all
strangers. Let each one here creep into the meeting with a short spear,
choose his man, sit down beside him, and be ready when the signal is
given by Angut or me. But do not kill. You are young and strong.
Throw each man on his back, but do not kill unless he seems likely to
get the better of you. Hold them down, and wait for orders."

No more was said. Rooney felt that delay might be fatal. With the
promptitude of men accustomed to be led, the youths crept into the
circle of listeners, and seated themselves as desired. Rooney and Okiok
selected their men, like the rest. Angut chanced to place himself
beside Grimlek.

The chief cast a quick, suspicious glance on him as he sat down, but as
Angut immediately became intent on the discussion that was going on, and
as the robber himself had become interested in spite of himself, the
suspicion was allayed as quickly as roused.

These quiet proceedings took place just before the heavy-faced Eskimo
began the speech which we have detailed. Notwithstanding the serious--
it might be bloody--work which was presently to engage all his physical
energies, the spirit of Angut was deeply stirred by the string of
objections which the man had flung out so easily. Most of the points
touched on had often engaged his thoughtful mind, and he felt--as many
reasoning men have felt before and since--how easy it is for a fool to
state a string of objections in a few minutes, which it might take a
learned man several hours fully to answer and refute.

Oppressed, and, as it were, boiling over, with this feeling, Angut, as
we have said, started to his feet, to the no small alarm of the guilty
man at his side. But the chief's fears were dissipated when Angut
spoke.

"Foolish fellow!" he said, turning with a blazing gaze to the
heavy-faced man. "You talk like a child of what you do not understand.
You ask to see God, else you won't believe. You believe in your life,
don't you? Yet you have never seen it. You stab a bear, and let its
life out. You know when the life is there. You have let it out. You
know when it is gone. But you have not _seen_ it. Then why do you
believe in it? You do not see a sound, yet you believe in it. Do not
lift your stupid face; I know what you would say: you _hear_ the sound,
therefore it exists. A deaf man does not hear the sound. Does it
therefore not exist? That which produces the sound is there, though the
deaf man neither sees nor hea