THE SUNLANDERS
Mandell is an obscure village on the rim of the polar sea. It is not
large, and the people are peaceable, more peaceable even than those
of the adjacent tribes. There are few men in Mandell, and many women;
wherefore a wholesome and necessary polygamy is in practice; the women
bear children with ardor, and the birth of a man-child is hailed with
acclamation. Then there is Aab-Waak, whose head rests always on one
shoulder, as though at some time the neck had become very tired and
refused forevermore its wonted duty.
The cause of all these things,--the peaceableness, and the polygamy,
and the tired neck of Aab-Waak,--goes back among the years to the time
when the schooner _Search_ dropped anchor in Mandell Bay, and when
Tyee, chief man of the tribe, conceived a scheme of sudden wealth. To
this day the story of things that happened is remembered and spoken
of with bated breath by the people of Mandell, who are cousins to the
Hungry Folk who live in the west. Children draw closer when the tale
is told, and marvel sagely to themselves at the madness of those who
might have been their forebears had they not provoked the Sunlanders
and come to bitter ends.
It began to happen when six men came ashore from the _Search_,
with heavy outfits, as though they had come to stay, and quartered
themselves in Neegah's igloo. Not but that they paid well in flour and
sugar for the lodging, but Neegah was aggrieved because Mesahchie, his
daughter, elected to cast her fortunes and seek food and blanket with
Bill-Man, who was leader of the party of white men.
"She is worth a price," Neegah complained to the gathering by the
council-fire, when the six white men were asleep. "She is worth a
price, for we have more men than women, and the men be bidding high.
The hunter Ounenk offered me a kayak, new-made, and a gun which he got
in trade from the Hungry Folk. This was I offered, and behold, now she
is gone and I have nothing!"
"I, too, did bid for Mesahchie," grumbled a voice, in tones not
altogether joyless, and Peelo shoved his broad-cheeked, jovial face
for a moment into the light.
"Thou, too," Neegah affirmed. "And there were others. Why is there
such a restlessness upon the Sunlanders?" he demanded petulantly. "Why
do they not stay at home? The Snow People do not wander to the lands
of the Sunlanders."
"Better were it to ask why they come," cried a voice from the
darkness, and Aab-Waak pushed his way to the front.
"Ay! Why they come!" clamored many voices, and Aab-Waak waved his hand
for silence.
"Men do not dig in the ground for nothing," he began. "And I have it
in mind of the Whale People, who are likewise Sunlanders, and who lost
their ship in the ice. You all remember the Whale People, who came to
us in their broken boats, and who went away into the south with dogs
and sleds when the frost arrived and snow covered the land. And you
remember, while they waited for the frost, that one man of them dug in
the ground, and then two men and three, and then all men of them, with
great excitement and much disturbance. What they dug out of the ground
we do not know, for they drove us away so we could not see. But
afterward, when they were gone, we looked and found nothing. Yet there
be much ground and they did not dig it all."
"Ay, Aab-Waak! Ay!" cried the people in admiration.
"Wherefore I have it in mind," he concluded, "that one Sunlander tells
another, and that these Sunlanders have been so told and are come to
dig in the ground."
"But how can it be that Bill-Man speaks our tongue?" demanded a little
weazened old hunter,--"Bill-Man, upon whom never before our eyes have
rested?"
"Bill-Man has been other times in the Snow Lands," Aab-Waak answered,
"else would he not speak the speech of the Bear People, which is like
the speech of the Hungry Folk, which is very like the speech of the
Mandells. For there have been many Sunlanders among the Bear People,
few among the Hungry Folk, and none at all among the Mandells, save
the Whale People and those who sleep now in the igloo of Neegah."
"Their sugar is very good," Neegah commented, "and their flour."
"They have great wealth," Ounenk added. "Yesterday I was to their
ship, and beheld most cunning tools of iron, and knives, and guns, and
flour, and sugar, and strange foods without end."
"It is so, brothers!" Tyee stood up and exulted inwardly at the
respect and silence his people accorded him. "They be very rich,
these Sunlanders. Also, they be fools. For behold! They come among us
boldly, blindly, and without thought for all of their great wealth.
Even now they snore, and we are many and unafraid."
"Mayhap they, too, are unafraid, being great fighters," the weazened
little old hunter objected.
But Tyee scowled upon him. "Nay, it would not seem so. They live to
the south, under the path of the sun, and are soft as their dogs are
soft. You remember the dog of the Whale People? Our dogs ate him the
second day, for he was soft and could not fight. The sun is warm and
life easy in the Sun Lands, and the men are as women, and the women as
children."
Heads nodded in approval, and the women craned their necks to listen.
