, gently.

"I know not how to begin, mother."

"Another rib may open your lips, perhaps," suggested the old woman,
softly.

"True; give me one," said Chingatok.

The third rib seemed to have the desired effect, for, while busy with
it, he began to give his parent a graphic account of the yacht and its
crew, and it was really interesting to note how correctly he described
all that he understood of what he had seen. But some of the things he
had partly failed to comprehend, and about these he was vague.

"And they have a--a Power, mother, shut up in a hard thing, so that it
can't get out unless they let it, and it drives the big canoe through
the water. It is very strong--terrible!"

"Is it a devil?" asked Toolooha.

"No, it is not alive. It is dead. It is _that_," he pointed with
emphasis to a pot hanging over the lamp out of which a little steam was
issuing, and looked at his mother with awful solemnity. She returned
the look with something of incredulity.

"Yes, mother, the Power is not a beast. It lives not, yet it drives the
white man's canoe, which is as big as a little iceberg, and it whistles;
it shrieks; it yells!"

A slightly sorrowful look rested for a moment on Toolooha's benign
countenance. It was evident that she suspected her son either of
derangement, or having forsaken the paths of truth. But it passed like
a summer cloud.

"Tell me more," she said, laying her hand affectionately on the huge arm
of Chingatok, who had fallen into a contemplative mood, and, with hands
clasped over one knee, sat gazing upwards.

Before he could reply the heart of Toolooha was made to bound by a
shriek more terrible than she had ever before heard or imagined.

Chingatok caught her by the wrist, held up a finger as if to impose
silence, smiled brightly, and listened.

Again the shriek was repeated with prolonged power.

"Tell me, my son," gasped Toolooha, "is Oblooria--are the people safe?
Why came you to me alone?"

"The little sister and the people are safe. I came alone to prevent
your being taken by surprise. Did I not say that it could shriek and
yell? This is the white man's big canoe."

Dropping the old woman's hand as he spoke, Chingatok darted into the
open air with the agility of a Polar bear, and Toolooha followed with
the speed of an Arctic hare.

CHAPTER FOUR.

A CATASTROPHE AND A BOLD DECISION.

Two days after her arrival at the temporary residence of the northern
Eskimos,