And then—But I have wandered from my text.
How did I get out of my second lie? I think
I got out with honour, but I cannot be sure, for it
was a long time ago and some of the details have faded
out of my memory. I recollect that I was reversed
and stretched across some one’s knee, and that
something happened, but I cannot now remember what
it was. I think there was music; but it is all
dim now and blurred by the lapse of time, and this
may be only a senile fancy.
’Yes, I will tell you anything about my life
that you would like to know, Mr. Twain,’ she
said, in her soft voice, and letting her honest eyes
rest placidly upon my face, ’for it is kind
and good of you to like me and care to know about
me.’
She had been absently scraping blubber-grease from
her cheeks with a small bone-knife and transferring
it to her fur sleeve, while she watched the Aurora
Borealis swing its flaming streamers out of the sky
and wash the lonely snow plain and the templed icebergs
with the rich hues of the prism, a spectacle of almost
intolerable splendour and beauty; but now she shook
off her reverie and prepared to give me the humble
little history I had asked for. She settled
herself comfortably on the block of ice which we were
using as a sofa, and I made ready to listen.
She was a beautiful creature. I speak from the
Esquimaux point of view. Others would have thought
her a trifle over-plump. She was just twenty
years old, and was held to be by far the most bewitching
girl in her tribe. Even now, in the open air,
with her cumbersome and shapeless fur coat and trousers
and boots and vast hood, the beauty of her face was
at least apparent; but her figure had to be taken
on trust. Among all the guests who came and
went, I had seen no girl at her father’s hospitable
trough who could be called her equal. Yet she
was not spoiled. She was sweet and natural and
sincere, and if she was aware that she was a belle,
there was nothing about her ways to show that she possessed
that knowledge.
She had been my daily comrade for a week now, and
the better I knew her the better I liked her.
She had been tenderly and carefully brought up, in
an atmosphere of singularly rare refinement for the
polar regions, for her father was the most important
man of his tribe and ranked at the top of Esquimaux
civilisation. I made long dog-sledge trips across
the mighty ice floes with Lasca—that was
her name—and found her company always pleasant
and her conversation agreeable. I went fishing
with her, but not in her perilous boat: I merely
followed along on the ice and watched her strike her
game with her fatally accurate spear. We went
sealing together; several times I stood by while she
and the family dug blubber from a stranded whale,
and once I went part of the way when she was hunting
a bear, but turned back before the finish, because
at bottom I am afraid of bears.
