Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 69).djvu/157

 ILLUSTRATED BY S. H. VEDDER

'' oom-oom. O-o-m oom-oom. O-o-m oom-oom ''

Up from the kashim, the underground council-house, came the beat of the devil-drum pulsing hollow and strange through the scream of the gale and the rumble of icebergs grinding below the snow-buried Eskimo village.

''O-o-m oom-oom. O-o-m oom-oom. O-o-m''

Ah-king-ah, the medicine-man, was trying to change the wind. Day and night for two moons the Polar blizzard had split its force on the bleak island pyramid thrusting up through the ice of Bering Strait. It was a wind of death—a devil's wind, piling floe on floe until the ice grounded, yet keeping it ever astir. No life could exist beneath the pack or on top of it, and in the igloos clinging to the white slope of the shore the people, unable to hunt, were facing starvation.

''O-o-m oom-oom. O-o-m oom-oom. O-o-m oom-oom''

In a temporary lull the hollow rhythm grew louder, penetrating the walls of the missionary's igloo where he, the only white man on the island, sat alone before a table clutching an open book with both mittened hands. The twilight of the Arctic noon made no impression on the thick frost-crust of the window, but the wan rays of a kerosene lamp fell on the volume and on the missionary's grey hair showing above the dropped hood of his reindeer parka. With every breath a shaft of vapour clouded the chill air, for his supply of driftwood had vanished while the blizzard was in its first month; and after he had shared his oil with the village families there was little left for use in his Eskimo heating lamp.

The reverberation of the devil-drum was suddenly pierced by the wail of a wolf-dog dying under the teeth of its hunger-maddened mates. The man raised sunken eyes, blue and fervid with a terrible anxiety, and listened. The sounds of cannibalistic ravening sent a tremor through his body.

He flattened his palms on the open Bible and strained his thin face upward in desperate supplication. "God—Father—Change the wind!" During a moment's silence his gaze remained fixed on something beyond the blackened ceiling of the igloo, beyond the driven ice-dust of the blizzard. Then, in a voice that gathered confidence as he proceeded, he filled the room with ringing phrases from the Book:—

"And he caused an east wind to blow in the heavens and by his power he brought in the south wind.

"He rained flesh also upon them as dust and feathered fowls as sands of the sea.

"And he let it fall in the midst of their camp, round about their habitations.

"So they did eat and were well filled."

''O-o-m oom-oom. O-o-m oom-oom. O-o-m oom-oom '' the devil-drum beat a barbarous amen.

"They did eat and were well filled!" The missionary closed the Bible and firmly, as one who has found new courage, repeated the words in the Eskimo tongue. He rose from the table and crossed over to a corner where a canned-milk box did duty as a cupboard. From the curled bacon rind that hung there he cut a thin slice and slipped it hungrily into his mouth. Chewing a bit of it eased the gnawing in his stomach, which had not yet grown accustomed to one meal a day—a ration made necessary since he had divided the last of his provisions with the village.

Opening a door at the back of the igloo, he made his stooping way into another larger room—the school-house and church his own hands had built so hopefully six months before. Under his stiff fingers the light flared up from a bracket lamp, revealing a small wall-blackboard which had never known a chalk mark, and the yellow lumber of benches that had yet to feel the contact of Eskimo garments. He had come north to teach and christianize a people that wanted neither teaching nor Christianity.