Red Rooney: The Last of the Crew

  Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

  RED ROONEY, BY R.M. BALLANTYNE.

  A Tale of Eskimo (Innuit) Life in Greenland at the end of theEighteenth Century.

  CHAPTER ONE.

  THE LAST OF THE CREW.

  LOST AND FOUND.

  There is a particular spot in those wild regions which lie somewherenear the northern parts of Baffin's Bay, where Nature seems to have setup her workshop for the manufacture of icebergs, where Polar bears, incompany with seals and Greenland whales, are wont to gambol, and wherethe family of Jack Frost may be said to have taken permanent possessionof the land.

  One winter day, in the early part of the eighteenth century, a solitaryman might have been seen in that neighbourhood, travelling on foot overthe frozen sea in a staggering, stumbling, hurried manner, as if hispowers, though not his will, were exhausted.

  The man's hairy garb of grey sealskin might have suggested that he was adenizen of those northern wilds, had not the colour of his face, hisbrown locks, and his bushy beard, betokened him a native of a verydifferent region.

  Although possessing a broad and stalwart frame, his movements indicated,as we have said, excessive weakness. A morsel of ice in his path, thatwould have been no impediment even to a child, caused him to stumble.Recovering himself, with an evidently painful effort, he continued toadvance with quick, yet wavering steps. There was, however, a strangemixture of determination with his feebleness. Energy and despair seemedto be conjoined in his look and action--and no wonder, for Red Rooney,although brave and resolute by nature, was alone in that Arcticwilderness, and reduced to nearly the last extremity by fatigue andfamine. For some days--how many he scarcely remembered--he hadmaintained life by chewing a bit of raw sealskin as he travelled overthe frozen waste; but this source of strength had at last been consumed,and he was now sinking from absolute want.

  The indomitable spirit of the man, however, kept his weakened bodymoving, even after the mind had begun to sink into that dreamy,lethargic state which is said to indicate the immediate approach ofdeath, and there was still a red spot in each of his pale and hollowcheeks, as well as an eager gleam of hope in his sunken eyes; for thepurpose that Red Rooney had in view was to reach the land.

  It was indeed a miserably faint hope that urged the poor fellow on, forthe desolate shore of Western Greenland offered little better prospectof shelter than did the ice-clad sea; but, as in the case of thedrowning man, he clutched at this miserable straw of hope, and held onfor life. There was the bare possibility that some of the migratoryEskimos might be there, or, if not, that some scraps of their food--somebits of refuse, even a few bones--might be found. Death, he felt, wasquickly closing with him on the sea. The great enemy might, perhaps, befought with and kept at bay for a time if he could only reach the land.

  Encouraging himself with such thoughts, he pushed on, but again stumbledand fell--this time at full length. He lay quiet for a few seconds. Itwas so inexpressibly sweet to _rest_, and feel the worn-out sensesfloating away, as it were, into dreamland! But the strong will burstthe tightening bands of death, and, rising once more, with theexclamation, "God help me!" he resumed his weary march.

  All around him the great ocean was covered with its coat of solid,unbroken ice; for although winter was past, and the sun of early springwas at the time gleaming on bergs that raised their battlements andpinnacles into a bright blue sky, the hoary king of the far northrefused as yet to resign his sceptre and submit to the interregnum ofthe genial sun.

  A large hummock or ridge of ice lay in front of the man, blocking hisview of the horizon in that direction. It had probably been heaved upby one of the convulsions of the previous autumn, and was broken into achaotic mass. Here he stopped and looked up, with a sigh. But thesinking of the heart was momentary. Deep snow had so filled up thecrevices of the shattered blocks that it was possible to advance slowlyby winding in and out among them. As the ascent grew steeper theforlorn man dropped on all-fours and crawled upwards until he reachedthe top.

  The view that burst upon him would have roused enthusiasm if hissituation had been less critical. Even as it was, an exclamation ofsurprise broke from him, for there, not five miles distant, was thecoast of Greenland; desolate, indeed, and ice-bound--he had expectedthat--but inexpressibly grand even in its desolation. A mighty tongueof a great glacier protruded itself into the frozen sea. The tip ofthis tongue had been broken off, and the edge presented a gigantic wallof crystal several hundred feet high, on which the sun glittered inblinding rays.

  This tongue--a mere offshoot of the great glacier itself--filled avalley full ten miles in length, measuring from its tip in the ocean toits root on the mountain brow, where the snow-line was seen to cutsharply against the sky.

  For some minutes Red Rooney sat on one of the ice-blocks, gazing withintense eagerness along the shore, in the hope of discerning smoke orsome other evidence of man's presence. But nothing met his disappointedgaze save the same uniform, interminable waste of white and grey, withhere and there a few dark frowning patches where the cliffs were tooprecipitous to sustain the snow.

