The Magnetic North Part 4

"What for?"

"Big feast."

"Oh, the Russian mission there gives a feast?"

"No. Big Innuit feast."

"When?"

"Pretty quick. Every year big feast down to Ikogimeut when Yukon ice get hard, so man go safe with dog-team."

"Do many people go?"

"All Innuit go, plenty Ingalik go."

"How far do they come?"

"All over; come from Koserefsky, come from Anvik--sometime Nulato."

"Why, Nulato's an awful distance from Ikogimeut."

"Three hundred and twenty miles," said the pilot, proud of his general information, and quite ready, since he had got a pipe between his teeth, to be friendly and communicative.

"What do you do at Ikogimeut when you have these--" "Big fire--big feed--tell heap stories--big dance. Oh, heap big time!"

"Once every year, eh, down at Ikogimeut?"

"Three times ev' year. Ev' village, and"--he lowered his voice, not with any hit of reverence or awe, but with an air of making a sly and cheerful confidence--"and when man die."

"You make a feast and have a dance when a friend dies?"

"If no priests. Priests no like. Priests say, 'Man no dead; man gone up.'" Nicholas pondered the strange saying, and slowly shook his head.

"In that the priests are right," said Mac grudgingly.

It was anything but politic, but for the life of him the Boy couldn't help chipping in:

"You think when man dead he stay dead, eh, and you might as well make a feast?"

Nicholas gave his quick nod. "We got heap muskeetah, we cold, we hungry. We here heap long time. Dead man, he done. Why no big feast? Oh yes, heap big feast."

The Boy was enraptured. He would gladly have encouraged these pagan deliverances on the part of the converted Prince, but the Colonel was scandalised, and Mac, although in his heart of hearts not ill-satisfied at the evidence of the skin-deep Christianity of a man delivered over to the corrupt teaching of the Jesuits, found in this last fact all the stronger reason for the instant organisation of a good Protestant prayer-meeting. Nicholas of Pymeut must not be allowed to think it was only Jesuits who remembered the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

And the three "pore benighted heathen" along with him, if they didn't understand English words, they should have an object-lesson, and Mac would himself pray the prayers they couldn't utter for themselves. He jumped up, motioned the Boy to put on more wood, cleared away the granite-ware dishes, filled the bean-pot and set it back to simmer, while the Colonel got out Mac's Bible and his own Prayer-Book.

The Boy did his stoking gloomily, reading aright these portents. Almost eclipsed was joy in this "find" of his (for he regarded the precious Nicholas as his own special property). It was all going to end in his--the Boy's--being hooked in for service. As long as the Esquimaux were there _he_ couldn't, of course, tear himself away. And here was the chance they'd all been waiting for. Here was a native chock-full of knowledge of the natural law and the immemorial gospel of the North, who would be gone soon--oh, very soon, if Mac and the Colonel went on like this--and they were going to choke off Nicholas's communicativeness with--a service!

"It's Sunday, you know," says the Colonel to the Prince, laying open his book, "and we were just going to have church. You are accustomed to going to church at Holy Cross, aren't you?"

"When me kid me go church."

"You haven't gone since you grew up? They still have church there, don't they?"

"Oh, Father Brachet, him have church."

"Why don't you go?"

Nicholas was vaguely conscious of threatened disapproval.

"Me ... me must take up fish-traps."

"Can't you do that another day?"

It seemed not to have occurred to Nicholas before. He sat and considered the matter.

"Isn't Father Brachet," began the Colonel gravely--"he doesn't like it, does he, when you don't come to church?"

"He take care him church; him know me take care me fish-trap."

But Nicholas saw plainly out of his one eye that he was not growing in popularity. Suddenly that solitary organ gleamed with self-justification.

"Me bring fish to Father Brachet and to Mother Aloysius and the Sisters."

Mac and the Colonel exchanged dark glances.

"Do Mother Aloysius and the Sisters live where Father Brachet does?"

"Father Brachet, and Father Wills, and Brother Paul, and Brother Etienne, all here." The native put two fingers on the floor. "Big white cross in middle"--he laid down his pipe to personate the cross--"here"--indicating the other side--"here Mother Aloysius and the Sisters."

"I thought," says Mac, "we'd be hearing of a convent convenient."

"Me help Father Brachet," observed Nicholas proudly. "Me show him boys how make traps, show him girls how make mucklucks." "_What_!" gasps the horrified Mac, "Father Brachet has got a family?"

"Famly?" inquired Nicholas. "Kaiomi"; and he shook his head uncertainly.

"You say Father Brachet has got boys, and"--as though this were a yet deeper brand of iniquity--"_girls_?"

Nicholas, though greatly mystified, nodded firmly.

"I suppose he thinks away off up here n.o.body will ever know. Oh, these Jesuits!"

"How many children has this shameless priest?"

"Father Brachet, him got seventeen boys, and--me no savvy how much girl--twelve girl ... twenty girl ..."

The Boy, who had been splitting with inward laughter, exploded at this juncture.

"He keeps a native school, Mac."