Think well before you speak' is
a saying among my own people."

He remained silent for a few moments after that, and observed that Okiok
made a signal to his two boys. They rose immediately, and left the hut.

"Now," said Okiok, "Angut may speak. There are none but safe tongues
here. My boys are good, but their tongues wag too freely."

"Yes, they wag too freely," echoed Mrs Okiok, with a nod.

Thus freed from the danger of being misreported, Angut turned to the
seaman, and said--

"I deny that I am an angekok, because angekoks are deceivers. They
deceive foolish men and women. Some of them are wicked, and only
people-deceivers. They do not believe what they teach. Some of them
are self-deceivers. They are good enough men, and believe what they
teach, though it is false. These men puzzle me. I cannot understand
them."

The Eskimo became meditative at this point, as if his mind were running
on the abstract idea of self-delusion. Indeed he said as much. Rooney
admitted that it _was_ somewhat puzzling.

"I suppose," resumed the Eskimo, "that Kablunets never deceive
themselves or others; they are too wise. Is it so?"

"Well, now you put the question," said Rooney, "I rather fear that some
of us do, occasionally; an' there's not a few who have a decided
tendency to deceive others. And so that is the reason you won't be an
angekok, is it? Well, it does you credit. But what sort o' things do
they believe, in these northern regions, that you can't go in