"It is said they are good to their women, who do little work,"
tittered Likeeta, a broad-hipped, healthy young woman, daughter to
Tyee himself.
"Thou wouldst follow the feet of Mesahchie, eh?" he cried angrily.
Then he turned swiftly to the tribesmen. "Look you, brothers, this is
the way of the Sunlanders! They have eyes for our women, and take them
one by one. As Mesahchie has gone, cheating Neegah of her price, so
will Likeeta go, so will they all go, and we be cheated. I have talked
with a hunter from the Bear People, and I know. There be Hungry Folk
among us; let them speak if my words be true."
The six hunters of the Hungry Folk attested the truth and fell each
to telling his neighbor of the Sunlanders and their ways. There were
mutterings from the younger men, who had wives to seek, and from the
older men, who had daughters to fetch prices, and a low hum of rage
rose higher and clearer.
"They are very rich, and have cunning tools of iron, and knives, and
guns without end," Tyee suggested craftily, his dream of sudden wealth
beginning to take shape.
"I shall take the gun of Bill-Man for myself," Aab-Waak suddenly
proclaimed.
"Nay, it shall be mine!" shouted Neegah; "for there is the price of
Mesahchie to be reckoned."
"Peace! O brothers!" Tyee swept the assembly with his hands. "Let the
women and children go to their igloos. This is the talk of men; let it
be for the ears of men."
"There be guns in plenty for all," he said when the women had
unwillingly withdrawn. "I doubt not there will be two guns for each
man, without thought of the flour and sugar and other things. And it
is easy. The six Sunlanders in Neegah's igloo will we kill to-night
while they sleep. To-morrow will we go in peace to the ship to
trade, and there, when the time favors, kill all their brothers. And
to-morrow night there shall be feasting and merriment and division
of wealth. And the least man shall possess more than did ever the
greatest before. Is it wise, that which I have spoken, brothers?"
A low growl of approval answered him, and preparation for the attack
was begun. The six Hungry Folk, as became members of a wealthier
tribe, were armed with rifles and plenteously supplied with
ammunition. But it was only here and there that a Mandell possessed a
gun, many of which were broken, and there was a general slackness of
powder and shells. This poverty of war weapons, however, was relieved
by myriads of bone-headed arrows and casting-spears for work at a
distance, and for close quarters steel knives of Russian and Yankee
make.
"Let there be no noise," Tyee finally instructed; "but be there many
on every side of the igloo, and close, so that the Sunlanders may not
break through. Then do you, Neegah, with six of the young men behind,
crawl in to where they sleep. Take no guns, which be prone to go
off at unexpected times, but put the strength of your arms into the
knives."
"And be it understood that no harm befall Mesahchie, who is worth a
price," Neegah whispered hoarsely.
Flat upon the ground, the small army concentred on the igloo, and
behind, deliciously expectant, crouched many women and children, come
out to witness the murder. The brief August night was passing, and in
the gray of dawn could be dimly discerned the creeping forms of Neegah
and the young men. Without pause, on hands and knees, they entered the
long passageway and disappeared. Tyee rose up and rubbed his hands.
All was going well. Head after head in the big circle lifted and
waited. Each man pictured the scene according to his nature--the
sleeping men, the plunge of the knives, and the sudden death in the
dark.
A loud hail, in the voice of a Sunlander, rent the silence, and a
shot rang out. Then an uproar broke loose inside the igloo. Without
premeditation, the circle swept forward into the passageway. On the
inside, half a dozen repeating rifles began to chatter, and the
Mandells, jammed in the confined space, were powerless. Those at the
front strove madly to retreat from the fire-spitting guns in their
very faces, and those in the rear pressed as madly forward to the
attack. The bullets from the big 45:90's drove through half a dozen
men at a shot, and the passageway, gorged with surging, helpless men,
became a shambles. The rifles, pumped without aim into the mass,
withered it away like a machine gun, and against that steady stream of
death no man could advance.
"Never was there the like!" panted one of the Hungry Folk. "I did
but look in, and the dead were piled like seals on the ice after a
killing!"
"Did I not say, mayhap, they were fighters?" cackled the weazened old
hunter.
"It was to be expected," Aab-Waak answered stoutly. "We fought in a
trap of our making."
"O ye fools!" Tyee chided. "Ye sons of fools! It was not planned, this
thing ye have done. To Neegah and the six young men only was it given
to go inside. My cunning is superior to the cunning of the Sunlanders,
but ye take away its edge, and rob me of its strength, and make it
worse than no cunning at all!"
No one made reply, and all eyes centred on the igloo, which loomed
vague and monstrous against the clear northeast sky. Through a hole
in the roof the smoke from the rifles curled slowly upward in the
pulseless air, and now and again a wounded man crawled painfully
through the gray.
