ndly. One buck who stepped down into the engine
room--[v]Amatikita, he said his name was--had some English, and came to
the point as straight as anything.

"Give me a [v]dlink, Cappie," says he.

"This is a dry ship," says I.

"Plenty dlink in that box," says he, handling an oil-can.

"Oh, if that's what you want, take it," I told him, and he clapped the
nozzle between his lips, and sucked down a gill of [v]cylinder
lubricating oil as though it had been water.

"You seem to like it," I said; "have some more."

But that was his fill. He thanked me and asked me to visit his village
when I could get away from the ship. And just then some of his friends
were caught pilfering, and the whole crew of them were bundled away.

Now I had noted that most of these Esquimaux had bits of bearskins
amongst their other furs, and it was that I had in mind when I fell out
with Captain Black. Amatikita had pointed out the direction in which his
village lay, and it was to that I intended making my way with as little
delay as possible. But I kept this to myself, and let no word of it slip
out on the _Gleaner_. Indeed, when I was over the bark's rails, I headed
off due north across the ice. I climbed and stumbled on in this
direction till I was well out of their sight and hearing amongst the
hummocks, and then I turned at right angles for the shore.

The cold up yonder in that Arctic night takes away your breath; it seems
to take the manhood out of you. You stumble along gasping. By a chance I
came on an Esquimaux sealing, and he beat and thumped me into
wakefulness. Then he packed me on to his dog-sleigh, and took my own bit
of a sled behind, and set his fourteen-foot whip cracking, and off we
set.

Well, you have to be pretty far gone if you can stay asleep with an
[v]Innuit's dog-sledge jolting and jumping beneath you, and I was well
awakened, especially as the Esquimaux sat on top of me. And so in time
we brought up at the huts, and a good job, too. I'd been tramping in the
wrong direction, so it turned out, and, besides, if I had come to the
village, I might well have walked over the top of it, as it was drifted
up level with snow. There was a bit of a rabbit-hole giving entrance to
each hut, with some three fathoms of tunnel underground, and skin
curtains to keep out the draught, but once inside you might think
yourself in a [v]stoke-hold again. There was the same smell of oil, and
almost the same warmth. I tell you, it was f