It was autumn before Nazinred and Mozwa drew near to their village. They took things leisurely1 on the return voyage, for, as Indians have little else to do besides hunt, trap, fish, eat, and sleep, they have no particular inducement to hurry their movements.
It is true that, being affectionate men, they were naturally anxious to rejoin their families, but being also steady-going, with considerable powers of self-denial, they were good men-of-business, from a savage2 point of view, and gave leisurely attention to the duties in hand.
On arriving at the outskirts3 of their village, they were surprised to see that one or two children who were playing among the bushes, and who could not have failed to see them, slunk away as if to avoid a meeting. Whatever anxiety the men might have felt, their bronzed and stern countenances4 betrayed no sign whatever. Landing near the old chief’s hut, they drew up their canoe and Nazinred and Mozwa went to announce their arrival. It was contrary to Indian etiquette5 to betray excitement, or to ask hasty questions.
They saluted6 the old man, handed him a plug of tobacco, and sat down to smoke, and it was not till some time had elapsed that Nazinred calmly asked if Isquay was well.
“Isquay is well,” replied the old chief, and a barely perceptible sigh of relief escaped Nazinred.
Then Mozwa asked about his wife and received a satisfactory answer. Still, it was obvious to both men, from the old chief’s manner, that there was something wrong.
“Adolay”, said the old man, and stopped.
“Dead?” asked Nazinred, with a look of alarm that he did not attempt to conceal7.
“No, not dead—but gone away,” he replied, and then related in detail the circumstances of the girl’s disappearance8. It must have been a terrible blow to the poor father, all the more that he was ignorant at the time of the girl’s motive9 for forsaking10 her home. But no vestige11 of feeling did he betray, save a slight contraction12 of his brows and a nervous play of his fingers about the handle of his scalping-knife. When the recital13 was ended he made no reply, but, rising slowly, left the hut and went to his own home.
We will not follow him thither14: there are some home-comings which are better left undescribed.
But next day Nazinred relaunched his canoe, and, with a small quantity of provisions and a large supply of ammunition15, set off alone for the shores of the Arctic Sea. What he told his wife is not known, but he gave no explanation whatever to any of his comrades as to his intentions.
Arrived at the coast, however, his further advance was rendered impossible by a sharp frost which created the first thin crust that was ultimately destined16 to turn the sea into thick ice. As even the thinnest coat of ice would be certain destruction to birch-bark, the canoe, he was well aware, was now useless. He therefore returned home, and quietly engaged in the ordinary hunting and fishing occupation of his tribe, but from that date he sank into a state of silent despair, from which his most intimate companions failed to rouse him. Not that he gave expression to his feelings by word or look. It was long-continued silence and want of interest in anything that told of the sorrow that crushed him. It is probable that the fact of Adolay being capable of forsaking her parents in such a way tended to increase the grief occasioned by her loss. But he spoke17 of his feelings to no one—not even to his wife.
Mozwa, who was very fond of his friend, and pitied him sincerely, made no attempt to comfort him, for he knew the nature of the man too well to think that by any words he could assuage18 his sorrow.
All the fine things that Nazinred had brought home, and with which he had hoped to rejoice the hearts of his wife and child, were utterly19 neglected. He let Isquay do what she pleased with them. The only thing that seemed to comfort him was the tobacco, for that, he found, when smoked to excess, blunted the edge of his feelings.
He therefore gave himself up to the unlimited20 use of this sedative21, and would no doubt have become, like many others, a willing slave to the pipe, but for the fortunate circumstance that the supply of tobacco was limited. As the autumn advanced, the diminishing quantity warned him to restrain himself. He eked22 it out by mixing with it a kind of leaf much used by Indians for this purpose, but which, by itself, was not considered worth smoking. Even with this aid, however, he was compelled to curtail23 the indulgence; then the weed failed altogether, and he was finally induced to engage in philosophical24 meditations25 as to the folly26 of creating a needless desire which could not be gratified. The unsatisfied craving27, coupled with the injury to his health, added considerably28 to the grief with which he was already oppressed. He had a powerful constitution, however. The enforced abstinence soon began to tell in his favour, and he actually had the courage, not to say wisdom, to refuse occasional pipes offered him by Mozwa when he chanced to visit his friend.
As that friend had not the loss of an only child to mourn, but, on the contrary, was called upon to rejoice in the addition of a new baby, the fine things that he had brought home were the cause of great satisfaction to his family. But alas29! Mozwa, although almost perfect, for a savage, had one fault—one besetting30 sin and moral disease—he gambled!
