er, to admit of
infants and other things being carried in it, and the peak behind was
prolonged into a tail with a broad flap at the end. This tail varied a
little in length according to the taste of the wearer--like our ladies'
skirts; but in all cases it was long enough to trail on the ground--
perhaps we should say the ice--and, from the varied manner in which
different individuals caused it to sweep behind them, it was evident
that the tail, not less than the civilised skirt, served the purpose of
enabling the wearers to display more or less of graceful motion.

"There is nothing that I have to hide from my woman," said the amiable
Eskimo, in reply to her question. "Only I am troubled about that
jump-about man Gartok."

"Has he been here again?" asked the wife, with something of a frown on
her fat face. "He is just as you say, a jump-about like the little
birds that come to us in the hot times, which don't seem to know what
they want."

"He is too big to look like them," returned the husband. "He's more
like a mad walrus. I met him on one of the old floes when I was after a
seal, and he frightened it away. But it is not that that troubles me.
There are two things he is after: he wants to stir up our young men to
go and fight with the Fire-spouters, and he wants our Nootka for a
wife."

"The dirty walrus!" exclaimed Mrs Mangivik, with as much vigour as if
she had been civilised, "he shall _never_ have Nootka. As for fighting
with the Fire-spouters, I only hope that if he does go to do so, he will
get killed and never come back."

"H'm!" grunted Mangivik, "if he does get killed he's not likely to come
back."

"Who is not likely to come back?" asked a young girl, with an
affectionate expression in her pretty brown eyes, issuing from the hut
at that moment and seating herself close to the old man. The girl's
face, on the whole, was unusually pretty for that of an Eskimo, and
would have been still more so but for the grease with which it was
besmeared--for the damsel had just been having a little refreshment of
white-whale blubber. Her figure was comparatively slim and graceful,
and would have been obviously so but for the ill-fitting coat and clumsy
boots with which it was covered.

"Your mother and I were talking of a bad man, Nootka," said Mangivik.

"Ay, a very very bad man," exclaimed Mrs Mangivik, with a decided nod
of her head.

"If he is so very bad," returned Nootka, "it would be good that h