Part 29

One night the old mother of Miak, the witch-woman, froze to death. The next day every family moved to the _kashim_, where, by shutting out the air and huddling close together, the people could keep warm without oil. Once a day Ah-king-ah brought them hope and comfort by lighting the stone lamp and chanting magical words to the almighty devil.

The missionary in his igloo spent desperate hours on his knees pleading with his God to change the wind. In the darkness he paced his room, warming his thin body by the exercise and striving for courage by repeating over and over the promises of the Bible. Sternly he reduced the rations for his scant daily meal until hunger brought upon him that strange fanatical exultation which is akin to the ecstasy that causes the fasting prophet to prophesy, or the medicine-man to perform his greatest feats of magic. With the passage of each dreary day the conviction grew upon him that this unprecedented blizzard had been sent to test his zeal as a worker in the vineyard of the Lord. This blizzard was his opportunity to win an entire village from the heathen sway of the medicine-man. With every atom of his being the little missionary grew to believe that if once he could persuade the people to enter the meeting-house, if once he could induce them to pray to his God, the wind would die, and the hunters be able to get food.

This conviction forced him every afternoon through the gale to the _kashim_. He ignored every rebuff, ignored utterly the danger to himself, although he knew that Ah-king-ah, should he forget the fate of the priest-murdering medicine-men, might have him killed as a witch who had brought misfortune on the village. Sometimes, by dint of superhuman self-denial, he brought bits of hardtack for the strangely quiet little ones clinging to their mothers in the _kashim_. Always he pleaded with the elders to turn from shamanism to the true God. The Eskimos, apathetic from prolonged hunger, suffered his presence. While he was with them, there was at least the light of his kerosene lantern. Otherwise, the _kashim_ was always in darkness now, for Ah-king-ah’s oil was gone.

Construing this tolerance as an encouraging sign, the earnest little man brought his Bible, and standing under the swinging light of the lantern, he translated page after page of Exodus--the promises of the Lord to the Children of Israel, the feeding of the wanderers in the desert. But the Eskimos sat stolid, unmoved, apathetic. Even his ardent rendering of the miracle of the loaves and fishes fell flat. Ah-king-ah, as if in weary scorn of his rival, stretched himself on the skins of his shelf and slept, or appeared to sleep.

One day, by accident, the missionary read of the magicians and sorcerers who competed with Moses and Aaron at the court of the Egyptian Pharaoh. Milli-ru-ak raised his eyes from a sad contemplation of his ailing infant son asleep in its mother’s arms. Miak, the witch-woman, leaned forward over her empty lamp to listen. A stir of interest went among the people. Here at last was something they could understand.

The white man had heretofore preached only a kind and beneficent God, but seeing in this an opening in the wall of their indifference, he plunged into detailed descriptions of the misfortunes that had visited the Egyptians. His gaunt face and sunken eyes glowed with fervor. Hunger lent a delirious and terrible vividness to his speech. Vicariously, the starving Eskimos were drowned in his Biblical rivers of blood. They were tormented by plagues of frogs and boils, locusts and lice. They were terrified by hails and thunders. Aware of the Eskimos’ almost idolatrous love for their offspring, he loosed his tongue of all restraint when he pictured the smiting of the first-born. To the sound of the howling blizzard he dwelt long on the pathos of the dead childish faces in those desolate homes along the Nile. Ah-king-ah bestirred himself and sat up. There was a murmuring among the hunters. The mothers caught their children to their breasts and swayed back and forth, moaning. The missionary, light-headed from hunger and emotion, reeled under the swinging shadows of the lantern.

“Would ye, like the Egyptians, harden your hearts against the word of God and bring death to your children?” he shouted. “Oh, come, my friends! Come with me before your little ones lie dead in your arms. Pray to Almighty God and be delivered! Follow me before it is too late!” Carried away by the effect of his eloquence on the hitherto indifferent Eskimos, he caught at the lantern and lurched forward toward the exit of the _kashim_. “Follow me to the house of God!”

The mothers rose with hysterical cries. The hunters began to get down from their shelf. But before the missionary had reached the ladder, Ah-king-ah was standing in the middle of the floor. Calm and dignified, he made a single motion with one hand. Not a soul moved farther to follow the white man.

The next day, when the missionary climbed to the opening of the _kashim_, he found the hole covered. His knocks and pleas for entrance met with no response, because Ah-king-ah was sitting on the door to hold it down.

Night brought a drop in temperature and an increase in the force of the gale. The grinding and crash of the ice-pack seemed to threaten the very foundations of the island. With the exception of the missionary, every soul on In-ga-lee-nay was packed in the _kashim_. Men, women, and children chewed desperately on dry walrus-hide and clung together to keep from freezing. The little ones wedged between their parents whimpered in misery. At last the company, weary from many wakeful nights, jerked and flung their arms about in troubled sleep.

