d, they were savages, destitute to a
lamentable extent of all those finer feelings and sentiments which
characterize a civilized race. The roughest of our Gloucester lads
were immeasurably in advance of them; and Palmleaf, but recently a
lash-fearing slave, seemed of a higher order of beings.

They were gone; but they had left an odor behind. We had to keep
Palmleaf burning coffee on a shovel all the rest of the evening; and,
for more than a month after, we could smell it at times,--a "sweet
_souvenir_ of our Husky beauties," as Wade used to put it.

There is something at once hopeless and pitiful about this people.
There is no possibility of permanently bettering their condition. Born
and living under a climate, which, from the gradual shifting of the
pole, must every year grow more and more severe, they can but sink
lower and lower as the struggle for existence grows sharper. There is
no hope for them. Their absurd love of home precludes the possibility
of their emigrating to a warmer latitude. Pitiful! because, where-ever
the human life-spark is enkindled, his must be a hard heart that can
see it suffering, dying, without pity.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Husky Chief.--Palmleaf Indignant.--A Gun.--Sudden
Apparition of the Company's Ship.--We hold a Hasty
Council.--In the Jaws of the British Lion.--An Armed
Boat.--Repel Boarders!--Red-Face waxes wrathful.--Fired on,
but no Bones Broken.

By the time we had fairly parted from our Esquimau friends it was near
eleven o'clock, P.M.,--after sunset. Instead of standing out into the
straits, we beat up for about a mile along the ice-field, and anchored
in thirteen fathoms, at about a cable's length from the island, to the
east of the ice-island. The weather had held fine. The roadstead
between the island and the main was not at present much choked with
ice. It was safe, to all appearance. We wanted rest. Turning out at
three and half-past three in the morning, and not getting to bunk
till eleven and twelve, made an unconscionable long day. Once asleep,
I don't think one of us boys waked or turned over till the captain
stirred us up to breakfast.

"Six o'clock, boys!" cried he. "Sun's been up these four hours!"

"Don't talk about the sun in this latitude," yawned Raed. "I can sit
up with him at Boston; but he's too much for me here."

While we were at breakfast, Weymouth came down to report a _kayak_
coming off.

"Shall we let him come aboard,