"Let each ask of his neighbor for Neegah and the six young men," Tyee
commanded.
And after a time the answer came back, "Neegah and the six young men
are not."
"And many more are not!" wailed a woman to the rear.
"The more wealth for those who are left," Tyee grimly consoled. Then,
turning to Aab-Waak, he said: "Go thou, and gather together many
sealskins filled with oil. Let the hunters empty them on the outside
wood of the igloo and of the passage. And let them put fire to it ere
the Sunlanders make holes in the igloo for their guns."
Even as he spoke a hole appeared in the dirt plastered between the
logs, a rifle muzzle protruded, and one of the Hungry Folk clapped
hand to his side and leaped in the air. A second shot, through the
lungs, brought him to the ground. Tyee and the rest scattered to
either side, out of direct range, and Aab-Waak hastened the men
forward with the skins of oil. Avoiding the loopholes, which were
making on every side of the igloo, they emptied the skins on the dry
drift-logs brought down by the Mandell River from the tree-lands to
the south. Ounenk ran forward with a blazing brand, and the flames
leaped upward. Many minutes passed, without sign, and they held their
weapons ready as the fire gained headway.
Tyee rubbed his hands gleefully as the dry structure burned and
crackled. "Now we have them, brothers! In the trap!"
"And no one may gainsay me the gun of Bill-Man," Aab-Waak announced.
"Save Bill-Man," squeaked the old hunter. "For behold, he cometh now!"
Covered with a singed and blackened blanket, the big white man leaped
out of the blazing entrance, and on his heels, likewise shielded, came
Mesahchie, and the five other Sunlanders. The Hungry Folk tried to
check the rush with an ill-directed volley, while the Mandells hurled
in a cloud of spears and arrows. But the Sunlanders cast their flaming
blankets from them as they ran, and it was seen that each bore on his
shoulders a small pack of ammunition. Of all their possessions, they
had chosen to save that. Running swiftly and with purpose, they broke
the circle and headed directly for the great cliff, which towered
blackly in the brightening day a half-mile to the rear of the village.
But Tyee knelt on one knee and lined the sights of his rifle on the
rearmost Sunlander. A great shout went up when he pulled the trigger
and the man fell forward, struggled partly up, and fell again. Without
regard for the rain of arrows, another Sunlander ran back, bent over
him, and lifted him across his shoulders. But the Mandell spearmen
were crowding up into closer range, and a strong cast transfixed the
wounded man. He cried out and became swiftly limp as his comrade
lowered him to the ground. In the meanwhile, Bill-Man and the three
others had made a stand and were driving a leaden hail into the
advancing spearmen. The fifth Sunlander bent over his stricken fellow,
felt the heart, and then coolly cut the straps of the pack and stood
up with the ammunition and extra gun.
"Now is he a fool!" cried Tyee, leaping high, as he ran forward, to
clear the squirming body of one of the Hungry Folk.
His own rifle was clogged so that he could not use it, and he called
out for some one to spear the Sunlander, who had turned and was
running for safety under the protecting fire. The little old hunter
poised his spear on the throwing-stick, swept his arm back as he ran,
and delivered the cast.
"By the body of the Wolf, say I, it was a good throw!" Tyee praised,
as the fleeing man pitched forward, the spear standing upright between
his shoulders and swaying slowly forward and back.
The little weazened old man coughed and sat down. A streak of red
showed on his lips and welled into a thick stream. He coughed again,
and a strange whistling came and went with his breath.
"They, too, are unafraid, being great fighters," he wheezed, pawing
aimlessly with his hands. "And behold! Bill-Man comes now!"
Tyee glanced up. Four Mandells and one of the Hungry Folk had rushed
upon the fallen man and were spearing him from his knees back to the
earth. In the twinkling of an eye, Tyee saw four of them cut down by
the bullets of the Sunlanders. The fifth, as yet unhurt, seized the
two rifles, but as he stood up to make off he was whirled almost
completely around by the impact of a bullet in the arm, steadied by
a second, and overthrown by the shock of a third. A moment later and
Bill-Man was on the spot, cutting the pack-straps and picking up the
guns.
This Tyee saw, and his own people falling as they straggled forward,
and he was aware of a quick doubt, and resolved to lie where he was
and see more. For some unaccountable reason, Mesahchie was running
back to Bill-Man; but before she could reach him, Tyee saw Peelo run
out and throw arms about her. He essayed to sling her across his
shoulder, but she grappled with him, tearing and scratching at his
face. Then she tripped him, and the pair fell heavily. When they
regained their feet, Peelo had shifted his grip so that one arm
was passed under her chin, the wrist pressing into her throat and
strangling her. He buried his face in her breast, taking the blows of
her hands on his thick mat of hair, and began slowly to force her off
the field. Then it was, retreating with the weapons of his fallen
comrades, that Bill-Man came upon them. As Mesahchie saw him, she
twirled the victim around and held him steady. Bill-Man swung the
rifle in his right hand, and hardly easing his stride, delivered the
blow. Tyee saw Peelo drive to the earth as smote by a falling star,
and the Sunlander and Neegah's daughter fleeing side by side.