When morning broke Milli-ru-ak’s child was dead.

The wailing of the mothers mingled with the roar of the blizzard and the increased fervor of the medicine-man’s incantations. Before the day was done, two more little ones died.

It was then that Milli-ru-ak, with three of the council men, appeared in the igloo of the white man.

“We will pray to your God,” said the hunter, wearily.

The peals of the bell that summoned the people to the prayer-meeting were freighted with the little missionary’s joy in the fulfilment of his mission. He had wrested a whole village from the dominance of the medicine-man!

The sunken eyes in his gaunt, unshaven face glowed with fanatic happiness as he looked down on the crowded room. Eskimos filled the benches, stood about the walls, and squatted on the floor about the last of his oil burning in the stone lamp below the pulpit. Of all the village only Ah-king-ah was absent. The people sat silent, grave, attentive, their eyes fixed on the Bible lying open on the pulpit.

The missionary began his exhortation, raising his voice above the raging of the blizzard and the rending of the icepack. Thrilled by a sense of achievement and inspired by faith, he spoke with a confidence and an eloquence he had never known before. Within him woke the spirit of the evangelist. During the hour he worked upon his congregation he felt himself rising to the sublime heights from which Jesus himself had dominated all physical conditions. So exalted was he that his preaching aroused a measure of faith in the starving Eskimos, even as the incantations of Ah-king-ah had done.

“Such is the might and goodness of our God,” he shouted after he had combed the Bible for incidents showing the stilling of storms, the feeding of the hungry, the raising of the dead. “And He is the same yesterday, today, and forever! Oh, down on your knees, my friends!” he cried with sudden vehemence. “Down on your knees and prove him now--now!”

His impassioned utterance swept his listeners to their knees, shouting, praying, pleading in long, fragmentary prayers for food, for life, for a change of wind. The fervid little white man leading them felt the whole room to be charged with power--an invincible power that flowed from him and from each one and definitely made its connection with the Infinite Mind that rules creation.

When he sprang to his feet at the end of the supplication, his thin face was alight.

“Go home, my people!” his voice rang out with confidence. “Go home and wait on the salvation of our Lord. Sharpen your spears; put an edge on your skinning-knives. Make ready your gears, for the day of hunting is near!”

“If the white man’s God answers, we will all become Christians!” cried Milli-ru-ak, rising and bringing the others with him.

“Yea! Yea!” came the chorus of assent. Miak, the witch-woman, sidled close to the pulpit, putting out a curious, but cautious, finger to feel the Bible.

“If the white man’s God changes the wind,” she croaked, slanting a wise, bleary eye up at the missionary, “the people of In-ga-lee-nay will come when the bell calls and listen again to the words in the black medicine-book.”

From the supreme heights of his faith the missionary watched his fur-clad congregation depart, seeing in them brands he had plucked from the burning, souls he had saved from destruction. Finally, in his cold living-room, he staggered toward his bunk and in sudden exhaustion sank upon it. He had scarcely drawn the fur robes about him when he was plunged into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

IV

He awoke to a hush so intense that his soul ached with it. It was as if the world had died, leaving him the only living thing upon it. After a moment’s bewilderment he realized that the wind was still, and there was no sound of grinding ice! His nerves, for ten weeks made taut by the continuous shriek of the blizzard, relaxed with a suddenness that was like a fall from a great height. Like a man swimming in a sea of silence, he raised his hands, groping for the luminous-faced watch by his bunk. He saw, with a gasp of incredulity, that he had slept eighteen hours!

Still dazed with sleep and hunger, he crawled from his robes and hurried out into the glimmering twilight of the arctic day. Great as was his faith in the power of prayer, he was astonished at the sight that met his eyes.

Under dark, moving clouds strangely shot with silver the ice-pack lay quiet and gray. A quarter of a mile away an inky, jagged line marked a lead of open water among the bergs. Every hunter in the village was squatted along the lead, and, as he looked, a sudden fusillade of rifle-shots registered the death of seals coming up to breathe.

Along the shores women and children and old men swarmed laughing, shouting, as some one threw a seal-hook into a dead animal and drew it to the ice. They crowded about it, their excited yells increasing. Five minutes later they were devouring the steaming flesh, stopping often to toss bits to the dogs, which gulped it ravenously.

The missionary bowed his head, a great gratitude, a great wonder in his heart. God had listened. God had heard. The famine was over.