We almost hear the exclamation31 of surprise, if not doubt, with which our reader receives this information. Yes; North American Indians are gamblers; many of them are confirmed gamblers. They do not indeed affect anything so intellectual as chess or so skilful32 as billiards33, but they have a game to the full as intellectual and scientific as that rouge34 et noir of Monaco with which highly cultivated people contrive35 to rob each other by mutual36 consent, and without being ashamed! Their game is not unknown to the juveniles37 of our own land. It goes by the name “odd-or-even.”
The manner of conducting the game varies a little here and there in its details, but its principle is the same everywhere: “I want your possessions, and get them I will, by hook or crook38! I couldn’t think of robbing you—O no; there might be jail or penal39 servitude on the back of that; and I won’t accept your gifts—good gracious, no! that would involve the loss of self-respect. No, no. Let us humbug40 each other. I will rob you if I can, and you will rob me if you can, and we’ll mutually agree to throw dust in each other’s eyes and call it ‘play’! Nothing, surely, could be fairer than that!”
Of course poor Mozwa did not reason thus. He was not cultured enough for that. In fact, he did not reason at all about the matter, as far as we know, but there can be no question that the poor fellow was smitten41 with the disease of covetousness42, and instead of seeking for a cure, like a manly43 savage, he adopted the too civilised plan of encouraging and excusing it.
Aware of his propensities44, Mrs Mozwa was much too knowing to allow the goods and trinkets destined for herself and family to remain in his power. She at once appropriated them, and secreted45 such of them as she did not require for present use. But there were articles which she could not well treat in that way with any shadow of excuse: for instance, the gun, powder and shot, bows and arrows, tobacco and pipes, hatchets46 and scalping-knives, blankets and masculine garments, which were in daily use. These were frequently lost and re-won before winter had fairly begun, but Mozwa was too fond of the excitement of gambling47 to make desperate ventures all at once. He liked to spin it out.
One night he had what is styled a “run of bad luck.” Being in something of a reckless mood, he went to visit a young friend who was as fond of gambling as himself, and took most of his worldly possessions with him. The friend, with a number of companions, was seated beside the wigwam fire, and quite ready to begin.
Taking a button, or some such object, in his hand, and putting both hands behind his back, the friend began to bob his head and shoulders up and down in an idiotic48 fashion, at the same time chanting in a sing-song monotone, “Ho yo, yo ho, hi ya yoho!” for a considerable length of time, while Mozwa staked his blanket, a fine thick green one, purchased at Great Bear Lake. We forget the friend’s stake, but it was probably supposed to be an equivalent.
Suddenly the yo-ho-ing ceased, both hands, tightly closed, were brought to the front, and the whole party gazed at Mozwa with intense expectation. He was not long in making up his mind. He pointed49 to the left hand. It was opened, and found to be empty! The blanket was lost. Back went the hands again, and the “yo-ho-ing” was continued. The new gun was the next stake. It also was lost; and thus the game was carried on far into the night, with smaller stakes, until Mozwa had lost almost all that he had brought with him—gun, blanket, pipes, tobacco, flint and steel, fire-bag, and even his coat, so that he walked home a half-naked and nearly ruined man!
But ruin in the wilderness50 of North America is not usually so thorough as it often is in civilised lands, owing partly to the happy circumstance that strong drink does not come into play and complete the moral destruction, as well as the physical, which gambling had begun. The character therefore, although deteriorated51, is not socially lost. The nature of property, also, and the means of acquiring it, render recovery more easy.
When Mozwa returned home minus his new blanket and the beautiful deerskin coat which his wife had made and richly ornamented52 for him with her own brown hands while he was away, he found his old coat and his old blanket ready for him. The old gun, too, was available still, so that he was not altogether disabled from attending to the duties of the chase, and in a short time afterwards, “luck” being in his favour, he had won back some of his lost possessions. But he was too often in that fluctuating state of alternating excitement and depression which is the invariable accompaniment, in a greater or less degree, of the gambler’s sin, whether carried on in the depths of the Arctic wilderness, the well-named “hells” of London, or the gilded53 salons54 of Monaco.
“You are a fool,” said Nazinred one day to his friend—for even among savages55 there are plain-spoken familiar friends gifted with common sense enough to recognise folly, and spiritual honesty to point it out and warn against it.
“Why does my brother say so?” asked Mozwa, who was not in the least offended by the observation.
