CHAPTER V THE SHAMÁN.

CHAPTER V

THE SHAMÁN.

"For my part, I have ever believed and do now know, that there are witches."--_Religio Medici._

The Boy had hoped to go to Pymeut the next day, but his feet refused to carry him. Mac took a diagram and special directions, and went after the rest of elephas, conveying the few clumsy relics home, bit by bit, with a devotion worthy of a pious pilgrim.

For three days the Boy growled and played games with Kaviak, going about at first chiefly on hands and knees.

On the fifth day after the Blow-Out, "You comin' long to Pymeut this mornin'?" he asked the Colonel.

"What's the rush?"

"_Rush!_ Good Lord! it's 'most a week since they were here. And it's stopped snowin', and hasn't thought of sleetin' yet or anything else rambunksious. Come on, Colonel."

But Father Wills had shown the Colonel the piece of dirty paper the Indian had brought on the night of the Blow-Out.

"_Trouble threatened. Pymeuts think old chief dying not of consumption, but of a devil. They've sent a dogteam to bring the Shamán down over the ice. Come quickly.--_PAUL."

"Reckon we'd better hold our horses till we hear from Holy Cross."

"Hear what?"

The Colonel didn't answer, but the Boy didn't wait to listen. He swallowed his coffee scalding hot, rolled up some food and stuff for trading, in a light reindeer skin blanket, lashed it packwise on his back, shouldered his gun, and made off before the Trio came in to breakfast.

The first sign that he was nearing a settlement, was the appearance of what looked like sections of rude wicker fencing, set up here and there in the river and frozen fast in the ice. High on the bank lay one of the long cornucopia-shaped basket fish-traps, and presently he caught sight of something in the bleak Arctic landscape that made his heart jump, something that to Florida eyes looked familiar.

"Why, if it doesn't make me think of John Fox's cabin on Cypress Creek!" he said to himself, formulating an impression that had vaguely haunted him on the Lower River in September; wondering if the Yukon flooded like the Caloosahatchee, and if the water could reach as far up as all that.

He stopped to have a good look at this first one of the Pymeut caches, for this modest edifice, like a Noah's Ark on four legs, was not a habitation, but a storehouse, and was perched so high, not for fear of floods, but for fear of dogs and mice. This was manifest from the fact that there were fish-racks and even ighloos much nearer the river.

The Boy stopped and hesitated; it was a sore temptation to climb up and see what they had in that cache. There was an inviting plank all ready, with sticks nailed on it transversely to prevent the feet from slipping. But the Boy stopped at the rude ladder's foot, deciding that this particular mark of interest on the part of a stranger might be misinterpreted. It would, perhaps, be prudent to find Nicholas first of all. But where was Nicholas?--where was anybody?

The scattered, half-buried huts were more like earth-mounds, snow-encrusted, some with drift-logs propped against the front face looking riverwards.

While he was cogitating how to effect an entrance to one of these, or to make his presence known, he saw, to his relief, the back of a solitary Indian going in the direction of an ighloo farther up the river.

"Hi, hi!" he shouted, and as the figure turned he made signs. It stopped.

"How-do?" the Boy called out when he got nearer. "You talk English?"

The native laughed. A flash of fine teeth and sparkling eyes lit up a young, good-looking face. This boy seemed promising.

"How d'ye do? You know Nicholas?"

"Yes."

The laugh was even gayer. It seemed to be a capital joke to know Nicholas.

"Where is he?"

The figure turned and pointed, and then: "Come. I show you."

This was a more highly educated person than Nicholas, thought the visitor, remarking the use of the nominative scorned of the Prince.

They walked on to the biggest of the underground dwellings.

"Is this where the King hangs out? Nicholas' father lives here?"

"No. This is the Kazhga."

"Oh, the Kachime. Ain't you comin' in?"

"Oh no."

"Why?"

His guide had a fit of laughter, and then turned to go.

"Say, what's your name?"

The answer sounded like "Muckluck."