A bunch of Mandells, led by one of the Hungry Folk, made a futile rush
which melted away into the earth before the scorching fire.
Tyee caught his breath and murmured, "Like the young frost in the
morning sun."
"As I say, they are great fighters," the old hunter whispered weakly,
far gone in hemorrhage. "I know. I have heard. They be sea-robbers and
hunters of seals; and they shoot quick and true, for it is their way
of life and the work of their hands."
"Like the young frost in the morning sun," Tyee repeated, crouching
for shelter behind the dying man and peering at intervals about him.
It was no longer a fight, for no Mandell man dared venture forward,
and as it was, they were too close to the Sunlanders to go back. Three
tried it, scattering and scurrying like rabbits; but one came down
with a broken leg, another was shot through the body, and the third,
twisting and dodging, fell on the edge of the village. So the
tribesmen crouched in the hollow places and burrowed into the dirt in
the open, while the Sunlanders' bullets searched the plain.
"Move not," Tyee pleaded, as Aab-Waak came worming over the ground to
him. "Move not, good Aab-Waak, else you bring death upon us."
"Death sits upon many," Aab-Waak laughed; "wherefore, as you say,
there will be much wealth in division. My father breathes fast and
short behind the big rock yon, and beyond, twisted like in a knot,
lieth my brother. But their share shall be my share, and it is well."
"As you say, good Aab-Waak, and as I have said; but before division
must come that which we may divide, and the Sunlanders be not yet
dead."
A bullet glanced from a rock before them, and singing shrilly, rose
low over their heads on its second flight. Tyee ducked and shivered,
but Aab-Waak grinned and sought vainly to follow it with his eyes.
"So swiftly they go, one may not see them," he observed.
"But many be dead of us," Tyee went on.
"And many be left," was the reply. "And they hug close to the earth,
for they have become wise in the fashion of righting. Further, they
are angered. Moreover, when we have killed the Sunlanders on the ship,
there will remain but four on the land. These may take long to kill,
but in the end it will happen."
"How may we go down to the ship when we cannot go this way or that?"
Tyee questioned.
"It is a bad place where lie Bill-Man and his brothers," Aab-Waak
explained. "We may come upon them from every side, which is not good.
So they aim to get their backs against the cliff and wait until their
brothers of the ship come to give them aid."
"Never shall they come from the ship, their brothers! I have said it."
Tyee was gathering courage again, and when the Sunlanders verified the
prediction by retreating to the cliff, he was light-hearted as ever.
"There be only three of us!" complained one of the Hungry Folk as they
came together for council.
"Therefore, instead of two, shall you have four guns each," was Tyee's
rejoinder.
"We did good fighting."
"Ay; and if it should happen that two of you be left, then will you
have six guns each. Therefore, fight well."
"And if there be none of them left?" Aab-Waak whispered slyly.
"Then will _we_ have the guns, you and I," Tyee whispered back.
However, to propitiate the Hungry Folk, he made one of them leader
of the ship expedition. This party comprised fully two-thirds of the
tribesmen, and departed for the coast, a dozen miles away, laden with
skins and things to trade. The remaining men were disposed in a large
half-circle about the breastwork which Bill-Man and his Sunlanders had
begun to throw up. Tyee was quick to note the virtues of things, and
at once set his men to digging shallow trenches.
"The time will go before they are aware," he explained to Aab-Waak;
"and their minds being busy, they will not think overmuch of the dead
that are, nor gather trouble to themselves. And in the dark of night
they may creep closer, so that when the Sunlanders look forth in the
morning light they will find us very near."
In the midday heat the men ceased from their work and made a meal of
dried fish and seal oil which the women brought up. There was some
clamor for the food of the Sunlanders in the igloo of Neegah, but Tyee
refused to divide it until the return of the ship party. Speculations
upon the outcome became rife, but in the midst of it a dull boom
drifted up over the land from the sea. The keen-eyed ones made out
a dense cloud of smoke, which quickly disappeared, and which they
averred was directly over the ship of the Sunlanders. Tyee was of the
opinion that it was a big gun. Aab-Waak did not know, but thought it
might be a signal of some sort. Anyway, he said, it was time something
happened.
