sped her hands and
looked at him excitedly, waiting for more.

"This Kablunet," he continued, "is very white, and not so ruddy as we
have been told they are. His hair is brown, and twists in little
circles. He wears it on the top of his head, and on the bottom of his
head also--all round. He is not small or short. No; he is long and
broad,--but he is thin, very thin, like the young ice at the beginning
of winter. His eyes are the colour of the summer sky. His nose is like
the eagle's beak, but not so long. His mouth--I know not what his mouth
is like; it is hid in a nest of hair. His words I understand not. They
seem to me nonsense, but his voice is soft and deep."

"And his dress--how does he dress?" asked Nuna, with natural feminine
curiosity.

"Like ourselves," replied Okiok, with a touch of disappointment in his
tone. "The men who said the Kablunets wear strange things on their
heads and long flapping things on their legs told lies."

"Why did you not bring him here?" asked Nuna, after a few moments'
meditation on these marvels.

"Because he is too heavy to lift, and too weak to walk. He has been
starving. I wrapped him in the skin of a bear, and left him with a
piece of blubber at his nose. When he wakes up he will smell; then he
will eat. Perhaps he will live; perhaps he will die. Who can tell? I
go to fetch him."

As the Eskimo spoke, the yelping of dogs outside told that his sons had
obeyed his commands, and got ready the sledge. Without another word he
crept out of the hut and jumped on the sledge, which was covered with
two or three warm bearskins. Ermigit restrained the dogs, of which
there were about eight, each fastened to the vehicle by a single line.
Norrak handed his father the short-handled but heavy, long-lashed whip.

Okiok looked at Norrak as he grasped the instrument of punishment.

"Jump on," he said.

Norrak did so with evident good-will. The whip flashed in the air with
a serpentine swing, and went off like a pistol. The dogs yelled in
alarm, and, springing away at full speed, were soon lost among the
hummocks of the Arctic sea.

CHAPTER TWO.

DESCRIBES A RESCUE AND A HAPPY FAMILY.

While the Eskimos were thus rushing to his rescue, poor Red Rooney--
whose shipmates, we may explain at once, had thus contracted his
Christian name of Reginald--began to recover from his swoon, and to
wonder in a listless fashion where he was. Feeling comparatively
comfortable