ones eating chunks of it," Donovan remarked.

Several of the men had come round where we were at work, and among
them the little dark chap who had tried to stab Kit. Wade went along
to him, and pointing to his own mouth, and then toward the mouths of
the rest of us, said, "_Pussay_" ("Seal"). But the fellow was still
sullen, and stared defiantly.

"Have to discipline him a little, I reckon," Kit muttered.

Again Wade pronounced the word _pussay_, pointing off toward their
huts.

"_Na-mick!_" exclaimed the Esquimau fractiously. "_Na-mick! Ik pee-o
nar-kut bok!_" swinging his arms. "_Ik pee-o askut ammee pussay!_"

"Any idea what he said?" Wade asked, turning to Kit.

"No: but it was a refusal; I know by his actions.--Donovan, there's
another job for you!"

Don went off a little to one side, and, working up toward him, made a
sudden lunge, and had him by the hair in a twinkling. Such a shaking
as the poor wretch got! Then, with a quick trip, Donovan laid him flat
on his back, and, jerking out his big knife, began strapping it
ominously on his boot-leg. Oh, how the terrified savage howled! Raed
turned away in disgust. After frightening him nearly into fits with
the knife, the stalwart sailor with a twitch threw him across his
knee, and applied the flat of the butcher-knife to the seat of his
seal-skin trousers with _reports_ that must have been distinctly
audible for a quarter of a mile. All the Huskies came rushing up,
screaming and gesticulating. The dogs barked. There was a general
uproar. After three or four dozen of these emphatic reminders of
arbitrary power, Donovan set the shrieking wretch on his feet, and,
still holding on to his hair, shouted in his face the word _pussay_ a
dozen times in a tone that might have been heard on the neighboring
islands. Kit and Wade and Weymouth all fell to shouting the same word;
catching the meaning of which, more than a dozen of the Huskies, men
and women, ran to their huts, and brought pieces of seal-blubber to
the amount of several hundred-weight. The little dark chap
disappeared, and we saw no more of him for two days.

"Now we want some eggs," said Kit. "What's the word for egg?"

"_Wau-ve_," Raed replied.

Wade then called _wau-ve_ several times to the crowd. They ran off
again, and in a few minutes returned with fifteen or twenty of the
razor-bill's eggs; and a party immediately set off toward the cliffs
for more.

"I admire their promptness," Kit observed, lau