n returned to their
encampment without disturbing the mound, which was, in all probability,
a cairn covering a record of the expedition which had come to such an
untimely end.

Next day, the moment there was enough of light to enable them to resume
the search, the Eskimos hurried on board the ship and began to ransack
every hole and corner, and they found much that caused their eyes to
glitter with the delight of men who have unexpectedly discovered a mine
of gold. Among other things, they found in a small room which had been
used as a blacksmith's forge, large quantities of hoop, bar, and
rod-iron. While Cheenbuk and Oolalik were rejoicing over this find,
Anteek rushed in upon them in a state of considerable excitement with
something in his hand. It was a large watch of the double-cased
"warming-pan" tribe.

"Listen!" exclaimed the boy, holding it up to Cheenbuk's ear, and giving
it a shake; "it speaks."

"What is it?" murmured the Eskimo.

"I don't know, but it does not like shaking, for it only speaks a little
when I shake it. I tried squeezing, but it does not care for that."

Here again Nazinred's superior knowledge came into play, though to a
limited extent.

"I have seen a thing like that," he said. "The trader at the great
fresh-water lake had one. He carried it in a small bag at his waist,
and used often to pull it out and look at it. He never told me what it
was for, but once he let me hear it speak. It went on just like this
one--_tik, tik, tik_--but it did not require shaking or squeezing. I
think it had a tongue like some of our squaws, who never stop speaking.
One day when I went into the trader's house I saw it lying on the thing
with four legs which the white men put their food on when they want to
eat, and it was talking away to itself as fast as ever."

They were still engaged with this mystery when a cry of delight from
Nootka drew them back to the cabin, where they found the girl clothed in
a pilot-cloth coat, immensely too large for her. She was standing
admiring herself in the mirror--so quickly had her feminine intelligence
applied the thing to its proper use; and, from the energetic but
abortive efforts she made to wriggle round so as to obtain a view of her
back, it might have been supposed that she had been trained to the arts
of civilisation from childhood.

With equal and earnest assiduity Cowlik was engaged in adorning her head
with a black flannel-lined sou'-wester, but