And just then Nicholas crawled out of the tunnel-like opening leading into the council-house. He jumped up, beaming at the sight of his friend.

"Say, Nicholas, who's this fella that's always laughing, no matter what you say? Calls himself 'Muckluck.'"

The individual referred to gave way to another spasm of merriment, which infected Nicholas.

"My sister--this one," he explained.

"Oh-h!" The Boy joined in the laugh, and pulled off his Arctic cap with a bow borrowed straight from the Colonel.

"Princess Muckluck, I'm proud to know you."

"Name no Muckluck," began Nicholas; "name Mahk----"

"Mac? Nonsense! Mac's a man's name--she's Princess Muckluck. Only, how's a fella to tell, when you dress her like a man?"

The Princess still giggled, while her brother explained.

"No like man. See?" He showed how the skirt of her deerskin parki, reaching, like her brother's, a little below the knee, was shaped round in front, and Nicholas's own--all men's parkis were cut straight across.

"I see. How's your father?"

Nicholas looked grave; even Princess Muckluck stopped laughing.

"Come," said Nicholas, and the Boy followed him on all fours into the Kachime.

Entering on his stomach, he found himself in a room about sixteen by twenty feet, two-thirds underground, log-walls chinked with moss, a roof of poles sloping upwards, tent-like, but leaving an opening in the middle for a smoke-hole some three feet square, and covered at present by a piece of thin, translucent skin. With the sole exception of the smoke-hole, the whole thing was so covered with earth, and capped with snow, that, expecting a mere cave, one was surprised at the wood-lining within. The Boy was still more surprised at the concentration, there, of malignant smells.

He gasped, and was for getting out again as fast as possible, when the bearskin flap fell behind him over the Kachime end of the entrance-tunnel.

Through the tobacco-smoke and the stifling air he saw, vaguely, a grave gathering of bucks sitting, or, rather, lounging and squatting, on the outer edge of the wide sleeping-bench that ran all round the room, about a foot and a half from the hewn-log floor.

Their solemn, intent faces were lit grotesquely by the uncertain glow of two seal-oil lamps, mounted on two posts, planted one in front of the right sleeping-bench, the other on the left.

The Boy hesitated. Was it possible he could get used to the atmosphere? Certainly it was warm in here, though there was no fire that he could see. Nicholas was talking away very rapidly to the half-dozen grave and reverend signiors, they punctuating his discourse with occasional grunts and a well-nigh continuous coughing. Nicholas wound up in English.

"Me tell you: he heap good friend. You ketch um tobacco?" he inquired suddenly of his guest. Fortunately, the Boy had remembered to "ketch" that essential, and his little offering was laid before the council-men. More grunts, and room made for the visitor on the sleeping-bench next the post that supported one of the lamps, a clay saucer half-full of seal-oil, in which a burning wick of twisted moss gave forth a powerful odour, a fair amount of smoke, and a faint light.

The Boy sat down, still staring about him, taking note of the well-hewn logs, and of the neat attachment of the timbers by a saddle-joint at the four corners of the roof.

"Who built this?" he inquired of Nicholas.

"Ol' father, an' ... heap ol' men gone dead."

"Gee! Well, whoever did it was on to his job," he said. "I don't seen a nail in the whole sheebang."

"No, no nail."

The Boy remembered Nicholas's sled, and, looking again at the disproportionately small hands of the men about him, corrected his first impression that they were too feminine to be good for much.

A dirty old fellow, weak and sickly in appearance, began to talk querulously. All the others listened with respect, smoking and making inarticulate noises now and then. When that discourse was finished, a fresh one was begun by yet another coughing councillor.

"What's it all about?" the Boy asked.

"Ol' Chief heap sick," said the buck on the Boy's right.

"Ol' Chief, ol' father, b'long me," Nicholas observed with pride.

"Yes; but aren't the Holy Cross people nursing him?"

"Brother Paul gone; white medicine no good."

They all shook their heads and coughed despairingly.

