k,
to manage his light craft."

But Egede was wrong, for even while he was speaking Kajo had slipped
quietly behind a bush. There, after a cautious look round to see that
no one observed him, he drew a curious little flat earthenware bottle
from some place of concealment about his dress, applied it to his lips,
and took what Rooney would have styled "a long, hearty pull."

That draught was the turning-point. The comic and humorous were put to
flight, and nothing but fierce, furious savagery remained behind. Many
men in their cups become lachrymose, others silly, and some combative.
The fiery liquor had the latter effect on Kajo. Issuing from his place
of retirement with a fiendish yell and glaring eyes, he made an insane
attack on Angut. That Eskimo, having no desire to hurt the man, merely
stepped lightly out of his way and let him pass. Fortunately his knife
had been left on the ground where Rooney first met him, for he stumbled
and fell upon Kabelaw, into whom he would certainly have plunged the
weapon had it still been in his hand.

Jumping up, he looked round with the glaring eyes of a tiger, while his
fingers clutched nervously at the place where he was wont to carry the
lost knife.

Seeing his condition, Arbalik sprang towards him, but, stooping quickly,
Kajo darted out of his way. At the same moment he snatched up a knife
that had been left lying on the ground. The first effect of the last
draught seemed for the time to have increased the man's powers of
action, for, rushing round the circle, he came suddenly upon poor old
Kannoa, who chanced to be seated a little apart from the others.
Seizing her thin hair, Kajo brandished the knife in front of her throat,
and, glaring at the men, gave vent to a wild laugh of triumph.

It was evident that he was for the time quite mad and unaccountable for
his actions--though by no means unaccountable for taking the accursed
drink that reduced him to that state of temporary insanity. Red Rooney,
aghast with horror at the impending fate of the dear old remembrancer of
his grandmother, sprang forward with the agility of a wild cat, but his
energy, intensified though it was by rage, could not have prevented the
catastrophe if Ippegoo had not come to the rescue.

Yes, that mild youth was the instrument chosen to avert the blow. He
chanced to be standing beside a mass of turf which Okiok had cut from
the ground for the purpose of making a dry seat for Nuna. Seizing