Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/276

262 "Then," Koehler cut in, "let's try to starve like gentlemen."

Hedon shook his head and smiled. "You know better than that, doc," he said. "Let's try to starve like savages."

"Like savages?" Geoff repeated.

Hedon looked away. "If you've read the unexpurgated accounts of our own people starving in the North you'll know what I mean, Geoff. If we come to it—and I don't say we will, for we'll stand a lot of starving yet before we'll be finished—but if we do come to it, let's try to do it decently and as part of the day's work, like Eskimos."

Some one without the igloo shouted and entered, and the daughter of a Palugmiut hunter stood before them, bearing portions of a freshly killed seal.

"Here's our hand-out," said Geoff, as Linn took the meat and put it into the pot suspended by a cord over the oil lamp.

Geoff went into the small igloo close by, which had been built for him and his sister. He roused her, and after they returned to the large snow house the nine guests of the Eskimos