"Then try s'm' other--some yella-brown, Esquimaux kind," hazarded the Boy lightly, hardly noticing what he was saying till he found nearly all the eyes of the company fixed intently upon him. Nicholas was translating, and it was clear the Boy had created a sensation.

"Father Wills no like," said one buck doubtfully. "He make cross-eyes when Shamán come."

"Oh yes, medicine-man," said the Boy, following the narrative eagerly.

"Shamán go way," volunteered an old fellow who hitherto had held his peace; "all get sick"--he coughed painfully--"heap Pymeuts die."

"Father Wills come." Nicholas took up the tale afresh. "Shamán come. Father Wills heap mad. He no let Shamán stay."

"No; him say, 'Go! plenty quick, plenty far. Hey, you! _Mush!_'"

They smoked awhile in silence broken only by coughs.

"Shamán say, 'Yukon Inua plenty mad.'"

"Who is Yukon Inua? Where does he live?"

"Unner Yukon ice," whispered Nicholas. "Oh, the river spirit?... Of course."

"Him heap strong. Long time"--he motioned back into the ages with one slim brown hand--"fore Holy Cross here, Yukon Inua take good care Pymeuts."

"No tell Father Wills?"

"No."

Then in a low guttural voice: "Shamán come again."

"Gracious! When?"

"To-night."

"Jiminny Christmas!"

They sat and smoked and coughed. By-and-by, as if wishing thoroughly to justify their action, Nicholas resumed:

"You savvy, ol' father try white medicine--four winter, four summer. No good. Ol' father say, 'Me well man? Good friend Holy Cross, good friend Russian mission. Me ol'? me sick? Send for Shamán.'"

The entire company grunted in unison.

"You no tell?" Nicholas added with recurrent anxiety.

"No, no; they shan't hear through me. I'm safe."

Presently they all got up, and began removing and setting back the hewn logs that formed the middle of the floor. It then appeared that, underneath, was an excavation about two feet deep. In the centre, within a circle of stones, were the charred remains of a fire, and here they proceeded to make another.

As soon as it began to blaze, Yagorsha the Story-teller took the cover off the smoke-hole, so the company was not quite stifled.

A further diversion was created by several women crawling in, bringing food for the men-folk, in old lard-cans or native wooden kantaks. These vessels they deposited by the fire, and with an exchange of grunts went out as they had come.

Nicholas wouldn't let the Boy undo his pack.

"No, we come back," he said, adding something in his own tongue to the company, and then crawled out, followed by the Boy. Their progress was slow, for the Boy's "Canadian webfeet" had been left in the Kachime, and he sank in the snow at every step. Twice in the dusk he stumbled over an ighloo, or a sled, or some sign of humanity, and asked of the now silent, preoccupied Nicholas, "Who lives here?" The answer had been, "Nobody; all dead."

The Boy was glad to see approaching, at last, a human figure. It came shambling through the snow, with bent head and swaying, jerking gait, looked up suddenly and sheered off, flitting uncertainly onward, in the dim light, like a frightened ghost.

"Who is that?"

"Shamán. Him see in dark all same owl. Him know you white man."

The Boy stared after him. The bent figure of the Shamán looked like a huge bat flying low, hovering, disappearing into the night.

"Those your dogs howling?" the visitor asked, thinking that for sheer dismalness Pymeut would be hard to beat.

Nicholas stopped suddenly and dropped down; the ground seemed to open and swallow him. The Boy stooped and saw his friend's feet disappearing in a hole. He seized one of them. "Hold on; wait for me!"

Nicholas kicked, but to no purpose; he could make only such progress as his guest permitted.

Presently a gleam. Nicholas had thrust away the flap at the tunnel's end, and they stood in the house of the Chief of the Pymeuts, that native of whom Father Wills had said, "He is the richest and most intelligent man of his tribe."

The single room seemed very small after the spaciousness of the Kachime, but it was the biggest ighloo in the settlement.

A fire burnt brightly in the middle of the earthen floor, and over it was bending Princess Muckluck, cooking the evening meal. She nodded, and her white teeth shone in the blaze. Over in the corner, wrapped in skins, lay a man on the floor groaning faintly. The salmon, toasting on sticks over wood coals, smelt very appetising.

