an nodded assent, as though a chord had been struck which
vibrated in both bosoms.

"My son," he said, in a patronising tone, "do not cease to try. Grey
hairs are beginning to show upon my head; I have seen and learned much,
and I have come to know that only he who tries, and tries, and tries
again to do what he knows is right will succeed. To him the Great
Manitou will give his blessing."

"My father," replied the other, falling in readily with the fictitious
relationship, "I will try."

Having thus come to a satisfactory agreement, this Arctic Peace Society
prepared to adjourn. Each wiped his knife on the grass and sheathed it
as he rose up. Then they shook hands again after the fashion of the
pale-faces, and departed on their respective ways. The red man returned
to the wigwams of his people, while the young Eskimo, descending the
river in his kayak, continued to hunt the white-whale and pursue the
feathered tribes which swarmed in the creeks, rivulets, and marshes that
bordered the ice-encumbered waters of the polar seas.

CHAPTER TWO.

WARUSKEEK.

Alas for the hopes and efforts of good men! At the very time that
Cheenbuk and the Indian were expressing their detestation of war,
elsewhere a young Eskimo was doing his best to bring about that unhappy
and ruinous condition of things.

He was an unusually strong young Arctic swashbuckler, with considerably
more muscle than brains, a restless spirit, and what may be styled a
homicidal tendency. He was also tyrannical, like many men of that
stamp, and belonged to the same tribe as Cheenbuk.

Walrus Creek was the summer residence of the tribe of Eskimos to which
Cheenbuk belonged. It was a narrow inlet which ran up into a small
island lying some distance off the northern shores of America, to
discover and coast along which has been for so many years the aim and
ambition of Arctic explorers. How it came by its name is not difficult
to guess. Probably in ages past some adventurous voyagers, whose names
and deeds have not been recorded in history, observing the numbers of
walruses which scrambled out of the sea to sun themselves on the cliffs
of the said creek, had named it after that animal, and the natives had
adopted the name. Like other aborigines they had garbled it, however,
and handed it down to posterity as Waruskeek, while the walruses,
perhaps in order to justify the name, had kept up the custom of their
forefathers, and continued to sun the