be resumed, one of the women announced that a
favourite dish which had been for some time preparing was ready. The
desire for that dish proving stronger than the desire for the story, the
company, including Simek, set to work on it with as much gusto as if
they had eaten nothing for hours past!

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Note. Such is the Eskimo notion of the Aurora Borealis.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

COMBINES STORY-TELLING (IN BOTH SENSES) WITH FASTING, FUN, AND MORE
SERIOUS MATTERS.

The favourite dish having been disposed of, Simek continued his story.

"Well," said he, "after my little torngak had been blown away, I waited
a short time, hoping that he would come back, but he did not; so I got
up, took a spear in my hand, and went off to White-bear Bay, determined
to see if the little spirit had spoken the truth. Sure enough, when I
got to the bay, there was the walrus sitting beside its hole, and
looking about in all directions as if it were expecting me. It was a
giant walrus," said Simek, lowering his remarkably deep voice to a sort
of thunderous grumble that filled the hearts of his auditors with awe in
spite of themselves, "a--most--awful walrus! It was bigger,"--here he
looked pointedly at Okiok--"than--than the very _biggest_ walrus I have
ever seen! I have not much courage, friends, but I went forward, and
threw my spear at it." (The listeners gasped.) "It missed!" (They
groaned.) "Then I turned, and, being filled with fear, I ran. Did you
ever see me run?"

"Yes, yes," from the eager company.

"No, my friends, you never saw me run! Anything you ever saw me do was
mere walking--creeping--standing still, compared with what I did then on
that occasion. You know I run fast?" ("Yes, yes.") "But that big
walrus ran faster. It overtook me; it overturned me; it _swallowed_
me!"

Here Simek paused, as if to observe how many of them swallowed that.
And, after all, the appeal to their credulity was not as much
overstrained as the civilised reader may fancy, for in their
superstitious beliefs Eskimos held that there was one point in the
training of a superior class of angekoks which necessitated the
swallowing of the neophyte by a bear and his returning to his friends
alive and well after the operation! Besides, Simek had such an honest,
truthful expression of countenance and tone of voice, that he could
almost make people believe anything he chose to