rs. But when I am at home old
Kannoa cooks for me. She is a good woman, and can make us comfortable."

"Just so, Angut. I'll be content to have the old woman for a nurse as
long as I need one. Good luck to you; and, I say, keep a sharp look-out
on Ujarak. He's not to be trusted, if I am any judge of men's faces."

Angut said no word in reply, but he smiled a grim smile as he turned and
went his way.

Being much fatigued with his recent exertions, Red Rooney turned into
Okiok's hut, to the great sorrow of the women and children, who had
gathered from all parts of the village to gaze at and admire him.

"He is real--and alive!" remarked Kunelik in a low voice.

"And Nuna is _not_ a liar," said the mother of Arbalik.

"Yes; he is tall," said one.

"And broad," observed another.

"But _very_ thin," said Pussimek.

"No matter; he can stuff," said Kabelaw, with a nod to her sister
Sigokow, who was remarkably stout, and doubtless understood the virtue
of the process.

While this commentary was going on, the object of it was making himself
comfortable on a couch of skins which Nuna had spread for him on the
raised floor at the upper end of her hut. In a few minutes the wearied
man was sound asleep, as was indicated by his nose.

No sooner did Mrs Okiok note the peculiar sound than she went out and
said to her assembled friends--"_Now_ you may come in; but--forget not--
no word is to be spoken. Use your eyes and bite your tongues. The one
who speaks shall be put out."

Under these conditions the multitude filed into the mansion, where they
sat down in rows to gaze their fill in profound silence; and there they
sat for more than an hour, rapt in contemplation of the wonderful sight.

"He snorts," was on the lips of Pussimek, but a warning glance from Nuna
checked the sentence in the bud.

"He dreams!" had almost slipped from the lips of Kunelik, but she caught
it in time.

Certainly these primitive people availed themselves of the permission to
use their eyes; nay, more, they also used their eyebrows--and indeed
their entire faces, for, the lips being sealed, they not only drank in
Rooney, so to speak, with their eyes, but tried to comment upon him with
the same organs.

Finding them very imperfect in this respect, they ventured to use their
lips without sound--to speak, as it were, in dumb show--and the
contortions of visage thus produced were indescribable.

This state of things was at its height wh