Five or six hours afterward a solitary man was descried coming across
the wide flat from the sea, and the women and children poured out upon
him in a body. It was Ounenk, naked, winded, and wounded. The blood
still trickled down his face from a gash on the forehead. His left
arm, frightfully mangled, hung helpless at his side. But most
significant of all, there was a wild gleam in his eyes which betokened
the women knew not what.
"Where be Peshack?" an old squaw queried sharply.
"And Olitlie?" "And Polak?" "And Mah-Kook?" the voices took up the
cry.
But he said nothing, brushing his way through the clamorous mass and
directing his staggering steps toward Tyee. The old squaw raised the
wail, and one by one the women joined her as they swung in behind. The
men crawled out of their trenches and ran back to gather about Tyee,
and it was noticed that the Sunlanders climbed upon their barricade to
see.
Ounenk halted, swept the blood from his eyes, and looked about. He
strove to speak, but his dry lips were glued together. Likeeta fetched
him water, and he grunted and drank again.
"Was it a fight?" Tyee demanded finally,--"a good fight?"
"Ho! ho! ho!" So suddenly and so fiercely did Ounenk laugh that every
voice hushed. "Never was there such a fight! So I say, I, Ounenk,
fighter beforetime of beasts and men. And ere I forget, let me speak
fat words and wise. By fighting will the Sunlanders teach us Mandell
Folk how to fight. And if we fight long enough, we shall be great
fighters, even as the Sunlanders, or else we shall be--dead. Ho! ho!
ho! It was a fight!"
"Where be thy brothers?" Tyee shook him till he shrieked from the pain
of his hurts.
Ounenk sobered. "My brothers? They are not."
"And Pome-Lee?" cried one of the two Hungry Folk; "Pome-Lee, the son
of my mother?"
"Pome-Lee is not," Ounenk answered in a monotonous voice.
"And the Sunlanders?" from Aab-Waak.
"The Sunlanders are not."
"Then the ship of the Sunlanders, and the wealth and guns and things?"
Tyee demanded.
"Neither the ship of the Sunlanders, nor the wealth and guns and
things," was the unvarying response. "All are not. Nothing is. I only
am."
"And thou art a fool."
"It may be so," Ounenk answered, unruffled.
"I have seen that which would well make me a fool."
Tyee held his tongue, and all waited till it should please Ounenk to
tell the story in his own way.
"We took no guns, O Tyee," he at last began; "no guns, my
brothers--only knives and hunting bows and spears. And in twos and
threes, in our kayaks, we came to the ship. They were glad to see us,
the Sunlanders, and we spread our skins and they brought out
their articles of trade, and everything was well. And Pome-Lee
waited--waited till the sun was well overhead and they sat at meat,
when he gave the cry and we fell upon them. Never was there such a
fight, and never such fighters. Half did we kill in the quickness
of surprise, but the half that was left became as devils, and they
multiplied themselves, and everywhere they fought like devils. Three
put their backs against the mast of the ship, and we ringed them with
our dead before they died. And some got guns and shot with both eyes
wide open, and very quick and sure. And one got a big gun, from which
at one time he shot many small bullets. And so, behold!"
Ounenk pointed to his ear, neatly pierced by a buckshot.
"But I, Ounenk, drove my spear through his back from behind. And in
such fashion, one way and another, did we kill them all--all save the
head man. And him we were about, many of us, and he was alone, when he
made a great cry and broke through us, five or six dragging upon him,
and ran down inside the ship. And then, when the wealth of the
ship was ours, and only the head man down below whom we would kill
presently, why then there was a sound as of all the guns in the
world--a mighty sound! And like a bird I rose up in the air, and the
living Mandell Folk, and the dead Sunlanders, the little kayaks, the
big ship, the guns, the wealth--everything rose up in the air. So I
say, I, Ounenk, who tell the tale, am the only one left."
A great silence fell upon the assemblage. Tyee looked at Aab-Waak with
awe-struck eyes, but forbore to speak. Even the women were too stunned
to wail the dead.
Ounenk looked about him with pride. "I, only, am left," he repeated.
But at that instant a rifle cracked from Bill-Man's barricade, and
there was a sharp spat and thud on the chest of Ounenk. He swayed
backward and came forward again, a look of startled surprise on his
face. He gasped, and his lips writhed in a grim smile. There was a
shrinking together of the shoulders and a bending of the knees. He
shook himself, as might a drowsing man, and straightened up. But the
shrinking and bending began again, and he sank down slowly, quite
slowly, to the ground.
It was a clean mile from the pit of the Sunlanders, and death had
spanned it. A great cry of rage went up, and in it there was much of
blood-vengeance, much of the unreasoned ferocity of the brute. Tyee
and Aab-Waak tried to hold the Mandell Folk back, were thrust aside,
and could only turn and watch the mad charge. But no shots came
from the Sunlanders, and ere half the distance was covered, many,
affrighted by the mysterious silence of the pit, halted and waited.