Like the blizzard, that day’s hunting was unprecedented in In-ga-lee-nay. Thirty seals and a sixty-foot whale fell to the lot of the hunters. There was food in abundance, and oil for the lamps and for the torches that fluttered yellow lights over the ice-bound shores where the people worked joyously over the kill. All day the missionary moved among them. He was happy, elated. They were his flock, his children. In the flush of his joy he had to exercise considerable self-control to keep from calling attention to the glory of God’s mercy. The following day, Saturday, was also filled with unusual activities, but he permitted himself to speak of the meeting of thanksgiving which he would hold for them on Sunday. The Eskimos nodded, and laughed in answer to his enthusiasm. Light-hearted, variable, they had already forgotten the misery of the famine in the plentitude of feasting.

But the children with whom he had divided his last hardtack came shyly to his side and took hold of his hands. They had not forgotten. The little missionary had not realized his utter loneliness, his craving for friendship, for love, until he felt the clinging of their small, warm fingers. His vision was blurred as, one by one, he gathered them up in his arms and talked to them. Here indeed was his work among these benighted little ones and their parents. Here would he stay as long as he lived, teaching them the ways of truth and civilization. His last thought that night was of the meeting-house on the morrow filled with grateful Eskimos sending up their praises to God. Perhaps even Ah-king-ah, the defeated, might come to listen to the Holy Word and become converted.

Sunday morning found him up early preparing his sermon. He melted ice, and for the first time in many weeks was able to shave. As he lighted the blubber-lamps to heat the meeting-house, he noted a small pair of fur mittens left by some child who had accompanied its mother to the first gathering. He picked them up and placed them on the pulpit, intending to return them later. The thought of the youngster sent him to the bottom of his trunk for the flag he always carried with him. He could not begin too soon to familiarize the little ones with their country’s flag, he thought, as he pinned the Stars and Stripes above the blackboard in anticipation of the near day when the people should send their children to school.

He rang the first bell, and then busied himself with a rearrangement of the benches. Engrossed in happy thoughts, he did not realize how swiftly time was passing until he glanced at his watch. Half an hour had gone by since his call to meeting! Apprehension stirred in him as he reached for the cord to ring the second bell, but before his outstretched fingers touched it, he stiffened in the attitude of arrested action.

_O-o-m, oom-oom. O-o-m, oom-oom. O-o-m, oom-oom._ The air suddenly began vibrating to the deep boom of the devil-drum. His hand fell to his side. Incredulity, comprehension, anger, succeeded each other in his face. Without pausing to tighten his parka hood he rushed out into the calm arctic noon, and ran toward the _kashim_ tunnel. One leap carried him over the medicine-man’s crossed sticks at the entrance, the next plunged him into the darkness of the passage.

Beat of drum and pagan chanting grew louder as he thrust his head up through the opening in the floor which was once more the stage for Ah-king-ah. Behind the shaman stood Milli-ru-ak, with the three whale hunters who had helped him kill the whale. Bird-beaks and crab-claws on their scanty garments were clattering to every motion of their dancing bodies. Their feathered heads swayed above whale-charms of jade that dangled on cords about their necks. Four Eskimo maidens in primitive finery stood together, holding by its ivory chains the Ceremonial Cup of the Whale filled with blubber cubes. At intervals, when the medicine-man signaled, they held the cup aloft and uttered long, weird cries like gulls.

The people who had so recently prostrated themselves in supplication before the white man’s God were now as fervently assisting Ah-king-ah in the ancient rites of thanksgiving to the Spirit of the Whale. Their faces glowed with happiness and well-being; their voices rose in joyous unison with the voice of the shaman.

At sight of the missionary the dancing and chanting ceased abruptly. Ah-king-ah took a confident step forward.

“Why does the white man bring his long face here to anger the spirits of the hunt?” he asked.

The missionary’s sunken eyes passed slowly over the faces of the hunters squatted on the shelf, over the faces of the mothers and of the old men and the children below. His anger ebbed to a great hopelessness that showed in the weary sag of his shoulders. He was defeated, yet he climbed to the floor of the _kashim_ and stood beside the half-nude figure of the giant shaman.

“Were your words then a lie within your mouths, ye people of In-ga-lee-nay?” he asked quietly. “Ye did promise this day to send up thanks to Almighty God for his mercies. If these promises were lies, why did ye come to pray with me?”

Milli-ru-ak started forward, his eyes narrowed with anger, but the medicine-man gestured for silence.

“Listen to the words of Ah-king-ah!” He spoke with primitive dignity, his authoritative voice instantly quelling the murmur of the hunters. “It was I, Ah-king-ah, who sent my people to the _kashim_ of the white man.”

The missionary turned incredulously.

