One pleasant morning, towards the end of summer, Benjamin Vane went out with his gun in the water-tramp on the large lake of Paradise Isle.

 

Leo and he had reached the isle in one of the india-rubber boats. They had taken Anders with them to carry their game, and little Oblooria to prepare their dinner while they were away shooting; for they disliked the delay of personal attention to cooking when they were ravenous! After landing Benjy, and seeing him busy getting himself into the aquatic dress, Leo said he would pull off to a group of walruses, which were sporting about off shore, and shoot one. Provisions of fowl and fish were plentiful enough just then at the Eskimo village, but he knew that walrus beef was greatly prized by the natives, and none of the huge creatures had been killed for some weeks past.

 

About this time the threatened war with the northern Eskimos had unfortunately commenced.

 

The insatiable Grabantak had made a descent on one of Amalatok’s smaller islands, killed the warriors, and carried off the women and children, with everything else he could lay hands on. Of course Amalatok made reprisals; attacked a small island belonging to Grabantak, and did as much general mischief as he could. The paltry islet about which the war began was not worthy either of attack or defence!

 

Then Amalatok, burning with the righteous indignation of the man who did not begin the quarrel, got up a grand muster of his forces, and went with a great fleet of kayaks to attack Grabantak in his strongholds.

 

But Grabantak’s strongholds were remarkably strong. A good deal of killing was done, and some destruction of property accomplished, but that did not effect the conquest of the great northern Savage. Neither did it prove either party to be right or wrong! Grabantak retired to impregnable fastnesses, and Amalatok returned to Poloeland “covered with glory,”—some of his followers also covered with wounds, a few of which had fallen to his own share. The success, however, was not decided. On the whole, the result was rather disappointing, but Amalatok was brave and high-spirited, as some people would say. He was not going to give in; not he! He would fight as long as a man was left to back him, and bring Grabantak to his knees—or die! Either event would, of course, have been of immense advantage to both nations. He ground his teeth and glared when he announced this determination, and also shook his fist, but a sharp twinge of pain in one of his unhealed wounds caused him to cease frowning abruptly.

 

There was a sound, too, in the air, which caused him to sit down and reflect. It was a mixed and half-stifled sound, as if of women groaning and little children wailing. Some of his braves, of course, had fallen in the recent conflicts—fallen honourably with their faces to the foe. Their young widows and their little ones mourned them, and refused to be comforted, because they were not. It was highly unpatriotic, no doubt, but natural.

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