The wilder spirits bore on, and when they had cut the remaining
distance in half, the pit still showed no sign of life. At two hundred
yards they slowed down and bunched; at one hundred, they stopped, a
score of them, suspicious, and conferred together.
Then a wreath of smoke crowned the barricade, and they scattered like
a handful of pebbles thrown at random. Four went down, and four more,
and they continued swiftly to fall, one and two at a time, till but
one remained, and he in full flight with death singing about his ears.
It was Nok, a young hunter, long-legged and tall, and he ran as never
before. He skimmed across the naked open like a bird, and soared and
sailed and curved from side to side. The rifles in the pit rang out
in solid volley; they flut-flut-flut-flutted in ragged sequence; and
still Nok rose and dipped and rose again unharmed. There was a lull in
the firing, as though the Sunlanders had given over, and Nok curved
less and less in his flight till he darted straight forward at every
leap. And then, as he leaped cleanly and well, one lone rifle barked
from the pit, and he doubled up in mid-air, struck the ground in a
ball, and like a ball bounced from the impact, and came down in a
broken heap.
"Who so swift as the swift-winged lead?" Aab-Waak pondered.
Tyee grunted and turned away. The incident was closed and there was
more pressing matter at hand. One Hungry Man and forty fighters, some
of them hurt, remained; and there were four Sunlanders yet to reckon
with.
"We will keep them in their hole by the cliff," he said, "and when
famine has gripped them hard we will slay them like children."
"But of what matter to fight?" queried Oloof, one of the younger men.
"The wealth of the Sunlanders is not; only remains that in the igloo
of Neegah, a paltry quantity--"
He broke off hastily as the air by his ear split sharply to the
passage of a bullet.
Tyee laughed scornfully. "Let that be thy answer. What else may we do
with this mad breed of Sunlanders which will not die?"
"What a thing is foolishness!" Oloof protested, his ears furtively
alert for the coming of other bullets. "It is not right that they
should fight so, these Sunlanders. Why will they not die easily? They
are fools not to know that they are dead men, and they give us much
trouble."
"We fought before for great wealth; we fight now that we may live,"
Aab-Waak summed up succinctly.
That night there was a clash in the trenches, and shots exchanged. And
in the morning the igloo of Neegah was found empty of the Sunlanders'
possessions. These they themselves had taken, for the signs of their
trail were visible to the sun. Oloof climbed to the brow of the cliff
to hurl great stones down into the pit, but the cliff overhung, and he
hurled down abuse and insult instead, and promised bitter torture to
them in the end. Bill-Man mocked him back in the tongue of the Bear
Folk, and Tyee, lifting his head from a trench to see, had his
shoulder scratched deeply by a bullet.
And in the dreary days that followed, and in the wild nights when they
pushed the trenches closer, there was much discussion as to the wisdom
of letting the Sunlanders go. But of this they were afraid, and the
women raised a cry always at the thought This much they had seen of
the Sunlanders; they cared to see no more. All the time the whistle
and blub-blub of bullets filled the air, and all the time the
death-list grew. In the golden sunrise came the faint, far crack of a
rifle, and a stricken woman would throw up her hands on the distant
edge of the village; in the noonday heat, men in the trenches heard
the shrill sing-song and knew their deaths; or in the gray afterglow
of evening, the dirt kicked up in puffs by the winking fires. And
through the nights the long "Wah-hoo-ha-a wah-hoo-ha-a!" of mourning
women held dolorous sway.
As Tyee had promised, in the end famine gripped the Sunlanders. And
once, when an early fall gale blew, one of them crawled through the
darkness past the trenches and stole many dried fish.
But he could not get back with them, and the sun found him vainly
hiding in the village. So he fought the great fight by himself, and
in a narrow ring of Mandell Folk shot four with his revolver, and ere
they could lay hands on him for the torture, turned it on himself and
died.
This threw a gloom upon the people. Oloof put the question, "If one
man die so hard, how hard will die the three who yet are left?"
Then Mesahchie stood up on the barricade and called in by name three
dogs which had wandered close,--meat and life,--which set back the day
of reckoning and put despair in the hearts of the Mandell Folk. And on
the head of Mesahchie were showered the curses of a generation.
The days dragged by. The sun hurried south, the nights grew long and
longer, and there was a touch of frost in the air. And still the
Sunlanders held the pit. Hearts were breaking under the unending
strain, and Tyee thought hard and deep. Then he sent forth word that
all the skins and hides of all the tribe be collected. These he had
made into huge cylindrical bales, and behind each bale he placed a
man.
