Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 69).djvu/164

 Ah-king-ah, my brothers, whom the spirits have taught concerning these things of mystery." The shaman wheeled, and with a quick, accusing finger transfixed the missionary. "It is because of this white man and his ringing bell that the Devil is angry!" he shouted. "Wherefore I say let this white man take his God back to his own kind—back to the land of his fathers!" The words rose to a shriek. "Let him take his God back to the land of his fathers!"

The muttering of the crowd broke loose in a yelling frenzy as men, women, and children took up the cry. In the seething, sweating mass of humanity the missionary's protests were lost, but the dauntless little man wrested himself from the hands of the medicine-man's apprentices, snatched the drum from the great Ah-king-ah himself, and leaped to the now empty shelf of the kashim.

"Wait! Wait!" he commanded. His fist banged the devil-drum, which none but a shaman might touch on penalty of death. The very magnitude of the sacrilege bludgeoned the people into an aghast silence. "For the sake of thy starving women and children, listen to the words of the white man's God. In the Book of which I have told you it is written: 'Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do!' Oh, poor benighted ones, pray to God for help and He will answer. For two months ye have watched Ah-king-ah with his devil tricks trying to change the wind. His words are a lie within his mouth! His sorceries are an abomination to the Lord. His"

A lightning movement and Ah-king-ah had snatched the drum to him. "We do not know this man's God, and we don't want to know Him!" The shaman's mighty voice extinguished the missionary's. "Let the white man take his God back to the land of his fathers!" The rumble of the drum began, and the shaman's feet resumed their weird passes. Again and again he repeated the words. His rhythmic chanting and the booming of the drum woke the mob spirit in the people. The yelling crowd that surged threateningly toward the missionary was led by Milli-ru-ak, who leaped to the shelf and crooked his avid fingers about the white man's throat.

"Stop, my brothers!" The medicine-man's authoritative voice rang out. He had ceased his capering and there was a light of apprehension in his wary eyes. "Milli-ru-ak, lay thy hands off. It is not well that the people of In-ga-lee-nay do violence to such as he, for well ye know how the long arm of the white man's law reaches even from the South, where the sun sinks under the world, to the North, where the water ends. Have ye forgotten the fate of the three medicine-men, Sautock, Beelack, and O-tock-tock in the year of the Red Death? They did but bind the man O'Ryan until his spirit fled—the strange man O'Ryan who swung the little cup of smoke before his God and wore a long garment with a cross about his neck. Remember, my brothers, how there came high chiefs from the South, mighty in anger and with stars on their breasts glittering like the fishes' scales! Remember how they hanged Sautock, Beelack, and O-tock-tock high on the slope behind the village! Have ye the minds of children that ye can forget the long moons their bones rattled in the chains as the east wind lipped them? I Ah-king-ah, to whom spirits whisper, tell ye it is not well that we do violence to a white man"—he woke again the rumbling rhythm of the drum—"but let him leave us in peace to practise the ways of our fathers. Let him take his God back to his own land!"

"Yea! Yea!" The people took up the words in a clamouring chorus while the shaman's three apprentices seized the protesting missionary and carried him to the opening in the floor. One of them placed his feet on the ladder. The other two pressed him down rung by rung, until he found himself on the floor of the tunnel, where the sulphurous eyes of starving dogs menaced him in the gloom.

He stood uncertain for a moment while the oom-oom of the devil-drum rolled in his ears. Then blindly he groped and beat his way along the slippery passage.

"Oh, Thou, Almighty Devil" The propitiatory chant of Ah-king-ah followed him out into the blizzard.

after day the blizzard continued unabated. The supply of mouldy seal-meat dwindled, vanished. The people began eating the walrus-skin coverings of their oomiaks. They chewed the hide dry because there was no oil for cooking except in the house of the medicine-man. The thin-faced children and babies suffered mutely, sucking on seal-skin ropes, on thongs of snow-shoes, on anything that contained a bit of nourishment.

Hunger gnawed at the stomachs of the people and marked their faces with hollows, yet there were no lamentations, no visible evidences of despair. After the manner of their race they waited patiently, stoically, for a change of weather—or for death.

One night the old mother of Miak, the witch-woman, froze to death. The next day every family moved to the kashim, where, by shutting out the air and huddling close together, the people could keep warm