The Magnetic North Part 27

But Muckluck stared incredulously.

"_Two_ at the same time!" she exclaimed. "It's like that, then, in your country?"

The Boy saw not astonishment alone, but something akin to disgust in the face of the Princess. He felt, vaguely, he must justify his twins.h.i.+p.

"Of course; there's nothing strange about it; it happens quite often."

"_Often?_"

"Yes; people are very much pleased. Once in a while there are even three--"

"All at the same time!" Her horror turned into shrieks of laughter.

"Why, your women are like our dogs! Human beings and seals never have more than one at a time!"

The old man in the corner began to moan and mutter feverishly. Nicholas went to him, bent down, and apparently tried to soothe him. Muckluck gathered up the supper-things and set them aside.

"You were at the Holy Cross school?" asked the Boy.

"Six years--with Mother Aloysius and the Sisters. They very good."

"So you're a Catholic, then?"

"Oh yes."

"You speak the best English I've heard from a native."

"I love Sister Winifred. I want to go back--unless"--she regarded the Boy with a speculative eye--"unless I go your country."

The sick man began to talk deliriously, and lifted up a terrible old face with fever-bright eyes glaring through wisps of straight gray hair. No voice but his was heard for some time in the ighloo, then, "I fraid," said Muckluck, crouching near the fire, but with head turned over shoulder, staring at the sick man.

"No wonder," said the Boy, thinking such an apparition enough to frighten anybody.

"Nicholas 'fraid, too," she whispered, "when the devil talks."

"The devil?"

"Yes. s.h.!.+ You hear?"

The delirious chatter went on, rising to a scream. Nicholas came hurrying back to the fire with a look of terror in his face.

"Me go get Shaman."

"No; he come soon." Muckluck clung to him.

They both crouched down by the fire.

"You 'fraid he'll die before the Shaman gets here?"

"Oh no," said Muckluck soothingly, but her face belied her words.

The sick man called hoa.r.s.ely. Nicholas got him some water, and propped him up to drink. He glared over the cup with wild eyes, his teeth chattering against the tin. The Boy, himself, felt a creep go down his spine.

Muckluck moved closer to him.

"Mustn't say he die," she whispered. "If Nicholas think he die, he drag him out--leave him in the snow." "Never!"

"s.h.!.+" she made him a sign to be quiet. The rambling fever-talk went on, Nicholas listening fascinated. "No Pymeut," she whispered, "like live in ighloo any more if man die there."

"You mean, if they know a person's dying they haul him out o'

doors--and _leave_ him a night like this?"

"If not, how get him out ... after?"

"Why, carry him out."

"_Touch_ him? Touch _dead_ man?" She shuddered. "Oh, no. Bad, bad! I no think he die," she resumed, raising her voice. But Nicholas rejoined them, silent, looking very grave. Was he contemplating turning the poor old fellow out? The Boy sat devising schemes to prevent the barbarism should it come to that. The wind had risen; it was evidently going to be a rough night.

With imagination full of sick people turned out to perish, the Boy started up as a long wail came, m.u.f.fled, but keen still with anguish, down through the snow and the earth, by way of the smoke-hole, into the dim little room.

"Oh, Nicholas! what was that?"

"What?"

"Wait! Listen! There, that! Why, it's a child crying."

"No, him Chee."

"Let's go and bring him in."

"Bring dog in here?"

"Dog! That's no dog."

"Yes, him dog; him my Chee."

"Making a human noise like that?"

Nicholas nodded. The only sounds for some time were the doleful lamenting of the Mahlemeut without, and the ravings of the Pymeut Chief within.

The Boy was conscious of a queer, dream-like feeling. All this had been going on up here for ages. It had been like this when Columbus came over the sea. All the world had changed since then, except the steadfast North. The Boy sat up suddenly, and rubbed his eyes. With that faculty on the part of the unlearned that one is tempted to call "American," a faculty for a.s.similating the grave conclusions of the doctors, and importing them light-heartedly into personal experience, he realised that what met his eyes here in Nicholas' house was one of the oldest pictures humanity has presented. This was what was going on by the Yukon, when King John, beside that other river, was yielding Magna Charta to the barons. While the Caesars were building Rome the Pymeut forefathers were building just such ighloos as this. While Pheidias wrought his marbles, the men up here carved walrus-ivory, and, in lieu of Homer, recited "The Crow's Last Flight" and "The Legend of the Northern Lights."

Nicholas had risen again, his mouth set hard, his small hands shaking.

He unrolled an old reindeer-skin full of holes, and examined it. At this the girl, who had been about to make up the fire, threw down the bit of driftwood and hid her face.

The sick man babbled on.

Faint under the desolate sound another--sibilant, clearer, uncannily human. Nicholas had heard, too, for he threw down the tattered deerskin, and went to the other side of the fire. Voices in the tunnel.

Nicholas held back the flap and gravely waited there, till one Pymeut after another crawled in. They were the men the Boy had seen at the Kachime, with one exception--a vicious-looking old fellow, thin, wiry, with a face like a smoked chimpanzee and eyes of unearthly brightness.

He was given the best place by the fire, and held his brown claws over the red coals while the others were finding their places.