"Why, your fish are whole. Don't you clean 'em first?" asked the visitor, surprised out of his manners.

"No," said Nicholas; "him better no cut."

They sat down by the fire, and the Princess waited on them. The Boy discovered that it was perfectly true. Yukon salmon broiled in their skins over a birch fire are the finest eating in the world, and any "other way" involves a loss of flavour.

He was introduced for the first time to the delights of reindeer "back-fat," and found even that not so bad.

"You are lucky, Nicholas, to have a sister--such a nice one, too"--(the Princess giggled)--"to keep house for you."

Nicholas understood, at least, that politeness was being offered, and he grinned.

"I've got a sister myself. I'll show you her picture some day. I care about her a lot. I've come up here to make a pile so that we can buy back our old place in Florida."

He said this chiefly to the Princess, for she evidently had profited more by her schooling, and understood things quite like a Christian.

"Did you ever eat an orange, Princess?" he continued.

"Kind o' fish?"

"No, fruit; a yella ball that grows on a tree."

"Me know," said Nicholas; "me see him in boxes St. Michael's. Him bully."

"Yes. Well, we had a lot of trees all full of those yella balls, and we used to eat as many as we liked. We don't have much winter down where I live--summer pretty nearly all the time."

"I'd like go there," said the girl.

"Well, will you come and see us, Muckluck? When I've found a gold-mine and have bought back the Orange Grove, my sister and me are goin' to live together, like you and Nicholas."

"She look like you?"

"No; and it's funny, too, 'cause we're twins."

"Twins! What's twins?"

"Two people born at the same time."

"No!" ejaculated Nicholas.

"Why, yes, and they always care a heap about each other when they're twins."

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 twinship.

"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. Sh! 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 Shamán."

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

They both crouched down by the fire.

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

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

The sick man called hoarsely. 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!"

"Sh!" 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, muffled, 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 Chèe."

"Let's go and bring him in."

"Bring dog in here?"

"Dog! That's no dog."

"Yes, him dog; him my Chèe."

"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 assimilating 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.

The Boy, feeling he would need an interpreter, signed to Muckluck to come and sit by him. Grave as a judge she got up, and did as she was bid.

"That the Shamán?" whispered the Boy.

She nodded. It was plain that this apparition, however hideous, had given her great satisfaction.

"Any more people coming?"

"Got no more now in Pymeut."

"Where is everybody?"

"Some sick, some dead."

The old Chief rambled on, but not so noisily.

"See," whispered Muckluck, "devil 'fraid already. He begin to speak small."

The Shamán never once looked towards the sufferer till he himself was thoroughly warm. Even then he withdrew from the genial glow, only to sit back, humped together, blinking, silent. The Boy began to feel that, if he did finally say something it would be as surprising as to hear an aged monkey break into articulate speech.

Nicholas edged towards the Shamán, presenting something in a birch-bark dish.

"What's that?"

"A deer's tongue," whispered Muckluck.

The Boy remembered the Koyukun song, "Thanks for a good meal to Kuskokala, the Shamán."

Nicholas seemed to be haranguing the Shamán deferentially, but with spirit. He pulled out from the bottom of his father's bed three fine marten-skins, shook them, and dangled them before the Shamán. They produced no effect. He then took a box of matches and a plug of the Boy's tobacco out of his pocket, and held the lot towards the Shamán, seeming to say that to save his life he couldn't rake up another earthly thing to tempt his Shamánship. Although the Shamán took the offerings his little black eyes glittered none the less rapaciously, as they flew swiftly round the room, falling at last with a vicious snap and gleam upon the Boy. Then it was that for the first time he spoke.

"Nuh! nuh!" interrupted Muckluck, chattering volubly, and evidently commending the Boy to the Shamán. Several of the old bucks laughed.

"He say Yukon Inua no like you."

"He think white men bring plague, bring devils."

"Got some money?" whispered Muckluck.

