nters, for she felt sure he would have been able to allay the
war-fever among the young braves if he had remained at home.

"Ay, he would easily have put down Alizay and Magadar; but the old chief
can do nothing, he is growing too old. The young men don't mind him
now. Besides, he is warlike as well as they."

While they were conversing thus, the young men referred to had finally
decided to go on the war-path--to search for the Eskimo who had fought
with their chief Nazinred, find him and kill him, and then continue the
search for his companions; for they had set him down as a liar,
believing that no Eskimo had the courage to visit their hunting-grounds
by himself.

To resolve and to act were almost simultaneous proceedings with those
energetic savages. In a very short time between twenty and thirty of
them left the village in single file, armed with the deadly gun, besides
tomahawks and scalping-knives, and took their way to a neighbouring
creek on the banks of which their canoes were lying.

CHAPTER FIVE.

A RENCONTRE AND FLIGHT.

Thus it naturally came to pass that the two bands of men who had gone to
the same place to meet each other met in the course of time.

There was a good deal of wandering about, however, before the actual
meeting took place, for the Eskimos had to provide a quantity of food on
landing on the Arctic shore, not only for themselves, but to supply the
four women who had accompanied them, and were to be left on the coast to
fish and mend their spare garments and boots, and await their return.

"We shall not be long of coming back," said Gartok as he was about to
leave his mother, old Uleeta, who was in the crew of one of the oomiaks.

"I wish I saw you safe back, my son," returned the woman, with a shake
of her head, "but I fear the Fire-spouters."

"_I_ don't fear them," returned the young man boastfully, "and it does
not matter much what you fear."

"He will never come back," said one of the other women when he was gone.
"I know that because I feel it. There is something inside of me that
always tells me when there is going to be misfortune."

The woman who thus expressed her forebodings was a mild young creature,
so gentle and inoffensive and yielding that she was known throughout her
tribe by the name of Rinka, a name which was meant to imply weakness.
Her weakness, however, consisted chiefly in a tendency to prefer others
before herself--in which matter Christians do not