When the word was given the brief day was almost spent, and it was
slow work and tedious, rolling the big bales forward foot by foot The
bullets of the Sunlanders blub-blubbed and thudded against them, but
could not go through, and the men howled their delight But the dark
was at hand, and Tyee, secure of success, called the bales back to the
trenches.
In the morning, in the face of an unearthly silence from the pit, the
real advance began. At first with large intervals between, the bales
slowly converged as the circle drew in. At a hundred yards they were
quite close together, so that Tyee's order to halt was passed along
in whispers. The pit showed no sign of life. They watched long and
sharply, but nothing stirred. The advance was taken up and the
manoeuvre repeated at fifty yards. Still no sign nor sound. Tyee shook
his head, and even Aab-Waak was dubious. But the order was given to go
on, and go on they did, till bale touched bale and a solid rampart of
skin and hide bowed out from the cliff about the pit and back to the
cliff again.
Tyee looked back and saw the women and children clustering blackly in
the deserted trenches. He looked ahead at the silent pit. The men were
wriggling nervously, and he ordered every second bale forward. This
double line advanced till bale touched bale as before. Then Aab-Waak,
of his own will, pushed one bale forward alone. When it touched the
barricade, he waited a long while. After that he tossed unresponsive
rocks over into the pit, and finally, with great care, stood up and
peered in. A carpet of empty cartridges, a few white-picked dog bones,
and a soggy place where water dripped from a crevice, met his eyes.
That was all. The Sunlanders were gone.
There were murmurings of witchcraft, vague complaints, dark looks
which foreshadowed to Tyee dread things which yet might come to pass,
and he breathed easier when Aab-Waak took up the trail along the base
of the cliff.
"The cave!" Tyee cried. "They foresaw my wisdom of the skin-bales and
fled away into the cave!"
The cliff was honey-combed with a labyrinth of subterranean passages
which found vent in an opening midway between the pit and where the
trench tapped the wall. Thither, and with many exclamations, the
tribesmen followed Aab-Waak, and, arrived, they saw plainly where the
Sunlanders had climbed to the mouth, twenty and odd feet above.
"Now the thing is done," Tyee said, rubbing his hands. "Let word go
forth that rejoicing be made, for they are in the trap now, these
Sunlanders, in the trap. The young men shall climb up, and the mouth
of the cave be filled with stones, so that Bill-Man and his brothers
and Mesahchie shall by famine be pinched to shadows and die cursing in
the silence and dark."
Cries of delight and relief greeted this, and Howgah, the last of the
Hungry Folk, swarmed up the steep slant and drew himself, crouching,
upon the lip of the opening. But as he crouched, a muffled report
rushed forth, and as he clung desperately to the slippery edge, a
second. His grip loosed with reluctant weakness, and he pitched down
at the feet of Tyee, quivered for a moment like some monstrous jelly,
and was still.
"How should I know they were great fighters and unafraid?" Tyee
demanded, spurred to defence by recollection of the dark looks and
vague complaints.
"We were many and happy," one of the men stated baldly. Another
fingered his spear with a prurient hand.
But Oloof cried them cease. "Give ear, my brothers! There be another
way! As a boy I chanced upon it playing along the steep. It is hidden
by the rocks, and there is no reason that a man should go there;
wherefore it is secret, and no man knows. It is very small, and you
crawl on your belly a long way, and then you are in the cave. To-night
we will so crawl, without noise, on our bellies, and come upon the
Sunlanders from behind. And to-morrow we will be at peace, and never
again will we quarrel with the Sunlanders in the years to come."
"Never again!" chorussed the weary men. "Never again!" And Tyee joined
with them.
That night, with the memory of their dead in their hearts, and in
their hands stones and spears and knives, the horde of women and
children collected about the known mouth of the cave. Down the twenty
and odd precarious feet to the ground no Sunlander could hope to pass
and live. In the village remained only the wounded men, while every
able man--and there were thirty of them--followed Oloof to the secret
opening. A hundred feet of broken ledges and insecurely heaped rocks
were between it and the earth, and because of the rocks, which might
be displaced by the touch of hand or foot, but one man climbed at a
time. Oloof went up first, called softly for the next to come on, and
disappeared inside. A man followed, a second, and a third, and so on,
till only Tyee remained. He received the call of the last man, but a
quick doubt assailed him and he stayed to ponder. Half an hour later
he swung up to the opening and peered in. He could feel the narrowness
of the passage, and the darkness before him took on solidity. The fear
of the walled-in earth chilled him and he could not venture. All the
men who had died, from Neegah the first of the Mandells, to Howgah
the last of the Hungry Folk, came and sat with him, but he chose the
terror of their company rather than face the horror which he felt to
lurk in the thick blackness. He had been sitting long when something
soft and cold fluttered lightly on his cheek, and he knew the first
winter's snow was falling. The dim dawn came, and after that the
bright day, when he heard a low guttural sobbing, which came and went
at intervals along the passage and which drew closer each time and
more distinct He slipped over the edge, dropped his feet to the first
ledge, and waited.