"Not here."

The Boy saw the moment when he would be turned out. He plunged his hands down into his trousers pockets and fished up a knife, his second-best one, fortunately.

"Tell him I'm all right, and he can give this to Yukon Inua with my respects."

Muckluck explained and held up the shining object, blades open, corkscrew curling attractively before the covetous eyes of the Shamán. When he could endure the temptation no longer his two black claws shot out, but Nicholas intercepted the much-envied object, while, as it seemed, he drove a more advantageous bargain. Terms finally settled, the Shamán seized the knife, shut it, secreted it with a final grunt, and stood up.

Everyone made way for him. He jerked his loosely-jointed body over to the sick man, lifted the seal-oil lamp with his shaky old hands, and looked at the patient long and steadily. When he had set the lamp down again, with a grunt, he put his black thumb on the wick and squeezed out the light. When he came back to the fire, which had burnt low, he pulled open his parki and drew out an ivory wand, and a long eagle's feather with a fluffy white tuft of some sort at the end. He deposited these solemnly, side by side, on the ground, about two feet apart.

Turning round to the dying fire, he took a stick, and with Nicholas's help gathered the ashes up and laid them over the smouldering brands.

The ighloo was practically dark. No one dared speak save the yet unabashed devil in the sick man, who muttered angrily. It was curious to see how the coughing of the others, which in the Kachime had been practically constant, was here almost silenced. Whether this was achieved through awe and respect for the Shamán, or through nervous absorption in the task he had undertaken, who shall say?

The Boy felt rather than saw that the Shamán had lain down between the ivory wand and the eagle's feather. Each man sat as still as death, listening, staring, waiting.

Presently a little jet of flame sprang up out of the ashes. The Shamán lifted his head angrily, saw it was no human hand that had dared turn on the light, growled, and pulled something else from under his inexhaustible parki. The Boy peered curiously. The Shamán seemed to be shutting out the offensive light by wrapping himself up in something, head and all.

"What's he doing now?" the Boy ventured to whisper under cover of the devil's sudden loud remonstrance, the sick man at this point breaking into ghastly groans.

"He puts on the Kamlayka. Sh!"

The Shamán, still enveloped head and body, began to beat softly, keeping time with the eagle's feather. You could follow the faint gleam of the ivory wand, but on what it fell with that hollow sound no eye could see. Now, at intervals, he uttered a cry, a deep bass danger-note, singularly unnerving. Someone answered in a higher key, and they kept this up in a kind of rude, sharply-timed duet, till one by one the whole group of natives was gathered into the swing of it, swept along involuntarily, it would seem, by some magnetic attraction of the rhythm.

_"Ung hi yah! ah-ha-yah! yah-yah-yah!"_ was the chorus to that deep, recurrent cry of the Shamán. Its accompanying drum-note was muffled like far-off thunder, conjured out of the earth by the ivory wand.

Presently a scream of terror from the bundle of skins and bones in the corner.

"Ha!" Muckluck clasped her hands and rocked back and forth.

"They'll frighten the old man to death if he's conscious," said the Boy, half rising.

She pulled him down.

"No, no; frighten devil." She was shaking with excitement and with ecstacy.

The sick man cried aloud. A frenzy seemed to seize the Shamán. He raised his voice in a series of blood-curdling shrieks, then dropped it, moaning, whining, then bursting suddenly into diabolic laughter, bellowing, whispering, ventriloquising, with quite extraordinary skill. The dim and foetid cave might indeed be full of devils.

If the hideous outcry slackened, but an instant, you heard the sick man raving with the preternatural strength of delirium, or of mad resentment. For some time it seemed a serious question as to who would come out ahead. Just as you began to feel that the old Chief was at the end of his tether, and ready to give up the ghost, the Shamán, rising suddenly with a demoniac yell, flung himself down on the floor in a convulsion. His body writhed horribly; he kicked and snapped and quivered.

The Boy was for shielding Muckluck from the crazy flinging out of legs and arms; but she leaned over, breathless, to catch what words might escape the Shamán during the fit, for these were omens of deep significance.

