to blazed on the visage of Grabantak.

"Come here, Anders, and bring the other bundle with you. Tell this
warrior that I am very glad to meet with him."

"Great and unconquerable warrior," began the interpreter, in the dialect
which he had found was understood, by the men of Poloe, "we have come
from far-off lands to bring you gifts--"

"Anders," said Leo, whose knowledge of the Eskimo tongue was sufficient,
by that time, to enable him in a measure to follow the drift of a
speech, "Anders, if you don't tell him _exactly_ what I say I'll kick
you into the sea!"

As Anders stood on a rock close to the water's edge, and Leo looked
unusually stern, he thereafter rendered faithfully what the latter told
him to say. The speech was something to the following effect:--

"I am one of a small band of white men who have come here to search out
the land. We do not want the land. We only want to see it. We have
plenty of land of our own in the far south. We have been staying with
the great chief Amalatok in Poloeland."

At the mention of his enemy's name the countenance of Grabantak
darkened. Without noticing this, Leo went on:--

"When I was out hunting with my man and a woman, the wind arose and blew
us hither. We claim your hospitality, and hope you will help us to get
back again to Poloeland. If you do so we will reward you well, for
white men are powerful and rich. See, here are gifts for Grabantak, and
for his wife."

This latter remark was a sort of inspiration. Leo had observed, while
Anders was speaking, that a stout cheerful-faced woman had been pushing
aside the men and gradually edging her way toward the Eskimo chief with
the air of a privileged person. That he had hit the mark was obvious,
for Grabantak turned with a bland smile, and hit his wife a facetious
and rather heavy slap on the shoulder. She was evidently accustomed to
such treatment, and did not wince.

Taking from his bundle a gorgeous smoking-cap richly ornamented with
brilliant beads, Leo coolly crowned the chief with it. Grabantak drew
himself up and tried to look majestic, but a certain twitching of his
face, and sparkle in his eyes, betrayed a tendency to laugh with
delight. Fortunately, there was another cap of exactly the same pattern
in the bundle, which Leo instantly placed on the head of the wife--whose
name he afterwards learned was Merkut.

The chief's assumed dignity vanished at this. With that childlike
hilarity pecul