That which sobbed made slow progress, but at last, after many halts,
it reached him, and he was sure no Sunlander made the noise. So he
reached a hand inside, and where there should have been a head felt
the shoulders of a man uplifted on bent arms. The head he found later,
not erect, but hanging straight down so that the crown rested on the
floor of the passage.
"Is it you, Tyee?" the head said. "For it is I, Aab-Waak, who am
helpless and broken as a rough-flung spear. My head is in the dirt,
and I may not climb down unaided."
Tyee clambered in, dragged him up with his back against the wall, but
the head hung down on the chest and sobbed and wailed.
"Ai-oo-o, ai-oo-o!" it went "Oloof forgot, for Mesahchie likewise knew
the secret and showed the Sunlanders, else they would not have waited
at the end of the narrow way. Wherefore, I am a broken man, and
helpless--ai-oo-o, ai-oo-o!"
"And did they die, the cursed Sunlanders, at the end of the narrow
way?" Tyee demanded.
"How should I know they waited?" Aab-Waak gurgled. "For my brothers
had gone before, many of them, and there was no sound of struggle.
How should I know why there should be no sound of struggle? And ere
I knew, two hands were about my neck so that I could not cry out and
warn my brothers yet to come. And then there were two hands more on my
head, and two more on my feet. In this fashion the three Sunlanders
had me. And while the hands held my head in the one place, the hands
on my feet swung my body around, and as we wring the neck of a duck in
the marsh, so my week was wrung.
"But it was not given that I should die," he went on, a remnant of
pride yet glimmering. "I, only, am left. Oloof and the rest lie on
their backs in a row, and their faces turn this way and that, and the
faces of some be underneath where the backs of their heads should be.
It is not good to look upon; for when life returned to me I saw them
all by the light of a torch which the Sunlanders left, and I had been
laid with them in the row."
"So? So?" Tyee mused, too stunned for speech.
He started suddenly, and shivered, for the voice of Bill-Man shot out
at him from the passage.
"It is well," it said. "I look for the man who crawls with the broken
neck, and lo, do I find Tyee. Throw down thy gun, Tyee, so that I may
hear it strike among the rocks."
Tyee obeyed passively, and Bill-Man crawled forward into the light.
Tyee looked at him curiously. He was gaunt and worn and dirty, and his
eyes burned like twin coals in their cavernous sockets.
"I am hungry, Tyee," he said. "Very hungry."
"And I am dirt at thy feet," Tyee responded.
"Thy word is my law. Further, I commanded my people not to withstand
thee. I counselled--"
But Bill-Man had turned and was calling back into the passage. "Hey!
Charley! Jim! Fetch the woman along and come on!"
"We go now to eat," he said, when his comrades and Mesahchie had
joined him.
Tyee rubbed his hands deprecatingly. "We have little, but it is
thine."
"After that we go south on the snow," Bill-Man continued.
"May you go without hardship and the trail be easy."
"It is a long way. We will need dogs and food--much!"
"Thine the pick of our dogs and the food they may carry."
Bill-Man slipped over the edge of the opening and prepared to descend.
"But we come again, Tyee. We come again, and our days shall be long in
the land."
And so they departed into the trackless south, Bill-Man, his brothers,
and Mesahchie. And when the next year came, the _Search Number Two_
rode at anchor in Mandell Bay. The few Mandell men, who survived
because their wounds had prevented their crawling into the cave, went
to work at the best of the Sunlanders and dug in the ground. They hunt
and fish no more, but receive a daily wage, with which they buy flour,
sugar, calico, and such things which the _Search Number Two_ brings on
her yearly trip from the Sunlands.
And this mine is worked in secret, as many Northland mines have been
worked; and no white man outside the Company, which is Bill-Man, Jim,
and Charley, knows the whereabouts of Mandell on the rim of the polar
sea. Aab-Waak still carries his head on one shoulder, is become an
oracle, and preaches peace to the younger generation, for which he
receives a pension from the Company. Tyee is foreman of the mine. But
he has achieved a new theory concerning the Sunlanders.
"They that live under the path of the sun are not soft," he says,
smoking his pipe and watching the day-shift take itself off and the
night-shift go on. "For the sun enters into their blood and burns them
with a great fire till they are filled with lusts and passions. They
burn always, so that they may not know when they are beaten. Further,
there is an unrest in them, which is a devil, and they are flung out
over the earth to toil and suffer and fight without end. I know. I am
Tyee."