When at last the convulsive movements quieted, and the Shamán lay like one dead, except for an occasional faint twitch, the Boy realised for the first time that the sick man, too, was dumb. Dead? The only sound now was the wind up in the world above. Even the dog was still.

The silence was more horrible than the hell-let-loose of a few minutes before.

The dim group sat there, motionless, under the spell of the stillness even more than they had been under the spell of the noise. At last a queer, indescribable scratching and scraping came up out of the bowels of the earth.

How does the old devil manage to do that? thought the Boy. But the plain truth was that his heart was in his mouth, for the sound came from the opposite direction, behind the Boy, and not near the Shamán at all. It grew louder, came nearer, more inexplicable, more awful. He felt he could not bear it another minute, sprang up, and stood there, tense, waiting for what might befall. Were _all_ the others dead, then?

Not a sound in the place, only that indescribable stirring of something in the solid earth under his feet.

The Shamán had his knife. A ghastly sensation of stifling came over the Boy as he thought of a struggle down there under the earth and the snow.

On came the horrible underground thing. Desperately the Boy stirred the almost extinct embers with his foot, and a faint glow fell on the terror-frozen faces of the natives, fell on the bear-skin flap. _It moved!_ A huge hand came stealing round. A hand? The skeleton of a hand--white, ghastly, with fingers unimaginably long. No mortal in Pymeut had a hand like that--no mortal in all the world!

A crisp, smart sound, and a match blazed. A tall, lean figure rose up from behind the bear-skin and received the sudden brightness full in his face, pale and beautiful, but angry as an avenging angel's. For an instant the Boy still thought it a spectre, the delusion of a bewildered brain, till the girl cried out, "Brother Paul!" and fell forward on the floor, hiding her face in her hands.

"Light! make a light!" he commanded. Nicholas got up, dazed but obedient, and lit the seal-oil lamp.

The voice of the white man, the call for light, reached the Shamán. He seemed to shiver and shrink under the folds of the Kamlayka. But instead of getting up and looking his enemy in the face, he wriggled along on his belly, still under cover of the Kamlayka, till he got to the bear-skin, pushed it aside with a motion of the hooded head, and crawled out like some snaky symbol of darkness and superstition fleeing before the light.

"Brother Paul!" sobbed the girl, "don't, _don't_ tell Sister Winifred."

He took no notice of her, bending down over the motionless bundle in the corner.

"You've killed him, I suppose?"

"Brother Paul--" began Nicholas, faltering.

"Oh, I heard the pandemonium." He lifted his thin white face to the smoke-hole. "It's all useless, useless. I might as well go and leave you to your abominations. But instead, go _you_, all of you--go!" He flung out his long arms, and the group broke and scuttled, huddling near the bear-skin, fighting like rats to get out faster than the narrow passage permitted.

The Boy turned from watching the instantaneous flight, the scuffle, and the disappearance, to find the burning eyes of the Jesuit fixed fascinated on his face. If Brother Paul had appeared as a spectre in the ighloo, it was plain that he looked upon the white face present at the diabolic rite as dream or devil. The Boy stood up. The lay-brother started, and crossed himself.

"In Christ's name, what--who are you?"

"I--a--I come from the white camp ten miles below."

"And you were _here_--you allowed this? Ah-h!" He flung up his arms, the pale lips moved convulsively, but no sound came forth.

"I--you think I ought to have interfered?" began the Boy.

"I think--" the Brother began bitterly, checked himself, knelt down, and felt the old man's pulse.

Nicholas at the bear-skin was making the Boy signs to come.

The girl was sobbing with her face on the ground. Again Nicholas beckoned, and then disappeared. There seemed to be nothing to do but to follow his host. When the bear-skin had dropped behind the Boy, and he crawled after Nicholas along the dark passage, he heard the muffled voice of the girl praying: "Oh, Mary, Mother of God, don't let him tell Sister Winifred."

“One work. Many languages. One reading experience.”