“Because you gain nothing by all your gaining except trouble and excitement, and sometimes you gain loss. Here you are, now, obliged to take to your old gun, whose flint will hardly strike fire more than four times out of ten; you are obliged to wrap yourself in the old blanket full of holes; and you come to me to borrow powder and ball.”
“That is true,” replied Mozwa, with a look of self-condemnation. “But,” he added, with a sort of brightly apologetic glance, “sometimes I win, and then I am well off, and it is Magadar who is the fool.”
“Does it make you less of a fool because Magadar is one also? Are you comforted to-day, in your poverty, by the thought that you were well off yesterday?”
Mozwa’s bright glance faded slowly. He was no match for his friend in argument, and, possessing an honest spirit, the look of self-condemnation began to creep again over his visage, but, being of a sanguine56 temperament57 and hopeful nature, the bright glance returned suddenly.
“Wisdom falls from the lips of my brother,” he said. “I was well off yesterday and I am badly off to-day, but I may be well off again to-morrow—if I have good luck.”
“Yes, and if Magadar has bad luck?” returned his friend. “You cannot both have good luck. Whatever one gains the other must lose—and so it goes on. Should wise men act thus?”
Mozwa was silent. His friend had never before spoken to him in this way. Indeed, no member of the tribe had ever before given utterance58 to such curious opinions. He knew not what to reply, and Nazinred relapsed into the moody59 silence which had characterised him more or less since he became aware of his daughter’s departure.
The short autumn of those Hyperborean regions having passed away, the land was speedily locked in a garment of ice and snow, and the long stern winter began.
It was not long before all the lakes and rivers set fast. At first only the lakes solidified60, then the more sluggish61 streams, while the rapids showed out inky black by contrast. Gradually the liquid margins62 of these were encroached on by the irresistible63 frost, until they were fairly bridged over, and their existence was only recalled to memory by hollow rumblings below the ice. At last the intensity64 of the cold overcame the salt sea itself; the floes, hummocks65, and bergs became united into one universal mass, and every sign of liquid disappeared from the polar regions.
It was when this condition of things had arrived that the heart-crushed Nazinred proceeded to carry out a plan over which he had been brooding ever since his return from Great Bear Lake. His inquiries66 had led him to believe that the Eskimo who had carried off his child belonged to the tribe which had recently been pursued by his compatriots, and that they probably dwelt among the islands, some of which were seen, and others known to exist, off the Arctic coast opposite the mouth of the Greygoose River. Moreover, a faint hope, that he would have found it difficult to define, was aroused by the fact that the kidnapper67 of his child had formerly68 been the rescuer of his wife.
As we have seen, his first attempt to go off in his canoe in search of Adolay was frustrated69 by young ice forming on the sea, and for a considerable time afterwards the Arctic Sea was impassable to any kind of craft. Now that the sea had set fast, however, his difficulty was removed, and he resolved to undertake the journey on foot.
Well he knew that no man of his tribe, not even Mozwa, would agree to accompany him on such a wild-goose chase. He therefore not only refrained from making to any of them the proposal, but avoided any allusion70 to his intentions. Knowing also that Isquay was gifted with such an intense desire for sympathy that she could not resist communicating whatever she knew to a few of her dearest friends—in the strictest confidence—he did not mention the matter to her until all his preparations were completed. Then he told her.
Like a good submissive squaw, she made no objection, though the expression of her face showed that she felt much anxiety.
“Who goes with you?” she asked.
“No one.”
“Is it wise to go alone?” she ventured to suggest.
“It may not be wise, but no one would go with me, I know, and I am determined71 to find Adolay!”
“How will you travel?”
“With a sledge72 and four dogs. That will enable me to carry food enough for a long journey. I will take my gun, of course.”
“But what will you do for fire?” objected Isquay; “there are no woods on the ice.”
“I will do without it.”
The poor woman was so amazed at this reply that she gave up further questioning.
“You have plenty strong moccasins ready, have you not?” asked Nazinred, “and pemmican, and dried meat?”
“Yes, plenty. And your snow-shoes are mended, and very strong.”
“That is well. I will take them, but I do not expect to use them much, for the snow on the Great Salt Lake is not soft like the snow in the woods.”
It was afternoon when this conversation was held, and very dark, for the sun had by that time ceased to rise much above the horizon, even at noon. Late in the night, however, there was brilliant light both from the stars and the aurora73. Taking advantage of this, Nazinred left his lodge74 and hastened to the outskirts of the village, where a little boy awaited him with the sledge and team of dogs all ready for a start.
