Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/261

Rh man scattered over the ice till some thirty figures swiftly gathered, men armed with spear and bow and long knife, and standing, watching, silent and wary, the advance of the strangers.

"In this bay are just so many seals—enough, the Eskimos hope, to give them food to scrape through the winter," Eric said quietly as his party halted. "They don't know where other seals may be got; and they look upon those here as their own, as we would a herd of cattle. I'll go forward to meet the hunters; they know me. Some one else ought to go with me as a sample of the rest of us."

"Unarmed?" objected Latham, as he watched Hedon put down his rifle.

"Koehler or Brunton or you, Geoff, you'll go?" Eric disregarded Price.

The surgeon had already stepped forward; so he and Eric advanced slowly, their empty hands held out away from their bodies. Three Eskimos, in similar posture, advanced to meet them. Would the savages, themselves starving, take in nine strangers to share with them what they had? If they would not—but the