“Long had I chanted the runes that please the almighty devil tossing in his hands the ivory ball of the world,” went on the medicine-man. “And I knew the time was ripe for fulfilment. Yet the wisdom of my fathers tells me that all things change form, even as the ice-pack changes its face in the arms of the wind. New spirits come. Old spirits die. There is sorcery in all things. Perhaps there is sorcery in the black Book the white man keeps. Perhaps there is not. But I, Ah-king-ah, maker of medicine, am not a man of wisdom if I protect not my people against it. Therefore I sent them to thee, white man, who knoweth the ways of thy God in the black Book, but before I sent them I promised that I, Ah-king-ah, who knoweth the ways of the almighty devil, would stay alone, working for them my strongest magic while they pray. They know my medicine is great, for, behold! the storm dies like the last grunt of the stricken walrus and”--he drew himself up proudly, resting his drum on his thigh--“it is I, Ah-king-ah, mightiest shaman of the North, who changed the wind!”

In the approving chorus that filled the room the missionary tried to make himself heard, but Ah-king-ah’s voice continued, vanquishing every other sound:

“And why should thy God be thanked?” he asked in the earnest manner of one seeking to understand another’s point of view. “Thou hast told my people He is a good God wanting to do only good to man. Why pray to Him when he can do us no harm? But the almighty devil--he is evil, evil. All his pleasure comes from doing evil to man. Therefore we must sing the magic runes that please him, so he leaves us alone. Therefore we must dance before the Spirit of the Whale to show our joy at the good fortune the devil has permitted. White man”--Ah-king-ah’s shrewd dark eyes were not unkind as he looked down on the little missionary “our ways are still the ways of our fathers. Thy ways are the ways of thy fathers. Leave us, then, and give thy thanks to whom it please thee.” He raised the drum from his thigh and made a quick motion with it. As the booming sounded, the three apprentices sprang forward. Not ungently they laid hold of the missionary and led him to the opening in the floor. Then rung by rung he was forced down the ladder until his feet touched the icy cobblestones at the bottom. The trap-door dropped above him, leaving him in darkness.

As he stumbled over wolf-dogs gorged with food and indifferent with sleep, his ears rang to the thump of the devil-drum and the pagan chanting of well fed, joyous people. The sounds followed him from the passage into the awful pervading silence of the polar day. He dragged his forlorn figure back along the snowy trail to the meeting-house. His knees trembled. A sudden awareness of his isolation from his kind struck through his heart like a sickness.

Past the mocking bareness of the benches, past the blackboard where the flag, loosed from three of its tacks, hung limp and dispirited, he made his way to the shaky little pulpit. He rubbed a fumbling hand across his eyes then, as a hurt child seeks the comfort of its mother’s breast, his gray head sank on his folded arms, and he pressed his face against the open Bible.

Numbed by his disappointment, crushed by his failure, he lay, a small, defeated white man in the primitive fur garments of an alien race. Gradually into his memory began to crowd the long months of loneliness, sacrifice, and privation he had borne to bring the comforts of religion and the uplift of civilization to an ungrateful heathen people. For them he had given up everything a white man holds dear. For them he had been willing to give even his life. His work had been futile. Futility! The word stood out in letters of ice against the blackness of his misery. But he was at the end. He was through. In the spring, when the first boat came from the mainland, he would leave In-ga-lee-nay. He _would_ take his God back to his own land, where there was at least the companionship of his kind.

Sagging wearily against the pulpit, he was oblivious to the passage of time, deaf to the increasing happy shouts from the _kashim_. The oil in the lamps burned away, the sputtering wicks grew black. Unconsciously, one hand, opening and shutting in anguish, had taken hold of something soft and warm. When at last he raised his face from his cramped arms, his eyes, dull with brooding, fell on the tiny pair of mittens he had placed on the pulpit that morning.

For the space of a dozen breaths he stared at them, then slowly, meditatively he began stroking them. Into his tired mind crept thoughts of yesterday. Children had come to him then--children with upraised, trusting eyes and warm, clinging fingers. They had come because they believed in him. They liked him. They were potential hunters and mothers of hunters. With their small clinging hands they were already molding the future of their race.

Little by little the look of hopelessness faded from his eyes, and a new determination crept into his thin face. When he stepped from the pulpit he turned and pinned the flag back into place, then hung the mittens on a nail beside it.

It was very late for the second bell, but the missionary crossed over to the bell-rope. His step was firm again, his dogged chin upraised. He laid hold of the rope and began pulling it vigorously, hopefully.

Out over the still, white bergs of Bering Strait two sounds strove once more for dominance in the arctic air:

_O-o-m, oom-oom. O-o-m, oom-oom. O-o-m, oom-oom._

_D-i-n-g-d-o-n-g, d-i-n-g-d-o-n-g. D-i-n-g-d-o-n-g._

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Copyright, 1925, by The Century Company. Copyright, 1926, by Barrett Willoughby.

GIDEON’S REVENGE[20]

By ELINOR WYLIE

(From _The Century Magazine_)