Without saying a word the Indian put on his snow-shoes and took hold of the tail-line of the sledge, which was heavily laden75, and well packed. With a slight crack of the whip he set the team in motion.
“Tell the old chief,” he said to the boy at parting, “that I go to seek for my daughter among the people of the Frozen Lake. When I find her I will return.”
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1
leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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outskirts
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| n.郊外，郊区 | |
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countenances
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| n.面容( countenance的名词复数 )；表情；镇静；道义支持 | |
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etiquette
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| n.礼仪，礼节；规矩 | |
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saluted
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| v.欢迎，致敬( salute的过去式和过去分词 )；赞扬，赞颂 | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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disappearance
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| n.消失，消散，失踪 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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forsaking
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| 放弃( forsake的现在分词 )； 弃绝； 抛弃； 摒弃 | |
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vestige
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| n.痕迹，遗迹，残余 | |
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contraction
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| n.缩略词，缩写式，害病 | |
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recital
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| n.朗诵，独奏会，独唱会 | |
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thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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ammunition
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| n.军火，弹药 | |
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destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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assuage
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| v.缓和，减轻，镇定 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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unlimited
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| adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的 | |
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sedative
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| adj.使安静的，使镇静的；n. 镇静剂，能使安静的东西 | |
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eked
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| v.（靠节省用量）使…的供应持久( eke的过去式和过去分词 )；节约使用；竭力维持生计；勉强度日 | |
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curtail
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| vt.截短，缩短；削减 | |
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philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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meditations
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| 默想( meditation的名词复数 )； 默念； 沉思； 冥想 | |
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folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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craving
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| n.渴望,热望 | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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besetting
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| adj.不断攻击的v.困扰( beset的现在分词 )；不断围攻；镶；嵌 | |
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exclamation
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| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
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skilful
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| (=skillful)adj.灵巧的，熟练的 | |
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billiards
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| n.台球 | |
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rouge
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| n.胭脂，口红唇膏；v.(在…上)擦口红 | |
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contrive
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| vt.谋划，策划；设法做到；设计，想出 | |
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mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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juveniles
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| n.青少年( juvenile的名词复数 )；扮演少年角色的演员；未成年人 | |
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crook
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| v.使弯曲；n.小偷，骗子，贼；弯曲(处) | |
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penal
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| adj.刑罚的；刑法上的 | |
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humbug
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| n.花招，谎话，欺骗 | |
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smitten
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| 猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去分词 ) | |
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covetousness
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manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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propensities
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| n.倾向，习性( propensity的名词复数 ) | |
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secreted
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| v.（尤指动物或植物器官）分泌( secrete的过去式和过去分词 )；隐匿，隐藏 | |
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hatchets
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| n.短柄小斧( hatchet的名词复数 )；恶毒攻击；诽谤；休战 | |
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gambling
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| n.赌博；投机 | |
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idiotic
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| adj.白痴的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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51
deteriorated
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| 恶化，变坏( deteriorate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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ornamented
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| adj.花式字体的v.装饰，点缀，美化( ornament的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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gilded
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| a.镀金的，富有的 | |
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54
salons
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| n.（营业性质的）店( salon的名词复数 )；厅；沙龙（旧时在上流社会女主人家的例行聚会或聚会场所）；（大宅中的）客厅 | |
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55
savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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sanguine
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| adj.充满希望的，乐观的，血红色的 | |
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57
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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moody
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| adj.心情不稳的，易怒的，喜怒无常的 | |
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solidified
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| （使）成为固体，（使）变硬，（使）变得坚固( solidify的过去式和过去分词 )； 使团结一致； 充实，巩固； 具体化 | |
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sluggish
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| adj.懒惰的，迟钝的，无精打采的 | |
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62
margins
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| 边( margin的名词复数 )； 利润； 页边空白； 差数 | |
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irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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64
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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hummocks
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| n.小丘，岗( hummock的名词复数 ) | |
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inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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67
kidnapper
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| n.绑架者，拐骗者 | |
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68
formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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69
frustrated
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| adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧 | |
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70
allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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71
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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72
sledge
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| n.雪橇，大锤；v.用雪橇搬运，坐雪橇往 | |
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73
aurora
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| n.极光 | |
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74
lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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75
laden
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| adj.装满了的；充满了的；负了重担的；苦恼的 | |
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