  Another despairing sigh rose to the man's lips, but these refused togive it passage. With stern resolve he arose and stumbled hurriedlyforward. The strain, however, proved too great. On reaching the levelice on the other side of the ridge he fell, apparently for the lasttime, and lay perfectly still. Ah! how many must have fallen thus, torise no more, since men first began to search out the secrets of thatgrand mysterious region!

  But Red Rooney was not doomed to be among those who have perished there.Not far from the spot where he fell, one of the short but muscular andhairy-robed denizens of that country was busily engaged in removing theskin from a Polar bear which he had just succeeded in spearing, after acombat which very nearly cost him his life. During the heat of thebattle the brave little man's foot had slipped, and the desperatelywounded monster, making a rush at the moment, overturned him into acrevice between two ice-blocks, fortunately the impetus of the rushcaused the animal to shoot into another crevice beyond, and the man,proving more active than the bear, sprang out of his hole in time tomeet his foe with a spear-thrust so deadly that it killed him on thespot. Immediately he began to skin the animal, intending to go homewith the skin, and return with a team of dogs for the meat and thecarcass of a recently-caught seal.

  Meanwhile, having removed and packed up the bear-skin, he swung it onhis broad shoulders, and made for the shore as fast as his short legswould carry him. On the way he came to the spot where the fallentraveller lay.

  His first act was to open his eyes to the uttermost, and, consideringthe small, twinkling appearance of those eyes just a minute before, thechange was marvellous.

  "Hoi!" then burst from him with tremendous emphasis, after which hedropped his bundle, turned poor Rooney over on his back, and looked athis face with an expression of awe.

  "Dead!" said the Eskimo, under his breath--in his own tongue, of course,not in English, of which, we need scarcely add, he knew nothing.

  After feeling the man's breast, under his coat, for a few seconds, hemurmured the word "Kablunet" (foreigner), and shook his head mournfully.

  It was not so much grief for the man's fate that agitated this child ofthe northern wilderness, as regret at his own bad fortune. Marvellouswere the reports which from the south of Greenland had reached him, inhis far northern home, of the strange Kablunets or foreigners who hadarrived there to trade with the Eskimos--men who, so the reports went,wore smooth coats without hair, little round things on their headsinstead of hoods, and flapping things on their legs instead of sealskinboots--men who had come in monster kayaks (canoes), as big as icebergs;men who
seemed to possess everything, had the power to do anything, andfeared nothing. No fabrications in the _Arabian Nights_, or _Gulliver_,or _Baron Munchausen_, ever transcended the stories about thoseKablunets which had reached this broad, short, sturdy Eskimo--storieswhich no doubt began in the south of Greenland with a substratum oftruth, but which, in travelling several hundreds of miles northward, hadgrown, as a snowball might have grown if rolled the same distance overthe Arctic wastes; with this difference--that whereas the snowball wouldhave retained its original shape, though not its size, the tales lostnot only their pristine form and size, but became so amazingly distortedthat the original reporters would probably have failed to recognisethem. And now, at last, here was actually a Kablunet--a _real_foreigner in the body; but not alive! It was extremely disappointing!

  Our sturdy Eskimo, however, was not a good judge of Kablunet vitality.He was yet rubbing the man's broad chest, with a sort of pathetic pity,when a flutter of the heart startled him. He rubbed with more vigour.He became excited, and, seizing Red Rooney by the arms, shook him withconsiderable violence, the result being that the foreigner opened hiseyes and looked at him inquiringly.

  "Hallo, my lad," said Rooney, in a faint voice; "not quite so hard. I'mall right. Just help me up, like a good fellow."

  He spoke in English, which was, of course, a waste of breath in thecircumstances. In proof of his being "all right," he fell back again,and fainted away.

  The Eskimo leaped up. He was one of those energetic beings who seem toknow in all emergencies what is best to be done, and do it promptly.Unrolling the bear-skin, which yet retained a little of its firstowner's warmth, he wrapped the Kablunet in it from head to foot, leavingan opening in front of his mouth for breathing purposes. With hisknife--a stone one--he cut off a little lump of blubber from the seal,and placed that in the opening, so that the stranger might eat onreviving, if so inclined, or let it alone, if so disposed. Then,turning his face towards the land, he scurried away over the ice like ahunted partridge, or a hairy ball driven before an Arctic breeze.

  He made such good use of his short legs that in less than an hour hereached a little hut, which seemed to nestle under the wing of a greatcliff in order to avoid destruction by the glittering walls of animpending glacier. The hut had no proper doorway, but a tunnel-shapedentrance, about three feet high and several feet long. Falling on hisknees, the Eskimo crept into the tunnel and disappeared. Gaining theinner end of it, he stood up and glared, speechless, at his astonishedwife.

