Ujarak says you are to get ready."

"Still, my son, I won't."

"Mother!" exclaimed Ippegoo, with that look and tone which usually
follows the saying of something very wicked; but the pleasant little
woman went on with her work with an air of such calm good-natured
resolution that her son felt helpless.

"Then, mother, I know not what to do."

"What did he tell you to do?" asked Kunelik abruptly.

The youth gave as much of his conversation with the wizard as sufficed
to utterly perplex his mother's mind without enlightening it much. When
he had finished, or rather had come to an abrupt stop, she looked at him
calmly, and said--

"My son, whatever he told you to do, go and do it. Leave the rest to
me."

From infancy Ippegoo had rejoiced in his wise little mother's decisions.
To be saved the trouble of thinking; to have a straight and simple
course clearly pointed out to him, so that he should have nothing to do
but shut his eyes and walk therein--or, if need be, run--was the height
of Ippegoo's ambition--next to solid feeding. But be not hard on him,
good reader. Remember that he was an ignorant savage, and that you
could not expect him to be as absolutely and entirely free from this low
type of spirit as civilised people are!

Without another word, therefore, the youth leaped on to his sledge,
cracked his whip, and set off on his delicate mission. Poor lad!
disappointment was in store for him. But compensation was in store
also.

While he was galloping along under the ice-cliffs on the east side of a
great berg, not far from the end of his journey, Okiok, with his wife
and daughter on a sledge, chanced to be galloping with equal speed in
the opposite direction on the west side of the same berg. It was a
mighty berg--an ice-mountain of nearly half a mile in length--so that no
sound of cracking lash or yelping dogs passed from the one party to the
other. Thus when Ippegoo arrived at his destination he found his fair
bird flown. But he found a much more interesting personage in the
Kablunet, who had been left under the care of Angut and Ermigit. This
great sight effectually banished disappointment and every other feeling
from his breast.

He first caught a glimpse of the wonderful man when half-way through the
tunnel-lobby, and the sight rooted him to the spot, for Red Rooney had
just finished making a full-dress suit of clothes for little Tumbler,
and was in the act of fitting them on when the young