Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/262

248 parley seemed progressing favourably. The Eskimos, assured that neither of the strangers had knives concealed, approached and talked. Hedon stayed with them while Koehler came back.

"They aren't taking enough seals each day to feed themselves; they're living now on the last of the caribou meat they got in the fall," the doctor reported. "But they'll share with us while it lasts."

Hedon now motioned his party forward, and at the same moment the main body of hunters moved to meet them. Flanked on both sides by gaunt, swarthy savages bearing seal spears and long knives, the nine white strangers entered the Eskimo village.

Though Geoff knew that Eric recently had visited these people and found them not only friendly but hospitable, and though Koehler now had reported their offer to welcome the whites and give what aid they could, Geoff watched the Eskimos wonderingly as he halted with his companions in the snow village. The little, rounded dwellings, some score in number, stood in a rough crescent; before them the