  She had cause for surprise, for never since their wedding-day had Nunabeheld such an expression on the fat face of her amiable husband.

  "Okiok," she said, "have you seen an evil spirit?"

  "No," he replied.

  "Why, then, do you glare?"

  Of course Nuna spoke in choice Eskimo, which we render into English withas much fidelity to the native idiom as seems consistent with theagreeable narration of our tale.

  "Hoi!" exclaimed Okiok, in reply to her question, but without ceasing toglare and breathe hard.

  "Has my husband become a walrus, that he can only shout and snort?"inquired Nuna, with the slightest possible twinkle in her eyes, as sheraised herself out of the lamp-smoke, and laid down the stick with whichshe had been stirring the contents of a stone pot.

  Instead of answering the question, Okiok turned to two chubby andstaring youths, of about fifteen and sixteen respectively, who weremending spears, and said sharply, "Norrak, Ermigit, go, harness thedogs."

  Norrak rose with a bound, and dived into the tunnel. Ermigit, althoughwilling enough, was not quite so sharp. As he crawled into the tunneland was disappearing, his father sent his foot in the same direction,and, having thus intimated the necessity for urgent haste, he turnedagain to his wife with a somewhat softened expression.

  "Give me food, Nuna. Little food has passed into me since yesterday atsunrise. I starve. When I have eaten, you shall hear words that willmake you dream for a moon. I have seen,"--he became solemn at thispoint, and lowered his voice to a whisper as he advanced his head andglared again--"I have seen a--a--Kablunet!"

  He drew back and gazed at his wife as connoisseurs are wont to do whenexamining a picture. And truly Nuna's countenance _was_ apicture-round, fat, comely, oily, also open-mouthed and eyed, withunbounded astonishment depicted thereon; for she thoroughly believed herhusband, knowing that he was upright and never told lies.

  Her mental condition did not, however, interfere with her duties. Awooden slab or plate, laden with a mess of broiled meat, soon smokedbefore her lord. He quickly seated himself on a raised platform, andhad done some justice to it before Nuna recovered the use of her tongue.

  "A Kablunet!" she exclaimed, almost solemnly. "Is he dead?"

  Okiok paused, with a lump of blubber in his fingers close to his mouth.

  "No; he is alive. At least he was alive when I left him. If he has notdied since, he is alive still."

  Having uttered this truism, he thrust the blubber well home, andcontinued his meal.

  Nuna's curiosity, having been aroused, was not easily allayed. She satdown beside her spouse, and plied him with numerous questions, to whichOkiok gave her brief and very tantalising replies until he was gorged,when, throwing down the platter, he turned abruptly to his wife, andsaid impressively--

  "Open your ears, Nuna. Okiok is no longer what he was. He has beenborn only to-day. He has at last seen with his two eyes--a Kablunet!"

  He paused to restrain his excitement. His wife clasped her hands andlooked at him excitedly, waiting for more.

  "This Kablunet," he continued, "is very white, and not so ruddy as wehave been told they are. His hair is brown, and twists in littlecircles. He wears it on the top of his head, and on the bottom of hishead also--all round. He is not small or short. No; he is long andbroad,--but he is thin, very thin, like the young ice at the beginningof winter. His eyes are the colour of the summer sky. His nose is likethe eagle's beak, but not so long. His mouth--I know not what his mouthis like; it is hid in a nest of hair. His words I understand not. Theyseem to me nonsense, but his voice is soft and deep."

  "And his dress--how does he dress?" asked Nuna, with natural femininecuriosity.

  "Like ourselves," replied Okiok, with a touch of disappointment in histone. "The men who said the Kablunets wear strange things on theirheads and long flapping things on their legs told lies."

  "Why did you not bring him here?" asked Nuna, after a few moments'meditation on these marvels.

  "Because he is too heavy to lift, and too weak to walk. He has beenstarving. I wrapped him in the skin of a bear, and left him with apiece of blubber at his nose. When he wakes up he will smell; then hewill eat. Perhaps he will live; perhaps he will die. Who can tell? Igo to fetch him."

  As the Eskimo spoke, the yelping of dogs outside told that his sons hadobeyed his commands, and got ready the sledge. Without another word hecrept out of the hut and jumped on the sledge, which was covered withtwo or three warm bearskins. Ermigit restrained the dogs, of whichthere were about eight, each fastened to the vehicle by a single line.Norrak handed his father the short-handled but heavy, long-lashed whip.

  Okiok looked at Norrak as he grasped the instrument of punishment.

  "Jump on," he said.

  Norrak did so with evident good-will. The whip flashed in the air witha serpentine swing, and went off like a pistol. The dogs yelled inalarm, and, springing away at full speed, were soon lost among thehummocks of the Arctic sea.